Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/206

 sand which is easily removed. This was, undoubtedly, part of a cargo intended for the early Spanish missions, and it may have been the crew of this wrecked galleon to which Soto and his shipmates belonged. The proverbial obliterating power ascribed to sand fails to apply at Clatsop, where a good deal of history of one sort and another is indelibly inscribed in this fugitive substance, and where may be seen the foundations of a village which was the home of a very primitive people who subsisted upon raw mollusks.

Three or four miles down the coast from Seaside is Tillamook Head, a high promontory which overhangs the sea; and about one mile out from this headland Tillamook Lighthouse, erected only a few years ago on a rock which seems designed by nature for such a purpose. The height of Tillamook Rock is eighty- eight feet,and of the tower forty-eight; yet in some winter storms bowlders of the size of cannon balls have been thrown quite over the top, such is the force of the waves which beat about its base. The party of nine men placed on the rock in October, 1879, to prepare the foundations of the lighthouse, first made a shelter for themselves by drilling holes in the rock, to which they fastened ringbolts with canvas tied to them as a temporary protection from winds and waves. The next step was to quarry out a sufficient space in a nook on one side for the erection of a shanty, which was bolted to the face of the cliff. They had then to cut stairs in the rock to reach the top, which, when leveled off, was about the size of a city lot. While excavating the stairs they were sometimes compelled to work on staging suspended from the top of the rock, with the brine dashing over them; and at other times the weather was such that on work could be done. But worse was to come, for in January huge waves dashed to the very top of the rock, and fell in masses of water on their canvas house, threatening to carry it away. By this storm their supplies were swept away, while for more than