250 SURVEYS AND TOWX- MAKING.

I have referred to the surveying expeditions in this place with the design, not only of bringing them into their proper sequence in point of time, but to make plain as I proceed correlative portions of my narra tive.

Between 1846, the year following the first Ameri can settlements on Puget Sound, and 1848, popula tion did not much increase, nor was there any com merce to speak of with the outside world until the autumn of the last-named year, when the settlers discarded their shingle-making and their insignificant trade at Fort Nisqually, to open with their ox-teams a wagon road to the mines on the American River. The new movement revolutionized affairs. Not only was the precious dust now to be found in gratifying bulk in many odd receptacles never intended for such use in the cabins of squatters, but money, real hard coin, became once more familiar to fingers that had nearly forgotten the touch of the precious metals. In January 1850, some returning miners reached the Sound in the first American vessel entering those wa-

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ters for the purposes of trade, and owned by a com pany of four of them. 6 This was the beginning of trade on Puget Sound, which had increased consider ably in 18523, owing to the demand for lumber in San Francisco. The towns of Olympia, Steilacoom, Alki, Seattle, and Port Townsend already enjoyed some of the advantages of commerce, though yet in their infancy. A town had been started on Baker Bay, which, however, had but a brief existence, and settlements had been made on Shoalwater Bay and Gray Harbor, as well as on the principal rivers enter ing them, and at Cowlitz Landing:. At the Cascades

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of the Columbia a town was surveyed in 1850, and

ing, besides a history of the scientific work of the coast survey, many original scraps of history, biography, and anecdotes of persons met with in the early years of the service, both in Oregon and California. Published entire it would be read with interest. It is often a source of regret that the limits of my work, extended as it is, preclude the possibility of extracting all that is tempting in my manuscripts. 6 See llist. Wash., this series.