Part 17

In insisting so strongly that the monarch of American mountains should have an American name, and not be called after an obscure English lord, I intend no offence to English sentiment, but merely wish to emphasize a patriotic right. No Englishman would fail to express his disgust and indignation if an attempt were made to name the grandest scenic feature in one of the British colonies after an American president or statesman. Finally, it must be remembered that along the line of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in British Columbia there are scores of superb peaks on which the English may without protest bestow the names of earls, lords, sirs, esquires, and ambassadors, if they choose. In my opinion, however, there is something equally ludicrous and presumptuous in naming a mountain after a puny mortal, however great he may seem to his generation. The mountainous map of the Pacific Coast is marred by too many of these blunders. To realize their full significance, read Tourgenieff’s wonderful dialogue between the Jungfrau and the Finsteraarhorn, in his “Prose Poems.” The futility of man’s pretensions to immortality has never been more vividly portrayed than in this dialogue, resumed at intervals of hundreds of thousands of years, and commenting on the intervening changes, till finally the whole earth is covered with a sea of ice, amid which the Jungfrau and Finsteraarhorn still rear their now silent heads unchanged.

Thanks to its great height and complete isolation, Mt. Tacoma is visible as far as Portland to the south, one hundred and twenty miles in an air-line, and one hundred and fifty miles to the east. One of the most perfect views of it is obtained from the piazza of the large Tacoma Hotel. Though it is over forty miles away, it seems so near, when the air is clear, that tourists are apt to fancy they could stroll to its base after dinner. To see it at its best, however, Mt. Tacoma should be viewed from the deck of a Sound steamer, or, better still, from the car windows on the Cascade Division of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Tourists who do not use the Northern Pacific Railroad, either going or returning, should by no means fail to make an excursion on this Cascade Branch, in order to get a view of Mt. Tacoma from within fifteen miles of its base. To do this it is not necessary to go as far as Pasco Junction, in Eastern Washington, where the cactus blooms in the sandy plains in June, as in Arizona and Southern California; but one can get off at Clealum or thereabouts, and return to Tacoma next day. Much of the land through which the Cascade Branch passes is disfigured by dead black trees and stumps. Other portions are in full cultivation, and the crop most favored appears to be hops, especially in the Puyallup Valley, where these vines attain a most luxuriant and prolific growth. Indians are still employed in considerable numbers during the hop-picking season, when they come in canoes from all parts of the coast. Oddly enough, this valley is the most pronounced “temperance” region in the Northwest, and one of the largest hop-growers will not, under any circumstances, allow a saloon to be opened within his extensive domain; though he seems to see nothing sinful or inconsistent in accumulating wealth by selling his hops to wicked brewers.

This hop valley lies between Tacoma and the Cascade mountains, and—aside from the picturesque hop-vines and a mountain stream with waters so clear that the passengers can see the fish in it from the car windows, for half an hour, as the train speeds along—it is in these mountains that the scenic attractions centre. Unfortunately, one of the most fascinating and exciting features of this route—the Switchback—has ceased to exist. This was a part of the road where the train ascended the mountain range by a series of zigzag movements, like a sailing-vessel tacking at sea. There was one monstrous one-hundred-and-ten-ton engine in front of the train, and another one behind, and when the train had reached a certain point, it was switched off and started ahead in the opposite direction. This was done repeatedly, until a place was reached where as many as six parallel tracks could be seen, each a few hundred yards higher than its predecessor. Several times the train ran over trestle-works of a most giddy height, and looking so frail as to make timid passengers wish they were back in Tacoma. But this “elevated” railway was merely a temporary arrangement, constructed at a cost of six hundred thousand dollars, in order that the Northern Pacific Railroad might not be dependent on the tender mercies of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company for a Pacific Coast terminus, pending the completion of the Stampede Tunnel, which has now taken the place of the Switchback.

