Isolation and High Water on the Humptulips

Deputy Sheriff Bruce Hennessey returned Saturday from Humptulips City, for which place he left here Thursday morning to attach two horses on a suit of Ruffe Kisch against Davis Best. He took a horse by scow from Hoquiam to the head of the Hoquiam river and then rode across the country to the Humptulips. He says the county road is in a fearful condition, the mud being in places up to a horse's belly, and blocked all along with fallen trees, of which he counted 116 between the rivers. At the Humptulips crossing, he found some men who had made a coffin for the body of a young man named Newham, who had died on the other side of the river (this young man had so wasted by disease that he only weighed ninety pounds when he died), but owing to the recent heavy rains the river had risen twelve feet the night before and the coffin could not be taken across. Hennessey crossed in a canoe, the current being so swift but a moment was occupied in the trip, and it was with difficulty he induced the canoeman to bring him back.