CHAPTER IX.

DR. HENRY A. SMITH, THE BRILLIANT WRITER.

This well known pioneer joined the "mighty nation moving west" in 1852. From Portland, the wayside inn of weary travelers, he pushed on to Puget Sound, settling in 1853 on Elliott Bay, at a place known for many years as Smith's Cove.

Being a gifted writer he has made numerous contributions to northwestern literature, both in prose and poetry.

In a rarely entertaining set of papers entitled "Early Reminiscences," he brings vividly to the minds of his readers the "good old times" on Elliott Bay, as he describes the manner of life, personal adventure, odd characters and striking environment of the first decade of settlement. In them he relates that after the White River massacre, he conveyed his mother to a place of safety, by night, in a boat with muffled oars.

To quote his own words: "Early the next morning I persuaded James Broad and Charley Williamson, a couple of harum-scarum run-away sailors, to accompany me to my ranch in the cove, where we remained two weeks securing crops. We always kept our rifles near us while working in the field, so as to be ready for emergencies, and brave as they seemed their faces several times blanched white as they sprang for their guns on hearing brush crack near them, usually caused by deer. One morning on going to the field where we were digging potatoes, we found fresh moccasin tracks, and judged from the difference in the size of the tracks that at least half a dozen savages had paid the field a visit during the night. As nothing had been disturbed we concluded that they were waiting in ambush for us and accordingly we retired to the side of the field farthest from the woods and began work, keeping a sharp lookout the while. Soon we heard a cracking in the brush and a noise that sounded like the snapping of a flintlock. We grabbed our rifles and rushed into the woods where we heard the noise, so as to have the trees for shelter, and if possible to draw a bead on the enemy. On reaching shelter, the crackling sound receded toward Salmon Bay. But fearing a surprise if we followed the sound of retreat, we concluded to reach the Bay by way of a trail that led to it, but higher up; we reached the water just in time to see five redskins land in a canoe, on the opposite side of the Bay where the Crooks' barn now stands. After that I had hard work to keep the runaways until the crop was secured, and did so only by keeping one of them secreted in the nearest brush constantly on guard. At night we barred the doors and slept in the attic, hauling the ladder up after us. Sometimes, when the boys told blood-curdling stories until they became panicky by their own eloquence, we slept in the woods, but that was not often.

"In this way the crops were all saved, cellared and stacked, only to be destroyed afterward by the torch of the common enemy.

"Twice the house was fired before it was finally consumed, and each time I happened to arrive in time to extinguish the flames, the incendiaries evidently having taken to their heels as soon as the torch was applied."

While yet new to the country he met with an adventure not uncommon to the earliest settlers in the great forest, recorded as follows:

"I once had a little experience, but a very amusing one, of being 'lost.' In the summer of 1854, I concluded to make a trail to Seattle. Up to that time I had ridden to the city in a 'Chinook buggy.' One bright morning I took a compass and started for Seattle on as nearly a straight line as possible. After an hour's travel the sun was hid by clouds and the compass had to be entirely relied upon for the right course. This was tedious business, for the woods had never been burned, and the old fallen timber was almost impassable. About noon I noticed to my utter astonishment, that the compass had reversed its poles. I knew that beds of mineral would sometimes cause a variation of the needle and was delighted at the thought of discovering a _valuable iron mine_ so near salt water. A good deal of time was spent in breaking bushes and thoroughly marking the spot so that there would be no difficulty in finding it again, and from that on I broke bushes as I walked, so as to be able to easily retrace my steps. From that place I followed the compass _reversed_, calculating, as I walked, the number of ships that would load annually at Seattle with pig-iron, and the amount of ground that would be eventually covered at the cove with furnaces, rolling mills, foundries, tool manufacturing establishments, etc.

"As night came on I became satisfied that I had traveled too far to the east, and had passed Seattle, and the prospect of spending a night in the woods knocked my iron calculations into pi. Soon, however, I was delighted to see a clearing ahead, and a shake-built shanty that I concluded must be the ranch that Mr. Nagle had commenced improving some time before, and which, I had understood, lay between Seattle and Lake Washington. When I reached the fence surrounding the improvements, I seated myself on one of the top rails for a seat and to ponder the advisability of remaining with my new neighbor over night, or going on to town. While sitting thus, I could not help contrasting his improvements with my own. The size of the clearing was the same, the house was a good deal like mine, the only seeming difference was that the front of his faced the west, whereas the front of mine faced the east. While puzzling over this strange coincidence, my own mother came out of the house to feed the poultry that had commenced going to roost, in a rookery for all the world like my own, only facing the wrong way. 'In the name of all that's wonderful!' I thought, 'what is she doing here? and how did she get here ahead of me?' Just then the world took a spin around, my ranch wheeled into line, and, lo! I was sitting on my own fence, and had been looking at my own improvements without knowing them." And from this he draws a moral and adorns the tale with the philosophic conclusion that people cannot see and think alike owing to their point of view, and we therefore must be charitable.

