USA > Washington > History of Washington the evergreen state : from early dawn to daylight with portraits and biographies Vol. II > Part 18
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And now, turning inland, let us stand beside the eternal dis- turbance of boisterous Spokane Falls. We have left the realm of silence save for the crash of the avalanche ; we enter the region of perpetual unrest, the mad conflict of angry waters hurrying to their fall. We have heard citizens of Tacoma speak jocosely of the time when Washington's great mountain would become the ice-house of the cities of the sound, and by some means, as yet not fully perfected, give up its glaciers to supply the demand for genuine frost-hardened crystal blocks. In Spokane Falls, alas ! utility has already invaded the poetical and done its profitable work. Spokane Falls is " a water-power," and Spokane City employs its forces and exults accordingly, as, all unmindful of sacrilege,
They break on the wheel of base barter
This beautiful child of the mist,
1
Eng ª by F. G. Kernan, N.Y.
John Paul
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And doom to the driving of mill-wheels The foam that young Iris has kist.
Drainer of lakes, devourer of streams, taking tribute from a thousand torrents, and drinking the foam of myriads of moun- tain cascades, as the sunshine absorbs the morning dew, the falls of Spokane fill with their eternal rush and roar the " Valley of tl.e Waters." It almost would seem as if the light leap and airy spring of the tiny rills as they put on their robes of silver and break in spray wreaths, rainbow-crowned from their parent fountain-heads, were practising for the tremendous declensions which await them below, when Spokane, having seized them in its relentless grasp, hurries them on to the charge and combat of its waters. Little does Lake Cœur d'Alene, but ten leagues away, dream, as his great cup catches the drippings of the hill- sides or the constant gushings of his hidden springs below, how wild a fate awaits the waters he so silently dismisses to meet their doom. Like the desperate man pictured in Cole's " Voyage of Life," they emerge from the calm and peaceful beauty of their morning to move with quickened step, insensible at first, but ever increasing, till at length, caught in the toils, and unable to escape, they mingle with the swirl and wild gambols of the Iris-crowned grand cascade. Coming first in one solid column of attack in its course through the city itself, " Spokane the Wonderful," with all the impetus born of a declivity of nearly one hundred and sixty feet of declension, divides into four channels, sepa- rated and barriered by rocks that may break but cannot stay the impetuous charge of their foam-plumed battalions. Escaped from these impediments, they once more reunite their forces, and then, like charging steeds maddened by some strange terror, dash onward with successive leaps, each wilder than the last, till with one final plunge of full sixty feet they are free again, and move placidly on through a deep gorge as if striving to re- cover from the fierceness of their advent.
So much for the æsthetic ; now for the practical. We are no longer the painter looking with artist eye to seize the most striking effect, but the practical millwright prospecting for a con- venient site to tap its water-power. Water-power, indeed-a net efficiency of thirty thousand horse-power at the least, even at its lowest stage ! What says the chief engineer of the water works : " This power, as compared with that of any other stream so far
13
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developed in any county, is almost the peer of them all." It is so great as simply to be beyond discussion. Nor does winter lock, as elsewhere, with her icy bolts the freedom and conse- quent utility of the fall. There is no day in the year that it is not ample in volume, ever ready to do the manufacturer's bid- ding. There is no need to vary your motive forces with steam or beg assistance from the whirl of wind-driven sails ; it is na- ture's free gift to man, given without let or hindrance, a constant torrent from springs that never fail.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
TWO CITIES OF WASHINGTON-OLYMPIA, THE "CAPITAL CITY," AND SEATTLE, THE "QUEEN CITY."
" ' Cities of refuge,' God-ordained, Thus Hebrew legends told, Altars where Mercy made her shrine And pity ne'er grew cold. When flying from pursuing wrath, Bearing the brand of Cain,
Murder, red-handed, fresh from crime, With fearful footsteps came.
Our Washington hath cities fair, Havens of refuge, too, ..
That watching wait with outstretched arms To greet the good and true.
' Cities of refuge,' not from crime, But sweet to weary souls,
Who gather here from every clime That tyranny controls.
They ope their gates to honest toil, Though poor the toilers be, And offer lands with fertile soil To serfs beyond the sea. A freer life, a purer air, A field to found a home,
To smooth the furrowed brow of care, And rest, no more to roam."
