CHAPTER X. 
Resources and Geographical Importance of Puget Sound , and its Relations to the Trade 
of Asia. 
Puget sound needs no special description in this report. It has 1,500 miles of shore-line, 
and many capacious harbors and roadsteads, accessible, commodious, and entirely land-locked. 
It is particularly adapted to steam navigation. 
Steilacoom, Seattle, and Bellingham bay, would be good termini for the railroad; and in 
relation simply to the route of the Columbia and the Cowlitz, Port Discovery, on the Straits de 
Fuca; but Seattle combines the greatest number of advantages. As rapidly as the tonnage 
and draught of vessels have increased in a few years, rising from ten or fifteen hundred to five or 
six thousand tons, it is hardly probable they will ever exceed the capacity of this harbor, 
which at low water would admit vessels of fifty feet draught. 
The principal resources of the sound are its lumber, its coal, its salmon, and the cod on the 
banks of the coast, far to the north and south of the entrances to the straits. The coal-beds 
extend from Bellingham bay to the Cowlitz river, and when subjected to analysis have been 
pronounced of excellent quality. Such was the opinion of the late Prof. Walter Johnson; and 
Lieut. Trowbridge, corps of engineers, has, after examination, expressed a favorable opinion of 
its quality. I regret that I cannot give in the appendix a copy of his letter to the Bellingham 
Bay Coal Company, which I left at Otympia. I learn, in a recent letter from Olympia, that in 
June very excellent coal was obtained from the mines in Bellingham bay. 
There is also much good land between the Cascades and the ocean. Although, at some 
points, spurs from the mountains extend nearly to the sound, yet generally there is an interval 
of prairie or rolling land some thirty or forty miles broad; the river-bottoms generally rich, 
with an undergrowth of vine, maple and alder. In the vicinity of, and north of Bellingham 
bay, there are extensive prairies, and the river Nook-sahk, navigable for steamers at least sixty 
miles, and which, having its source back of Mount Baker, passes under its southern and western 
base, and finally enters the sound in the northern part of the bay, is represented to have much 
excellent land on its banks. At the delta of the Sam-ish and Sin-a-ah-mish, and on the D’Wam- 
ish and its several tributaries on the Puy-gal-lut, there is much excellent land. The prairies 
on the southern shore of the Sami are some of them gravelly, particularly those in the vicinity of 
Nisqually; but, as a general rule, the land is good and yields fair returns to labor. The quality 
of the land improves on approaching the mountain slopes, and an extensive prairie near the 
head of the Cowlitz, and at the base of Mount St. Helens, is one of the best tracts of land in 
the Territory. 
The region generally between the Columbia river and the sound, and the Cascades and the 
Pacific ocean, is well watered. The river bottoms having a growth of pine, maple, alder, and 
curl-maple, are generally rich, and there is much productive prairie, interspersed wilh groves of 
timber, and little or none of the country can be called mountainous. There is a good country 
along the Willopah and the Chihalis rivers, and from the Chihalis to the head of Hood’s canal. 
The islands of the sound, moreover, are quite extensive, and Whitby’s island, the largest of 
them all, and in the very centre of the sound, is the garden of the Territory. West of the sound 
the country is comparatively unknown. It is reported to have great mineral wealth and much 
excellent land. There will be a great thoroughfare of business and travel from the sound to 
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