Until accustomed to it and schooled in wood-craft, the mighty and amazing forest was bewildering and mysterious to the adventurous settler; however, they soon learned how not to lose themselves in its labyrinthine depths.

Dr. Smith is a past master in description, as will be seen by this word-picture of a fire in a vast pitchy and resinous mass of combustible material. I have witnessed many, each a magnificent display.

"Washington beats the world for variety and magnificence of awe inspiring mountains and other scenery. I have seen old ocean in her wildest moods, have beheld the western prairie on fire by night, when the long, waving lines of flame flared and flashed their red light against the low, fleecy clouds till they blossomed into roseate beauty, looking like vast spectral flower gardens, majestically sweeping through the heavens; have been in the valley of the river Platte, when all the windows of the sky and a good many doors opened at once and the cloud-masked batteries of the invisible hosts of the air volleyed and thundered till the earth fairly reeled beneath the terrific cannonade that tore its quivering bosom with red-hot bombs until awe-stricken humanity shriveled into utter nothingness in the presence of the mad fury of the mightiest forces of nature. But for magnificence of sublime imagery and awe-inspiring grandeur a forest fire raging among the gigantic firs and towering cedars that mantle the shores of Puget Sound, surpasses anything I have ever beheld, and absolutely baffles all attempts at description. It has to be seen to be comprehended. The grandest display of forest pyrotechnics is witnessed when an extensive tract that has been partly cleared by logging is purposely or accidentally fired. When thus partly cleared, all the tops of the fir, cedar, spruce, pine and hemlock trees felled for their lumber remain on the ground, their boughs fairly reeking with balsam. All inferior trees are left standing, and in early days when only the very choicest logs would be accepted by the mills, about one-third would be left untouched, and then the trees would stand thicker, mightier, taller than in the average forest of the eastern and middle states.

"I once witnessed the firing of a two thousand acre tract thus logged over. It was noon in the month of August, and not a breath of air moved the most delicate ferns on the hillsides. The birds had hushed their songs for their midday siesta, and the babbling brook at our feet had grown less garrulous, as if in sympathy with the rest of nature, when the torch was applied. A dozen or more neighbors had come together to witness the exhibition of the unchained element about to hold high carnival in the amphitheater of the hills, and each one posted himself, rifle in hand, in some conspicuous place at least a quarter of a mile from the slashing in order to get a shot at any wild animal fleeing from the 'wrath to come.'

"The tract was fired simultaneously on all sides by siwashes, who rapidly circled it with long brands, followed closely by rivers of flame in hot pursuit.

"As soon as the fire worked its way to the massive winrows of dry brush, piled in making roads in every direction, a circular wall of solid flame rose half way to the tops of the tall trees. Soon the rising of the heated air caused strong currents of cooler air to set in from every side. The air currents soon increased to cyclones. Then began a race of the towering, billowy, surging walls of fire for the center. Driven furiously on by these ever-increasing, eddying, and fiercely contending tornadoes, the flames lolled and rolled and swayed and leaped, rising higher and higher, until one vast, circular tidal wave of liquid fire rolled in and met at the center with the whirl and roar of pandemoniac thunder and shot up in a spiral and rapidly revolving red-hot cone, a thousand feet in mid-air, out of whose flaring and crater-like apex poured dense volumes of tarry smoke, spreading out on every side, like unfolding curtains of night, till the sun was darkened and the moon was turned to blood and the stars seemed literally raining from heaven, as glowing firebrands that had been carried up by the fierce tornado of swirling flame and carried to immense distances by upper air currents, fell back in showers to the ground. The vast tract, but a few moments before as quiet as a sleeping infant in its cradle, was now one vast arena of seething, roaring, raging flame. The long, lithe limbs of the tall cedars were tossing wildly about, while the strong limbs of the sturdier firs and hemlocks were freely gyrating like the sinewy arms of mighty giant athletes engaged in mortal combat. Ever and anon their lower, pitch-dripping branches would ignite from the fervent heat below, when the flames would rush to the very tops with the roar of contending thunders and shoot upward in bright silvery volumes from five to seven hundred feet, or double the height of the trees themselves. Hundreds of these fire-volumes flaring and flaming in quick succession and sometimes many of them simultaneously, in conjunction with the weird eclipse-like darkness that veiled the heavens, rendered the