XVIII.
The Pioneer Mother
WITH visiting the sick, teaching the young and caring for her own family, the pioneer mother had her hands full, and of the fruits of her labor she saw but little. The life was terribly narrow, but so full of labor and danger that there was no time to repine. The coming of a white man with a white woman who settled in Elokomon Valley, about two miles back of Cathlamet, was a great event.
The low divide between the Columbia and Elokomon Rivers was covered at this time by a dense forest of the spruce and Douglas fir, and so thick was the growth that the fir trees would go up for loo feet without a limb, and150
