But our cows must have feed, must be milked, and the milk marketed, and so there was no rest nor sleep for us for another thirty-six hours. In fact, there was but little sleep for anybody on that beach at the time. Several ocean steamers had just dumped three thousand people on the beach, and the scramble still continued to find a place to build a house or stretch a tent, or even to spread a blanket, for there were great numbers already on hand landed by previous steamers. The staking of lots on the tide flats at night, when the tide was out, seemed to be a staple industry. Driving of piles or planting of posts as permanent as possible often preceded and accompanied by high words between contestants came to be a commonplace occurrence. The belief among these people seemed to be that if they could get stakes or posts to stand on end, and a six-inch strip nailed to them to encompass a given spot of the flats, that they would thereby become the owner, and so the merry war went on until the bubble burst.
A few days after my arrival four steamers came with an aggregate of over two thousand passengers, many of whom, however, did not leave the steamer and took passage either to their port of departure, San Francisco, Victoria, or points on the Sound. The ebb tide had set in, and although many steamers came later and landed passengers, their return lists soon became large and the population began to diminish.
Taking my little dory that we had with us on the scow, I rowed out to the largest steamer lying at anchor surrounded by small boats so numerous that in common parlance the number was measured by the acre, "an acre of boats." Whether or not an acre of space was covered by these craft striving to reach the steamer I will not pretend to say, but can say that I certainly could not get within a hundred feet of the steamer. All sorts of craft filled the intervening space, from the smallest Indian canoe to large barges, the owners of each either striving to secure a customer from a hapless passenger, or, having secured one, of transferring his belongings to the craft.
There were but a few women in this crowd, but ashore, quite too many, a large majority of whom (those on the ground will remember) were too much like their arch representative, "Old Mother Damnable," well and truly named. But I draw the veil.