The chief attraction of the Cascade route is of course Mt. Tacoma, which can be seen from many points of view, as the train sweeps around it in a wide curve, somewhat similar to the way in which Mt. Shasta is circumvented. When Tacoma was ascended for the first time, about thirty years ago, by Lieutenants Kautz and Slaughter, the party required nine days from Steilacoom on Puget Sound and back. Since the completion of the railway, however, a trail has been made from the nearest point on the road, from which tourists can ascend the mountain on horseback to a height of about two miles, where the Puyallup and Carbon glaciers may be seen to advantage. The remaining mile offers difficulties and dangers sufficient to daunt any but the bravest and most expert Alpine climbers. Perhaps the summit of Tacoma will always remain as inaccessible to ordinary tourists as the Matterhorn; but so few parties have as yet made the ascent that a route may yet be found, by which the summit will be made as easy of access as that of Mt. Hood. But it must be borne in mind that even from the lower point now accessible to all, Tacoma is nearly as high as Hood; and those who are averse to endangering their life for the sake of seeing the craters at the summit, two hundred or three hundred yards in diameter, now filled with snow, but still having enough heat and sulphur vapor in their environs to save a party caught in a storm from freezing (see Hazard Stevens’s article in _Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1876), will thus find infinite enjoyment in viewing the extensive scene, and in exploring the glaciers and the grand cañons leading from them, with the rivers of ice-water and their innumerable rapids, cascades, and falls. There are fourteen living glaciers on the sides of Tacoma. At the latitude of this mountain the vast snow-fields cannot disappear airwards by evaporation, and therefore they follow the law of gravitation downwards as glaciers, till the melting-line is reached, which becomes the birthplace of mighty rivers. Of these solidified snow-fields, or ice-rivers, some are from two to four miles wide, and the Nesqually, Wenass, and White River glaciers are respectively four, five, and ten miles long. Of the rivers which find their sources in Tacoma’s glaciers, five are from seventy to a hundred miles long, and three—the White, Puyallup, and Cowlitz—are navigable.

Surely there is reason to believe that when tourists once begin to realize the grandeur and the still largely unexplored attractions of the mountain region of our Northwest, Switzerland will be neglected for a time, and the cities of Tacoma and Portland will become the Interlaken and the Zermatt of America.

XIV.

THE AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN.

A STRANGE FACT—HISTORY OF TACOMA—ADVANTAGES OF ITS SITUATION—NAVIGATION—FORESTS AND SAW-MILLS—SPLENDORS AND DISADVANTAGES OF FOREST FIRES—COAL-FIELDS OF WASHINGTON—SCENIC FEATURES OF PUGET SOUND—OLYMPIA—SEATTLE SINCE THE FIRE—THE OLYMPIC MOUNTAINS—PORT TOWNSEND.

Students of American history, a few generations hence, will find it difficult to believe that the magnificent Puget Sound region in Washington, which offers such unequalled advantages for navigation, commerce, lumbering, agriculture, and mining, should have remained almost entirely undeveloped till the last quarter of the nineteenth century, almost a hundred years after the exploration of this fine and tortuous inland sea by Vancouver. Indeed, it seems probable that the end of this century might have been reached without a general appreciation of the manifold attractions of Western and Eastern Washington had it not been for the building of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which has been practically the creator of this State. In the few years since its completion it has been demonstrated that if the United States authorities had carried out the intention held at one time of ceding this territory to England, as an expression of good will, they would have given away a State as rich in natural resources as New York or Pennsylvania, either of which it exceeds in dimensions by one-half.

No spot in Washington has been so literally created by the Northern Pacific Railroad as “the City of Destiny,” Tacoma; for when the decision was announced in 1873 of making this spot the terminus of the new transcontinental railroad, the old village of Tacoma had only three hundred inhabitants, and on the site of New Tacoma there was nothing but a dilapidated log cabin. In 1886 the post-office business at Tacoma amounted to $9,040, and in 1889 to $32,446; and it is assumed that these dollars in each case represent an equal number of inhabitants.

