STEEP TRAILS 



head, the whole island will be set free and 

 brought forward in vivid relief amid the gloom, 

 a girdle of silver light of dazzling brightness 

 on the water about its shores, then darkening 

 again and vanishing back into the general 

 gloom. Thus island after island may be seen, 

 singly or in groups, coming and going from 

 darkness to light like a scene of enchantment, 

 until at length the entire cloud ceiling is rolled 

 away, and the colossal cone of Mount Rainier 

 is seen in spotless white looking down over the 

 forests from a distance of sixty miles, but so 

 lofty and so massive and clearly outlined as 

 to impress itself upon us as being just back of 

 a strip of woods only a mile or two in breadth. 

 For the tourist sailing to Puget Sound from 

 San Francisco there is but little that is at all 

 striking in the scenery within reach by the 

 way until the mouth of the Strait of Juan de 

 Fuca is reached. The voyage is about four 

 days in length and the steamers keep within 

 sight of the coast, but the hills fronting the 

 sea up to Oregon are mostly bare and uninvit- 

 ing, the magnificent redwood forests stretch- 

 ing along this portion of the California coast 

 seeming to keep well back, away from the 

 heavy winds, so that very little is seen of them; 

 while there are no deep inlets or lofty moun- 

 tains visible to break the regular monotony. 



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