"'In 1853 Hillory Butler took a contract to get me out logs at Smith's Cove. George F. Frye was his teamster. In the fall of 1854 and spring and summer of 1855, Edward Hanford and John C. Holgate logged for me on their claims, south of the townsite toward the head of the bay. T. D. Hinckley was their teamster, also Jack Harvey. On one occasion, when bringing in a raft to the mill, John lost a diary which he was keeping and I picked it up on the beach. The last entry it contained read: "June 5, 1855. Started with a raft for Yesler's mill. Fell off into the water." I remember I wrote right after "and drowned," and returned the book. I don't know how soon afterward John learned from his own book of his death by drowning. "'The Indian war breaking out in the fall of '55 put a stop to their logging operations, as of all the rest. "'The Indians killed or drove off all the cattle hereabouts and burned the dwellings of Hanford, Holgate and Bell on the borders of the town, besides destroying much other property throughout the country. "'The logging outfits in those days were of the most primitive and meager description. Rafts were fastened together by ropes or light boom-chains. Supplies of hardware and other necessaries were brought up from San Francisco by the lumber vessels on their return trips as ordered by the loggers. I remember on one occasion Edmund Carr, John A. Strickler, F. McNatt and John Ross lost the product of a season's labor by their raft getting away from them and going to pieces while in transit between the mill and the head of the bay. My booming place was on the north side of the mill along the beach where now the foundations are going up for the Toklas & Singerman, Gasch, Melhorn and Lewis brick block. There being no sufficient breakwater thereabouts in those times, I used often to lose a great many logs as well as boom-chains and things by the rafts being broken up by storms. "'My mill in the pioneer times before the Indian war furnished the chief resource of the early citizens of the place for a subsistence. "'When there were not enough white men to be had for operating the mill, I employed Indians and trained them to do the work. George Frye was my sawyer up to the time he took charge of the _John B. Libby_ on the Whatcom route. My engineers at different times were T. D. Hinckley, L. V. Wyckoff, John T. Moss and Douglass. Arthur A. Denny was screw-tender in the mill for quite a while; D. T. Denny worked at drawing in the logs. Nearly all the prominent old settlers at some time or other were employed in connection with the mill in some capacity, either at logging or as mill hands. I loaded some lumber for China and other foreign ports, as well as San Francisco.'"