Atlantis Arisen/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE QUEEN CITY AND ITS DEPENDENCIES.
There is little difference in the aspect of the country as we proceed north through the basin described in the foregoing chapter. Sumner, named after the statesman Charles Sumner, is a small and pretty town in the midst of hop-fields. Slaughter, a little further on, is in a rich agricultural region, and appears to be prosperous. It is named after Lieutenant W. A. Slaughter, who was killed in this vicinity by Indians during the war of 1855. Kent is a place of considerable importance, about one hour's travel from Tacoma. There are fine woods all along, and hills in sight on one side or the other, showing that the valleys of the streams are narrow as they are rich. A little distance beyond Kent is Orillia, also in a good farming country.
Black River, full in spring-time, winds among meadows valuable for large hay-crops. Hyde Park is a suburb of Seattle, and seems given up to brickmaking at present, brick being in demand since the great fire which swept Seattle on the 6th of June, 1889. From Hyde Park to the city is a continuous suburban town. Indeed, the continuous settlements from the Puyallup to Elliot Bay struck me with surprise, knowing how recently towns began to appear upon the maps of this thickly-wooded region.
A dozen years ago I was in Seattle, and thought it the ugliest of places,—thought, in fact, that it would be impossible to redeem it from ugliness. The hills, rising sharply from the waterfront, which was narrow and disfigured with rude structures, were roughly terraced with streets running parallel to the bay, and which were cut at right angles by other streets, steep and by no means smooth, seemed to present hopeless obstacles to the development of beauty. Long before the summit of the ridge was reached the uncleared forest began, hemming in the town between water and woods. Along the business front was a mass of sawdust, the accumulation of many years, in which the pedestrians feet sank, and which the tides kept water-soaked, the only attractive feature of the place being some wonderfully large, broad-leaved maple-trees, growing down at the south end of the water-front with their roots in the bay, and which, alas! are no longer to be seen. In truth, there was little in the Seattle of 1890 to remind one of what had been.
What I saw, in place of the former town, was a city of fine proportions spread over a smooth slope, and extending not only to the summit of the hills, but out of sight beyond, with lines of cable and electric cars traversing the streets in every direction, a solid front of docks and wharves where shipping lay, or came and went with the hours, and which had altogether the most metropolitan look of any city in the Northwest.
Seattle is not, like Tacoma, a new town. It was founded in 1852, by D. S. Maynard, C. 1). Boren, A. A. Denny, and W. N. Bell, who took claims side by side on the shore of the bay. Henry L. Yesler was admitted to the company the same year, and built the mill whose sawdust helped to fill in the city's front, as aforesaid. It was to Yesler's saw-mill more than anything that the town was indebted for its growth, this being the first mill to establish a lumber trade with San Francisco. Its mess-house was a place of general rendezvous for travellers up and down the Sound for more than one decade. Around its rude but hospitable board, and about its ample hearth piled high with blazing fir-slabs, were recounted the many strange adventures which befell the numerous guests, including volunteer Indian fighters, naval officers, judges of the courts, and shipmasters.
The founders of Seattle belonged to that class of men born to follow the beckoning of the star of empire in its westward orbit. Talk about Columbus discovering a new world! What was his voyage to the months of dreary marching across the continent, the setting out from Portland, then a cluster of rude cabins, in a sailing-vessel for the Sound, and the disembarkation upon an uninhabited shore, in the midst of a November storm, of women, children, and household goods! When they were landed, after many hours of labor, "the women sat down and cried," says one of their chroniclers. Alas, how often women's tears bedew the earth which brings forth plentifully of its riches
for husbands and sons, but not for them, their strength being spent!
The place where the pioneers of Seattle first landed was on the west side of the peninsula which encloses Elliot Bay, and
this point they called by the Indian word Alki, which signifies " by and by." .Here was laid out a town, called New York: but a chief of the Duamish tribe of Indians informing them during the winter of a pass in the mountains to the east, and other matters of interest, they decided to remove to the mainland, and, in acknowledgment of the services of this chief, named the future city after him—Seattle. Among the West Washington tribes was a superstition that if the name of a dead
person were spoken the spirit would be disturbed. This superstition afforded Seattle a pretext for demanding pay while yet alive for the discomfort the frequent sound of his name would cause him after death, and thereafter he became a pensioner on the bounty of the Seattleites.
