emerges into sight from behind the trees which had previously hidden it
from the passengers on the Northern Pacific train, and soon it stands
before them in life size, and follows them up to the Sound, with that
peculiar ease which mountains that are supposed to be firmly rooted in
the soil have in keeping up with an express train,—frisking around it,
now on one side, now on another, like a gambolling white elephant. From
this point of view the mountain bears some resemblance to the Jungfrau;
but whereas that beautiful Swiss peak weakens the impression of her
grandeur and power by putting her arms for support on the neighboring
Mönch and Ebenefluh, almost equal to her in height, Tacoma stands in
solitary grandeur, appearing more sublimely isolated even than Hood
or Shasta; for the range on which it rises seems merely a hill. And
whereas the tourist who sees the Jungfrau at Mürren, or the Matterhorn
at Zermatt, or Mont Blanc at Chamounix, is already five or six thousand
feet high, and therefore gazes at a mountain whose summit is only
eight or nine thousand feet above him, Tacoma, on the other hand, is
seen from the very level of the sea, and therefore rears the whole of
its three miles of sloping snow-fields and glaciers before the awed
spectator. Its exact height is 14,444 feet, or just four feet higher
than Shasta. But thanks to its magnifying snow-mantle, which never
disappears, and the fact that it is seen from ocean level, it seems
much higher and grander than California’s finest peak. Tacoma, indeed,
is the king of all our mountains, from the tourist’s and artist’s
point of view; for although Fairweather and St. Elias in Alaska are
higher still, they are beyond the range of excursion steamers, and are,
moreover, generally buried behind clouds; while Mt. Whitney in Central
California is almost equally inaccessible in the Sierra wilderness,
and in beauty of outlines does not bear comparison with Tacoma for a
moment, lacking as it does its fine conical shape and the advantage of
isolation.
Such being the case, it is surely the height of absurdity to continue
naming the grandest mountain in the United States after an obscure
English lord. When Vancouver first discovered all these North Pacific
mountains, in 1792, he had a perfect right to name them after anybody
he pleased; but Washington now happens to belong to the United
States, and every American with a spark of patriotic feeling in
his constitution must feel that Anglo-mania could not show a more
humiliating form than in the disposition still shown by many persons on
the Pacific Coast, to use Lord Rainier’s name in designating the king
of all our mountains. The same objection might be urged against Hood,
which bears the name of Lord Hood; but in this case it happens that the
name is appropriate, for this peak is hood-shaped, and the uninformed
always fancy that to this fact it owes its name; so it may be allowed
to stand. Louwala, too, would be a more musical and acceptable name
than St. Helens, and there is no reason on earth why a mountain in
Washington should bear the name of a British ambassador in Madrid. But
in this case also the matter may be overlooked, since the name St.
Helens, like the shape of the mountain itself, has a vague feminine
suggestiveness. But for Rainier there is no excuse whatever, as we have
an infinitely more euphonious name for it in Tacoma, which, moreover,
designates the mountain’s character exactly; for in the Indian dialect
it means “the mountain.” The fact that the Northern Pacific Railroad,
which really “created” the State of Washington, by first developing its
resources, always has Mt. Tacoma on its maps, has already done much to
popularize this musical name, and to oust the memory of the English
lord; and if all tourists of taste will unite in tabooing Rainier,
they will soon succeed in effacing that name from all the maps. Tacoma
cannot fail to triumph in the long run, just as the attempt made some
time ago to name Lake Tahoe after a governor of California failed, the
original Indian name being instinctively and unanimously preferred by
tourists to such an ugly word as Bigler. Even the Seattle people will
find that they will gain more in the estimation of other Americans if
they will allow a sentiment of national patriotism to override the
local pride and jealousy of a neighboring town which now make them act
in a very silly manner when you use the expression “Mount Tacoma.”
To those Pacific Coast people who stubbornly cling to such words as
Rainier and Bigler, I commend chapter twenty-three of Washington
Irving’s “Astoria,” where he laments “the stupid, commonplace, and
often ribald names entailed upon the rivers and other features of the
Great West by traders and settlers.... Indeed, it is to be wished that
the whole of our country could be rescued as much as possible from the
wretched nomenclature inflicted upon it by ignorant and vulgar minds;
and this might be done, in a great degree, by restoring the Indian
names,” which are “in general more sonorous and musical.”
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!