-BREWERTON.
SIX " cities of refuge," as Hebraic legends inform us, opened their sheltering gates to those who, having slain a fellow-man in their wrath or been guilty of accidental homicide, fled to find pro- tection from the avengers of blood fast following upon their foot- steps. Now, though our similitude lacks the essential element which characterizes the special purpose of these ancient cities of the olden time, we may affirm that the wide bounds of favored Washington contain many a city fairer by far than those of the Jewish dynasty, which are, indeed, in a higher and holier sense " cities of refuge" and oases of repose. They speak, though
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with dumb lips, no uncertain language ; they are eloquent in invitation ; they say to the toilers in lands beyond the seas, " Why wear out your patient lives in hopeless, unrequited toil, working for some lord of the soil or hard-hearted taskmaster, who sees his hireling spend youth and strength in faithful ser- vice, yet cares not when the uselessness of premature old age, with its palsied limbs and failing vigor, relegates him to the poorhouse and the infirmary, or, more frequently still, turns him out to die like the overworked beast who perishes unshel- tered by the roadside. They do more than this ; they promise equal rights, just protection, and a system of government found- ed upon a plan which makes each individual not only the gov- erned, but an integer of the power which formulates the code under which he lives ; they point to our broad prairies, our bound- less woods, our vast water-power, still running to waste, with wonderful facilities for transportation by land and sea ; above all, to the possibilities of securing at a merely nominal price lands teeming with fertility and affluent in all that rewards the labors of the husbandman, growing the wood which will erelong furnish the material for a home far excelling the peasant's wild- est dream, not to mention the impossibility of his obtaining it in the land of his nativity. To the physically broken and ener- vated they promise a renewal of strength, the pure breeze of the prairie or the bracing breath of upland heights as opposed to the stifling heat of the factory and foul-smelling mill ; the music of bird notes instead of the dull, monotonous whir of ever-revolv- ing machinery, redolent of odors dense and deleterious. Nor does this unspoken welcome appeal only to the serf and slaver in foreign lands ; it has a suggestion of advice and extends a beckoning hand to those within our own borders-to the clerk drudging hopelessly at his city desk; to the toilers who find a scanty living amid New England hills, who, dwelling in those brown old homes, wrest by careful husbandry a meagre living from a cold and reluctant soil, tilling the worn-out fields first broken by their fathers in the far-off days that reach back to the time when the Puritan sang his thanksgiving hymn beneath the wintry stars, ere, at a later period, he burned the witches at Salem or gently indoctrinated the rebellious Quaker by scoring his transgressions upon his bleeding back, or, still farther on, compelled the Baptist, in the person of Roger Williams, to find
Eng. vy F G. Kernon, N.Y
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
a way by water to a terrestrial paradise, and explore, with wel- come of " what cheer," the sunny waters of Narragansett Bay. There is something better to be found amid the woods and wilds of yet almost virgin Washington than this hopeless hand-to- mouth existence on the Atlantic border. Why then remain ? It offers a soil still unbroken, enriched by the vegetable deposits of centuries, which needs but the turning of the sod and the planting of the seed to grow white with wheat or golden with the tasselled corn. Mile after mile of the " forest primeval" wait the stroke of the axe and the rending of the saw. The streams teem with trout, the sound with salmon. The ordinary course of nature is calm and serene-the cyclone bates its breath, the blizzard stays its hand, the bolts of Jove refuse to fly, the tempest loses its terrors, a severe winter is so infrequent as to be memorable, an ideal summer too common to excite special comment-in a word, it is a land where the silent forces of nature invite capital to utilize powers and avail itself of materials whose possibilities of recompense exceed the estimate of its most optimistic dream, while to the less affluent seeker for a home it suggests a broader field, a freer life, an oasis amid the desert of unrequital, a veri- table " A-la-bama" and haven of rest.
Having thus generalized its advantages, we will endeavor to become specific and bring into evidence in the present chapter three of Washington's most important cities, beginning with
OLYMPIA.
