Kitabı oku: «Blazing the Way; Or, True Stories, Songs and Sketches of Puget Sound», sayfa 20
“When he lived in Steilacoom, at a time when that city was even smaller than it is now, a certain would-be bully declared, with an oath, that if it were not for the respect he had for the ‘cloth,’ he would let daylight through his portly ministerial carcass. Thereupon the ‘cloth’ was instantly stripped off and dashed upon the ground, accompanied with the remark, ‘The “cloth” never stands in the way of a good cause. I am in a condition, now sir, to be enlightened.’ But instead of attempting to shed any light into this luminary of the pulpit, whose eyes fairly blazed with a light not altogether of this world, the blustering bully lit out down the street at the top of his speed.”
The following has a perennial freshness, although I have heard it a number of times:
“When Olympia was a struggling village and much in need of a church, this portly, industrious man of many talents took upon himself the not overly pleasant task of raising subscriptions for the enterprise, and in his rounds called on Mr. Crosby, owner of the sawmill at Tumwater, and asked how much lumber he would contribute to the church. Mr. Crosby eyed the ‘cloth’ a moment and sarcastically replied, ‘As much as you, sir, will raft and take away between this and sundown.’ ‘Show me the pile!’ was the unexpected rejoinder. Then laying off his coat and beaver tile he waded in with an alacrity that fairly made Mr. Crosby’s hair bristle. All day, without stopping a moment, even for dinner, his tall, stalwart form bent under large loads of shingles, sheeting, siding, scantling, studding and lath, and even large sills and plates were rolled and tumbled into the bay with the agility of a giant, and before sundown Mr. Crosby had the proud satisfaction of seeing the ‘cloth’ triumphantly poling a raft toward Olympia containing lumber enough for a handsome church and a splendid parsonage besides.
“Mr. Crosby was heard to say a few days afterward that no ten men in his employ could, or would, have done that day’s work. Meeting the divine shortly afterwards, Mr. Crosby said, ‘Well, parson, you can handle more lumber between sunrise and dark than any man I ever saw.’
“‘Oh,’ said the parson, ‘I was working that day for my Maker.’
“Moral: Never trust pioneer preachers with your lumber pile, simply because they wear broadcloth coats, for most of them know how to take them off, and then they can work as well as pray.”
This conjuror with the pen has called up another well known personality of the earliest times in the following sketch and anecdote:
“Dr. Maynard was of medium size. He had blue eyes, a square forehead, a strong face and straight black hair, when worn short, but when worn long, as it was when whitened by the snows of many winters, it was quite curly and fell in ringlets over his shoulders. Add to this description, a long, gray beard, and you will see him as he appeared on our streets when on his last legs. When ‘half seas over,’ he overflowed with generous impulses, would give away anything within reach and was full of extravagant promises, many of which were out of his power to fulfill. He once owned Alki Point and sometimes would move there in order to ‘reform,’ but seldom remained longer than a month or six weeks. Alki Point was covered with huge logs and stumps, excepting a little cleared ground near the bay where the house stood. But when the doctor saw it through his telescopic wine-glasses it was transformed into a beautiful farm with broad meadows covered with lowing herds and prancing steeds whose ‘necks were clothed with thunder.’
“One day, in the fall of 1860, while viewing his farm through his favorite glasses, David Stanley, the venerable Salmon Bay hermit, happened along, when Maynard gave him a glowing description of his Alki Point farm as he himself beheld it just then, and wound up by proposing to take the old man in partnership, and offered him half of the fruit and farm stock for simply looking after it and keeping the fences in repair. The temptation to gain sudden riches was too much for even his unworldliness of mind, and he made no delay in embarking for Alki Point with all his worldly effects. His object in living alone, was, he said, to comply with the injunction to keep one’s self ‘unspotted from the world,’ but the doctor assured him that the change would not seriously interfere with his meditations, inasmuch as few people landed at Alki Point, notwithstanding its many attractions.
“The day of his departure for the Mecca of all his earthly hopes turned out very stormy. It was after dark before he reached the point, and on trying to land his boat filled with water. He lost many of his fowls and came near losing his life in the boiling surf. After getting himself and his ‘traps’ ashore, he built a fire, dried his blankets, fried some bacon, ate a hearty supper and turned in.
