Ezra Meeker

“ But the Trail is deserted now, and scarcely five wagons pass in a week, with part of the roadbed grown up in grass. That mighty movement—tide shall we call it—of suffering humanity first going west, accompanied and afterwards followed by hundreds of thousands of stock, with the mightier ebb of millions upon millions of returning cattle and sheep going east, has all ceased, and now the road is a solitude save a few straggling wagons, or here and there a local flock driven to pasture. No wonder that we looked in vain for the graves of the dead with this great throng passing and repassing. ”

“ So, when our little train emerged from the forests skirting the Puyallup Valley, and came out on the open at Montgomery's, afterwards Camp Montgomery, of Indian war times, twelve miles southeasterly of Fort Steilacoom, the experience was almost as if one had come into a noonday sun from a dungeon prison, so marked was the contrast. Hundreds of cattle, sheep and horses were quietly grazing, scattered over the landscape, so far as one could see, fat and content. ”

“ As reverence for the past dies out in the breasts of a generation, so likewise patriotism wanes. In the measure that the love of the history of the past dies, so likewise do the higher aspirations for the future. To keep the flame of patriotism alive we must keep the memory of the past vividly in mind.
Bearing these thoughts in mind, this expedition to perpetuate the memory of the old Oregon Trail was undertaken. ”

“ The train had encountered a large herd feeding and traveling at right angles to the road. The older heads of the party, fearing a stampede of their teams, had given orders not to molest the buffaloes, but to give their whole attention to the care of the teams. But one impulsive young fellow would not be restrained, and fired into the herd and wounded a large bull. Either in anger or from confusion, the mad bull charged upon a wagon filled with women and children and drawn by a team of mules. He became entangled in the harness and on the tongue between the mules. ”

“ We so often see pessimism manifested by unsuccessful elderly persons that the world is ready to accept as a fact that age brings with it a pessimistic spirit, and hence the writing by an old man of younger days is like looking where distance lends enchantment. I am not conscious of looking on life other than in my younger days—the bright, hopeful side, where right and honesty is the rule and wrong and dishonesty the exception. The isolation of the pioneers from the outside world had a tendency to draw them together as one great family. ”

“ The timber is all gone and in its place brick blocks and pleasant, modest homes are found, where the roots and stumps once occupied the ground now smiling fruit gardens adorn the landscape and fill the purses of 1,400 fruit growers, and supply the wants of 6,000 people. Instead of the slow trudging ox team, driven to the market town sixteen miles distant, with a day in camp on the way, I see fifty-four railroad trains a day thundering through the town. I see electric lines with crowded cars carrying passengers to tide water and to the rising city of Tacoma, but seven miles distant. ”

“ Yes, I say again, give me the humble home for a child, that is a home in fact, rather than the grandest palace where home life is but a sham. And right here is where this generation has a grave problem to solve, if it's not the gravest of the age, the severance of child life from the real home and the real home influences, by the factory child labor, the boarding schools, the rush for city life, and so many others of like influences at work, that one can only take time to mention examples. ”

“ As in a thronged city street, no one seemed to look to the right or to the left, or to pay much, if any, attention to others, but bent alone on accomplishing the task in hand. Over all, in calm weather at times, the dust would settle so thick that the lead team of oxen could not be seen from the wagon—like a London fog, so thick one might almost cut it. ”

“ CHAPTER XII. CRUISE ON PUGET SOUND.
Put yourself in my place, reader, for a time—long enough to read this chapter. Think of yourself as young again, if elderly (I will not say old) ; play you have been old and now young again, until you find out about this trip on Puget Sound fifty and more years ago. Then think of Puget Sound in an inquiring mood, as though you knew nothing about it, only a little indefinite hear-say; enough to know there is such a name, but not what manner of place or how large or how small; whether it was one single channel, like a river, or numerous channels ”

“ The story of the trip across the plains in 1852 is both interesting and pathetic, but I have planned to write of life after the journey rather than much about the journey itself; of the trials that beset the people after their five months' struggle on the tented field of two thousand miles of marching were ended, where, like on the very battlefield, the dead lay in rows of fifties or more; where the trail became so lined with fallen animals, one could scarcely be out of sight or smell of carrion; where the sick had no respite from suffering, nor the well from fatigue. ”

