"The other day some of Parke's men at work on the foundation of the new Union Block on Front, corner of Columbia Street, delving among ancient fragments of piles, stranded logs and other debris of sea-wreck, long buried at that part of the waterfront, found at the bottom of an excavation they were making, a mass of knotted iron, corroded, attenuated and salt-eaten, which on being drawn out proved to be a couple of ancient boom-chains. "The scribe, thinking he might trace something of the history of these ancient relics, hunted up Mr. Yesler, whom, after considerable exploration through the mazes of his wilderness on Third and Jefferson Streets, he found, hose in hand, watering a line of lilies, hollyhocks, penstemons, ageratums, roses, et al. "The subject of the interview being stated, Mr. Yesler proceeded to relate: 'Yes, after I got my mill started in 1853, the first lot of logs were furnished by Dr. Maynard. He came to me and said he wanted to clear up a piece on the spit, where he wanted to lay out and sell some town lots. It was somewhere about where the New England and Arlington now stand. The location of the old mill is now an indeterminate spot, somewhere back of Z. C. Miles' hardware store. The spot where the old cookhouse stood is in the intersection of Mill and Commercial Streets, between the Colman Block and Gard. Kellogg's drug store. Hillory Butler and Bill Gilliam had the contract from Maynard, and they brought the logs to the mill by hand--rolled or carried them in with handspikes. I warrant you it was harder work than Hillory or Bill has done for many a day since. Afterwards, Judge Phillips, who went into partnership with Dexter Horton in the store, got out logs for me somewhere up the bay. "'During the first five years after my mill was started, cattle teams for logging were but few on the Sound, and there were no steamboats for towing rafts until 1858. Capt. John S. Hill's "_Ranger No. 2_," which he brought up from San Francisco, was the first of the kind, and George A. Meigs' little tug _Resolute_, which blew up with Capt. Johnny Guindon and his crew in 1861, came on about the same time. A great deal of the earliest logging on the Sound was done exclusively by hand, the logs being thrown into the water by handspikes and towed to the mill on the tide by skiffs.