The New York of Alki Point, like all the many namesakes of the great metropolis, came to nothing, and was forgotten until very recently speculators bought up the land and laid out West Seattle, since which period many improvements have been made, with a railroad connecting the peninsula with the city on the mainland. The growth of Seattle was slow so long as there were no railroads in the country, and the commerce of the Sound was confined chiefly to an export trade with California in lumber and coal, with some cargoes of lumber to foreign ports. In 1870 the whole exports of Puget Sound in foreign and American vessels amounted to four hundred and forty thousand nine hundred and fifteen dollars, the largest part of which was in lumber. The imports from foreign countries were light, amounting to only thirty-three thousand one hundred and five dollars. Ship-building added something to the business of the Sound, but the spell of loneliness which brooded over these silent shores had not then been broken, except by
" The first low wash of waves, where soon Should roll a human sea."
Then came the promise of a transcontinental railroad, and then the road itself. Presto, change! Up went business houses and dwellings, with improvements of every kind. In 1880 the population of this twenty-eight-year-old town was three thousand five hundred; in 1888, one year after the railroad had crossed the Cascades, it was twenty thousand; in 1889, when over seven million dollars' worth of property was destroyed by fire, it was twenty-seven thousand; and in 1890 it is, according to the census, forty-one thousand four hundred and sixty-four. No wonder that to repair the damages by fire, and to provide shelter for so rapid an influx of people, the streets are obstructed with lumber, brick, stone, and iron, while many tent-cloth houses are yet to be seen. Order is, however, in the main restored, and, as I have said, the city has a metropolitan aspect, particularly when
viewed from the bay, which belongs to no other town on the Sound.
Seattle, like all towns in their formative periods, was, and still is, a combination of the new and beautiful with the decaying and grotesque, although the great conflagration was of service in wiping out much of the latter, as well as in introducing even more largely the former. As it stands to-day it contains hundreds of buildings which would be a credit to any city in the United States for grand proportions and grace of outline. The Hotel Rainier and Hotel Denny arc built upon the heights, with magnificent views on every side, themselves constituting a part of that pleasing tout ensemble presented from the approach by water.
Like Tacoma, Seattle has extended its suburbs in all directions. It is a saying that the two cities meet half-way, in spite of their confessed rivalry. North, the street railways carry you to Queen Anne Town, the fashionable quarter; Gilman's Addition, the terminal centre of three railroads; Ballard, another addition just being put on the market, on Salmon Bay; Bay View Addition, on Salmon Bay; Kilbourne's Division, on Green Lake; Tremont, on Lake Washington. East, to Bryn Mawi Park, on the west shore of this lake; Boston Heights, on the summit of the elevation between Elliot Bay and Lake Washington, to Green's addition, and Summit addition, and I do not know how many more. A ferry carries you to West Seattle, where a company with half a million is making improvements, as before mentioned.
In none of these places do you find the view lacking in interest, whether you are thinking of the wonders of nature or the works of men: both are here worthy of attention. West Seattle sits upon a high sandy point, which having once attained, you have water on every side except the southern, a city on the east. Port Blakely mills, the largest in the world, the smoke of whose burning sawdust ascendeth forever, and serves as a beacon on the Sound, is a little north of west; and Port Orchard, the newly-selected site of the United States navy yard, is a little south of west.
But transferring yourself to Seattle, and taking a cable-car to Boston Heights, here again you have a water-view on both sides
of you, but how different! The city is at your feet, to and from whose busy wharves all sorts of water-craft are darting and departing, while the west shore of the bay, Port Blakely and other headlands receding melt into a dim distance bounded by the Olympic Mountains. On the other hand, Lake Washington lies just at the foot of the eastern slope, with green islands and wooded shores, and Mount Rainier, towering in white, eternal majesty above this summer landscape.
The lakes about Seattle, to which I have before referred, never ceased to be interesting to me from their evident physical history; at the same time they are very pretty from a scenic stand-point, with sloping shores admirably adapted to villa sites, for which they are being rapidly seized upon. Lake Union is small, with a number of settlements almost surrounding it. There are three asthmatic little steamers running from the railway approach to Fremont, Edgwater, Latona, and Green Lake, on its borders. Pleasure-boats are to let, and a dancing-hall furnishes the foreign population the opportunity of the waltz on Sundays.
A small canal, which it has been Seattle's ambition to have enlarged by the government into a ship-canal, connects Lakes Washington and Union with the Sound. Had Congress seen fit to undertake this not very expensive work, a naval station might very well have been located here where vessels could lie in fresh water, and doubtless the work will yet be performed for the benefit of commerce, vessels lying in the Sound waters becoming heavily encrusted with barnacles. The teredo is very destructive to any wood immersed in the Sound, and to the supports of wharves, which frequently succumb to its ravages; hence the value of a fresh-water harbor. Port Orchard has several streams running into it which may suffice to cure this evil, but Lake Washington would have been more certain to be free from it.
