"Now the very best thing we can do is to camp," said the senior of the party of two, to which the junior, your humble writer, readily assented, and so our first night's camp was scarcely twelve miles from where we had started in the morning.
What a nice camping place this. The ladies would say lovely, and why not? A beautiful pebbly beach that extended almost to the water's edge even at low tide with a nice grassy level spit; a back ground of evergreen giant fir timber; such clear, cool water gushing out from the bank near by, so superlative in quality as to defy words to adequately describe; and such fuel for the camp fire, broken fir limbs with just enough pitch to make a cheerful blaze and yet body enough to last well. Why, we felt so happy that we were almost glad the journey had been interrupted. Oliver was the carpenter of the party, the tent builder, wood getter, and general roust-a-bout, to coin a word from camp parlance, while I, the junior, was the "chief cook and bottle washer," as the senior would jocularly put it.
At the point a little beyond where we landed we found next morning J. R. Johnson, M. D., with his cabin on the point under the pretentious name of "Johnson's Hospital," opened as he said for the benefit of the sick, but which, from what I saw in my later trips I think his greatest business was in disposing of cheap whisky of which he contributed his share of the patronage.
An Indian encampment being near by, a party of them soon visited our camp and began making signs for trade. "Mika tik-eh clams?" came from out the mouth of one of the matrons of the party as if though half choked in the speaking, a cross between a spoken word and a smothered guttural sound in the throat.
"What does she say, Oliver?" the junior said, turning for counsel to the superior wisdom of the elder brother.
"I'm blessed if I know what she says, but she evidently wants to sell some clams."
And so, after considerable dickering, and by signs and gestures and words oft repeated we were able to impart the information that we wanted a lesson in cookery; that we wanted her to show us how to cook them, and that we would buy some. This brought some merriment in the camp. The idea, that there lived a person that did not know how to cook clams. Without saying by your leave or anything else the motherly looking native began tearing down our camp fire.