“ Small wonder that with such parents and with such surroundings I am able to say that for fifty-eight years of married life I have never been sick in bed a single day, and that I can and have endured long hours of labor during my whole life, and what is particularly gratifying that I can truthfully say that I have always loved my work and that I never watched for the sun to go down to relieve me from the burden of labor.
"Burden of labor?" Why should any man call labor a burden? It's the sweetest pleasure of life, if we will but look aright. ”

“ As we drew off on the tide from the mouth of the Puyallup River, numerous parties of Indians were in sight, some trolling for salmon, with a lone Indian in the bow of his canoe, others with a pole with barbs on two sides fishing for smelt, and used in place of a paddle, while again, others with nets, all leisurely pursuing their calling, or more accurately speaking, seemed waiting for a fisherman's luck. ”

“ It makes no difference how far you travel in "Pathfinder the Great"—to the next county or across the continent—for its Pullman-like riding qualities do not leave you dog-tired at the day's end, and the motor purrs as contentedly at bedtime as when first you pushed the starting button in the morning.
You can ride all day long in "Pathfinder the Great," traveling at high speed without realizing any sense of weariness or driving strain. In its perfect balance and low center of gravity lies the secret of this road-smoothing quality. ”

“ Thomas M. Chambers, father of the prominent members of the Olympia community of that name, had built a saw-mill on Steilacoom creek, two miles from the town, and a grist mill where farmers oftentimes came with pebbles in their wheat to dull the burrs.
We are wont now to speak of this place as "poor old Steilacoom," with its tumbled-down houses, rotting sidewalks and decayed wharves; the last vestige of the latter of which has disappeared; but then everything was new, with an air of business bustle that made one feel here was a center of trade. ”

“ The rush of waters can be heard for a mile or more from the high bluff overlooking the narrow valley, or rather canyon, and presented a formidable barrier for a lone traveler. The river bed is full of boulders worn rounded and smooth and slippery, from the size of a man's head to very much larger, thus making footing for animals uncertain. After my first crossing, I dreaded those to come, which I knew were ahead of me, more than all else of the trip, for a misstep of the pony meant fatal results in all probability. ”

“ The demand for labor has lessened and bread lines for the unemployed threatened, and with it the cost of low living has become a vital question.
Referring again to the banquet room and to the woeful waste going into the sewers of Tacoma, may we not pause for the moment to ask, How many of these banquet rooms, great and small, hotels, kitchens of the idle rich as well as the improvident poor, are pouring like waste into the sewers and the deep sea in the United States? If all were collected in one great sewer, the volume would stagger the imagination. ”

“ It was land we wanted whereby we might stake a claim, and not scenery to tickle our fancy. Yet, I doubt if there lives a man, or ever did, who has seen that great mountain, but has been inspired with higher thoughts, and we may say higher aspirations, or who has ever tired looking upon this grand pile, the father of five great rivers.
We floated into the mouth of the Puyallup River with a vague feeling as to its value, but did not proceed far until we were interrupted by a solid drift of monster trees and logs, extending from bank to bank up the river for a quarter of a mile or more. ”

“ Only to think of it, you who complain of the hard lot of the workers of this generation: wheat twenty-five cents a bushel, corn fifteen cents, pork two and two and a half cents a pound, with bacon sometimes used as fuel by the reckless, racing steamboat captains of the Ohio and Mississippi. But when we got onto the farm with abundance of fruit and vegetables, with plenty of pumpkin pies and apple dumplings, our cup of joy was full, and we were the happiest mortals on earth. ”

“ I found the little wife had not fared any better than I had on the trail, and, in fact, not so well, for the floor of the cabin was a great deal harder than the sand spit where I had passed the night, with plenty of pure, fresh air, while she, in a closed cabin, in the same room with many others, could neither boast of fresh air nor freedom from creeping things that make life miserable. ”

“ I see a quarter of a million people within a radius of thirty miles, where solitude reigned supreme fifty-four years ago, save the song of the Indian, the thump of his canoe paddle, or the din of his gambling revels. When I go down to the Sound I see miles of shipping docks where before the waters rippled over a pebbly beach filled with shell-fish. ”

“ Having lived the simple life for so many years I could not now change to the more modern ways of "High Living" and would not if I could; nevertheless, the wonderful advance of art and science, the great opportunity afforded for betterment of life in so many ways to challenge our admiration, I would not record myself as against innovation, as saying that all old ways were the best ways, but I will say some of them were. ”

