STEEP TRAILS 



Notwithstanding the tremendous energy 

 displayed in lumbering and the grand scale 

 on which it is being carried on, and the num 

 ber of settlers pushing into every opening in 

 search of farmlands, the woods of Washington 

 are still almost entirely virgin and wild, with 

 out trace of human touch, savage or civilized. 

 Indians, no doubt, have ascended most of the 

 rivers on their way to the mountains to hunt 

 the wild sheep and goat to obtain wool for 

 their clothing, but with food hi abundance on 

 the coast they had little to tempt them into 

 the wilderness, and the monuments they have 

 left in it are scarcely more conspicuous than 

 those of squirrels and bears; far less so than 

 those of the beavers, which in damming the 

 streams have made clearings and meadows 

 which will continue to mark the landscape for 

 centuries. Nor is there much in these woods 

 to tempt the farmer or cattle-raiser. A few 

 settlers established homes on the prairies or 

 open borders of the woods and in the valleys 

 of the Chehalis and Cowlitz before the gold 

 days of California. Most of the early immi 

 grants from the Eastern States, however, set 

 tled in the fertile and open Willamette Valley 

 of Oregon. Even now, when the search for 

 land is so keen, with the exception of the bot 

 tom lands around the Sound and on the lower 



242 



