154 Dawson, Bird Colonies of the Olympiades. [\nrii 



The ruggedness of the succeeding stretch is occasioned ap])ar- 

 ently by a great fault, or crack in the earth's crust, running roughly 

 north and south. The sea-floor has been dropped to westward 

 leaving the exposed edges of the strata on shore to the mercy of 

 the waves. In some places the tough strata, chiefly sandstone and 

 conglomerates, presumably Miocene, were bent sharply before 

 breaking; so that now, in the form of detached islets and prom- 

 ontories, they stand on edge, balancing in the most precarious 

 and fantastic forms. One such rock, off Toleak Point, rises to a 

 height of one hundred feet, with a thickness of only twenty at the 

 tide line, — so thin, indeed, that the sea has w^orn a keyhole near 

 the bottom and the air another near the top. Moreover, the shore- 

 line is complicated by transverse folds of rocks, the precursors of 

 the Olympic Mountains to the eastward; and these are usually 

 marked offshore by a chain of islets in descending series, the 

 outermost member of the series being the most denuded, and the 

 innermost being mere detached fragments of the mainland with 

 forest crowns intact. It is thus that the more than one hundred 

 and thirty islets which rise above the spray-line, are grouped 

 into nine principal systems, roughly corresponding to the chief 

 promontories. 



The coast-line of this hundred mile stretch is further interrupted 

 by several rivers, none of them long streams, but each of consider- 

 able volume because of the extraordinary rainfall which charac- 

 terizes this section. The precipitation at La Push was 155 inches 

 for the year 1905, and 100 inches for the last five months of 1906. 

 It goes without saying that "saturated" plumages may be found 

 here in their perfection. There is a corresponding density of vege- 

 tation, especially along the crest of the sea-wall, where the jungle 

 of salal and dw^arf salmon-berry is nourished by ten months of 

 rain and mist and two of fog, and where the rough trail which is 

 resorted to at high tide resembles a tunnel rather than a footpath. 

 A luxuriant growth of evergreen timber, chiefly tideland spruce 

 and giant cedar, covers the entire western slope of the Olympic 

 peninsula; but along the immediate shore-line it often presents a 

 stunted appearance, due either to salty spray or wind, or both. 

 Those islands which are totally devoid of trees may, nevertheless, 

 be crowned with an almost impenetrable grow^th of mingled salal 



