oo 
The rainy season proper begins late in October or early in No¬ 
vember, and may be said to continue till the ensuing April. It 
frequently happens, after the first rains, that weeks of weather 
similar to Indian summer occur, and it is seldom that one or 
other ofi the months of January, February or March does not 
prove continuously mild and clear. The summers of this terri¬ 
tory are unsurpassed in the world. In the winter months, six 
in number, rains prevail. No disappointment should be felt if 
falling weather occurred in some part of the twenty-four hours, 
yet many bright sunshiny days relieve the long continued rainy 
season of Washington Territory. Of the sixteen winters passed 
in this territory, the writer has known but three so severe as to 
render it essential to house and feed stock. . . . Rose 
bushes generally have proved an evergreen, and during the win¬ 
ter of 1860-61, the hermosa continued in bloom in the garden of 
the writer till the twenty-fifth of January. ... An average 
of from seven to ten days of freezing weather may be looked 
for with a moderate certainty, when ice may be formed sufficiently 
thick to bear a man’s weight. Under most favoring circum¬ 
stances a small pond, entirely protected from the wind, may be 
frozen thick enough to permit a day or two of skating to a 
limited number of persons. Parties fond of sleighing consider 
themselves especially favored if they are afforded a season of 
from three days to a week’s duration.” — Evans. 
Deeming this subject worthy of general circulation, we quote 
some items from the local press, touching the mildness of our 
climate and its effects on vegetation. The Seattle (W. T.) tri¬ 
weekly Intelligencer of Nov. 28, 1870, says: “ Thanksgiving 
passed off very quietly in this city, with the exception of the 
Methodist church, where a respectable audience assembled, and 
the services were of an interesting character. The Reverends 
J. F. Damon and S. H. Mann officiating. . . . Near the 
reverend gentlemen, and in full view of the audience, was very 
tastefully arranged upon the stand, a fine display of flowers, 
fruit and vegetable productions, gathered on that day from the 
gardens of the city, consisting of a variety of roses, violets, 
daisies, honeysuckles, chrysanthemums, bluebells, snapdragon, 
hollyhocks, marigold, princess feather, mullen-pink, new oats, 
white and red clover, ragged robins, ripe and in blossom, and 
young grapes — second crop, to which Mr. Damon alluded by 
way of supplement in his discourse, in a happy manner, referring 