The first in rank, if not in size, to claim our attention is Olympia, the " capital city," as it is called, for it is here that the Solons of Washington-the Jupiters and lesser legislative gods of this modern Olympus-meet to discuss and settle as best they may the affairs of state ; to emulate "the fateful three" and tangle or set in order, as destiny may decree, the business of the good people of this new-born commonwealth ; to wrangle and disagree at times, like the heroes of the ancient mythology, and then again coincide in all charity and lovingkindness when . party tides flow on more harmoniously. The city of which we are about to speak, one of the oldest towns in the State of Washington, and, moreover, the county-seat of Thurston County, is situated 122 miles distant by rail from Portland, and 36 from Tacoma by steamer. It is located at the head of Budd's Inlet,
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
an arm of Puget Sound, and the extreme southern limit of its waters-we say an arm of the sound, for all its many inlets and ramifications are regarded but as side streets and lanes leading to, but not a part of, that great watery thoroughfare to which Vancouver, so generous in nomenclature, gave the generic title of Puget Sound. Olympia is most fortunate in the enjoyment of a site which unites facility of access with more than ordinary beauty of position, while, unlike the mountain from whence it takes its name, and wherein also it differs materially from its sister cities of the sound, its shores are not precipitous, but rise gradually into picturesque prominence, disclosing its whole ex- tent as approached from the bay, and revealing a situation unex- celled by any water front in Western Washington. There is, of course, as in all comparatively newly settled regions, much that remains to be done ; but when we remember the brevity of the period during which such remarkable improvements have been accomplished, we can only wonder at the result and lose our- selves in speculation as to the possible greatness of her future. If we are to judge from the past, what may another lustrum not do for Olympia ? Though the flatness of the shore would seem at first sight to militate against the utilizing of her otherwise excellent harbor, it only requires the building of piers suffi- ciently long to connect the natural meander line with deep water to obviate all difficulty and furnish dockage and shipping facilities which may be rendered available to any desired ex- tent. Meanwhile, her waters, both sea and tributary, are gener- ously prolific in sea foods. The succulent clam is, as elsewhere stated, found in immense quantities, and attains a dimension as- tonishing and unknown save upon the Pacific coast.
The oyster, ever a philosophic dish, opens with the regularity of the legislative session ; smelt, cod, halibut, and the epicurean salınon are so plentiful that, so far as the latter is concerned, it would almost seem that the contract of a Puget Sound employé should be modelled upon those of the old-time indentures of the apprentices of Northern Maine, to which we have already alluded. As for the smaller lakes and inflowing streams, the disciple of old Isaac Walton's patient art may follow his pleasing toil from morn till dewy eve, yet never want for en- couragement. The city itself, with its broad, well-shaded streets, its abundance of fruit trees, its wealth of smiling gardens
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
redolent of sweets, its commodious public buildings, elegant pri- vate residences, churches, hotels, and institutions both financial and educational, needs but one element to assist its progress-a boundary-line on wheels, for its corporate limits are continually expanding, while the growth of its population, like an o'er-filled cup, overflows its boundaries. The capital city is by no means an isolated metropolis shut up within itself. Steamboats run daily to Tacoma and Seattle ; even the denizens of the saw-mill towns and lumbering camps that dot the beaches or invade the monotony of the otherwise wooded shores of Hood's Canal can "run up to town" and get their supplies almost as frequently as they please. It has a hospital well maintained ; its school facili- ties and educational methods are, as, indeed, everywhere else in the Evergreen State, excellent ; the secret societies are repre- sented by elaborate lodge-rooms ; street railways connect distant points with commendable rapidity ; the electric light is ubiqui- tous-in a word, to sum it up briefly and complete this outline word picture with a single sentence, Olympia is not only " the capital city," but a capital city, well worthy of its distinction as the selected site of Washington's senatorial and legislative deliberations and the official residence of its Executive.
