Geoduck (1853?)

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Sat Nov 9 21:07:17 UTC 2002


THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE,
OR KLALAM AND KLICKATAT
By THEODORE WINTHROP
TO WHICH ARE NOW FIRST ADDED HIS
WESTERN LETTERS AND JOURNALS
edited by John H. Williams
Tacoma: John H. Williams
1913

   THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE first appeared in 1862.  The following is from a letter.

Pg. 257
Vancouver, July 12th, 1853 (...)
Pg. 261:
   A few houses make Olympia a thriving lumbering village, cleared from the woods, with stumps in the main street.  Plenty of "Ostend" oysters and large, queer clams.*  Puget Sound terminates here in a point, spreading below to a great lake with low banks, thick with firs.

*The native oysters of the Sound are small and not unlike in flavor to those of the British Channel, which Winthrop has in mind.  They are greatly esteemed by epicures, but fashion has dictated the transplanting of seed of the larger eastern oysters from the Atlantic coast beds.  These ripen perfectly, but do not propagate, in the shallow bays at the head of the Sound and on the coast.
   The clams of Puget Sound have a wide reputation for their abundance and excellence.  The "large, queer clams" mentioned by Winthrop are the "geoducks," which weigh several pounds, and are edible.
   The Puget Sound clam was the subject of a celebrated _bon mot_ by the late Francis W. Cushman, of Tacoma, representative in Congress and the wit of the lower house.  Cushman was a Republican, and his best speeches were in support of the tariff.  "Our friends the enemy," he said in one of these, "are welcome, if they wish, to return to the lean panic years of the Nineties; but as for me and my constituents, we want no more hard times.  We remember too well those sad years on Puget Sound, where we had nothing to live upon but clams.  When the tide was out the table was spread.  We dug clams, and ate clams, till our stomachs rose and fell with the tide!"



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