“ The ravages of cholera carried off thousands. One family of seven a little further down the Platte, lie all in one grave; forty-one persons of one train dead in one day and two nights tells but part of the dreadful story. The count of fifty-three freshly made graves in one camp ground left a vivid impress upon my mind that has never been effaced; but where now are those graves? They are irrevocably lost. ”

“ A motley crowd these people were, almost cosmopolitan in nationality, yet all vestige of race peculiarities or race prejudice ground away in the mill of adversity and trials common to all alike in common danger. And yet, the dress and appearance of this assemblage were as varied as the human countenance and as unique as the great mountain scenery before them. Some were clad in scanty attire as soiled with the dust as their brows; others, while with better pretensions, lacked some portions of dress required in civilized life. ”

“ I see hundreds of sail vessels that whiten every sea of the globe, being either towed here and there or at dock, receiving or discharging cargo, where before scarce a dozen had in a year ventured the voyage. At the docks in Seattle I see the 28,000-ton steamers receiving their monster cargoes for the Orient, and am reminded that these monsters can enter any of the numerous harbors of Puget Sound and are supplemented by a great array of other steam tonnage contending for that vast across-sea trade, and again exclaim with greater wonderment than ever, "What wondrous changes time has wrought!" ”

“ I drove to Seattle, passing through the towns of Sumner, Auburn and Kent, lecturing in each place, with indifferent success, as the people seemed to pay more attention to the ox team than they did to me, and cared more to be in the open, asking trivial questions, than to be listening to the story of the Oregon Trail. ”

“ Seriously, is there a pacificist with American red blood in his veins, who will condemn the war with Spain to put a stop to the atrocities right under our nose, in Cuba, or the wars with Aguinaldo in the Philippines, or with the pirates of Tripoli, or coming right home to the vital spot, the War of the Revolution that resulted in the birth of this nation? ”

“ Then came the press correspondent and the press to herald to the world the pathos of the lone grave, to in time reach the eyes and touch the hearts of the descendants of the dead, who had almost passed out of mind and to quicken the interest in the memory of one once dear to them, till in time there arose a beautiful monument lovingly inscribed, just one hundred years after the birth of the inmate of the grave. ”

“ On this journey there was a stretch of fifty miles without a blade of grass—the sole subsistence of cattle and horses being browse from young maple and alder trees, which was not very filling, to say the least. In making the road every person from ten years old up lent a hand, and there is where your humble servant had his first lessons in trail making, barefooted to boot, but not much, if any, worse off than many others. ”

“ We see it a hundred feet wide and fifteen feet deep, where the tramp of thousands upon thousands of men and women, and the hoofs of millions of animals and the wheels of untold numbers of vehicles have loosened [Pg 272] the soil and the fierce winds have carried it away, and finally we find ruts a foot deep worn into the solid rock.
"What a mighty movement, this, over the Old Oregon Trail!" we exclaim time and again, each time with greater wonderment at the marvels yet to be seen, and hear the stories of the few yet left of those who suffered on this great highway. ”

“ Puget Sound, I yet see the forty islands or more; its sixteen hundred miles of shore line; its schools of fish, and at intervals the seal; its myriads of sea gulls; the hawking crow; the clam beds; the ebb and flow of the tide—still there. But many happy homes dot the shore line where the dense forests stood; the wild fruits have given way to the cultivated; trainloads of fruit go out to distant markets; and what we once looked upon as barren land now gives plenteous crops ”

“ We pioneers yearn to have this work begun because of the intense desire to perpetuate the memory of the past and believe it of great importance to the rising generation in implanting this memory in the breasts of the future rulers of the nation and of sowing the seeds of patriotism, but of transcendant importance, as you will perceive from what I have said, is the beginning of this work and carrying it to a speedy finish, as a measure of preparedness for defense or war. ”

“ Meeting one day nine wagons on the Oregon Trail returning, we discovered the teams were all driven by the women and children—the men were all dead. This was on the trail in the Platte Valley after that dreadful scourge of cholera had struck the columns.
While the missionaries were but few in number, their influence became widespread, and especially helpful to the later inrush of home builders, and even if not successful in saving men's souls, they were instrumental in saving men's lives, and deserve a tender spot in our hearts. ”