“The excitement of the day, however, prevented sleep, and he got up and sat by the fire till morning. As soon as it was light he strolled out to look at the stock, but to his surprise, only a bewildering maze of logs and interminable stumps were to be seen where he expected to behold broad fields and green pastures. The only thing he could find resembling stock were – to use his own language – ‘an old white horse, stiff in all his joints and blind in one eye, and a little, runty, scrubby, ornery, steer calf.’ After wandering about over and under logs till noon, he concluded he had missed the doctor’s farm, and returned to the beach with the intention of pulling further around, but seeing some men in a boat a short distance from shore, he hailed it and inquired for Dr. Maynard’s farm. Charley Plummer was one of the party and he told the old man that he had the honor of being already upon it. Stanley explained his object in being there, and after a fit of rib-breaking laughter, Mr. Plummer advised him to return to Salmon Bay as soon as possible, which he did the very next day.
“The old man had a keen sense of the ludicrous, and joined heartily in the laugh, saying he had been taken in a great many times in his life, but never in so laughable manner as on this occasion. A few days afterward as Charley Plummer was sitting in Dr. Maynard’s office the hermit put in an appearance. ‘Good afternoon, doctor,’ said he, with an air of profound respect. ‘Why, how do you do, Uncle Stanley, glad to see you – how does the poultry ranch prosper? By the way, have you moved to Alki Point yet?’ ‘O, yes, I took my traps, poultry and all, over there several days ago, and had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Plummer there. Did he mention the circumstances?’ ‘No,’ said the doctor, ‘he just came in. How did you find things?’
“‘To tell the truth, doctor, I couldn’t rest until I could see you and thank you from the bottom of my heart for the inestimable blessing you have conferred upon me.’
“At this demonstration of satisfaction uttered with an air of profound gratitude, the doctor leaned back complacently in his easy chair, while an expression of benignant self-approval illuminated his benevolent face.
“‘Yes,’ continued he, ‘I can never be sufficiently grateful for the benefit your generosity has already been to me individually, besides it bids fair to prove a signal triumph for religion and morality, and it may turn out to be a priceless contribution to science.’
“At the utterance of this unexpected ‘rhapsody’ the doctor turned with unalloyed delight, and seeing that the old man hesitated, he encouraged him by saying, ‘Go on, Uncle, go right along and tell all about it, although I can’t understand exactly how it can prove a triumph for religion or science.’
“‘Well,’ continued the old man with solemn countenance, ‘my orthodoxy has been a little shaky of late, in fact I have seriously doubted the heavenly origin of various forms of inspiration, but when I got to Alki Point and looked around my skepticism fell from my eyes as did the scales from the eyes of Saul of old.’
“‘Yes,’ interrupted the doctor, ‘the scenery over there is really grand and I have often felt devotional myself while contemplating the grand mountain scenery – ’
“‘Scenery? Well – yes, I suppose there is some scenery scattered around over there, but it isn’t that.’
“‘No, well what was it, uncle?’
“‘Why, sir, as I was saying, when I get a chance to fairly look around I was thoroughly satisfied that nothing but a miracle, in fact, nothing short of the ingenuity and power of the Almighty could possibly have piled up so many logs and stumps to the acre as I found on your farm.’
“Here the doctor’s face perceptibly lengthened and a very dry laugh, a sort of hysterical cross between a chuckle and a suppressed oath, escaped him, but before he had time to speak the old man went on:
“‘So much for the triumph of religion, but science, sir, will be under much weightier obligations to us when you and I succeed in making an honest living from the progeny of an old blind horse and a little, miserable runty steer calf.’
“This was too much for the doctor and springing to his feet he fairly shouted, ‘There, there, old man, not another word! come right along and I will stand treat for the whole town and we will never mention Alki Point again.’
“‘No, thank you,’ said the hermit, dryly, ‘I never indulge, and since you have been the means of my conversion you ought to be the last man in the world to lead me into temptation, besides our income from the blind horse and runty steer calf will hardly justify such extravagance.’
“Hat and cane in hand he got as far as the door, when Maynard called to him saying, ‘Look here, old man, I hope you’re not offended, and if you will say nothing about this little matter, I’ll doctor you the rest of your life for nothing.’
“After scratching his head a moment the hermit looked up and naively answered, ‘No, I’m not mad, only astonished, and as for your free medicine, if it is all as bitter as the free dose you have just given me, I don’t want any more of it,’ and he bowed himself out and was soon lost to the doctor’s longing gaze. With eyes still fixed on the door he exclaimed, ‘Blast my head if I thought the old crackling had so much dry humor in him. Come, Charley, let’s have something to brave our nerves.’”