Passing from the centre to the circumference, we may say that its outer setting of resources and industries furnishes a fit adornment to the inner gem, advantages which the many inlets afforded by the extensive shore-line of the sound utilize with abundant ease. This is especially true of the wealth of timber, one great source of manufacture and profit, and all important to the needs of every growing city. Here, as elsewhere in Wash- ington, nature has showered her gifts with a prodigal and wide- open hand ; the surface of the surrounding country is covered with fir, cedar, oak, maple, alder, and pine of enormous growth ; the rain and sunshine of uncounted years have been silently at work preparing the material which should one day roof in the habitations of thousands, then unborn, who now people the happy homes of the Evergreen State ; but when this demand, . great as it is, has been supplied, there is still an abundance, and will be for years to come, to supply the cargoes for export. The annual cut is even now very heavy and the increasing facilities of the numerous mills are taxed to their utmost capacity. Should there be any doubter of this statement, let him watch the almost
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
endless procession of log rafts as they are towed or drift lazily along to encounter the rough usage of the whirling saws, so soon to convert the pine tree of to-day, deep rooted in the recesses of the primitive forest, into the enclosure of God's most beautiful dwelling upon earth-a home-or follow the white-sailed ships whose keels are continually cleaving the waters of the sound, to bear them afar to lands beyond the sea. Nor are the skirts of this Olympian goddess unadorned with treasures, hidden as yet for want of that development which capital will in the fulness of time undoubtedly supply, for there exists, as prospectors have demonstrated, any amount of coal and iron and some copper in the vicinity of Olympia. Unappreciated as they may be at present, yet as a part of Western Washington's material pros- perity we believe her mines, here and elsewhere, are destined to become eminent factors not only in gaining substantial divi- dends for the investor, but by supplying occupation to thousands, whose presence and labor will help to develop new sources of reve- nue and add to the bone and sinew of her population by attract- ing settlers to the State. We are prepared to express the opin- ion that, when once inaugurated, the success of these mining industries will be simply startling. There is a fine water-power derived from the falls of the Tumwater, which, largely as it has been employed, still offers sites for occupancy. It must not be imagined because we have dwelt thus strongly upon the lumber and mining interests of Olympia's vicinity that agriculture has no place, and must, therefore, stand with idle hands amid this affluence of more important industries ; it is far otherwise, as witness the following description from the pen of a close ob- server, who clearly proves that she has much to do and the wherewithal, moreover, to accomplish her vocation. He says :
" The surface of the surrounding country is by no means rough, even when thickly timbered ; and the soil of the valleys and occasional patches of open upland prairie are very inviting to the agriculturalist, for they afford many varieties of fertile lands. Aside from these alluvial river bottoms and sandy and gravelly uplands, all the cleared lands will make good farms and pay well when brought under cultivation. Wheat and grain of all kinds are grown here of fine quality, while hops are pro- duced that equal any in this section. There is no limit to the yield of vegetables, and fruits, apples, pears, quinces, plums,
HaRaymond
Dnut Bories Com med
Jamachachlaw
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
and peaches are all grown in excellence, and some in perfec- tion."
Olympia and Thurston County, in which she sits enthroned, have a history withal, rich in events, holding memories. both dark and light, overflowing with scenes and incidents never so well described as by her old pioneers. Want of space forbids, or it might be entertaining and certainly most instructive to trace its settlement and gradual upbuilding from its first clear- ing in the solemn silence of the hitherto untenanted forest to the fair city of to-day ; and here it seems necessary to repeat in de- tail what we have generally referred to in a previous chapter. The first term of a district court ever held there was convened January 20th, 1852, under the judicial supervision of the Hon. William Strong, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Oregon Territory and Judge of the Third Judicial District, a session necessitated by the seizure of two vessels-the Beaver and Mary Dare-detained for infraction of the revenue laws. Before the adjournment of this court several new limbs were added to the legal tree; among others then admitted to the Bar was that learned lawyer and all-accomplished historian, the Hon. Elwood Evans, still practising in Tacoma, to whose graphic pen and faithful record we have been so deeply and constantly indebted for material embodied in these pages. We have told the story before in briefer words, but a good story will bear telling again ; so, though it be " a twice-told tale," we will venture to inflict a new description upon the reader of Olym- pia's first Fourth of July celebration, never to be forgotten, the precursor and first-born of many a more elaborate demonstration in honor of our natal day yet to be holden beneath the shadow of Pacific's pines, yet none, perhaps, more feelingly kept or fit- tingly honored. It took place in the same year (1852). The commemoration attracted settlers from all parts of Northern Ore- gon, many of the sound settlements being largely represented. We can imagine the scene : The men, rough, bearded and sun- burned, driving in over the recently opened roads, with the old farm wagons newly greased and painted in honor of the occasion, in which their families had made the weary journey of the plains ; the women in their sun-bonnets and calico Sunday best, with here and there a ribbon or gay-hued parasol-relic of by-gone
