USA > Washington > History of Washington the evergreen state : from early dawn to daylight with portraits and biographies Vol. II > Part 29
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culturist, to the tiller of fields, to the grazier, the millwright, and the lumberman ; hence it was that she was so fortunate as to avoid the hangers-on, thieves, thugs, and base speculators upon the weaknesses of humanity, who are the inseparable ac- companiments of mining camps and the cities that supply their needs. There was no " gambling lay out" in the possibilities of the wildernesses of Washington, no seductions to the settler save the honest invitations of freer fields for even greater labor, a healthful climate, and a virgin soil, whose productiveness might be larger than that which he was accustomed to culti- vate.
While thus eulogizing the men whose keen axes first let the sunshine in to warm the long darkened ground, where the forest leaves had rotted peacefully for centuries, undisturbed save by the bound of the deer or the foot of some wandering Indian, or who broke with their ploughshares the sod of the prairie, that it might grow verdant with wheat or plumed with the tassels of the corn, we must not forget the wives and daughters who fought life's battle by their side through those ofttimes dark and dreary days of frontier settlement in the Territory of Wash- ington. Verily God must have selected these devoted women to fulfil their self-appointed task, pouring out upon them a double portion of that self-sacrificing spirit, that forgetfulness of all save home and present duty so characteristic of true womanhood under whatever circumstances it may be found. They were in- deed " helpmeets" for the rugged men beside whom they labored and for whom they prayed. Surely many of these hus- bands and fathers, whose religion was one of honest dealing rather than of public profession, who spoke hasty words in their wrath, but never did a mean or unkind action, will at the great day of final account justify the text that "the unbelieving hus- band is sanctified by the wife." All honor, say we, to those brave and kindly hearts, those jewels of their sex, set, it may be roughly, as wanting the graces of conventionality, but though cased in the casket of their weaker physical frame, ever stronger in all good things than their lords, the women of the frontier, first pioneers of culture and refinement, who hoped ever through the darkest day, finding some silver lining in the gloomiest cloud-these were they who wandered in the wilderness through many years-weary years withal-of self-abnegation, ever com-
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forted with the thought of that promised land of rest and plenty which, before they died, they trusted they might be permitted to enter and enjoy, but which, though so long anticipated, they were never destined to attain, because the God in whom they trusted called them up higher, to occupy a better country, even a heavenly. Their lives were, indeed, like those of the chosen people of Israel, a pilgrimage, yet they fainted not in the desert, for they were led, if not by a pillar of cloud and flame, at least by that better guide of a faith which never doubted or wavered in its reliance on holy things, knowing that whatever might be- tide, He who beheld their sorrows would surely recompense. And here, though it may seem a strange thing to say, we believe that this religious instinct was strengthened by the deprivation of what is somewhat cantingly called " sanctuary privileges ;" the ministrations of the Gospel were to them literally angel visits, few and far between, prized none the less because of their infrequency. Religion had no chance to grow stale with them. The old adage that familiarity breeds contempt is, paradoxical as it may seem, verified in " church-going" as well as in secular matters. They did not require a bugle and quartette at one end and a clerical buffoon at the other in the woods of territorial Wash- ington to obtain reverential hearing beneath log-cabin roofs for the unlearned men who were satisfied in those primitive days to confine their preaching to Christ and Him crucified.
Yet many there were of these estimable women who folded their weary hands to a final rest beneath the shadows of the pines that sheltered their humble cabins ; many more, alas ! whose mangled remains were sepulchred by the wolf and prowl- ing coyote after their immolation on the altars of Indian cruel- ties and still more brutal savage lust. What words of ours can do justice to the memory of Washington's pioneer dead or to the few old men and women who, gray-haired and bowed with many years, still remain, standing like withered pines upon the mountain-tops, flame-scorched, storm-beaten, tossed by many winds, seared by the lightning and twisted by the wintry gales, yet firmly rooted still, the landmarks of a bygone day, towering above the younger and greener growth by which they are sur- rounded and on which their ruined trunks so soon to fall look sadly down ! Honor to these gray heads ! let the young men rise up before them to do these veterans the reverence they have
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so worthily earned ; for surely there are those who bore the bur- den and heat of the day, sowing that you might reap more abundantly.