The falls of the Snoqualmie (Indian Snoqualimich) River having frequently been mentioned to me as highly attractive, I resolved to devote a day to an excursion along the line of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad, whose western end is in Seattle and its eastern end in Spokane, with a considerable hiatus between. I found the following stations along the road
in a distance of about forty miles: Boulevard, Ballard Junction, Ballard, Boss, Fremont, Edgwater, Latona, Ravenna Park, Yesler Junction, Keith, Pontiac (a brickmaking settlement)^ Maple Leaf (a lumbering establishment), Terrence, Wayne, Bothell, Snohomish Junction, York, Redmond, Peterson, Inglewood, Monovon, Gilman, Preston, Falls City, Snoqualmie Falls, Snoqualmie, and South Bend,—or a station every mile and onethird of the way,—which would lead one to expect a populous country. The road is, however, constructed for the most part through an uncleared region, the whole population being at these several recently-opened settlements.
Bothell is the location of the Huron Lumber Company. Inglewood is on the border of Sammamish or Squawk Lake, a beautiful sheet of water in which there are standing submerged trees, showing subsidence of this part of the coal-basin. Monovon, also on this lake, is a picturesque place, which with the water and the hills has quite a Swiss aspect. Gilman, close up -to the mountains, is a raw, unpainted settlement, whose promise of future improvement lies in a large hop-field.
The Talley is evidently very rich in soil. I noted some wonderfully high maple-trees curiously swathed in yellow moss, and alder-trees of great growth ana beauty, their white and gray bark mottled with splashes of light green, showing clearly out from the gloom of the unbroken forest.
The train obligingly stops at the falls to give travellers an opportunity to alight and enjoy a five-minute view of the cataract.. This is a very delightful five minutes, which I prolonged into a half-hour by walking back from the next station before the train returned. The height of the fall is two hundred and sixty-eight feet. The stream descends on either side of a dividing island of rock, as at Niagara. On the east side of the rock it is projected in two separate strands, which gyrate at the start and twist together as steam comes out of a locomotivepipe. The effect is to throw the water into garlands of foam which, falling upon one another and being projected a long distance out, appear heaped up rather than falling. On the west side the water, dashed into foam, descends in two other streams —one fan-shaped—which, uniting half-way down, turn and join the main stream in one mass of feathery foam. The mist blown
over to the east side of the chasm gives a fine rainbow. The condensation forms numerous rills on the face of the almost perpendicular walls, which descend like threads of silver over the vividly green masses. There are rapids above and below the fall, and higher up the stream another cataract one hundred and twenty feet in height, the Indian name of which is Topan. In short, the Snoqualmie is a mountain stream above here, with a rapid current and jagged bed, and abounds in good fishing, as the woods do in game.
At Snoqualmie Station, where we dined, is a comfortable and pleasantly-situated summer hotel. Here the Hop-Growers' Association owns eleven hundred acres, three hundred and ten of which is in hops this season. The production of this farm is from eighteen hundred to two thousand pounds per acre. Fruit and root crops are successfully cultivated at Snoqualmie, giving evidence of what may be expected from the Valley in the future. I met a lady and her daughter going down to Seattle to witness the graduation of a daughter and a sister from some institution in the city, and who lived on a farm higher up the Valley, with which they appeared to be well satisfied.
I returned to the city in time to note from my hotel windows a charming evening scene: the Bay dotted with sail-boats, steamers coming and going, a fine veil of mist overhanging the Sound, the sun setting in a sea of golden cloud, from which flakes of gold fell off and floated away along the horizon. The level rays of departing day bring out the headland opposite with every building outlined, the surface of the Sound resembling for roughness a Canton crepe in pale blue, creased with the wakes of various water-craft, completed the first effect; then suddenly the heavens were flushed with a rosy radiance which was reflected from the placid water beneath, as if the day should kiss the earth good-night and blush in doing it. I thought about the Montana lady I had met in Tacoma, and hoped she was enjoying the picture as she was capable of doing.
The subject which absorbs most of the business brain of the Northwest, whether it be in Tacoma, Seattle, or some of the ocean ports, is how to obtain control of the trade of the Orient. A glance at the map shows us that so far as location is con
cerned there is little difference. Seattle is a couple of hours nearer to the Straits than Tacoma. But Tacoma, if time becomes an object, can make a short cut through Gray's Harbor, and so also could Seattle. Therefore, supposing the latter to have secured what Tacoma has, a direct transcontinental railroad, the chances are so nearly even as to make the most sagacious decline to venture a prediction.