Among the unfortunate victims of the drink habit in an early day was poor old Tom Jones. Nature had endowed him with a splendid physique, but he wrecked himself, traveling downward, until he barely lived from hand to mouth. He made a house on the old Conkling place, up the bay toward the Duwampsh River, his tarrying place. Having been absent from his customary haunts for a considerable time, it was reported that he was dead. In the village of Seattle, some marauder had been robbing henroosts and Tom Jones was accused of being the guilty party. Grandfather John Denny told one of his characteristic stories about being awakened by a great commotion in his henhouse, the lusty cocks crowing “Tom Jo-o-o-ones is dead! Tom Jo-o-o-ones is dead!” rejoicing greatly that they were henceforth safe.
D. T. Denny gathered up seven men and went to investigate the truth of the report of his demise. They found him rolled up in his blankets, in his bunk, not dead but helplessly sick. When they told him what they had come for – to hold an inquest over his dead body, the tears rolled down his withered face. They had him moved nearer town and cared for, but he finally went the way of all the earth.
Another of the army of the wretched was having an attack of the “devil’s trimmings,” as Grandfather John Denny called them, in front of a saloon one day and a group stood around waiting for him to “come to”; upon his showing signs of returning consciousness, all but one filed into the saloon to get a nerve bracer. D. T. Denny, who relates the incident, turned away, he being the only temperance man in the group.
CHAPTER III.
TRAILS OF COMMERCE
Samuel L. Simpson wrote this sympathetic poem concerning the old Hudson Bay Company’s steamer Beaver, the first steam vessel on the North Pacific Coast. She came out from London in 1836 and is well remembered by Puget Sound pioneers. In 1889 she went on the rocks in Burrard Inlet, British Columbia.
THE BEAVER’S REQUIEM
“Forlorn in the lonesome North she lies,
That never again will course the sea,
All heedless of calm or stormy skies,
Or the rocks to windward or a-lee;
For her day is done
And her last port won
Let the wild, sad waves her minstrel be.
“She will roam no more on the ocean trails,
Where her floating scarf of black was seen
Like a challenge proud to the shrieking gales
By the mighty shores of evergreen;
For she lies at rest
With a pulseless breast
In the rough sea’s clasp and all serene.
“How the world has changed since she kissed the tide
Of the storied Thames in the Georgian reign,
And was pledged with wine as the bonny bride
Of the West’s isle-gemmed barbaric main —
With a dauntless form
That could breast the storm
As she wove the magic commercial chain.
“For Science has gemmed her brow with stars
From many and many a mystic field,
And the nations have stood in crimsoned wars
And thrones have fallen and empires reeled
Since she sailed that day
From the Thames away
Under God’s blue sky and St. George’s shield.
“And the world to which, as a pioneer,
She first came trailing her plume of smoke,
Is beyond the dreams of the clearest seer
That ever in lofty symbols spoke —
In the arts of peace,
In all life’s increase,
And all the gold-browed stress invoke.
“A part of this was a work of hers,
In a daring life of fifty years;
But the sea-gulls now are her worshipers,
Wheeling with cries more sad than tears,
Where she lies alone
And the surges moan —
And slowly the north sky glooms and clears.
“And may we not think when the pale mists glide,
Like the sheeted dead by that rocky shore,
That we hear in the rising, rolling tide
The call of the captain’s ring once more?
And it well might be,
So forlorn is she,
Where the weird winds sigh and wan birds soar.”
The development of the most easily reached natural resources was necessarily first.
The timber and fisheries were a boundless source of wealth in evidence.
As early as 1847, a sawmill run with power afforded by the falls of the Des Chutes at Tumwater, furnished lumber to settlers as a means of profit.
The first cargo was taken by the brig Orbit in 1850, to San Francisco, she being the first American merchant vessel in the carrying trade of Puget Sound. The brig George Emory followed suit; each carried a return cargo of goods for trade with the settlers and Indians.
At first the forest-fallers had no oxen to drag the timbers, after they were hewn, to the water’s edge, but rolled and hauled them by hand as far as practicable. It was in this manner that the brig Leonesa was loaded with piles at Alki in the winter of 1851-2, by the Dennys, Terry, Low, Boren and Bell.
Lee Terry brought a yoke of oxen to complete the work of loading, from Puyallup, on the beach, as there was no road through the heavy forest.
