white man to the mountain, and tiie point remained unvisited for 
50 years; last summer, I was able to identify it and named it 
Tolmie’s Peak. Some six or seven years ago, coal was discovered 
on a branch of the Carbon River; mines were opened by the 
Northern Pacific Railroad Company, and a railroad was built 
from Tacoma. But little was done, however, to explore the coal 
field and ascertain its limits until parties were sent out by the 
Northern Trans-continental Survey under the direction of Prof. 
Pumpclly. This work has not been easy ; the pathless forest was 
exceedingly difficult to penetrate, and it requires a peculiar instinct 
to scent a coal vein buried under a superficial gravel wash and 
the mass of dead and living vegetation. It has often been a mat¬ 
ter of wonder to me that the prospectors employed should succeed 
as well as they do. As the work slowly progressed, trails became 
necessary ; permanent camps were built, and thus the wilderness 
was made habitable. At the end of two years we have pushed 
our exploration thirty miles south of Wilkeson and have traced the 
strip of Coal Measures, bounded on all sides by more recent eruptive 
rocks, to its southern limit. It is a peculiar fragment of the earth’s 
crust, split by volcanic forces from its associates, and almost en¬ 
gulfed by the eruptions both east and west of it. Its sandstones, 
shales and coal veins are the record of thousands of years of slow, 
patient work Ty waves and plants ; they lie at the base of one of 
nature’s grandest monuments to the destructive earth-rending 
forces that buried Pompeii and made the gardens of Ischia deso¬ 
late. 
In carrying out the aim of our exploration, the develop¬ 
ment of the material resources of the region, we have incidentally 
called attention to the great beauty of its scenery. A trip to the 
glaciers, made by Mr. Oakes, vice-president of the Northern 
Pacific Railroad, and Senator Edmunds, last June, resulted in an 
order to search for a practicable route and build a trail up to Mt. 
Tacoma itself; and, in laying out that trail, we found new points of 
view, new scenes of wonderful savage grandeur, and others of lovely 
peaceful restfulness. Our main horse trail extends from Wilke¬ 
son, the end of the railroad, south to Carbon River, about nine 
miles, and then rises on to the divide between Carbon River and 
the Puyallup, here about six miles across from valley to valley. 
This range extends southeast, rising and narrowing until it joins 