Merchants will tell you in a general way that the trade of China amounts to one hundred and thirty million dollars annually, that it is only in its infancy, and that it is principally in the hands of Great Britain, but that the Pacific Coast of the United States must compete so strongly for it as to divert it to itself. The} T will tell you that in twenty-five years China will have a trade hundreds of millions greater than at present, because the empire will then be thrown open by railroads and rapid transportation generally to commercial operations. The Chinese will consume American wheat (which they are beginning to do now), wares, and manufactures. Besides this market for our productions, there are also to be considered the fiftyseven millions of people who inhabit those parts of Asia which approach this continent more nearly, as Japan, Manchooria, Mongolia, and Siberia. To supply these people from Europe by the present route and means of travel and Transportation requires, we are told, caravans numbering thirty-six thousand camels and bullocks and one hundred thousand horses.
This state of affairs cannot be permitted to continue in this the nineteenth century! and the question is seriously asked, "Who is'to have control of this vast trade?" and as seriously answered, America. Why? Because America has the capital, material, energy, and pluck to obtain it. That point conceded, the next one of importance is that of distance, and Seattle is nine thousand six hundred and fifty miles nearer to the A moor Biver than Liverpool. It is twelve hundred miles nearer Singapore, three thousand five hundred nearer Canton, six thousand nearer Shanghai, and eight thousand miles nearer Vladivostok than is Liverpool.
But that is not all. Seattle is five hundred miles nearer Vladivostok than San Francisco is, three hundred and fifty nearer Shanghai, three hundred nearer Canton, and three hun
dred nearer Singapore. It has also slightly the advantage over Portland in some of these distances, and very slightly over Tacoma. It has nothing, then, to fear in the matter of distance except from some port upon the coast either of Washington or British Columbia. And here comes in the consideration of latitude and productions, which are in favor of Washington.
These are weighty topics to discuss in a railway or drawingroom conversation, yet one hears them everywhere. And they are stirring themes, too, when we remember that Jefferson and Benton discussed them in the early part of the century, and the nation has been moving westward on the chosen line ever since. Just what point will secure the prize of pre-eminence is not for me to prophesy. Besides, the country is so vast and so rich in resources that there is room for all to grow and prosper. So let us leave the future to reveal itself, and comment upon Seattle as it now is.
The volume of jobbing trade for Seattle in 1889 is variously estimated at from seventeen million dollars to twenty million dollars. The confusion in business incident to the fire prevents a closer estimate. Seattle merchants carry large stocks of all kinds of merchandise, although the tendency now is to separate wholesale and retail business, and to segregate merchandise into special lines. Retail trade is not dependent, as in other States, upon the coming in of certain crops. June furnishes a heavy hay crop and garden stuff. The immense wheat crop begins to move in August; hops in September; potatoes in October; fruit in its proper seasons, from June to October; lumber and coal at all times; and cattle and dairy products during most offthe year.
Manufactures are quite numerous in Seattle, but are still lacking in many things. Previous to the fire it had ten saw-mills, whose plants cost four million dollars, and tributary to it, within a radius of thirty-five miles, seven great milling establishments. It had ship-yards; several sash- and door-factories; shingle-, barrel-, and furniture-factories; brick-yards and tile-factories; carriage-factories; four breweries; foundries, brass and iron, and boiler-works; soda-works; and fifty other kinds of manufactures. The capital employed in factories in 1889 was $6,285,000, and the value of production $10,407,488. It is mentioned in the press of Seattle that there is room for a large
tannery and boot- and shoe-factory; for a woodenware- and willow ware-factory: for powder works; for two flouring-mills, and for wholesale houses dealing in men's furnishing goods, in hats, in paints, oils, glass, drugs, stationery, millinery, and general machinery, as specialties. This gives a better idea of the condition of trade than an enumeration of business firms. Seattle has eleven banks,—not as many as Tacoma by two or Portland by five,—with an aggregate capital of about four million dollars and deposits amounting to nearly six million dollars.
The coal-mines of King County which are tributary to Seattle are the Franklin, Black Diamond, Cedar Mountain, Newcastle, Gilman, and Durham. Their total output for 1889 was three hundred and ninety-one thousand one hundred and eighty-three tons. There was a suspension of production for a couple of months while the coal-bunkers destroyed in the fire were being rebuilt, which lessened the amount. The present facilities will enable the companies to receive and discharge two million tons a year.
