CHAPTER XIII.

HOMEWARD BOUND.

The voyage southward proceeded without special incident. "Glaciers" were gradually left behind, but "gulfs" and bays, channels and narrow passages were still a part of the programme. The day following the reading of the "Decade" was Sunday. Mr. Selborne at the request of many of the passengers, preached in the cabin, the Percivals organizing a choir which led the singing with their clear young voices.

On Monday the _Queen_ reached Nanaimo, a city and coaling-station for ships, on the east shore of Vancouver's Island. Tom and Fred hired a team and drove half a dozen miles inland to a trout-brook of which they had heard. Tom could not walk about much, but he enjoyed the ride immensely, and when they reached the brook he limped along the bank to a shady spot, from which he shouted various comments, disparaging and otherwise, on his companion's methods of angling and rather limited success. They returned tired but happy, with a dozen silvery little fish as trophies. In the late afternoon Randolph and Pet headed a party to explore the city, which they found a hot and dusty one, but, in its upper portions, abounding in wonderfully bright flowers.

At one garden they stopped and bought a great ball of nasturtiums. It was nearly twilight, and as the travelers leaned against the fence, idly watching the owner of the garden as he gathered the nosegay, they saw whole flocks of evening primroses opening their wings like yellow butterflies, one by one.

This gardener, it seemed, was a blacksmith, employed by day in a coal mine which ran out half a mile under the sea. His business, he said, was to keep the mules shod.

The shaft of this great mine came up in the outskirts of the town, and the Percivals, earlier in the day, had seen the huge buckets come rushing up from the bowels of the earth, six hundred and forty feet below, laden with coal and streaming with water.

The evening was memorable for a row in the harbor to an Indian burying-ground, where strange and hideously carved figures kept watch over the neglected graves.

Until a late hour, after their return from this boating excursion, the party remained on deck, talking over the events of the day.

"Do you know," asked Tom, "how this place started?"

"Well?" said Mr. Percival, who was always pleased to have his boy thorough in looking up the history of a place.

"An Englishman named Richard Dunsmuir, was riding horseback along a trail back on the mountain. The horse stumbled, and when Dunsmuir came to look at the log or stone, it was coal. He started a big mine, with two partners who put in about five thousand dollars apiece. A few years later one of them sold out to Dunsmuir for two hundred and fifty thousand, and afterward the second one sold for seven hundred and fifty thousand."

"Whew!" whistled Randolph. "I say, Tom, let's give up Latin and go into the coal-mining business."

"All right," says Tom cheerfully. "You buy a horse and gallop through the woods till you both tumble down. Then I'll pick you up, point out the coal--if it doesn't turn out to be a stump--and we'll go halves. Or I'll sell out now for ten dollars and fifteen cents!"

Just as the steamer cast off her fasts and started her paddles, Selborne announced that the bright sky had, as usual, cajoled them into keeping late hours, for it was now nearly eleven, and in four hours it would be daylight again. Whereupon the deck party broke up.

Next morning they found themselves at Victoria, where they stopped long enough to complete their purchases of miniature totem poles and other Indian curiosities, which were displayed for sale upon the wharf.

All through that bright day the _Queen_ ploughed her way southward through a blue, sunlit sea. It was Puget Sound, said Tom, the cartographer of the occasion. They touched at Port Townsend and at Seattle. At the latter port the ship left half her passengers, as the Excursion was too large to be quartered at one hotel. The rest, including the individuals in whom we are specially interested, kept on to Tacoma. Here they said good-by to the _Queen_--now as homelike as the "Kamloops"--and took up their abode in a large hotel which they found to be delightfully situated on high ground, with a broad, cool veranda overlooking the Sound.

Immediately after supper Tom rushed out to have his kodak refilled. He had already taken nearly a hundred pictures, and reveled in anticipation of showing them, especially the instantaneous and surreptitious views of his unconscious relatives and friends, together with many captive bears, to an admiring circle during the coming winter.

The following day was spent in riding about the city, the planked streets and sidewalks of which struck them as very odd, and in visiting the Indian reservation at Puyallup, a few miles distant. The country was very dry, and forest fires were smouldering all along the road.

At Seattle, the next stopping-place, the historian ("I'm a regular 'Pooh Bah' on this trip," exclaimed Tom) was called on for statistics concerning the city.

"Be accurate, my son," added Fred; "but above all, be brief."

