reputation. Bucoda was destroyed by fire, sustaining a loss
of one hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars, but is now
rebuilt better than before.
On leaving the Chehalis Valley we enter upon gravelly prairies, separated by belts of timber. A particularly interesting section is Mound Prairie, which is covered with mounds from two to two and a half feet high, as close together as potato- hills in a field. Various theories have been advanced as to their origin, but it is merely a matter of conjecture still.
At Tenino passengers for Olympia leave the Northern Pacific, and take passage on the Olympia and Tenino Railroad, recently sold to the Port Townsend and Southern. The distance is only about fifteen miles, but the road was a narrow-gauge, the track in bad order, travel light, and the service anything but agreeable. I was told the track was to be widened and the road put in good order, which has, I believe, been done by its new owners.
This little road, with all its faults, had my sympathies. It was built by local capital and local labor, even the ladies of Olympia assisting by having what they cglled “field days,” when they all went out with baskets, coffee-pots, and frying-pans, and fed the volunteers upon the grade, who were the men of every rank of society in the little capital city. The Northern Pacific had disappointed its good people grievously bypassing by and taking a short cut to Commencement Bay,—which its want of funds probably forced it to do,—and the Olympians, with true American pluck, determined to have a branch, and did have it, taking a just pride in the successful accomplishment of their undertaking.
Most of the prairies about the head of the Sound were taken up in early times, and bear the names of the first settlers upon them. Bush’s Prairie is perhaps the most noted of any on the line of the road, simply because Bush, being a colored man, of sound sense and a kind heart, who made himself useful to his white neighbors, defended his well-deserved claim to a donation, which the government finally granted him, although the law read “white male citizen.” His son exhibited wheat raised on Bush Prairie, which received a medal at the Centennial Exposition.
Tumwater, which is the Chinook dialect for strong or rapid water, is the name of a village at the head of Budd’s Inlet, on
