The most of these names, as w ill be seen, are aboriginal, while Lieutenant Meares is responsible for Dungeness. On the east, flowing into Hood's Canal, are the Quilcene, Leland, Sylopish, and Skokomish, and many smaller ones without names. Several of these rivers could be navigated with small steamers by simply removing accumulations of drift.
The laying out of towns on Gray's Harbor and exploration of its tributary rivers by "timber cruisers" awakened so great an interest in the Olympic Peninsula that, if any prospector or party of adventurers penetrated even a few miles beyond the heretofore known limits of exploration, the fact was quickly given to the public with as much eclat as if it had been indeed Darkest Africa, and these pathfinders all Livingstones and Stanleys.
Up to this time the most generally accepted theory of the country in the interior, according to one writer, was that it consisted of valleys sloping inward from the mountains to a great central basin. In support of this belief it was pointed out that, notwithstanding the country round about had abundant rain, and that clouds constantly hung over the mountain-tops, all the streams flowing towards the four points of the compass were too insignificant to drain the great area shut in by the mountains. (This was not true, as I have shown, concerning the south side.) This writer fancied a great interior lake, but could not account for its drainage except by imagining a subterranean outlet. He urged some adventurous persons to "acquire fame by unveiling the mystery which wraps the land encircled by the snow-capped range."
" Superstition," remarked Governor Semple, in his official report for 1888, lends its aid to the natural obstacles in preserving the integrity of this grand wilderness. The Indians have traditions in regard to happenings therein, ages ago, which were so terrible that the memory of them has endured until this day with a vividness that controls the actions of men. In those remote times, say the aborigines, an open valley existed on the upper Wynooskie, above the canon, in the Heart of the Olympic Eange. This valley was wide and level, and the mountains hedged it in on every side. Its main extent was open land, matted with grass and sweet with flowers, while the
