At The Dalles the company divided, one party composed of a majority of the men started over the mountains with the wagons and teams; the women and children prepared to descend the river in boats.
In one boat, seated on top of the “plunder” were Mrs. A. A. Denny and two children, Miss Louisa Boren, Mrs. Low and four children and Mrs. Boren and one child. The other boat was loaded in like manner with a great variety of useful and necessary articles, heaped up, on top of which sat several women and children, among whom were Mrs. Sarah Denny, grandmother of the writer, and her little daughter, Loretta.
A long summer day was spent in floating down the great canyon where the majestic Columbia cleaves the Cascade Range in twain. The succeeding night the first boat landed on an island in the river, and the voyagers went ashore to camp. During the night one of the little girls, Gertrude Boren, rolled out of her bed and narrowly escaped falling into the hurrying stream; had she done so she must have certainly been lost, but a kind Providence decreed otherwise. Re-embarking the following day, gliding swiftly on the current, they traversed a considerable distance and the second night approached the Cascades.
Swifter and more turbulent, the rushing flood began to break in more furious foam-wreaths on every jagged rock, impotently striving to stay its onward rush to the limitless ocean.
Sufficient light enabled the observing eye to perceive the writhing surface of the angry waters, but the boatmen were stupified with drink!
All day long they had passed a bottle about which contained a liquid facetiously called “Blue Ruin” and near enough their ruin it proved.
I have penned the following description which met with the approval of one of the principal actors in what so nearly proved a tragedy:
It was midnight on the mighty Columbia. A waning moon cast a glowworm light on the dark, rushing river; all but one of the weary women and tired little children were deeply sunken in sleep. The oars creaked and dipped monotonously; the river sang louder and louder every boat’s length. Drunken, bloated faces leered foolishly and idiotically; they admonished each other to “Keep ’er goin’.”
The solitary watcher stirred uneasily, looked at the long lines of foam out in midstream and saw how fiercely the white waves contended, and far swifter flew the waters than at any hour before. What was the meaning of it? Hark! that humming, buzzing, hissing, nay, bellowing roar! The blood flew to her brain and made her senses reel; they must be nearing the last landing above the falls, the great Cascades of the Columbia.
But the crew gave no heed.
Suddenly she cried out sharply to her sleeping sister, “Mary! Mary! wake up! we are nearing the falls, I hear them roar.”
“What is it, Liza?” she said sleepily.
“O, wake up! we shall all be drowned, the men don’t know what they are doing.”
The rudely awakened sleepers seemed dazed and did not make much outcry, but a strong young figure climbed over the mass of baggage and confronting the drunken boatmen, plead, urged and besought them, if they considered their own lives, or their helpless freight of humanity, to make for the shore.
“Oh, men,” she pleaded, “don’t you hear the falls, they roar louder now. It will soon be too late, I beseech you turn the boat to shore. Look at the rapids beyond us!”
“Thar haint no danger, Miss, leastways not yet; wots all this fuss about anyhow? No danger,” answered one who was a little disturbed; the others were almost too much stupified to understand her words and stood staring at the bareheaded, black haired young woman as if she were an apparition and were no more alarmed than if the warning were given as a curious mechanical performance, having no reference to themselves.
Repeating her request with greater earnestness, if possible, a man’s voice broke in saying, “I believe she is right, put in men quick, none of us want to be drowned.”
Fortunately this penetrated their besotted minds and they put about in time to save the lives of all on board, although they landed some distance below the usual place.
A little farther and they would have been past all human help.
One of the boatmen cheerfully acknowledged the next day that if it “hadn’t been fur that purty girl they had a’ gone over them falls, shure.”
The other boat had a similar experience; it began to leak profusely before they had gone very far and would soon have sunk, had not the crew, who doubtless were sober, made all haste to land.
My grandmother has often related to me how she clapsed her little child to her heart and resigned herself to a fate which seemed inevitable; also of a Mrs. McCarthy, a passenger likewise, becoming greatly excited and alternately swearing and praying until the danger was past. An inconvenient but amusing feature was the soaked condition of the “plunder” and the way the shore and shrubbery thereon were decorated with “hiyu ictas,” as the Chinook has it, hung out to dry. Finding it impossible to proceed, this detachment returned and took the mountain road.
A tramway built by F. A. Chenoweth, around the great falls, afforded transportation for the baggage of the narrowly saved first described. There being no accommodations for passengers, the party walked the tramroad; at the terminus they unloaded and stayed all night. No “commodious and elegant” steamer awaited them, but an old brig, bound for Portland, received them and their effects.
Such variety of adventure had but recently crowded upon them that it was almost fearfully they re-embarked. A. A. Denny observed to Captain Low, “Look here, Low, they say women are scarce in Oregon and we had better be careful of ours.” Presumably they were, as both survive at the present day.
From a proud ranger of the dashing main, the old brig had come down to be a carrier of salt salmon packed in barrels, and plunder of immigrants; as for the luckless passengers, they accommodated themselves as best they could.
The small children were tied to the mast to keep them from falling overboard, as there were no bulwarks.
Beds were made below on the barrels before mentioned and the travel-worn lay down, but not to rest; the mosquitos were a bloodthirsty throng and the beds were likened unto a corduroy road.
One of the women grumbled a little and an investigation proved that it was, as her husband said, “Nothing but the tea-kettle” wedged in between the barrels.
Another lost a moccasin overboard and having worn out all her shoes on the way, went with one stockinged foot until they turned up the Willamette River, then went ashore to a farmhouse where she was so fortunate as to find the owner of a new pair of shoes which she bought, and was thus able to enter the “city” of Portland in appropriate footgear.
After such vicissitudes, dangers and anxiety, the little company were glad to tarry in the embryo metropolis for a brief season; then, having heard of fairer shores, the restless pioneers moved on.
CHAPTER III
THE SETTLEMENT AT ALKI
Midway between Port Townsend and Olympia, in full view looking west from the city of Seattle, is a long tongue of land, washed by the sparkling waves of Puget Sound, called Alki Point. It helps to make Elliott Bay a beautiful land-locked harbor and is regarded with interest as being the site of the first settlement by white people in King County in what was then the Territory of Oregon. Alki is an Indian word pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, which is al as in altitude; ki is spoken as ky in silky. Alki means “by and by.”
It doth truly fret the soul of the old settler to see it printed and hear it pronounced Al-ki.
The first movement toward its occupancy was on this wise: A small detachment of the advancing column of settlers, D. T. Denny and J. N. Low, left Portland on the Willamette, on the 10th of September, 1851, with two horses carrying provisions and camp outfit.
These