It is in contemplation to erect iron- and steel-works at Kirkland, on Lake Washington, which will employ one thousand men, a company having already been formed for that purpose, with a capital of two million five hundred thousand dollars. The ore is to be obtained from the Denny Mines in the vicinity. The manufacture of railroad material will be carried on in connection with the iron-works.
From these items, putting that and that together, it is safe to say that Seattle is no bubble which a pin-prick will cause to collapse, and that a century hence it will be here with added area, wealth, dignity, and history.
Speaking of history reminds me to give a leaf out of Seattle's past. It is not about the siege of the town by the Dwamish and other Indians in 1856, when a stockade was built with Mr. Yesler's lumber to protect the settlement, and when Captain Gansevoort, of the United States ship-of-war, which was fortunately in the harbor, came to their relief, together with the territorial authorities, but concerns a period about ten years later.
The want of Washington during the territorial times was women; excepting the families of the original pioneers, few had come to settle here, the majority of men who had drifted
to Puget Sound from the Fraser Biver Mines, or by sea, being unmarried. This condition of society resulted in the union of Indian women with white men, and the degradation of the latter. It was suggested to Governor Pickering that it would be a philanthropic action to furnish the white bachelor population of Washington with wives from among the widows and daughters of soldiers killed in the war of the rebellion. The man selected or permitted to take charge of the enterprise was Asa S. Mercer, of Seattle, who, armed with a certificate of character, repaired to Washington, D.C., with the intention of appealing for aid to President Lincoln, but arrived on the day of his assassination, which seemed to put an end to the undertaking.
However, he then formed an immigration scheme of his own and secured contracts with one hundred and fifty young women, and as many families, to take them to Washington and guarantee them employment at good wages, on the payment to him in advance of a certain amount of passage-money. He made terms with a steamship company, and, instead of notifying all those who had contracted with him, set sail for Puget Sound with half the number, leaving the remainder to their vain regrets. For this violation of trust he was sued in the Superior Court of New York, which decided it had no jurisdiction, and his victims were left without redress. As for the seventy-five young women who reached this coast, an Immigrant Aid Society had been organized to provide homes and employment for them, and they disappeared like morning dew before the sun, being too few to create much of a change in Washington society or morals.
In this city, where such a movement was possible twenty-five years ago, there are now forty-three church organizations,—and we all know that churches consist chiefly of women,—with over eight thousand communicants. Sermons are preached in the English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Welsh languages, and sixteen denomi nations are represented. Half a million dollars is to be expended this year in fifteen new church edifices.
Seattle has four daily and several weekly newspapers, of which the Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Press are the principal ones. The State University is located here, and in the heart of the city. Its endowment being inadequate to its needs, a movement is on foot to sell the ground, and with the proceeds
erect better buildings farther from the centre of the town, and with the remainder enlarge the endowment. There is a large Chautauqua circle here, and the society owns property on Yashon Island, near Tacoma, where it holds its annual meeting. A Young Men's Secretarial Institute also owns twenty acres adjoining the Chautauqua-plat, which is about establishing a training-school and gymnasium, with ball-ground, boating-club, and a variety of physical-development accessories.
This institute consists in the first place of the secretaries of the Young Men's Christian Associations throughout the Northwest, and the stock is sold only to active members of the associations. They will have twenty-five thousand dollars with which to make improvements in 1891. The two organizations promise to be helpful to each other, and together will make Yashon Island a popular summer resort. The institute has already published among its rules that "boiled shirts" are not admissible; polished shoes only admissible on Sundays; no study to be allowed in afternoons; the hours of sleep to extend from ten o'clock in the evening to seven in the morning. The last of these four rules may wisely balance the effect of the first three.
The common schools of Seattle are of a high order, and the city has erected handsome structures for their accommodation. The city supports an Orphans' Home and three hospitals, Providence Hospital being the largest on the Pacific Coast. The charitable orders are numerous, as in other cities.
The tourist has a choice in departing from Seattle of steamboat or railway service. The railroads going out of the city are the Puget Sound Shore line to Puyallup, where it connects with the Northern Pacific, and through that road with the Union Pacific, or O. R. and N. Railroad, and the Southern Pacific, or Oregon and California Railroad. The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad I have already referred to. This is an extensive system, only partially completed. The Snoqualmie branch on which I travelled opens up coal and iron fields in that region, and is eighty miles in length. Another branch, one hundred and twenty miles in length, known as the Seattle and West Coast Railroad, will connect with the Canadian Pacific, making Seattle one of its terminals. When completed the main line will cross the Cascades by Cady's Pass, at the head of the Skokomish or north fork of the Snoqualmie River, and join the eastern division west of Spokane. The Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad is a narrow-gauge line connecting Seattle with the Newcastle, Cedar River, and Green River coal-fields, by a system of branches aggregating sixty miles, and sustains an enormous traffic. Its ultimate destination is the Columbia River at Wallula. Of lines projected but not built, the Seattle Southern is to run from West Seattle direct to Portland, to connect with the Southern Pacific system. Thus the Queen City looks to being the terminus of three, if not five, transcontinental roads.