Is it not a pertinent suggestion to make here that it would be a gracious deed, and well worthy of consideration, if each town and city of the State were to erect in its most beautiful park, or, better still, in its most public thoroughfare, where all eyes could look upon it, a lasting monument, ornate with suggestive decora- tions, whose appropriate devices should emphasize our theme by giving on its base a brief history of the founding of the place, while its broken shaft, crowned by sculptured flowers, should gain an additional wreath from being engraved with the names of those old pioneers to whose patient continuance in well-doing it owed both existence and progress.
Then, too, on the gathering of the dead to their last resting- place, let your Greenwoods and Mount Auburns of the future, as well as those which already blossom with the offerings of the myrtle and the rose, set aside its most beautiful elevation as the appointed sepulchre, should they desire to slumber with their fellows, for your old pioneers, that their descendants may be encouraged to emulate their virtues by beholding how you honor the fathers and mothers who under God made the State of Wash- ington what she is to-day.
CHAPTER XLII.
TO CONCLUDE THIE TERRITORIAL HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
" The hand grows weary with its task, The work of toilsome days, The tired brain begins to ask, Surcease in many ways. It seems so long since first our pen Essayed this tangled theme,
Of years long dead and living men, 'Tis like a troubled dream ; And now as on the closing page We gladly 'finis ' write, We wonder what historic sage WVill critic words indite ?"
-BREWERTON.
WHAT broader or more extensive theme could we select for our valedictorian chapter than the praises of Puget Sound ? We read of " storm centres" from Cape Horn, the cloud-gatherer, to wave-swept Newfoundland banks, but if there be such a thing as a peace centre, where the weary elements, worn out with their strifes, retire to repose, this climactic Eden is located in Western Washington. Shunned by the thunder and almost a stranger to the electric bolts of Jove, it knows nothing of tem- pests ; no cyclone fells its forests, no blizzard heaps its valleys with snow-drifts ; on the contrary, the Chinook wind, the oscu- lation of the Pacific, born of the Japan current upon our west- ern shore, breathes balmy blessings upon perennial grasses, ever- green pines, and ofttimes winter-blooming shrubs and flowers ; it is, in a word, the paradise of repose-the waves slumber, no wreckage cumbers the shores of these inland seas, waters of a hundred fathoms in depth that know no quicksands or hidden rocks or dangerous shoals, where great ships may anchor within a cable's length of the shore and ride in safety. A very practical writer thus portrays Puget Sound :
" Saratoga Lake is at times more ruffled, but a mill-pond is
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not smoother than its surface generally, being seldom disturbed even by winds and tides in conflict. Its beauty claims the least regard, striking as it is. Nature, if she ever shows design, dis- plays it here. Place this body of water as it exists to-day in Western Washington anywhere east of the Rocky Mountains, and its serviceability would be comparatively lost. An ordinary hard blow, such as is frequent there, would wreck every vessel on a lee shore, and in a gale a steamer would hardly find sea room. Nowhere in the body of the sound can anchorage be found. Here, however, no vessels are ever lost, for here the rude shocks of nature seem never to occur ; on the contrary, there is complete exemption from the agitation born of disas- trous storms. However strong the indications of former turbu- lence, it has now subsided, and this region has dropped into that centre amid revolving forces called inert. Seemingly this is just where the reactionary powers of surrounding disturbances meet each other to produce a counterbalancing calm. Stripped of these prevailing conditions, Puget Sound, now the safest, would become the most treacherous of waters."
Reaching into the land-if we measure, strictly speaking, from Cape Flattery-not more than a hundred and fifty miles, the meander line of its shores presents a frontage of no less than eighteen hundred miles more or less rich in timber or valuable mineral deposit, all of which must reach their market by the convenient waterways flowing at their feet. Why, the value of the timber alone whose forests terminate upon its shores is esti- mated at $3,500,000,000, and who shall say what buried wealth of metals may not lay beneath their sod ?
