The Washington Historian Volume 1, No. 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 Excerpt: ...doubly dangerous from the fact that a man once outside, the door shut fast and there being no other entrance except the one at the foot of the tower, he was a prisoner eighty feet from the ground, exposed to the full violence of the terrific storm in winter during probably the full term of his watch, with none to hail for relief. Such was destined to be my unhappy fate. I had now been some months in this service and had quite an amount of my salary due me, payments not being regular then as now, and often being withheld through lack of appropriation for a year or more. 'Twas one terrible stormy night in January. I was awakened from my slumber by the midnight watch coming down from the tower and hailed by him as his relief for the morning watch, to keep the dreary hours till sunrise. I tumbled out, donned my clothes and oil suit, and with lantern lighted commenced toiling up the steep and narrow trail, now over, now crawling under the great trunks of fallen spruce trees which obstructed the way. The rain poured in torrents and the trees on the hillside and on the summit above me swayed and groaned and ground together horribly. The trail winding up the hill and under the lee of the storm, I felt none of its shock and blast, but now and then a giant of the forest, twisted and torn beyond all endurance of the holding power of its spreading roots in the thin and soaked soil, would give way and go tearing and crashing into the gulf below on my right, coming to a stop at last with a deep, resounding thud in the morass and quagmire at its bottom, warned me of the time I would have traversing the three or four hundred yards of the narrow exposed hogsback of the promontory to the light tower at its extremity. I was now almost to the limit of the friendly protection o...