"Population rising forty thousand," rattled off Tom, who had his lesson well this time; "twice destroyed by fire, the last time in 1889. Now nearly rebuilt again. Situated between a big body of fresh water called Lake Washington, and Puget Sound. Always fighting, good-naturedly enough, with its rival Tacoma."

Oh! the dust, the dust. It lay in the streets four inches deep. It filled the air at every step, and powdered the pretty traveling dresses of the girls.

But it was a wonderful city, with its push and rush and fever of building and money-getting. To-day a vacant lot, to-morrow an eight-story bank building; to-day a peaceful bit of upland pasture, to-morrow a huge hotel, crowded with guests from all parts of the world.

"Nobody can stop to walk, or even ride in carriages," observed Bess. "It fairly takes away my breath here. You get into a cable car and whirl off at ten miles an hour, up hill and down dale. Do they ever sleep, do you suppose?"

The Percivals had a really enjoyable excursion to Lake Washington, where they sailed and steamed to their hearts' content. A cable car took them to and from the lake, and beside the road they could see lots of land offered for sale at high foot-rates, with tall forest-trees still standing in them; others, partly built upon, and occupied by fine dwelling-houses, with the back yard full of charred stumps.

The busiest streets of the city, like those of Tacoma, were "paved" with four-inch planks. Electric cars, as well as those run by cable, dashed to and fro with startling speed. The air was so filled with smoke from forest fires that ships in the harbor could hardly be distinguished from the shore. A day's ride through a wonderfully fertile country brought them to Portland, Oregon, where Randolph's first move was to hunt up Bert Martin.

Bert and Susie were overjoyed to see their old friends. They lived in a pretty cottage not far from the railroad station, and Randolph had to bring Kittie, Pet, Tom, Fred and Bess to take tea with them.

When supper was finished, and the young people had talked over the dear old Latin School days, and the gay summer at the Isles of Shoals, Bert got a step-ladder and gathered handfuls of red roses from the trellis over the front door, where they grew in true Oregonian abundance.

Tom and Susie got on marvelously well together, and the former showed a singular eagerness to have Bert correspond with him, after he should have arrived home in the East.

From Portland the managers had provided their travelers with a little two-day side trip to the Dalles.

They rode in the cars all one afternoon along the southern shore of the Columbia, stopping to scramble up a steep hillside to the foot of the beautiful Multnomah Falls, and arriving at Dalles just after dark. Randolph and Fred were the only ones who cared to explore the town, which they conscientiously did, traveling miles, they averred, over the plank sidewalks, and hopelessly losing their way on several occasions; but turning up in good season at last at the depot.

The train was side-tracked here, and tooting and puffing engines, shifting freight cars, kept sleep from the eyes of most of the party. At daybreak they rose and made their way sleepily down to the river, where a steamer was waiting for them. Back they went, down the river to Portland. A thick fog hid the "mountainous and precipitous cliffs" and "bold headlands" which the guide-book promised them.

Wearily they boarded the cars standing ready at the Portland depot, and took possession of their comfortable compartments and drawing-rooms for their Eastward journey.

The next morning found them at Tacoma, and then on the Northern Pacific, striking across the new State of Washington. The Cascade Mountains--a long and insurmountable barrier between East and West--had to be crossed, and up went the train, curving, groaning and winding, as the Canadian Pacific had through the Rockies.

"Longest tunnel in America except the Hoosac!" screamed Tom above the din of the cars, as they plunged into the "Stampede." "Nearly two miles from end to end, and half a mile above the level of the sea."

And now came the most wearisome part of the homeward journey. The sun rose in a cloudless sky, and disclosed only hot, treeless, rolling prairie as far as the eye could reach. In the cars the mercury stood at ninety-six degrees, and linen dusters were once more brought to light.

In the evening they reached Spokane Falls, and set forward their watches one hour. It gave the travelers a queer sensation to arrive at a station at nine o'clock, stop half an hour, and start on at half-past ten.

The following day they recrossed the Rocky Mountains and descended the eastern slope, through a pleasant farming country, to the city of Helena. Here there was a stop of several hours, and the boys had a good swim in the great tank which was fed by hot springs.

When they were on board the train and in motion once more, Tom was called on for the "probabilities."

"To-morrow morning," he announced, "we shall be in Cinnabar, seven miles from the Mammoth Hot Springs. There we shall divide up into parties, and 'do' the Yellowstone Park in four-horse mountain-wagons, taking about five days for the job. It's going to be one of the biggest things on the whole trip, too."

But we must leave Yellowstone Park, surnamed "The Wonderland of America," for another chapter.