Puget Sound and British Columbia 



with jagged crests and peaks from six to eight thou- 

 sand feet high, — small residual glaciers and ragged 

 snow-fields beneath them in wide amphitheatres 

 opening down through the forest-filled valleys. These 

 valleys mark the courses of the Olympic glaciers at 

 the period of their greatest extension, when they 

 poured their tribute into that portion of the great 

 northern ice-sheet that overswept Vancouver Island 

 and filled the strait between it and the mainland. 



On the way up to Olympia, then a hopeful little 

 town situated at the end of one of the longest fingers 

 of the Sound, one is often reminded of Lake Tahoe, 

 the scenery of the widest expanses is so lake-like in 

 the clearness and stillness of the water and the luxu- 

 riance of the surrounding forests. Doubling cape 

 after cape, passing uncounted islands, new combina- 

 tions break on the view in endless variety, sufficient to 

 satisfy the lover of wild beauty through a whole life. 

 When the clouds come down, blotting out everything, 

 one feels as if at sea; again lifting a little, some islet 

 may be seen standing alone with the tops of its trees 

 dipping out of sight in gray misty fringes; then the 

 ranks of spruce and cedar bounding the water's edge 

 come to view; and when at length the whole sky is 

 clear the colossal cone of Mt. Rainier may be seen in 

 spotless white, looking down over the dark woods 

 from a distance of fifty or sixty miles, but so high and 

 massive and so sharply outlined, it seems to be just 

 back of a strip of woods only a few miles wide. 



Mt. Rainier, or Tahoma (the Indian name), is the 

 noblest of the volcanic cones extending from Lassen 



[9] 