The selection of Tacoma seems to have been determined by considerations similar to those which made Portland the “City of Destiny” in Oregon. As Portland was built at the highest point on the Willamette River where ocean vessels can go with ease and safety, so Tacoma has been located at the most convenient southern branch of Puget Sound which ocean vessels can reach at all times, independent of the tide. The State capital lies further south still, it is true, but its arm of the Sound is so much affected by the tide that a wharf had to be built projecting almost a mile into the bay. The Tacoma harbor, on the other hand, has forty to seventy-five fathoms of water, and shippers are inclined to growl that it is too deep, which makes anchoring at some places inconvenient. It is on this fine harbor, as much as on the fact of its being the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad, that Tacoma bases its hope of taking a large part of the exceedingly profitable Oriental trade from the British, and also from the San Franciscans. Tacoma is about three hundred miles nearer to Canton than San Francisco, which makes a day’s difference in its favor each way. Among the chief articles imported by the Asiatics in return for their teas and silks, are flour, canned goods, and lumber, all of which, and especially the last, Tacoma is eminently qualified to provide. Seventeen years ago its site was a dense forest, and dense forests still cover the greater part of the Puget Sound region and Western Washington, and will for centuries to come, even at the present rate of wholesale destruction. It has been estimated that the forest district of the State includes 175,000,000,000 feet of lumber.

What threatens to exterminate the superb forests of Washington and Oregon is not so much the lumberman’s axe as the forest fires, which, instead of diminishing year by year, seem to increase in frequency and extent. They are caused by camp-fires left burning by careless hunters or Indians, or by sparks from railway engines. But even when there are no extensive fires originating in this way, the summer air in Washington and Oregon is odorous, pungent to the eyes, and opaque from the innumerable clearings, or places where farmers burn down their dense timber to secure land for the plough. A volcano in full activity could hardly be a more brilliant and thrilling sight than the dazzling nocturnal splendor of these fires—the united brilliancy of scores or hundreds of blazing fir-trees, some lying prostrate in confused groups, others, several hundred feet high, standing in solemn array, like condemned criminals, until the flames rush up to their tops and bring them down too, or else leave them standing as blackened, ghastly trunks. These transitory fireworks, however, do not compensate settlers in the long run for the loss of so much valuable timber, or tourists for missing sight of the snow-mountains. I have often seen the sun here day after day looking like a full red moon, and the air is for weeks so densely filled with smoke that the eyes become inflamed. Indeed, unless there has been a shower, tourists have little chance of seeing Mts. Hood or Tacoma in July or August. Owing to Tacoma’s destiny of becoming the American Interlaken, this is a matter of some importance; but little can be done to remedy the evil until the national government can be induced to spend some of the surplus in the treasury on measures for the protection of our Northern forests,—the envy of the whole civilized world.

The lumber business is still the most important industry in Tacoma, and will probably long remain so. In 1873 there was one saw-mill on the premises, and now there are seventeen, employing nearly fifteen hundred men, and with a combined capacity for turning out more than a million and a quarter feet a day. It is interesting to see these mills at work. There is one at which the steamers on the way to Olympia stop to take in water, so that passengers have time to watch the chain which, like a moving cable, carries down the débris of the timber in a flume-like trough, high in the air, and throws it down on a pile which is kept burning constantly. One cannot suppress the thought what a boon the fuel thus wasted would be to the poor in our Eastern cities. Vessels are always seen loading to carry the available part of the timber to all parts of the world.

