48 
THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
parties are frequently made up during the summer season, the trip being entirely 
free from difficulty or danger, even to ladies. 
It is at the city of Tacoma that the tourist first looks over the blue waters of 
Puget Sound. This is the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. 
Occupying a commanding position upon a high plateau overlooking Admiralty 
Inlet, Tacoma has an excellent harbor, capable of receiving the largest ocean¬ 
going vessels. It has also some fine public buildings, among them being the 
Anna Wright Seminary for girls, a monument of the beneficence of Mr. C. B. 
Wright, of Philadelphia. Its luxuriously furnished hotel, the Tacoma, erected 
at a cost of $200,000, occupies one of the finest sites in the world, overlooking, 
as it does, the picturesque shores of the bay, and commanding a magnificent 
view of the imperial mountain. 
A few miles northward is Seattle, also with an excellent harbor, and the 
promise of becoming a city of great importance, an extensive section of rich 
country being naturally tributary to it. 
There is no more delightful climate than that of Puget Sound. The sum¬ 
mers are cool, the maximum temperature at Tacoma in the summer of 1884 
being eighty-nine degrees, and in that of 1885, eighty-five degrees only. 
The Cascade division of the railroad, extending eastward from Tacoma, is 
developing a very rich bituminous coal country, and great quantities of the 
mineral are being shipped from Tacoma, where immense bunkers have been 
erected to facilitate its exportation. This line also reaches the fine hop growing 
country of the Puyallup valley, whose product has steadily risen in Eastern 
markets, until now it commands as high a price as that of the State of New York. 
But never was the tourist less disposed than now to concern himself with 
agricultural or commercial statistics. With eager expectation, impatient of 
delay, he is hastening toward that veritable Wonderland of the World that con¬ 
stitutes the Mecca of his pilgrimage. He is about to enter upon the final stage 
of his long journey, in that far-famed Inland Passage, whose incomparable 
scenery, extending in one unbroken chain for more than a thousand miles, alone 
surpasses those stupendous works of Nature upon which he has so recently 
gazed. 
John Hyde. 