A strange fancy comes to us as we write. Recalling our long personal acquaintance with the locality in question and the ele- mental Sabbath calm of which we have spoken as pervading the region of the sound, it seems as if the mist clouds, so often roll- ing over its surface or clinging lovingly to the pines they finally elude to vanish in the upper air, were the smoke wreaths of the peace pipes of the storms, gathered here to make an eternal compact, exempting Puget Sound from their terrors and con- verting Western Washington into the neutral ground of their everlasting conflicts.
We remember, when a small boy at school, losing, to our great grief and mortification, our place in the geography class
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because unable to locate Puget Sound, little dreaming then how often in the days to come we should traverse its waters. We recollect, too, how suggestive to our infant mind its very name seemed of savagery, lying as it did in so far-off and occult a region ; the haunt of the beaver and the seal ; a natural preserve of bears ; a huge Indian reservation, whose white agents, if such it knew, were self-appointed and dreadfully liable to " lose their hair ;" a place where salmon were a drug ; and he whose insane imagination should have dared to predict the possibility of its being ever traversed by steamers or linked by railroads with the metropolis of the East would have been considered a subject for the lunatic asylum and relegated to that retreat accordingly with as little delay as possible. Now, as the French say, " we have changed all that." So forgetting the Puget Sound of the past, the theatre of combat and warwhoop, of savage incursions of far northern tribes, the sea wolves of the Northwest, paddling stealthily in their great war canoes on their errands of murder and rapine, let us consider the Puget Sound of to-day by amplify- ing the description to which we have already committed our- selves.
Naturally calm, bright, and beautiful, Puget Sound is fast putting off its war paint and beginning to array itself in the robes of a higher progressive civilization. Fair cities sit upon its shores, villages dot its indentations, many keels part its placid waters. Its echoes, grown familiar to the shriek of the steam whistle, no longer start at the sound ; the white wings of the pale-face canoe have become too common a sight to attract the attention of the Indian. Expectation hastens onward and Realization follows swiftly in its footsteps. The plan of to day is the thing accomplished of to-morrow. We cease to be sur- prised.
Regarded from a topographical point of view as it appears upon the map of Western Washington, there is but one simile, and that, perhaps, at first sight not the most pleasantly sugges- tive, to which we may liken this vast body of water, but never- theless, in general scope, outline, and appearance it resembles the octopus-an octopus, indeed, broken at the centre by the intrusion of Whidby and Camano islands, whose widespread feelers reach out from thence till lost in the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the north, while its southern termini touch the mouths
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J. G. Decksback
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of the Puyallup and the Tumwater ; but, unlike the octopus of the ocean, it puts forth its Briarean tentacles not to injure but to bless ; to bring great ships from afar to cities that smile their welcome upon its banks ; to make an ever-ready waterway for the log rafts floating to expectant mills, to bear upon their bosoms the argosies that carry food, shelter and fuel to lands beyond the sea-in fine, to furnish those all-needful means of communi- cation which, combined with that great inland triumph of mod- ern engineering, the Northern Pacific Railroad, have made the wilds of Western Washington what they are to-day, and without which it would be far less advanced both in wealth and popula- tion. Then, too, as already suggested, it seems to exercise a beneficent influence over climatic changes, softening and mellow- ing all, rendering the air more balmy, the mist-veiled scenery more beautiful beneath its silvery screens, and reducing to a pleasant degree of warmth the heat of the sultriest summer day -all confess to the influence of its ameliorating presence. What, indeed, would Western Washington do without Puget Sound ?
Looking back to the period of early discovery, it seems won- derful that with all its temptations to enter and enjoy it was not sooner explored and traversed. Think of it ! An inland sea in extent, a secluded lake in quietude, with a " flattering" wel- come at its very mouth and an entrance far more grand and im- pressive than that which unlocks the harbor of San Francisco, and which may yet become the key to a more popular and auriferous Golden Gate, the " open sesame" to a land where fortune beckons, whose climate discounts that Atlantic-vaunted Newport, and whose natural gifts beggar comparison with any region of similar extent embraced by our national boundaries. Take it all in all, in its adaptation to the needs of commerce and trade, if the good people of the Northwest had been per- mitted to give their own order to Dame Nature's workshop, it could hardly have been filled more perfectly.