It seems the intention to make West Seattle terminal ground for several roads, the initiative being given in the organization of a West Seattle Terminal and Elevator Company, which is to build on trestles across the bay at its southern end, and erect wheat-elevators on the bluff shore. The height of the elevator above the floor of the warehouse, which is one hundred and twenty by five hundred and thirteen feet ground area, is one hundred and twenty feet. It will have a capacity of seventy thousand bushels, and the warehouse of one million. A shipdock twelve hundred feet long will be constructed, with over five thousand feet of side-tracks and other facilities for receiving and discharging grain, the whole to cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
A belt-line railroad around Lake Washington is reported projected, to be built by the Lake Shore and Eastern and Northern Pacific. The Northern Pacific, it will be observed, is at the bottom of most of the greatest enterprises in the Evergreen State. The Union Pacific would willingly enter into competition, but circumstances have not been favorable in the Puget Sound region, where it is confined to the control of the leased steamboats of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, but will construct in the near future a line from Tacoma to Olympia and Gray's Harbor, and, if we may believe rumor, several other lines. But it is not for me to say what railroad companies will do; there is more certainty about what they have done, a part of their policy being to puzzle the public about their intentions until they have secured whatever portion of "the earth" seems to promise the largest harvest. Railroads are tricksy things. It is only on great water-ways like the Columbia or the Sound that one feels the bounty, the beauty, and the peace of the free gifts of God. Such a highway is always at the door of these mediterranean cities. Upon it may float a palace or a plunger. Let us take something intermediate and visit some of Seattle's outlying territories.
The first of these may be said to come under the head of sawmills, and to give an idea of the importance of these to the State of Washington, let me borrow some figures from the Post-Intelligencer for January 1, 1890, showing the number of feet of lumber cut in the State for the previous year.
| Mills. | Lumber. | Lath. | Pickets. |
| Port Discovery | 32,537,459 | 13,774,800 | 1,071,470 |
| Washington, Hadlock, Port Townsend | 24,800,737 | 7,482,000 | 307,855 |
| Port Blakely | 62,092,701 | 11,387,100 | 629,088 |
| Port Gamble | 42,138,399 | 10,280,617 | 181,180 |
| Port Ludlow | 25,040,695 | 6,158,076 | 63,667 |
| Puget, Utsalady | 20,781,721 | 7,897,247 | 65,534 |
| Tacoma, Tacoma | 53,578,168 | 18,156,250 | 221,910 |
| St. Paul and Tacoma | 36,000,000 | 3,750,000 | 300,000 |
| Gig Harbor | 14,722,971 | 6,038,420 | 98,820 |
| Port Madison | 25,400,000 | 8,128,000 | 300,000 |
| Pacific, Tacoma | 40,000,000 | 12,000,000 | |
| Local, in Tacoma | 94,500,000 | 12,000,000 | |
| Local, in Seattle | 140,500,000 | 18,000,000 | |
| On Bellingham Bay | 35,000,000 | 5,000,000 | |
| Other Local, Puget Sound | 37,000,000 | 3,000,000 | |
| Total Puget Sound | 684,092,851 | 143,052,510 | 8,209,476 |
| OTHER SECTIONS. | ||
| Lumber. | ||
| Five Gray's Harbor mills | 98,500,000 | feet |
| Two Shoalwater Bay mills | 35,000,000 | feet„ |
| Six Columbia River mills | 76,000,000 | feet„ |
| Nine mills between Columbia River and the Sound | 81,000,000 | feet„ |
| Eleven other mills | 92,000,000 | feet„ |
| 382,500,000 | feet„ | |
| Puget Sound mills | 684,182,851 | feet„ |
| 1,066,682,851 | feet„ | |
1,066,682,851
About seven million feet was dressed lumber. The value of this product for this one year was $12,800,284. The larger mills own a fleet of vessels, but aside from these hundreds of vessels come here to load. Statistics from eight Puget Sound mills show that four hundred and two cargoes sailed from their docks in* 1889. Port Madison and Pacific mills furnished no list of vessels, but they probably loaded another hundred. These cargoes go to the ports of California. Mexico, Central America, Hawaii, Peru, Chili, Australia, Brazil, China, and Great Britain. . The Port Blakely mill filled one order from Cardiff, England, for one million feet in timbers sixteen by sixteen inches square and sixty-one feet long, and twenty-four inches square and ninety feet long. The value of this cargo was seventeen thousand dollars.
