Puget Sound and British Columbia 



mon on the Wahsatch Mountains, it is called "red 

 pine." In California, on the western slope of the 

 Sierra Nevada, it forms, in company with the yellow 

 pine, sugar pine, and incense cedar, a pretty well- 

 defined belt at a height of from three to six thousand 

 feet above the sea; but it is only in Oregon and Wash- 

 ington, especially in this Puget Sound region, that 

 it reaches its very grandest development, — tall, 

 straight, and strong, growing down close to tide- 

 water. 



All the towns of the Sound had a hopeful, thrifty 

 aspect. Port Townsend, picturesquely located on a 

 grassy bluff, was the port of clearance for vessels sail- 

 ing to foreign parts. Seattle was famed for its coal- 

 mines, and claimed to be the coming town of the 

 North Pacific Coast. So also did its rival, Tacoma, 

 which had been selected as the terminus of the much- 

 talked-of Northern Pacific Railway. Several coal- 

 veins of astonishing thickness were discovered the 

 winter before on the Carbon River, to the east of 

 Tacoma, one of them said to be no less than twenty- 

 one feet, another twenty feet, another fourteen, with 

 many smaller ones, the aggregate thickness of all 

 the veins being upwards of a hundred feet. Large 

 deposits of magnetic iron ore and brown hematite, 

 together with limestone, had been discovered in ad- 

 vantageous proximity to the coal, making a bright 

 outlook for the Sound region in general in connection 

 with its railroad hopes, its unrivaled timber resources, 

 and its far-reaching geographical relations. 



After spending a few weeks in the Puget Sound 



I "1 



