And yet, because of that hand logging work, Jane came very near becoming a widow one morning before breakfast, but did not know of it until long afterwards. It occurred in this way. We did not then know how to scaffold up above the tough, swelled butts of the large trees, and this made it very difficult to chop them down. So we burned them by boring two holes at an angle to meet inside the inner bark, and by getting the fire started, the heart of the tree would burn, leaving an outer shell of bark. One morning, as usual, I was up early, and after starting the fire in the stove and putting on the tea kettle, I hastened to the burning timber to start afresh the fires, if perchance, some had ceased to burn. Nearing a clump of three giants, two hundred and fifty feet tall, one began toppling over toward me. In my confusion I ran across the path where it fell, and while this had scarce reached the ground, a second started to fall almost parallel to the first, scarcely thirty feet apart at the top, leaving me between the two with limbs flying in a good many directions. If I had not become entangled in some brush, I would have gotten under the last falling tree. It was a marvelous escape, and would almost lead one to think that there is such a thing as a charmed life.
The rafting of our precious accumulations down the Columbia River to Oak Point; the relentless current that carried us by where we had contracted our logs at six dollars a thousand; the following the raft to the larger waters, and finally, to Astoria, where we sold them for eight dollars, instead of six per thousand, thus profiting by our misfortunes; the involuntary plunge off the raft into the river with my boots on; the three days and nights of ceaseless toil and watching would make a thrilling story if we had but the time to tell it. Our final success was complete, which takes off the keen edge of the excitement of the hour, and when finished, we unanimously voted we would have none of it more.
At Oak Point we found George Abernethy, former Governor of Oregon, who had quite recently returned with his family from the "States," and had settled down in the lumber business. He had a mill running of a capacity of about 25,000 feet of lumber a day. It was a water power mill, and the place presented quite a smart business air for the room they had. But Oak Point did not grow to be much of a lumber or business center, and the water mill eventually gave way to steam, located elsewhere, better suited for the business.