At the first crossing of the Chehalis River is the pretty village of Claquato, which makes us wonder how it got there, so isolated it seems from the outside world. Its buildings, gardens, and orchards have a truly comfortable, even charming, appearance; and the sign, "Claquato Academy," upon the front of a good-sized frame-building, inspires us with respect for this isolated community. Altogether, it produces a most favorable impression—suggesting numerous quotations from the poets, who, we recollect with a sigh, are not, after all, very reliable real-estate agents.
The Chehalis, near here, receives the waters of the Newaukum, a small river heading in the foot-hills of the Cascades. The valley of the Newaukum, together with that of the Chehalis, above the junction, afford from fifty to seventy-five thousand acres of the best of farming land; Lewis County, which contains them, being one of the best agricultural counties in the Territory. In the Chehalis Valley is a cedar-tree, we are told, measuring twenty-one feet in diameter six feet from the ground, and is estimated to be 250 feet to the first limbs.
"We get our last coupon of rough road just beyond Claquato, a few miles of which brings us to the second crossing of the Chehalis, at its junction with the Skookum Chuck ("strong water"), another pretty spot, where we dine. Not more than three miles from here, is a fallen tree three feet in diameter at the butt, and 290 in length. Another tree, in an adjoining county, measures eleven feet in diameter, and 310 in length, and we hear of two more being fourteen feet in thickness; which is pretty well for firs and cedars. From Skookum Chuck to Olympia, is a fifteen-mile drive over gravelly prairies, separated by wooded sections.