But although lumber is the staple of Tacoma’s trade, the city’s prosperous growth would hardly be arrested by a decline in this business; for its importance as a centre for the exportation of wheat and coal will grow much more rapidly than the forests diminish. As the timber is cleared away, the farmers can take possession of the soil, which yields heavy crops of the best wheat. Puget Sound extends from north to south about one hundred and twenty miles, and has a shore-line of almost sixteen hundred miles, much of which is tide land; and on these tide lands grain yields the fabulous amount of over a hundred bushels to the acre. Eastern Washington, also, which differs so widely in soil and climate from the western half of the State, has been found excellently adapted for grain and fruit raising, with the help of irrigation, preparations for the use of which are now being made on a vast scale. All these products will of course seek a market via the Puget Sound cities.

I saw Tacoma in 1887, and again in 1889 and 1890, and the growth of the city in this short time was such that in both cases I hardly recognized the place. It seemed as if some fairy had visited the town and changed every black stump into a four-story brick building by touching it with her wand. The cause of this sudden “spurt” was the completion of the Cascade Division of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and the Stampede Tunnel, which opened up the vast coal-fields along this road, and made the Pacific Coast cities independent of Pennsylvania coal. The export of coal to California ports is already second in importance to Tacoma’s lumber trade, and the business is as yet in its infancy. Bituminous or soft coal is at present chiefly mined, but it is said that “near the foot of Mt. Tacoma is the best anthracite mine in the world, the product running ninety-eight per cent of fixed carbon,” the smallest vein being four feet through. “This will be opened up very shortly, as soon as a railway can be built through to tap it.” Such a railway would also prove a great boon to tourists. The words just quoted are from the _Oregonian_, which by the way is still read by almost as many Washingtonians as Oregonians,—a reminiscence of the time when Portland was the metropolis of both the States which formed old Oregon.

As this chapter is intended to be devoted to the scenic rather than the commercial aspects of Puget Sound, I cannot give any more space to the latter. It is worthy of note that the Tacomans, however enthusiastic they may be in regard to their business prospects, never fail to appreciate also the æsthetic and climatic advantages of their location. Excessive summer heat is as unknown as excessive winter cold, the thermometer having been known to keep within the limits of 30° and 90° for six successive years; and though it rains a good deal in winter, the rain is not depressing through a sultry atmospheric condition. As for the site of Tacoma, it has the double advantage of being not only picturesque in itself, as seen from the bay, but of affording at the same time a superb bay and mountain view from the residences. The city is built on sloping ground and terraces rising one behind the other; and as in San Francisco, the business streets are on level ground, and the residence streets run up hill; but we read that “the engineer declared when he entered upon his work that the streets should have such easy grades that a horse with buggy and driver might go from one point to another in a lively trot, and he carried his point.” The greater part of the city having been at first in the hands of the Northern Pacific Railroad, the directors were able to lay out the town on principles of good taste, which was done by putting the matter in the hands of an expert landscape gardener. The streets in consequence are all from eighty to one hundred feet wide, and nearly seventeen hundred acres of land have been put aside for parks. The future hundreds of thousands of Tacoma will ever be grateful for these sanitary and far-seeing provisions. For, however salubrious the climate may be, a large city always needs breathing-spaces and wide streets. Until recently Tacoma was behind Seattle in the matter of street-car facilities, but within a year cable-cars have been built, and almost twenty miles of electric street railroads, which have solved the problem of going up hill at a grade of fourteen feet to one hundred, and enable the merchants, in rainy weather, to reach their elevated residences in comfort. Concerning these residences I may add that almost all of them command a superb view of that compound octopus-like arm of the Pacific known as Puget Sound, and of the incomparable Mt. Tacoma.

