Such variety of adventure had but recently crowded upon them that it was almost fearfully they re-embarked. A. A. Denny observed to Captain Low, "Look here, Low, they say women are scarce in Oregon and we had better be careful of ours." Presumably they were, as both survive at the present day. From a proud ranger of the dashing main, the old brig had come down to be a carrier of salt salmon packed in barrels, and plunder of immigrants; as for the luckless passengers, they accommodated themselves as best they could. The small children were tied to the mast to keep them from falling overboard, as there were no bulwarks. Beds were made below on the barrels before mentioned and the travel-worn lay down, but not to rest; the mosquitos were a bloodthirsty throng and the beds were likened unto a corduroy road. One of the women grumbled a little and an investigation proved that it was, as her husband said, "Nothing but the tea-kettle" wedged in between the barrels. Another lost a moccasin overboard and having worn out all her shoes on the way, went with one stockinged foot until they turned up the Willamette River, then went ashore to a farmhouse where she was so fortunate as to find the owner of a new pair of shoes which she bought, and was thus able to enter the "city" of Portland in appropriate footgear. After such vicissitudes, dangers and anxiety, the little company were glad to tarry in the embryo metropolis for a brief season; then, having heard of fairer shores, the restless pioneers moved on. CHAPTER III THE SETTLEMENT AT ALKI. Midway between Port Townsend and Olympia, in full view looking west from the city of Seattle, is a long tongue of land, washed by the sparkling waves of Puget Sound, called Alki Point. It helps to make Elliott Bay a beautiful land-locked harbor and is regarded with interest as being the site of the first settlement by white people in King County in what was then the Territory of Oregon. _Alki_ is an Indian word pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, which is _al_ as in altitude; _ki_ is spoken as _ky_ in silky. Alki means "by and by." It doth truly fret the soul of the old settler to see it printed and hear it pronounced Al-ki. The first movement toward its occupancy was on this wise: A small detachment of the advancing column of settlers, D. T. Denny and J. N. Low, left Portland on the Willamette, on the 10th of September, 1851, with two horses carrying provisions and camp outfit. These men walked to the Columbia River to round up a band of cattle belonging to Low. The cattle were ferried over the river at Vancouver and from thence driven over the old Hudson Bay Company's trail to the mouth of Cowlitz River, a tributary of the Columbia, up the Cowlitz to Warbass Landing and on to Ford's prairie, a wide and rich one, where the band were left to graze on the luxuriant pasturage.