Several ships were loaded at Port Townsend, where the possession of three yoke of oxen gave them a decided advantage.
One ship, the G. W. Kendall, was sent from San Francisco to Puget Sound for ice. It is needless to say the captain did not get a cargo of that luxury; he reported that water did not freeze in Puget Sound and consoled the owner of the ship by returning with a valuable cargo of piles.
The cutting of logs to build houses and the grubbing of stumps to clear the land for gardens alternated with the cutting of piles. In the clearing of land, the Indians proved a great assistance; far from being lazy many of them were hard workers and would dig and delve day after day to remove the immense stumps of cedar and fir left after cutting the great trees. The settlers burned many by piling heaps of logs and brush on them, others by boring holes far into the wood and setting fire, while some were rent by charges of powder when it could be afforded.
The clearing of land in this heavily timbered country was an item of large expense if hired, otherwise of much arduous toil for the owner. The women and children often helped to pile brush and set fires and many a merry party turned out at night to “chunk up” the blazing heaps; after nightfall, their fire-lit figure flitting hither and yon against the purple darkness, suggested well-intentioned witches.
Cutting down the tall trees, from two hundred fifty to four hundred fifty feet, required considerable care and skill. Sometimes we felt the pathos of it all, when a huge giant, the dignified product of patient centuries of growth, fell crashing, groaning to the earth. This side of the subject, is presented in a poem “The Lone Fir Tree,” not included in this volume.
When finally the small patches of land were cleared, planted and tended, the returns were astonishing, such marvelous vegetables, small fruits and flowers, abundant and luxuriant, rewarded the toiler. Nature herself, by her heaps of vegetation, had foreshown the immense productiveness of the soil.
In the river valleys were quite extensive prairies, which afforded superior stock range, but the main dependence of the people was in the timber.
In 1852 H. L. Yesler came, who built the first steam sawmill on Puget Sound, at Seattle. Other mills sprang up at Port Ludlow, Port Gamble, Port Madison and Port Blakely, making the names of Meigs, Pope, Talbot, Keller, Renton, Walker, Blinn and others, great in the annals of sawmilling on Puget Sound.
This very interesting account concerning Yesler’s sawmill and those who worked in it in the early days was first published in a Seattle paper many years ago:
“The other day some of Parke’s men at work on the foundation of the new Union Block on Front, corner of Columbia Street, delving among ancient fragments of piles, stranded logs and other debris of sea-wreck, long buried at that part of the waterfront, found at the bottom of an excavation they were making, a mass of knotted iron, corroded, attenuated and salt-eaten, which on being drawn out proved to be a couple of ancient boom-chains.
“The scribe, thinking he might trace something of the history of these ancient relics, hunted up Mr. Yesler, whom, after considerable exploration through the mazes of his wilderness on Third and Jefferson Streets, he found, hose in hand, watering a line of lilies, hollyhocks, penstemons, ageratums, roses, et al.
“The subject of the interview being stated, Mr. Yesler proceeded to relate: ‘Yes, after I got my mill started in 1853, the first lot of logs were furnished by Dr. Maynard. He came to me and said he wanted to clear up a piece on the spit, where he wanted to lay out and sell some town lots. It was somewhere about where the New England and Arlington now stand. The location of the old mill is now an indeterminate spot, somewhere back of Z. C. Miles’ hardware store. The spot where the old cookhouse stood is in the intersection of Mill and Commercial Streets, between the Colman Block and Gard. Kellogg’s drug store. Hillory Butler and Bill Gilliam had the contract from Maynard, and they brought the logs to the mill by hand – rolled or carried them in with handspikes. I warrant you it was harder work than Hillory or Bill has done for many a day since. Afterwards, Judge Phillips, who went into partnership with Dexter Horton in the store, got out logs for me somewhere up the bay.
“‘During the first five years after my mill was started, cattle teams for logging were but few on the Sound, and there were no steamboats for towing rafts until 1858. Capt. John S. Hill’s “Ranger No. 2,” which he brought up from San Francisco, was the first of the kind, and George A. Meigs’ little tug Resolute, which blew up with Capt. Johnny Guindon and his crew in 1861, came on about the same time. A great deal of the earliest logging on the Sound was done exclusively by hand, the logs being thrown into the water by handspikes and towed to the mill on the tide by skiffs.