To get a perfect impression of Mt. Tacoma, however, we must board the steamer going either to Olympia or to Seattle and Victoria. Both these trips will be taken by every tourist who is wise. In certain hazy conditions of the atmosphere Mt. Tacoma, as viewed from the bay, presents a most unique and mysterious appearance. The haze completely conceals the broad base and the wooded part of the mountain, leaving only the vast cone in sight, like a floating island of snow on an illimitable ocean of mist. As the steamer leaves the harbor for Olympia, we have this mountain on one side, and on the other side rows of fine villas on the crest of the steep hill-side, with their feet, as it were, dangling over the precipice, and looking as if the slightest earthquake shock would make them tumble into the harbor. But there are no earthquakes in Washington and Oregon, though their volcanoes are not quite cold yet; nor are there any other violent disturbances, such as cyclones and tornadoes. Hence the waters of Puget Sound are always safe and usually unruffled, so that sea-sickness need not be dreaded. That part of the Sound which lies between Tacoma and Olympia is not so straight and wide as the stretch between Tacoma and Seattle, but winds about like a river and embraces between its curves many large and small islands, bays, promontories, and inlets where rivers and creeks add their sweet water to the briny substance of the Sound. The comparison to an octopus, which I ventured to use a moment ago, bold and fantastic as it may seem, describes the shape of this southwestern part of the Sound remarkably well, as it here sends out its feelers in every direction, one of them almost reaching an arm of Hood’s Canal. What a paradise for yachting and picnic parties this Sound will be when Tacoma and Seattle have reached the size of San Francisco, and when Washington will hold two or three million inhabitants—which it can without the least crowding, or settling on poor lands!

In some places, where earthslides have occurred, the banks of the Sound are steep and palisade-like, but usually the forest trees come right up to the edge of the water. In this part of the Sound the scenery preserves its primeval aspect, human habitation being rare; but occasionally an Indian hut may be seen, with a family group consisting of a “warrior” taking his ease on his back, while his wife chops the wood wherewith to cook his dinner, and his mother mends his clothes. These dusky squaws have secured the right of doing masculine work which so many of their white sisters are now clamoring for; and they have husbands, too, which the latter usually have not: and yet they are not happy.

Only one town of any significance—Steilacoom—is seen on this route. Not far from it is one of the most beautiful scenic points on the Sound—a place where it widens out amid the islands in such a way that it seems the meeting-place of five large rivers, resembling a central square in a city into which as many streets lead. A few hours more, and we come to the capital of the State. Like the capital of Oregon, Olympia has not kept pace in growth with some other cities in the State, its population being about the same as that of Salem—five or six thousand; and if it is ever to become a commercial centre, it will have to rely on railways rather than on navigation, because its harbor is too much affected by the tide. The mile-long pier which stands on the sand in low tide has been the subject of many cruel jokes in rival towns. But Olympia is considered a quiet and pleasant place to reside in; and while Tacoma arrogates the title of “City of Destiny,” and Seattle that of “Queen City of the Sound,” Olympia likes to be called the “City of Homes.” The houses are surrounded by gardens in which flowers bloom every month in the year and roses run riot, and from elevated points near by the scenic outlook embraces half-a-dozen snow-peaks, including those of the Olympic range.

It is on the route from Tacoma to Seattle and Victoria, however, that the Olympic range shows to best advantage. The Sound here is, as I have said, less winding and less puzzling to all but the pilot, but there are the same endless changes and surprises in the watery vista. At one place the channel is no wider than a river, so that one can count the pebbles on the shore; at another it widens out into a spacious lake dotted with islands; and in the upper part it expands so much that land for awhile is out of sight altogether, and we seem to be on the ocean. Here the water is not littered with the débris of saw-mills, as in many places below, but seals may still be encountered basking on logs in the sunshine. It must be admitted that the immediate bank-scenery of Puget Sound nowhere equals in grandeur and interest that of the Middle Columbia River; but the background of snow-mountains is even grander: the scenic frame is here more interesting than the picture itself. Tacoma, St. Helens, and Adams are to be seen, and just as we enter the bay of Seattle we catch our first glimpse of Mt. Baker,—another one of the North Pacific extinct volcanic snow-cones, eleven thousand feet in height. From the hill above Seattle a much more complete view of this peak, which stands like a sentinel just this side of the British boundary, is afforded; and here, too, the Olympic range shows to best advantage.