Page:The Pacific Monthly volume 17.djvu/269



Vol. XVII

AST or West there is probably no stretch of coast bordering the United States which is less known or less frequented than that extending from Gray's Harbor to Cape Flattery in Washington. North of Moclips, especially, where the rocky ribs of the Olympic Mountains begin to break up the dead level of shining sand, travel becomes increasingly difficult. The tributary region is penetrated deeply by only one wagon road, that from East Clallam on the Straits to Mora in the lower Quillayute country. Navigators shun the coast as they would a plague, for it is guarded by over a hundred rugged islets, and by the remains of countless others now reduced to sullen reefs. Rain falls almost daily, save during July and August, and these months witness a never- ending conflict between sun and fog. The timber in consequence is very heavy, and the undergrowth which crowns the sea-wall is almost impenetrable.

Yet in spite of these drawbacks, in spite.

too, of the scanty population, cliierly In- dian, to be found in the tributary region, those who have forced their way along this coast, or have ventured into its troubled wa- ters, have felt amply repaid by the sight of frowning headlands pierced by graceful arches, by the ever-fresh delights of crescent beach and crashing surf, and not least, by the ever-varied panorama of the islands, — in the morning half-mantled in the mystery of fog, at noon resplendent in clear sunshine and flashing with the wings of countless sea- birds, at evening silhouetted against the warm saffron of the western sky. like the fabled Islands of the Blessed.

In July of the present year, the writer, ac- companied by wife and child, arranged to visit this coast, together with its adjacent islands, intending primarily a systematic study of its bird-life. We had the services of two Indian boatmen, of the Quillayute tribe, California and Gordon Hobucket by name, and the use of a typical Indian canoe hollowed from a single log of cedar. Cedar in itself is the frailest of wood, but cedar