Page:History of the Oregon Country volume 2.djvu/58

 the site of the present town of Shelton.' To and from Olympia we always made our way in the canoe. Olympia was our post office. It was but a trifle to paddle a distance of twenty miles and return. Needless to say our meals were not had at uniformly regular hours, nor did any meal consist of courses till one got tired. We seldom carried with us anything to eat except bread ; and not always that, for often we could not get it. For the rest, there were fish, oysters, clams and game. Every spring of pure, fresh water that poured into these bays, we knew, and we camped wherever night overtook us, or lay by at the meeting place of the currents to await the turn of the tide. Our days were happy and our nights serene; for we knew not what it was to have the wants that now compel us to real effort. Often, indeed, we were hungry and tired enough, but that was nothing. There was no competition to rack our energies; there were no ambitions to drive us mad. It is indeed worth while to live in a time when

Not that we would have our lives always thus; 't would be a humdrum existence, indeed. But there is a pleasure in looking back to the “good old times” – in which we should never wish to live again. The territory of Washington was one year old when I came to it. We were in Oregon when the territorial government was erected here. In the fall of 1853 my father made his preparations for the removal.? The following spring we came across the country from the Columbia River, by the Cowlitz trail,3 starting from Lafayette, near Portland, and consuming three weeks in the journey, with cattle and our few household goods, to Olympia. Down the banks

· For biography of David Shelton, after whom this town was named, see Compiler's Appendix, vol. II, p. 249. · John Tucker Scottand family spent the year 1853 at Lafayette. They ar rived in Oregon, from Illinois, in the fall of 1852. • An interesting narrative of the Cowlitz trail is given, in several places, in Ezra Meeker's Pioneer Reminiscences of PugetSound. See p. 249, following. Indiana. It was the county seat of Yamhill County, until 1889. [30]
 * Lafayette was founded in 1847 by Joel Perkins,and named after Lafayette,