1882.1 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



151 



Natural History and Science. 



CO MM UNI CA TIONS. 



WINTER IN WASHINGTON TERRITORY. 



BY MRS. FANNY E. BRIGGS, LA CENTER, 

 WASHINGTON TERRITORY. 



Are there any readers of the Gardener's 

 Monthly who would like to know how life goes 

 on up here under the fir trees? There is plenty 

 to do as any one will believe who will make an 

 estimate of the labor of disposing of a growth of 

 timber standing thickly on the ground, and much 

 of it two hundred feet and even more in height, 

 with a heavy growth of underbrush. Few trees 

 are chopped down. They are "fired" at the 

 base by boring holes and inserting fire, and when 

 they fall, are separated into lengths for logging 

 in the same way. 



A little patch is cleared here and there at first 

 where circumstances favor, and grass sown 

 between fallen logs, and in all open places, to 

 furnish pasturage. 



There are mills, but not enough to suppl}^ all 

 with building material, and many claims are 

 taken where there are no roads, and houses are 

 built without a foot of sawed material in them. 

 A tree of straight grain is selected, and every 

 part of the house is split out, with more or less 

 care, according to the taste and skill of the 

 builder. Ours was more carefully built than 

 most, the sides being covered with shingles 

 exactly like the roof. 



But can any one imagine the isolation of 

 winter's life on a homestead in these ends of the 

 earth? In summer the climate is agreeable 

 sometimes rather too dry for vegetation, but 

 never excessively hot. Then we are occupied 

 with the usual cares of life on a farm, and if we 

 have leisure, do not mind a walk of even two or 

 three miles to visit a congenial "neighbor." 

 There is Sabbath school and occasional preach- 

 ing at the little school-houses here and there, and 

 people meet together with hearty kindness and 

 genuine sociability. In short our social life is at 

 its best at that season. 



But the country is rough and sparsely settled. 



The roads are bad at any season, and when the 

 winter rains fjill almost constantly, week after 

 week, the mud becomes as Mrs. Stowe phrases^ 

 it, '' of unfathomable and sublime depths." The 

 man who has horses and a wagon is a " bloated 

 aristocrat." Oxen are the usual teams, and 

 wooden sleds the usual vehicles at all seasons. 

 Of course in this state of things there is not much 

 "driving"' for pleasure, and we women are 

 practically almost prisoners. Now and then we 

 set rain and mud and distance at defiance, but 

 sometimes I look day after day at the leaden 

 sky, and the dreary wall of dead fir trees, until I 

 no longer wonder at the numbers of petrifactions 

 that strew the ground, but only that anything 

 animate or inanimate, escapes the same influence^ 



What would we not give for some of the priv- 

 ileges that are so much a part of life in the East- 

 ern States? For the well-filled book-shelves we 

 have left behind ; for some of the magazines you 

 read and toss aside, the lectures and sermons and 

 concerts you listen to so witically? 



But there are here, (as where are there not?} 

 some compensations. First, health comes to 

 almost every one in this pure air, and who can- 

 not be content when strength takes the place of 

 weakness, and health of disease? There is an 

 exhileration, a fullness of life and energy in the 

 air that I have never known elsewhere. 



And although the primeval forest shuts us in 

 to what seems the peculiar and chosen haunt of 

 loneliness and isolation, only eight miles away 

 flows the mighty Columbia, bearing on its broad 

 bosom the ships of all nations. In favoring con- 

 ditions of air and wind I can hear the hoarse 

 whistles of these ocean steamers, and I love to 

 fancy what scenes they have witnessed, what 

 perils escaped, and what freight they bear, and 

 there is fascination in the thought of this busy 

 and varied life so near at hand and in sucli con- 

 trast with the quiet scenes around me. And then,. 

 "To him who in the love of nature, 

 Holds communion with her visihle forms," 



she is never silent. She speaks from the ever- 

 present firs whether pensively smiling in the 

 sunshine, or wrapped in the somber gloom of 