Let us, then, go to see Port Blakely. It lies ten miles west of Seattle on the southern end of Bainbridge Island, and is owned by Captain W. H. Benton and associates. Most of the great milling establishments of Puget Sound were founded about 1852-53, when the devastating fires of San Francisco's early history suggested the need of lumber manufacture. Benton was one of the many sea-captains—chiefly Maine men—who saw their ideal haven in Puget Sound. It is related that in 1851 Dr. Samuel Merritt, of San Francisco, sent a vessel, of which he was owner, to these northern waters for ice. When the vessel returned, the captain surprised the doctor by saying as soon as they met, "Why, doctor, water don't freeze in Puget Sound!" This was a revelation, and many a sea-going man from the coast of Hew England, looking at the waters which never froze and the limitless forests, determined to stick his stake there.
And so it fell out that, in 1853, Captain Benton joined C. C. Terry on Alki Point in erecting a mill, which they afterwards removed to Port Orchard, and subsequently sold. Benton then went to Port Blakely, and with a partner named Howard erected in 1864 an establishment costing eighty thousand dollars, and which would cut fifty thousand feet a da}\ In 1880 its capacity was increased to two hundred thousand feet per diem of twelve hours. It now cuts three hundred thousand, and could add another one hundred thousand, having a great number of saws,
and a three-thousand horse-power. Captain Renton resides here, and employs two hundred and fifty men, many of whom have families. Their homes constitute a pretty village, with a public hall and reading-room. Education and amusement are encouraged to make pleasant the lives of the workers.
And surely they need it. I never behold great manufactories like this without resentment towards the vandalism of progress. What a creature is man! What dreadful machinery he invents to rend in pieces, to pull down, to drag along, to dig up, and to build up—a fortune for himself! The forces of nature move silently and majestically, but man's inventions harrow your nerves and confound your understanding. They w T hizz, bang, whistle, roar, shriek, clang, rattle, pound; they break, crush, tear; they are violent; they wound and weary your spirit. Yet here is Captain Renton, who has spent a long life with the scream of machinery in his ears, and he is the kind friend of all who serve him, himself deprived of his sight by an accident which might any day befall them.
About eight miles farther down the Sound, on the north end of Bainbridge Island, is Port Madison, an inlet so narrow that our steamer is compelled to back out without turning around. The village lies on a smooth hill-side, made picturesque by some large trees of broad-leaved maple.
Twenty miles or more north, and just at the entrance of Hood's Canal, is Port Ludlow. This establishment, with one at Utsalady on Camano Island, opposite Crescent Harbor, and another at Port Gamble, seven miles inside the canal, belongs to the Puget Mill Company. The village at Port Gamble is called by the pretty Indian name of Teekalet.
The Washington Mill Company is located at Hadlock, at the head of Port Townsend Bay. The last of these great mills, all of which contribute to the business of Seattle in some measure, is on Port Discovery, well up towards the foot-hills of the Olympic Range, and near the foot of Mount Constance. There is a road across the peninsula between Port Discovery and Port Townsend. Squim Bay is another inlet, three to five miles west of Port Discovery, and the government has reservations on each side of the entrance, as it has at all these harbors. On many of them are light-houses which shine gratefully across the waters
3
as our steamer glides through the dusk of a summer night, and brings us back by morning to Seattle.
The real country tributary to the Queen City lies to the north on the east shore of the Sound. The first river falling into the Sound north of Seattle is the Snohomish, formed by the junction of the Snoqualmie and the Skykomish Rivers, about twentyfive miles northwest of Snoqualmie Falls. The tourist can take the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad, and by a branch reach Snohomish City in about an hour and a half, or can take a steamboat to that place.