“‘In 1853 Hillory Butler took a contract to get me out logs at Smith’s Cove. George F. Frye was his teamster. In the fall of 1854 and spring and summer of 1855, Edward Hanford and John C. Holgate logged for me on their claims, south of the townsite toward the head of the bay. T. D. Hinckley was their teamster, also Jack Harvey. On one occasion, when bringing in a raft to the mill, John lost a diary which he was keeping and I picked it up on the beach. The last entry it contained read: “June 5, 1855. Started with a raft for Yesler’s mill. Fell off into the water.” I remember I wrote right after “and drowned,” and returned the book. I don’t know how soon afterward John learned from his own book of his death by drowning.
“‘The Indian war breaking out in the fall of ’55 put a stop to their logging operations, as of all the rest.
“‘The Indians killed or drove off all the cattle hereabouts and burned the dwellings of Hanford, Holgate and Bell on the borders of the town, besides destroying much other property throughout the country.
“‘The logging outfits in those days were of the most primitive and meager description. Rafts were fastened together by ropes or light boom-chains. Supplies of hardware and other necessaries were brought up from San Francisco by the lumber vessels on their return trips as ordered by the loggers. I remember on one occasion Edmund Carr, John A. Strickler, F. McNatt and John Ross lost the product of a season’s labor by their raft getting away from them and going to pieces while in transit between the mill and the head of the bay. My booming place was on the north side of the mill along the beach where now the foundations are going up for the Toklas & Singerman, Gasch, Melhorn and Lewis brick block. There being no sufficient breakwater thereabouts in those times, I used often to lose a great many logs as well as boom-chains and things by the rafts being broken up by storms.
“‘My mill in the pioneer times before the Indian war furnished the chief resource of the early citizens of the place for a subsistence.
“‘When there were not enough white men to be had for operating the mill, I employed Indians and trained them to do the work. George Frye was my sawyer up to the time he took charge of the John B. Libby on the Whatcom route. My engineers at different times were T. D. Hinckley, L. V. Wyckoff, John T. Moss and Douglass. Arthur A. Denny was screw-tender in the mill for quite a while; D. T. Denny worked at drawing in the logs. Nearly all the prominent old settlers at some time or other were employed in connection with the mill in some capacity, either at logging or as mill hands. I loaded some lumber for China and other foreign ports, as well as San Francisco.’”
The primitive methods, crude appliances and arduous toil in the early sawmills have given place to palaces of modern mechanical contrivance it would require a volume to describe, of enormous output, loading hundreds of vessels for unnumbered foreign ports, and putting in circulation millions of dollars.
As a forcible contrast to Mr. Yesler’s reminiscence, this specimen is given of modern milling, entitled “Sawing Up a Forest,” representing the business of but one of the great mills in later days (1896) at work on Puget Sound:
“The best evidence of the revival of the lumber trade of the Sound, is to be found at the great Blakeley mill, where four hundred thousand feet of lumber is being turned out every twenty-four hours, and the harbor is crowded with ships destined for almost all parts of the world.
“One of the mill officials said, ‘We are at present doing a large business with South American and Australian ports, and expect with proper attention to secure the South African trade, which, if successful, will be a big thing. We have the finest lumber in the world, and there is no reason why we should not be doing five times the business that is being done on the Sound. Why, there is some first quality and some selected Norway lumber out there on the wharf, and it does not even compare with our second quality lumber.’
“The company has at present (1896) 350 men employed and between $15,000.00 and $20,000.00 in wages is paid out every month.
“The following vessels are now loading or are loaded and ready to sail:
“Bark Columbia, for San Francisco, 700,000 feet; ship Aristomene, for Valparaiso, 1,450,000 feet; ship Earl Burgess, for Amsterdam, 1,250,000 feet; bark Mercury, for San Francisco, 1,000,000 feet; ship Corolla, for Valparaiso, 1,000,000 feet; barkentine Katie Flickinger, for Fiji Islands, 550,000 feet; bark Matilda, for Honolulu, 650,000 feet; bark E. Ramilla, for Valparaiso, 700,000 feet; ship Beechbank, for Valparaiso, 2,000,000 feet.
“To load next week:
“Barkentine George C. Perkins, for Sidney, N. S. W., 550,000 feet; bark Guinevere, for Valparaiso, 850,000 feet.
