arbitration, in 1872, when Emperor William of Germany decided in favor of the claim of the United States.
One should enter the Fuea Sea by the Strait of Fuca, fifteen miles wide and sixty in length. At this gateway of the Pacific stand, what it requires the help of our imagination to make out, the Pillars of Hercules, of Vancouver. As we advance, Vancouver Island is on our left, its general surface rather rounded and smooth, crowned with forest in the interior, its shores indented with lovely bays and coves of a most inviting appearance. On the right is the mainland, with the Olympic Range lifting its silvered summits and noble peaks. In front, rising from the Cascade Range, is Mount Baker, with half a dozen lesser peaks grouped about it.
Advancing still farther, we pass by the southern end of the San Juan group, which scarcely shows an opening between the islands, and find ourselves almost abreast Deception Pass. Let us turn to the north, where we have not yet been, and make for Anacortes, where we desire to go, because we have heard wonderful things of Anacortes. A half-dozen miles takes us to Ship Harbor, or Guemes Canal, and half 1 a dozen more to the City of the Sea.
Fidalgo Island has all those eccentricities of shape which characterize this group. Stretching north from Deception Pass seven miles to Guemes Canal, with a width varying from three to six miles, it is flanked on the west by two small islands, and cut into on the east by an inlet about three miles long from north to south, forming, with Padilla Bay, a narrow peninsula pointing north, while about nine square miles of its area are contained in another peninsula pointing south, and separated from the main island by Similk Bay, which meets Deception Pass on the southeast. This portion of the island is an Indian reservation, and is divided from the mainland only by Swinomish Slouch, a narrow and shallow but navigable channel between Padilla Bay and that unnamed portion of the Sound before referred to, north of Port Susan, and into which empties the Skagit River by several mouths.
Near the centre of Fidalgo Island is Mount Erie, twelve hundred and fifty feet in height, while several small lakes add to its scenic attractions. To say that the view from the summit