There is little to catch the eye of the traveller in the region traversed by the railroad. It is a scene of newly-opened forest with new settlements, such as we have seen so frequently, and must continue to see wherever we go in the lower Sound country except on some of the islands. This is the case because the chief and most profitable pursuits of the people hitherto have been logging for the great mills, growing hay and vegetables on the rich bottom-lands, bee-culture, and cattle-raising. More recently they have taken to lumbering, and a good many mills have been erected in Snohomish Yalley. Snohomish City is a town of three thousand inhabitants, located near the head of navigation by steamboat on the river. It is well situated on the north bank, with several hotels, three churches, a scientific society and museum, a fifteen-thousand-dollar school-house, two dozen stores, a more than average number of professional men even for a county-seat, and other signs of an intelligent population. Here and in the vicinity are half a dozen large saw-mills, five shingle-mills, three sash-, door-, blind-, and moulding-factories, and many logging-camps. The export trade of Snohomish River is of the value of two million dollars annually, while the local trade between farmers, loggers, other people, and the merchants exceeds that sum. It is estimated that the improvements of 1890 will be of the value of one million dollars, and will include a court-house and a theatre. The Snohomish Agricultural Society and Turf Club will make a speed-track near Lake Blackman, for the exhibition of blooded horses; from all of which it is evident that the people of Snohomish are'progressive.
Machias is a new town located on the Pillchuck, a branch of
the Snohomish, at the point of contact of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern, and near Lake Stevens, a beautiful sheet of water. Lumbering is the great industry at present, but I hear a good deal about mines of coal and of silver in the neighborhood.
Cathcart, Lowell, and Marysville are milling-towns on the river below Snohomish. The river is crooked and not wide, with low banks which must be overflowed in some seasons. It parts into several channels five or six miles from Port Gardiner, into which it flows by three mouths. On the north side of the entrance is the Tulalip Indian reservation, including thirty-eight square miles of excellent land. On the south side of Port Gardiner is Muckilteo, a fish-canning establishment.
I have not taken pains to collect any information about the salmon fisheries of the Sound, which are in their general features the same as those of the Columbia. But the variety of food fishes in the Sound is much greater than in the great freshwater river. Halibut and codfish are plentiful, as well as smaller fish, such as smelt and herring, but the business of packing them has not seemed to attract capital. The only company 1 heard of was one on Scow Bay, Port Townsend, and they were professional fishermen from Massachusetts who had recently set up this establishment. They experimented by sending a refrigerator car to Hew York packed with halibut on ice, and, finding it practicable, went into the business. Oysters are successfully grown in the Sound, and clams of half a dozen varieties are native. Lobsters have been planted by the government, as also carp and shad. This by way of parenthesis.
Tw r elve or fifteen miles north of the Snohomish, the Stillaquamish River enters that part of the Sound called Port Susan by Vancouver. It was somewhere about here, perhaps on the south shore of Port Gardner, that on the king's birthday, June 4, 1792, Vancouver took formal possession of this region for his Majesty,—hence the name "Possession Sound," given to the eastern arm of this wonderful sea, which is no sound at all.
Edmunds is the seaport town of Snohomish County, and only four years old. It boasts many advantages.
On the Stillaquamish is one town—Stanwood—of considerable consequence as a milling and trading centre for that valley. Marysville is also a thriving place. Centreville is older, but
does less business. The Stillaguamish, like the Snohomish, has three mouths, two opening into Port Susan, and one into a nameless portion of the Sound connected with Port Susan by a passage not more than half a mile in width. A project is on foot to connect Utsalady with the mainland railroads by a line to the mouth of the Stillaguamish, bridging this passage.
The rivers on this side of the Sound, especially these northern rivers, have all this delta feature. They have rushed down from the mountains for ages, bearing the soil formed from the rocks and vegetable mould, which the tides have beaten back again until wide areas of the richest marsh-land have been formed. In seasons of flood the river has washed out several channels by which to get to deep water through this impediment. These marsh lands when diked are the most productive in the State, if not in the world, but in the amplitude of other resources their value is not yet fully appreciated.
Speaking of other resources, the reader is referred for one of the most important, but undeveloped, to the chapter on geology and mineralogy. All that is there said of the country immediately north of the Stillaquamish is undoubtedly true here. The east shore of the Sound from Bellingham Bay to Nisqually River is rich in minerals,—coal, iron, silver, marble, building-stone, asbestos, tin, and ores of other metals. But there are not yet hands enough in the State, however willing, to uncover this wealth. Sultan, on a branch of the Skykomish, is in a rich silrer-bearing district.
When I speak of this country as tributary to Seattle, it is as dependent upon the larger market of a commercial metropolis for supplies. The same might be said of the whole northern part of West Washington, a condition of things which is not likely to be perpetuated when its grand resources begin in earnest to be developed.
Pointing our steamer's prow southward, we again enter the main body of the Sound, Admiralty Inlet, and rounding Whidbey Island proceed to Port Townsend.