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Eastern finery, but still treasured and kept with care in the wilderness as a link between the old-time fashions and the new ; the children, the younger born beneath the "Evergreen" pines, the older all agog to see "Fourth of July" once more ; the homely but hearty fun and junketing by the old school-house, then new and unfinished, or beneath the neighboring trees ; the reunions and reminiscences of those who had crossed the plains together by ox team, but had never met since they " whacked bulls" across the big divide ; the harmless mirth, the thorough good-fellowship, and, above all and pervading all, the love of the dear old flag and the revival of patriotic sentiments that lit anew the flame of slumbering but never entirely extinguished love which every true American bears for all that belongs to these United States ; how they must have cheered the orators' "spread-eagle" utterances to the echo, how enjoyed the suggestions of " what our fathers did at Bunker Hill" ! But it was not to be a mere demonstration, the keeping of a day of remembrance, a festival soon to be forgotten. It had a deeper meaning, a larger intent and outcome. We are told that after the ceremonies of the day had been concluded an enthusiastic meeting was improvised, and the division of the Territory-then entirely Oregon -- was discussed, and resulted in an arrangement for a convention to be held during the fall to promote that object. It gave an in- pulse to journalism, too, for we find James W. Wiley and Thorn- ton F. McElroy, the former being the editor, issuing the first number of a journal-the Columbian-to assist the desired sepa,- ration by advocating the interests of Northern Oregon and Puget Sound, and specially championing the formation of a separate Territory north of the Columbia River, to be denomi- nated Columbia-a movement which proved an opening wedge to bring about an agitation which in due time resulted in the establishment of the Territory of Washington. The capital city is indeed a treasure-house rich in incidents. We have no space to record the abortive attempt to expel the obnoxious Chinese, an effort ending only in the prosecution, conviction, and sentence of its well-meaning perpetrators. Nor may we longer dwell upon the perfections of this Olympian queen, but pass to her sister sovereign, both by rank and title, Olympia's neighbor and friend, Seattle, the " Queen City of the sound."
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SEATTLE, THE "QUEEN CITY."
It is simply impossible within the circumscribed limits of a few pages to do justice to the birth, growth, situation, and peculiar advantages, not to mention the many interesting inci- dents which rightfully belong to and are inseparably bound up with the history of Seattle ; we must, therefore, confine ourselves to a mere outline of three or four most memorable events, such as the Indian siege, the lynchings, the anti-Chinese excitement, and the great fire, which gave her citizens an opportunity to show the world how rapidly zeal, courage, and true energy could repair the ravages of apparently irremediable disaster. The right to wear, as she does so regally, the proud appellation of the " Queen City," was bought with a price the greatness of which her inhabitants of to-day can scarcely appreciate. She is the child of patient self-sacrifice and heroic effort ; her birth was accompanied by throes of anxiety, privation, discourage- ment, and danger, with all those evils which retard the develop- ment of the frontier settlement. She passed through the phases of an infancy ofttimes clouded, a later existence continually menaced by unforeseen difficulties, and a maturer civic life hampered by rivalries hardly less embarrassing. That she should finally not only have emerged triumphantly from the obstacles that obstructed her progress is alike creditable to American manhood and its special application to the upbuilding of Seattle by the pioneers of Puget Sound. The site they so wisely selected is at once suitable and commanding, for the " Queen City" sits upon her single bluff with as proud an air of civic dignity as ever Rome of old when she " sat upon her seven hills," and from her throne beside the Tiber ruled the world. Looking down upon Elliott Bay, a beautiful expansion of the sound, she rises step by step up the steep eminence, whose en- vious crest conceals the many evidences of substantial progress that lie beyond, but that which is visible is strikingly hand- some, and it would be difficult to select amid all the ramifica- tions of Puget Sound a location more entirely appropriate. Rising from the eastern shore of Elliott Bay with a regular but decided acclivity, the greater part of the city proper is to be seen ; at its foot extends its sheltered harbor, with abundant anchorage dotted with ships, and lined with docks and wharves
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