The Oregon Railway & Navigation Company's steamers leave Tacoma, for
Seattle, at four o'clock in the morning, and at six-thirty in the
evening, so we were unable to see this portion of the sound until our
return trip. Seattle is another of those rushing, pushing, thriving,
Western towns, whose energy and dash always surprise Eastern people. The
population of the city is 15,000 souls; it has gas-works, water-works,
and a street railway, and does more business, and handles more money
each year than many an Eastern city of 50,000 or more.
The annual lumber shipments alone aggregate over a million dollars, from
ten saw-mills that cost over four millions, and the value of the
salmon-canning product is nearly a million more. The soil of the valleys
adjacent to Seattle is peculiarly adapted to hop-raising, and that
industry is extensively carried on by a large number of farmers. Some of
the largest and finest hop-ranches in the world are located in the
vicinity, and their product is shipped to various American and European
ports, over 100,000 tons having been shipped in 1888, bringing the
growers the handsome sum of $560,327.
During the fifteen years since the beginning of this important
cultivation, the hop crop is said never to have failed, nor has it been
attacked by disease, nor deteriorated by reason of the roots being kept
on the same land without replanting. It is believed that the Dwamish,
the White River, and the Puyallup Valleys could easily produce as many
hops as are now raised in the United States, if labor could be obtained
to pick them. Indians have been mainly relied upon to do the picking,
and they have flocked to the Sound from nearly all parts of the
Territory, even from beyond the mountains. Many have come in canoes from
regions near the outlet of the Sound, from British Columbia, and even
from far off Alaska, to engage temporarily in this occupation; then to
purchase goods and return to their wigwams. They excel the whites in
their skill as pickers, and, as a rule, conduct themselves peaceably.
Elliot Bay, on which Seattle is built, affords a fine harbor and good
anchorage, while Lakes Union and Washington, large bodies of fresh
water--the former eleven and the latter eighteen feet above tide
level--lie just outside the city limits, opposite. There are rich coal
mines at hand, which produce nearly a million dollars worth each year.
Large fertile tracts of agricultural lands, in the near vicinity,
produce grain, vegetables, and fruits of many varieties, and in great
luxuriance. Iron ore of an excellent quality abounds in the hills and
mountains back of the city, and with all these natural resources and
advantages at her command, Seattle is sure to become a great metropolis
in the near future. The climate of the Puget Sound country is temperate;
snow seldom falls before Christmas, never to a greater depth than a few
inches in the valleys and lowlands, and seldom lies more than a few days
at a time. My friend, Mr. W. A. Perry, of Seattle, in a letter dated
December 6, says:
"The weather, since your departure, has been very beautiful. The morning
of your arrival was the coldest day we have had this autumn. Flowers are
now blooming in the gardens, and yesterday a friend who lives at Lake
Washington sent me a box of delicious strawberries, picked from the
vines in his garden in the open air on December 4, while you, poor
fellow, were shivering, wrapped up in numberless coats and furs, in the
arctic regions of Chicago. Why don't you emigrate? There's lots of room
for you on the Sumas, where the flowers are ever blooming, where the
summer never dies, where the good Lord sends the _tyee_ (great) salmon
to your very door; and where, if you want to shoot, you have your choice
from the tiny jacksnipe to the cultus bear or the lordly elk."
There are thousands of acres of natural cranberry marshes on the shores
of the sound, where this fruit grows wild, of good quality, and in great
abundance. It has not been cultivated there yet, but fortunes will be
made in that industry in the near future.
But the crowning glory of Puget Sound, and its greatest source of
wealth, are the vast forests of timber. It is scarcely advisable to
tell the truth concerning the size to which some of the giant firs and
cedars grow in this country, lest I be accused of exaggeration; but, for
proof of what I say, it will only be necessary to inquire of any
resident of the Sound country. There are hundreds of fir and cedar trees
in these woods twenty to twenty-five feet in diameter, above the spur
roots, and over three hundred feet high. A cube was cut from a fir tree,
near Vancouver, and shipped to the Colonial Exhibition in London in
1886, that measured nine feet and eight inches in thickness each way.
The bark of this tree was fourteen inches thick. Another tree was cut,
trimmed to a length of three hundred and two feet, and sent to the same
destination, but this one, I am told, was only six feet through at the
butt.
[Illustration: PUGET SOUND SAW-LOGS.]
From one tree cut near Seattle six saw-logs were taken, five of which
were thirty feet long, each, and the other was twenty-four feet in
length. This tree was only five feet in diameter at the base, and the
first limb grew at a height of two feet above where the last log was cut
off, or over one hundred and seventy feet from the ground. A red cedar
was cut in the same neighborhood that measured eighteen feet in diameter
six feet above the ground; and there is a well-authenticated case of a
man, named Hepburn, having lived in one of these cedars for over a year,
while clearing up a farm. The tree was hollow at the ground, the cavity
measuring twenty-two feet in the clear and running up to a knot hole
about forty feet above. The homesteader laid a floor in the hollow,
seven or eight feet above the ground, and placed a ladder against the
wall by which to go up and down. On the floor he built a stone
fireplace, and from it to the knot hole above a stick and clay chimney.
He lived upstairs and kept his horse and cow downstairs. It may be well
to explain that he was a bachelor, and thus save the reader any anxiety
as to how his wife and children liked the situation.
The "Sumas Sapling" stands near Sumas Lake, northeast of Seattle. It is
a hollow cedar, twenty-three feet in the clear, on the ground, and is
estimated to be fifteen feet in diameter twenty feet above the ground. I
have, in several instances, counted more than a hundred of these mammoth
trees on an acre of land, and am informed that one tract has been out
off that yielded over 1,000,000 feet of lumber per acre. In this case
the trees stood so close together that many of the stumps had to be dug
out, after the trees had been felled, before the logs could be gotten
out. The system of logging in vogue here differs widely from that
practiced in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, and elsewhere. No snow or ice
are required here, and, in fact, if snow falls to any considerable depth
while crews are in the woods a halt is called until it goes off.
Corduroy roads are built into the timber as fast as required, on which
the teams travel, so that it is not necessary that the ground should be
even frozen. Skids, twelve to eighteen inches thick, are laid across,
these roads, about nine feet apart, and sunk into the ground so as to
project about six inches above the surface; the bark is peeled off the
top, they are kept greased, and the logs are "snaked" over them with
four to seven yoke of cattle, as may be required. The wealthier
operators use steam locomotives and cars, building tracks into the
timber as fast and as far as needed. This great timber belt is
co-extensive with Puget Sound, the Straits of Georgia, and the Cascade
Mountains. I believe that at the present rate at which lumber is being
consumed, there is fir, pine, and cedar enough in Washington Territory
and British Columbia to last the world a thousand years.