ton gloves, several sizes too large, they made a brave and uncomplaining attempt. to carry the white man's sartorial burden with dignity.

Phra Nang is a Siamese word meaning "the second wife of the king"-the first wife being called Somedetch Phra Nang. The king was said to have had thirty-two wives. The arrival of the vessel was celebrated with the booming of cannon and speech-making and in a few days her cargo was on its way East. Tea trains and silk trains for some years had been a feature of transcontinental traffic over the Northern Pacific. The merchandise carried by these trains was brought across the Pacific in sailing vessels. The first of these was the A. G. Ropes and the second the ship W. J. Rotch, Captain Gibbs, arrived on July 19, 1888. The Rotch carried 3,109 tons of tea which was unloaded and on its way East inside of thirty-eight hours after arrival. November 15th the steamship Zambesi sailed for Hong Kong having as a part of her cargo twenty-six boxes of selected baldwin, rubicon, red cheeked and new town pippin apples from the Tacoma fruit farm of Frank Alling. This was the first shipment of Washington apples to the Orient and they were sold at the rate of $100 a ton, f. o. b. Tacoma. At 11.10 o'clock on the night of November 28, 1894, a strip of land between 250 and 300 yards long and from 20 to 60 feet wide slid into Commencement Bay at Tacoma, carrying the home and boathouse of H. H. Alger, forty-five feet of the south end of the Northern Pacific Railroad's Puget Sound warehouse, its freight office and the adjoining stock yards. Night Watchman John Hanson and Emma Stubbs, age fifteen, daughter of Alger, were carried down in the wreckage and lost their lives. The girl's body was not recovered. May 18, 1895, Diver Baldwin found Hanson's body pinned beneath timbers in forty feet of

water.

Further north a second slide a few minutes later carried away a portion of the ocean dock. Policeman Harry Keene and Night Watchman Eastman were standing near the Crescent creamery plant (now the Pacific Cold Storage Company) when the slide started. They felt a heavy jar, followed immediately by the crash of the Puget Sound warehouse as it broke up and settled into the water. The pump house, containing the engine and boilers supplying the steam for the pumps then hydraulicking earth from the bluff, floated back near the other docks, caught fire and threatened to destroy the remaining portions of the warehouses. The Alger house floated out into the bay and the steamer Blue Bird rescued all members of the family except Emma. It was supposed she had been struck by falling timbers, rendered unconscious and drowned.

The scarcity of lights rendered rescue work difficult and it was not until the following morning that the full extent of the damage could be ascertained.

The following night another section of the made land, about two acres in extent, went down at low tide, carrying with it 120 feet more of the Puget Sound warehouse, and much of the adjoining land settled.

Several days before the first slide occurred it was reported that smoke clouds were hanging about the top of Mount Rainier and that its long extinct fires were threatening to break out. Old Town watchmen reported that they had seen a tidal wave fifteen feet in height sweep the shore.

Northern Pacific officials estimated the damage to warehouses and tracks at about thirteen thousand dollars. The pump house was gone; also the freight office in which was a safe containing $2,400 in cash and checks and other papers worth more than ten thousand dollars.

Engineers soon were at work making a survey of the slide, and it was found that the bottom of the bay had settled over an area of some twenty acres. Where the warehouses had stood sixty feet of water was found; 100 foot piles were washed out, and the fact that they were not broken led Division Superintendent McCabe to believe that the cause of the catastrophe was the washing out of a stratum of quicksand low down beneath the filled-in earth. Extending their soundings into the bay the engineers found that for more than a thousand feet outward from shore the bottom of the bay had settled down from twenty to sixty feet, and at a few places an even greater subsidence was shown. This discovery led Chief Engineer McHenry to say that it was not a sliding but a dropping motion that had caused the trouble. The center of the disturbance, he said, was to be found about a thousand feet from shore.

Rev. A. J. Hanson, of Puyallup, in presenting his report to the Methodist Conference in Seattle in September, 1895, said he had some good news to reportthe hop crop was a failure; it had been cursed by God and was far below normal yield. Bishop Bowman asked if the hops had failed to grow and Hanson replied they had grown but had been destroyed by the hop louse, to which Bishop Bowman replied, "Good!" From all over the house came fervent "Thank Gods!"

When the report of the conference was published in the newspapers, a number of Puyallup people took up the question and in reply to the ministers said. that such extremist expressions showed inconsistency and that the ministers should rejoice also when the crops of potatoes and cereals failed-they also were used in the manufacture of whisky, a liquor containing 20 per cent more alcohol than the beer made from hops. Hanson was transferred from the Puyallup conference—one of the large hop growers, in a signed letter to the press, asking that his church there return $400 which the hop grower had contributed towards the erection of the church building.