“Those to arrive within the next two weeks:
“Bark Antoinette, for Valparaiso, 900,000 feet; barkentine J. L. Stanford, for Melbourne, 1,200,000 feet; ship Saga, for Valparaiso, 1,200,000 feet; bark George F. Manson, for Shanghai, China, 950,000 feet; ship Harvester, for South Africa, 1,000,000 feet.”
Shingle making was a prominent early industry. The process was slow, done entirely by hand, in vivid contrast with the great facility and productiveness of the modern shingle mills of this region; in consequence of the slowness of manufacture they formerly brought a much higher price. It was an ideal occupation at that time. After the mammoth cedars were felled, sawn and rived asunder, the shingle-maker sat in the midst of the opening in the great forest, towering walls of green on all sides, with the blue sky overhead and fragrant wood spread all around, from which he shaped the thin, flat pieces by shaving them with a drawing knife.
Cutting and hewing spars to load ships for foreign markets began before 1856.
As recorded in a San Francisco paper:
“In 1855, the bark Anadyr sailed from Utsalady on Puget Sound, with a cargo of spars for the French navy yard at Brest. In 1857 the same ship took a load from the same place to an English navy yard.
“To China, Spain, Mauritius and many other places, went the tough, enduring, flexible fir tree of Puget Sound. The severe test applied have proven the Douglas fir to be without an equal in the making of masts and spars.
“In later days the Fram, of Arctic fame, was built of Puget Sound fir.”
The discovery and opening of the coal mines near Seattle marks an epoch in the commerce of the Northwest.
As early as 1859 coal was found and mined on a small scale east of Seattle.
The first company, formed in 1866-7, was composed of old and well-known citizens: D. Bagley, G. F. Whitworth and Selucius Garfield, who was called the “silver-tongued orator.” Others joined in the enterprise of developing the mines, which were found to be extensive and valuable. Legislation favored them and transportation facilities grew.
The names of McGilvra, Yesler, Denny and Robinson were prominent in the work. Tramways, chutes, inclines, tugboats, barges, coalcars and locomotives brought out the coal to deep water on the Sound, across Lakes Washington and Union, and three pieces of railroad. A long trestle at the foot of Pike Street, Seattle, at which the ship “Belle Isle,” among others, often loaded, fell in, demolished by the work of the teredo.
The writer remembers two startling trips up the incline, nine hundred feet long, on the east side of Lake Washington, in an empty coal car, the second time duly warned by the operatives that the day before a car load of furniture had been “let go” over the incline and smashed to kindlingwood long before it reached the bottom. The trips were made amidst an oppressive silence and were never repeated.
The combined coal fields of Washington cover an area of one thousand six hundred fifty square miles. Since the earliest developments great strides have been made and a large number of coal mines are operated, such as the Black Diamond, Gilman, Franklin, Wilkeson, the U. S. government standard, Carbonado, Roslyn, etc., with a host of underground workers and huge steam colliers to carry an immense output.
The carrying of the first telegraph line through the dense forest was another step forward. Often the forest trees were pressed into service and insulators became the strange ornaments of the monarchs of the trackless wilderness.
Pioneer surveyors, of whom A. A. Denny was one, journalists, lawyers and other professional men, with the craftsmen, carpenters who helped to repair the Decatur and build the fort, masons who helped to build the old University of Washington, and other industrious workers brought to mind might each and every one furnish a volume of unique and interesting reminiscence.
The women pioneers certainly demand a work devoted to them alone.
Simultaneously with the commercial and political development, the educational and religious took place. The children of the pioneers were early gathered in schools and the parents preceded the teachers or supplemented their efforts with great earnestness. Books, papers and magazines were bountifully provided and both children and grown people read with avidity. For many years the mails came slowly, but when the brimming bags were emptied, the contents were eagerly seized upon, and being almost altogether eastern periodical literature, the children narrowly escaped acquiring the mental squint which O. W. Holmes speaks of having affected the youth of the East from the perusal of English literature.
The pioneer mail service was one of hardship and danger. The first mail overland in the Sound region was carried by A. B. Rabbeson in 1851, and could not have been voluminous, as it was transported in his pockets while he rode horseback.
A well known mail carrier of early days was Nes Jacob Ohm or “Dutch Ned,” as every one called him. He, with his yellow dog and sallow cayuse, was regarded as an indispensable institution. All three stood the test of travel on the trail for many years. The yellow canine had quite a reputation as a panther dog, and no doubt was a needed protection in the dark wild forest, but he has long since gone where the good dogs go and the cayuse probably likewise.
