100 days in the San Juans : a 1946 voyage through the San Juan Islands [excerpt]

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the company manageis once told me that there's lime here for a hundred years. This land was bought from the Verriers, who moved to Orcas.
The Flying Dutchman and the San Juanderer draw up to the floating docks. (Isabel took hold of the wrong piling; it broke; she fell in, but we missed that.)
We went into the store for supplies from friendly Mr. Miller, saw Mr. Scott at work in his proud garden, toted some water down from the hydrant on the hill and by that time it was after nine o'clock and the milk truck was due. We could, someone hinted, probably catch a ride on the milk truck half of the four miles to English Camp.
Here it comes! Mrs. Martin unloads her bottles for Roche Harbor! We buy seven quarts. Bottles and cases were shifted on the truck to make room for us and  the girls and  we set  out for   English   Camp.
Now I know what they mean about getting your land legs after a long time on a boat. They mean that you get more tired than usual when you walk! Mrs. Martin lets us off where her road turns and we strike out.
It is fresh this morning, not too hot; the road is graveled. It dips now and then into green woods and
yellow fields and then it lifts to overlook blue waters and islands. Finally it turns down to Garrison Bay, where . . .
We'll be seeing you.    JUNE
P. S. A reader writes, ". . .a boat, flying a yacht club flag, passed us . . . with youngsters on board with ,22s. As they came abeam of Corm Rock, the artillery turned loose. They killed one Bonaparte gull and hit a couple of cormorants. A man aboard was heard to remark: 'Fine shooting. Wasn't that real sport? We will look for some more' . . ."
The children were only having fun. Nothing was harmed -- that time. One gull dead, though it is illegal to shoot them, is only one gull dead. But if many did that trick the land would be despoiled of something that makes it what it is. Because it is robbing all the people, that was a rather nasty little cruise. However, all that's needed is to let the kids know. One year's school program would do the trick. One period a week for every grade in school, year in , year out, and we'd have our earth cherished as it never has been before! There is no limit to the good that would spread out from that program.
English Camp
wwc\ SAN JUAN ISLAND- You said y°u
M   J    couldn't come to English Camp,  Mrs.
9 %J Robertson, but that you had always wanted to see it. This day's story is for you, then, a guided tour with Mrs. Davis, whose Englishman- father, William Crook, homesteaded this land while it was still warm from the tread of soldiers marching up and down 12 years from 1860 to 1872. Mrs. Davis was a very small girl then, but she has lived here all her life; she knows the story by heart.
First, you come down a long private road, through woods and pasture, into the yard where the house is. You knock on the door, pay your 10 cents which Mrs. Davis reluctantly accepts, and then this strong, well-preserved pioneer woman takes you into her front room to see pictures and a few relics she keeps there. You ask about Jim Crook, the brother you have heard so much about - how he makes his own clothes from the sheep's back to his own.
"Oh, you won't see Jim today," Mrs. Davis says. "He's out with the wheat. He's busy . . . yes,
he did spin some wool once, and weave himself a suit of clothes. The old loom is still here and the clothes, too, if you want to see them . . . he's had a lot of notions. His latest is a sawmill and an electric plant run by a windmill . . ."
Now, you go out into the grounds along a road made by the soldiers in the 60s. The trees are planted along the sides in even rows as the English always do things, native firs transplanted in two long rows.
Ivy grows thick up the trees and all around. Mrs. Davis says it was brought from England by Mrs. Delacombe, the second officer's wife, who was very homesick here.
The winding switch-back trail down the hill from here soon arrives at the old blockhouse on the beach. This building is in better repair than it was when I saw it 15 years ago. Mr. Crook has shingled and mended and whitewashed it afresh. The old frayed shingles from the days of the occupation are neatly piled in a heap for souvenir  hunters.   (Mr.
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