CHAPTER XLV

WASHINGTON'S RECOVERY FROM THE PANIC OF 1893 ACCELERATED BY THE DISCOVERY

OF GOLD IN ALASKA-HOW THE UNITED STATES PURCHASED THE NORTHERN TERRITORY—SECRETARY SEWARD'S CONNECTION WITH IT—EARLY DEVELOPMENT— THE "KLONDYKE RUSH"-THE BUILDING OF THE UNITED STATES ASSAY OFFICE IN SEATTLE AND ITS FLOOD OF GOLD NEWSPAPER MEN TALK OF AN ALASKA EXHIBIT WHICH RESULTS IN THE ALASKA-YUKON-PACIFIC EXPOSITION OF 1909 -THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR AND THE PART PLAYED BY WASHINGTON BOYS -INCREASED FORTIFICATIONS ON THE SOUND AND THE BUILDING OF THE AMERICAN LAKE CANTONMENT.

Slowly, laboriously, but successfully Western Washington was pulling itself out of the business stagnation following 1893 and was beginning to show signs of returning prosperity when news of the discovery of Alaska's wonderfully rich gold mines arrived and again awakened to life that spirit of daring and love of adventure which at all times has characterized the people of the state. Washingtonians knew Alaska possessed gold-the report for 1895 showed an added. $1,000,000 in gold production over the $2,000,000 of the year before; but even the best informed were not prepared for the "big strike" in the Klondyke. The news of it turned men's heads and started a movement of passenger and freight traffic which, in a few months, far exceeded safe facilities. Pre-Klondyke transportation facilities had been inadequate. New vessels hastily were built and sailed northward with every inch of their space filled with gold seekers and their supplies. The gold seekers returned, some in worse financial condition than when they had set out, and some with well filled "pokes." Some of these pokes went toward the upbuilding of a greater Washington. Any benefit which the state derived from Alaska's development was, in a measure, the return of "bread cast upon the waters." Washington people had played an important part in its acquisition and development and were entitled to benefit from her good fortune. In the "Fifty-Four-Forty-or-Fight" campaign of James K. Polk, Russia, evidently inspired by a desire to check the expansion of British power on the Pacific, offered to give Alaska to the United States provided the latter succeeded in establishing the northern boundary of Oregon in accordance with the famous campaign slogan. The Oregon question was a compromise and nothing further was heard of the Alaska purchase until 1859, when it became a subject of semiofficial discussion in the national capital. Secretary of State William H. Seward became much interested and in a speech delivered in Minneapolis in 1860 said:

"Standing here and looking far off into the Northwest I see the Russian as he busily occupies himself in establishing seaports and towns and fortifications on the verge of this continent, as the outpost of St. Petersburg; and can say,

'Go on, and build your outposts all along the coast, up even to the Arctic Ocean; they will yet become the outposts of my own country-monuments to the civilization of the United States in the Northwest.'

Sentiment favorable to the purchase grew slowly. Whalers and fishermen from Puget Sound were to make the next move. They objected to the restrictions imposed upon their business by the Russian laws and officials of Alaska and presented their case to the Territorial Legislature of 1865-66. Washington Territorial Legislatures were famous for their memorials and another was soon on its way to Washington. Congress was requested to obtain certain concessions for Puget Sound fishermen. The memorial was filed away and Congress doubtless soon would have forgotten both the memorial and the fishermen had it not been for Secretary Seward. The Puget Sound fishermen's appeal gave him the opportunity he was awaiting and an excuse for opening negotiations with Russian Minister Stoeckle. Russia's price was $10,000,000 and Seward offered to "split the difference" between that price and the amount offered by the United States and buy the territory for $7,000,000, with $200,000 more for the purchase of certain rights and privileges held by the Russian Fur Company. Evidently Secretary Seward did not propose to have a repetition of the long drawn-out and expensive Hudson's Bay claims negotiations.

Upon being admitted the Russian minister said:

"I have a dispatch, Mr. Seward, from my government by cable. The emperor gives his consent to the cession. Tomorrow, if you like, I will come to the department, and we can enter the treaty."

"Why wait until tomorrow, Mr. Stoeckel?" asked the secretary with a smile. "Let us make the treaty tonight."

"But your department is closed. You have no clerks and my secretaries are scattered about the town."

"Never mind that," replied Seward, "if you can muster your legation together before midnight, you will find me waiting you at the department, which will be open and ready for business."

At 4 o'clock the next morning the treaty was engrossed and ready for delivery to the President and Senate. April 9th the Senate ratified the treaty. · May 28th it received the official endorsement of the President and on October 18th Gen. Lovell H. Rousseau received the actual transference from Captain Pestchouroff at Sitka.

Had the Senate foreseen the storm of criticism that was to follow it probably would have debated the treaty at greater length. Almost immediately the guns of the opposition were turned on the administration and the purchase. Seward had not, at that time, given the territory the name Alaska and the new possession was called "Seward's Folly," "Johnson's Polar Bear Garden," "Walrussia," and the purchase "an egregious blunder" palmed off on a silly administration by the shrew Russian." Seward was accused of having entered into a secret alliance with Russia and much was said about the purchase having been made with the object of paying Russia for her silent assistance in the Civil war. During the dark days of 1863 the Russian fleet had visited the United States and it may be that Seward, by the purchase, sought to show appreciation for this hint to the British lion that any interference upon his part in the family quarrel between the states would be looked upon as an unfriendly act toward the Russian bear. It