Indians, No Doubt, Have Ascended
Most Of The Rivers On Their Way To The Mountains To Hunt The Wild
Sheep
And goat to obtain wool for their clothing, but with food in
abundance on the coast they had little to
Tempt them into the
wilderness, and the monuments they have left in it are scarcely more
conspicuous than those of squirrels and bears; far less so than those
of the beavers, which in damming the streams have made clearings and
meadows which will continue to mark the landscape for centuries. Nor
is there much in these woods to tempt the farmer or cattle raiser. A
few settlers established homes on the prairies or open borders of the
woods and in the valleys of the Chehalis and Cowlitz before the gold
days of California. Most of the early immigrants from the Eastern
States, however, settled in the fertile and open Willamette Valley or
Oregon. Even now, when the search for land is so keen, with the
exception of the bottom lands around the Sound and on the lower
reaches of the rivers, there are comparatively few spots of
cultivation in western Washington. On every meadow or opening of any
kind some one will be found keeping cattle, planting hop vines, or
raising hay, vegetables, and patches of grain. All the large spaces
available, even back near the summits of the Cascade Mountains, were
occupied long ago. The newcomers, building their cabins where the
beavers once built theirs, keep a few cows and industriously seek to
enlarge their small meadow patches by chopping, girdling, and burning
the edge of the encircling forest, gnawing like beavers, and
scratching for a living among the blackened stumps and logs, regarding
the trees as their greatest enemies - a sort of larger pernicious weed
immensely difficult to get rid of.
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