Then, too, from an æsthetic standpoint, how majestic its surroundings ! As if to bar the ruder breezes of the Pacific, the glorious Olympians rear to the northward their mighty founda- tions of solid rock, pinnacled with superstructures whose mina- rets are the everlasting snows ; and then, as if repentant of a rudeness of exterior which might suggest a frown, these moun- tain giants, plumed by the clouds and armored by the plating
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of the rocks guarding its gateways, soften their rough visages till all the landscape smiles, with here and there a sea-set island gem, their pine-clad bluffs, dark with their crowded denizens, looking down upon beaches of snowy sand. Such are some of the most striking characteristics of the many ramifications of Puget Sound.
Come, take our mental pass, and let us wander together, as one walks in dreams, for the last time hand in hand ; sail with us on our voyage, not of fancy, but of fact ; let us explore the sound, see for ourselves this wonderful waterway traversed by Vancou- ver's keel, and long before his day by those bolder navigators of Russia and old Spain, who lost themselves in its multitudinous windings. We enter its wide portals, we pass Cape Flattery ; Tatoosh Island, with its warning light, is lost in the haze of dis- tance ; there is no longer "moan of harbor bar" or the crash of breakers on " outer rocks with waves afoam ;" the broad channel of Juan de Fuca, dividing us from that " derelict Vancouver," so worthless in Benton's eyes, but which, had it not been for British arrogance and slavery's politic yielding, we had proudly called our own to-day, is also threaded. We pause in momentary doubt in the inland sea that divides Haro Strait from Admiralty Inlet, uncertain which of two courses to pursue -- to go northward, where the clustered beauties of Wave-washed Island and San Juan await and beckon us to inspect their romantic outlines, or drift southward, on even calmer tides, to leisurely examine the wealth of fragrant woods, the tree-encircled heights and ever- recurring isles of the southern shores. Let us follow them, for they lead to the finest domains of thrice-favored Washington, a region to which Nature herself invites, saying through the speech of lips ever dumb but eloquent, " Come and rest. Here tarry and find your perfect ' A-la-bama.' " We enter Admiralty Inlet ; Whidby Island, with its Spanish sister, Camano, lies to our left ; a little farther, and Port Townsend, the harbor city, sitting gracefully on her fair eminence, needs no interpreter to tell her own story of capital and labor well applied-she is the exemplification of growth, a warrant for future progress ; then on by Hadlock, ports Ludlow and Madison, and many a city yet to be still in embryo ; and now the night, slowly and reluc- tantly, as if loath to draw her dusky curtain over so beautiful a scene, closes around us. Mount Tacoma (ever to us Mount Taco-
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ma, let Seattle and the geographers say what they will) grows gray and ghostly beneath the feeble radiance of the new-born crescent moon, whose silver bow rises to disappear behind the pines. The twilight deepens ; the afterglow dies out ; the roses, fleeing to return the last kiss of the sunset, are gathered to bloom anew with the coming of the dawn. We round a point. What sudden gleam is this that, coming as we do out of the silence and dewy darkness of the night, dazzles the eyes and challenges the notice of the observer ? What witchery of many-colored lights reaching from strand to hill-top ? What this fleet of anchored hulls, black and sombre save for the flashes of their emerald and scarlet signal lanterns ? What this incessant hum and murmur, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, upon the busy strand ? What but the myriad sparkles of the Queen City's innumerable electric lights as she sits enthroned above the bay in all her pride, the oldest and most populous city of the sound.
And now once more over the night-shrouded waters till a ten- league flight brings us to the even more beautiful natural site of her younger sister and ever constant rival, " la belle Tacoma," the City of Destiny, as her indwellers delight to call their metropolis-Tacoma, the Aladdin palace of the Far West, where Industry rubbed the golden lamp of capital and those twin magicians Enterprise and Energy did the rest. Wonderful Taco- ma, little more than a decade ago a wild of the forest, knowing no better dwelling than the wigwam of the savage, except where the " old town" nestled a hamlet beneath the hills ; no song but the rude gutturals of the Indian as he kept time to the paddle of his canoe ; no Christian worship save that which found its hum- ble altar in the church whose appropriate spire-the oldest in the land, planted by the hand of God Himself to look heavenward- was a gigantic pine ; but now, rich in all the comforts and con- ventionalities of civilization, presents an example of progress whose completeness puts to shame Eastern cities of more than a century's growth.
