COUNTRY UPON SHOALWATER BAY AND PUGET SOUND. 
469 
as the Puyallup. Lower down it is clay, of a light grayish color. The gravelly lands bear 
pretty good grass, but on being broken up the mould leaches through. 
It is on these gravelly prairies lying between Olympia and the Skookum Chuck that the mounds 
occur mentioned by Captain Wilkes, and which he ascribes to an artificial origin. Without 
commenting upon the improbability of any savage race covering with these monuments so exten¬ 
sive a tract of country, it may be proper to mention that, after a very careful examination, I have 
failed to discover any regularity in their arrangement, as he imagined, and that the supposed 
pavement appears to consist merely of the larger stones left by water-courses. It is, indeed, 
difficult to account for the occurrence, over so large a tract of country, of mounds so uniform 
in shape and size, and so equally distributed; but the same appearance upon a smaller scale is 
noticeable elsewhere, and the explanation I believe to be the protection afforded by scattered 
bushes, roots, or grass to the particular spots constituting their summits, while the adjacent ground 
has gradually been washed away. In a soil so loose and easily abraded as these prairies, such 
an effect is not unusual; and I have seen the process going on with individual mounds. A 
plant fully capable of producing the result is the wild cucumber vine, whose root, sometimes 
reaching the size of a flour-barrel, would constitute no small nucleus of itself. Much of them is 
prairie, partially wooded with oak. As farming lands, they are inferior. The clay lands are 
esteemed excellent for wheat, but some time must elapse before they are extensively cleared. 
The width of the plateau, from the Sound to the foot of the mountains at Nisqually, is estimated 
at thirty miles; to the northward it becomes much narrower. The peninsula between Hood’s 
canal and Admiralty inlet, and Whidby’s island, partake of this general character. 
The Cascade mountains north of Mount Rainier present, from the Sound, the same difference 
from the southern, in the character of the scenery, as that noticed on the eastern side, arising 
from a difference in geological character. Seen from the lower end of Whidby’s island, the more 
distant range is a bare and ragged sierra, some of the peaks of which rise to the limits of per¬ 
petual snow. Mount Baker, which terminates the view, has a sharp and precipitous outline, 
more resembling that of Mount Hood than the regular forms of Rainier, St. Helens, and Adams. 
The fact of an interior mountain basin, inferred during the examination of the country on the 
Okinakane, seems to be confirmed. Into this there appears to be a wide entrance through the 
gap of the Samish river. Mount Baker, it should be mentioned, has, during this winter, been 
in action, throwing out light clouds of smoke. The last eruption of any note is said to have 
been in 1843, when a slight shock of an earthquake was felt at Fort Langley. 
As regards the western side of the Sound, the best information attainable is as follows: 
That there is a valley lying to the west of Hood’s canal, there seems to be no doubt; and the 
existence within it of prairie country and small lakes is reported, but no persons now living on 
the Sound have visited it. A high range of hills extends along the western edge of the canal as 
far as the head of Quul-seet or Colseed inlet, where it appears to drop off! It closely approaches 
the water, and, as is said, leaves no passage for a road between. Beyond this range is another 
higher one, which is believed to extend as far north as near the head of Port Discovery, and 
thence follow the Straits of Fuca towards Cape Flattery. Still farther west is the main Olympian 
range, which meets it at that point. Between the first and second ranges there would seem to 
be a continuous valley, extending from the Chihalis to Port Townsend, and drained at its south¬ 
ern extremity by a branch of the Skokomish, which runs into Hood’s canal. Between the sec¬ 
ond and third, if the description is correct, there must also be a basin, probably a mountainous 
and broken one, drained at its southern extremity by a branch of the Quinaitl, and at its northern, 
perhaps, by the Elk-whah, which runs into the Straits of Fuca. Vague Indian rumor men¬ 
tions a large lake in this basin. It seems highly probable that a good route could be found by the 
valley first mentioned from Olympia to Port Townsend. As seen from either end the gap is ap¬ 
parently continuous. No obstruction exists to roads from Port Ludlow, at the head of Hood's 
canal, to Port Townsend, and thence along the straits, except the timber; and an old Indian trail 
