Woodpeckers, yellow hammers and sap-suckers, beat their brave tattoo on the dead tree trunks and owls uttered their cries from the thick branches at night. Riding to church one Sunday morning we beheld seven little owls sitting in a row on the dead limb of a tall fir tree, about fourteen feet from the ground. Winking and blinking they sat, silently staring as we passed by. Rare birds peculiar to the western coast, the rufous-backed hummingbird, like a living coal of fire, and the bush-titmouse which builds a curious hanging nest, also visited this natural park. The road we children traveled from this place led through heavy forest and the year of the drouth (1868) a great fire raged; we lost but little time on this account; it had not ceased before we ran past the tall firs and cedars flaming far above our heads. Returning from church one day, when about half way home, a huge fir tree fell just behind us, and a half mile farther on we turned down a branch road at the very moment that a tree fell across the main road usually traveled. The game was not then all destroyed; water fowl were numerous on the lakes and bays and the boys of the family often went shooting. Rather late in the afternoon of a November day, the two smaller boys, taking a shot gun with them, repaired to Lake Union, borrowed a little fishing canoe of old Tsetseguis, the Indian who lived at the landing, and went to look at some muskrat traps they had set. It was growing quite dark when they thought of returning. For some reason they decided to change places in the canoe, a very "ticklish" thing to do. When one attempted to pass the other, over went the little cockle-shell and both were struggling in the water. The elder managed to thrust one arm through the strap of the hunting bag worn by the younger and grasped him by the hair, said hair being a luxuriant mass of long, golden brown curls. Able to swim a little he kept them afloat although he could not keep the younger one's head above water. His cries for help reached the ears of a young man, Charles Nollop, who was preparing to cook a beefsteak for his supper--he threw the frying pan one way while the steak went the other, and rushed, coatless and hatless, to the rescue with another man, Joe Raber, in a boat.