Page:The Conquest.djvu/259

 penter, as he set to splitting boards out of the surrounding firs.

By Christmas seven cabins were covered and the floors laid. The chinks were filled with clay, and fir-log fires were set roaring in the capacious chimneys that filled an entire end of each cabin. On Christmas day they moved in, wet blankets and all, with rounds of firearms and Christmas salutes.

The leather tent, soaked for days, fell to pieces. The heavy canisters of powder, every one of which had been under the water in many a recent capsize, were consigned in safety to the powder-house.

On New Year's Eve the palisades were done, and the gates were closed at sunset.

The first winter-home of civilised people on the Columbia has an abiding charm, not unlike that of Plymouth or Jamestown.

Back through the mists of one hundred years we see gangs of elk, chased by hunters through cranberry bogs, "that shook for the space of half an acre."

Their soundless footfalls were lost in beds of brown pine needles and cushions of moss. The firing of guns reverberated through the dim gloom like a piece of ordnance.

It was from such a trip as this that the hunters returned on the 16th of December, reporting elk. All hands set to work carrying up the meat from the loaded boats, skinning and cutting and hanging it up in small pieces in the meathouse, to be smoked by a slow bark fire. But in spite of every precaution, the meat began to spoil.

"We must have salt," said Captain Lewis.

In a few days, five men were dispatched with five kettles to build a cairn for the manufacture of salt from seawater.

Already Clark had examined the coast with this in view, and the salt-makers' camp was established near Tillamook Head, about fifteen miles southwest of the fort where the old cairn stands to this day. Here the men built "a neat, close camp, convenient to