And now yet again, and for the last time, accompany us, if you will, for the final stage of this our long journey together. Let us end it beneath the historic shades of Olympia's legisla- tive halls, for now the dawn is near, and, like all night-wander- ing ghosts, we must vanish with its advent. But ere we part,
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by way of benediction and farewell, let us add these final thoughts, born of our personal affection for the State of which we are writing. The dawn is near; the sky grows gray and brightens ; the red blushes of the sunrise flame and fleck with rose tints the eastern horizon. At last it comes, the orb itself wheeling slowly upward to light the Western world and its busy millions through the labors of another day of toil. It glorifies and gilds the buildings of the capital of the infant State. It has a blessing in its smile for rich and poor, for the meanest as well as for the best. The settler's humble cabin in the clearing is as radiant with light as the gubernatorial mansion. The sun has risen, behold an emblem-a fortunate one-of the noble State whose history we have written-a repetition, indeed, of that history. Faint, sad, cold and gray, weak and feeble in its beginnings, obscured by many mists of doubt and difficulty, it still struggled forth superior to all ; and now, like that lumi- nary, so pure, so full-orbed, so splendidly effulgent, rises and expands, to grow and gain in all that best constitutes a State, till, with the continuance of the same great and gracious Al- mighty blessing, which has so far attended her every effort, Washington will go on with eagle flight, still onward and up ward, from conquering to conquer, till the culmination of her perfect day. Our task is accomplished. FAREWELL !
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE STATEHOOD OF WASHINGTON.
" As when in some baronial hall Of England's stately homes,
Where ivy decks the ancient wall, Round which the night wind moans, They gayly greet the honored heir, To manhood newly come,
And celebrate his advent there With feast and beat of drum,
So now to welcome Washington, The State of which we boast, And dignify its honors won, Her people play the host.
And looking backward to the morn Preceding perfect day, Forget the darkness of its dawn And gloom now swept away.
For history finds a higher flight, And soars on stronger wing, When former faith is changed to sight, We know whereof we sing."
-BREWERTON.
WHEN in aristocratic England, still wedded as she is to the preservation of old-time customs and feudal observances, some heir " to the manor born" or inheritor of high degree reaches his legal majority, it is made an occasion of great rejoicing and special ceremony. The tenantry gather upon the lawn beneath the shadow of its ancestral oaks and gayly keep the gala day ; speeches are made, toasts drunk, and congratulations offered to the happy mortal now ruler of his paternal acres ; whether he be the heir apparent to some lordly title or the eldest scion of a wealthy commoner, each finds a hearty greeting on coming to his own. It is even so with the new-born State of Washington, so recently arrived at its legal and legislative majority, and at last, after a long and tedious probation of enforced minority,
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entitled to claim an equality in the sisterhood of the republic, even with the most honored of the " Old Thirteen." The event has been celebrated. The blare of trumpets and the rattle of drums have died away with the last echoes of our national salutes, the rainbow hues of the federal ensign no longer wave from every flagstaff to rival the glory of the sunrise. Our holi- day is over, the festal garments are laid aside, and Washington, like the heir of whom we have spoken, comes back to the labors and stern realities of this practical, commonplace, work-a- day world. It has prosaic duties to perform as well as a destiny to fulfil -- duties linking cause with effect, and a destiny whose outcome depends upon the faithfulness of their reaction.
We supposed when we wrote " farewell" at the conclusion of our last chapter that our work was done ; that the " vale" then spoken was its final word ; but it seemed, upon second thought, ungracious, to say the least, to leave our new-born State upon the threshold of its existence ; to shun the glare of the full-orbed day after following its gradual brightening from the first gleam of its doubtful dawn ; to ignore the results of a progress whose trembling steps we have watched and endeavored to pursue as it made its dangerous way through the unbroken wilds of terri- torial Washington. Let us, therefore, devote a chapter or two to its State history, confining ourselves to mere outline and leav- ing to the more minute chronicles of future historians a delinea- tion which shall round out and exhaustively amplify what our circumscribed space must necessarily reduce to a skeleton narra- tive.
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