Their Picturesque Towers And Arches Seem To Be Kindly Adopted By
Nature, And Planted With Wild Flowers And Wreathed With
Ivy; while
their rugged angles are soothed and freshened and embossed with green
mosses, fresh life and decay mingling in
Pleasing measures, and the
whole vanishing softly like a ripe, tranquil day fading into night.
So, also, among the older ruins of the East there is a fitness felt.
They have served their time, and like the weather-beaten mountains are
wasting harmoniously. The same is in some degree true of the dead
mining towns of California.
But those lying to the eastward of the Sierra throughout the ranges of
the Great Basin waste in the dry wilderness like the bones of cattle
that have died of thirst. Many of them do not represent any good
accomplishment, and have no right to be. They are monuments of fraud
and ignorance - sins against science. The drifts and tunnels in the
rocks may perhaps be regarded as the prayers of the prospector,
offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves; but, like prayers of
any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered. But, after
all, effort, however misapplied, is better than stagnation. Better
toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether
they contain any or not, than lie down in apathetic decay.
The fever period is fortunately passing away. The prospector is no
longer the raving, wandering ghoul of ten years ago, rushing in random
lawlessness among the hills, hungry and footsore; but cool and
skillful, well supplied with every necessary, and clad in his right
mind. Capitalists, too, and the public in general, have become wiser,
and do not take fire so readily from mining sparks; while at the same
time a vast amount of real work is being done, and the ratio between
growth and decay is constantly becoming better.
XVII
Puget Sound
Washington Territory, recently admitted[22] into the Union as a State,
lies between latitude 46 degrees and 49 degrees and longitude 117
degrees and 125 degrees, forming the northwest shoulder of the united
States. The majestic range of the Cascade Mountains naturally divides
the State into two distinct parts, called Eastern and Western
Washington, differing greatly from each other in almost every way, the
western section being less than half as large as the eastern, and,
with its copious rains and deep fertile soil, being clothed with
forests of evergreens, while the eastern section is dry and mostly
treeless, though fertile in many parts, and producing immense
quantities of wheat and hay. Few States are more fertile and
productive in one way or another than Washington, or more strikingly
varied in natural features or resources.
Within her borders every kind of soil and climate may be found - the
densest woods and dryest plains, the smoothest levels and roughest
mountains. She is rich in square miles (some seventy thousand of
them), in coal, timber, and iron, and in sheltered inland waters that
render these resources advantageously accessible. She also is already
rich in busy workers, who work hard, though not always wisely,
hacking, burning, blasting their way deeper into the wilderness,
beneath the sky, and beneath the ground. The wedges of development
are being driven hard, and none of the obstacles or defenses of nature
can long withstand the onset of this immeasurable industry.
Puget Sound, so justly famous the world over for the surpassing size
and excellence and abundance of its timber, is a long, many-fingered
arm of the sea reaching southward from the head of the Strait of Juan
de Fuca into the heart of the grand forests of the western portion of
Washington, between the Cascade Range and the mountains of the coast.
It is less than a hundred miles in length, but so numerous are the
branches into which it divides, and so many its bays, harbors, and
islands, that its entire shoreline is said to measure more than
eighteen hundred miles. Throughout its whole vast extent ships move
in safety, and find shelter from every wind that blows, the entire
mountain-girt sea forming one grand unrivaled harbor and center for
commerce.
The forest trees press forward to the water around all the windings of
the shores in most imposing array, as if they were courting their
fate, coming down from the mountains far and near to offer themselves
to the axe, thus making the place a perfect paradise for the
lumberman. To the lover of nature the scene is enchanting. Water and
sky, mountain and forest, clad in sunshine and clouds, are composed in
landscapes sublime in magnitude, yet exquisitely fine and fresh, and
full of glad, rejoicing life. The shining waters stretch away into
the leafy wilderness, now like the reaches of some majestic river and
again expanding into broad roomy spaces like mountain lakes, their
farther edges fading gradually and blending with the pale blue of the
sky. The wooded shores with an outer fringe of flowering bushes sweep
onward in beautiful curves around bays, and capes, and jutting
promontories innumerable; while the islands, with soft, waving
outlines, lavishly adorned with spruces and cedars, thicken and enrich
the beauty of the waters; and the white spirit mountains looking down
from the sky keep watch and ward over all, faithful and changeless as
the stars.
All the way from the Strait of Juan de Fuca up to Olympia, a hopeful
town situated at the head of one of the farthest-reaching of the
fingers of the Sound, we are so completely inland and surrounded by
mountains that it is hard to realize that we are sailing on a branch
of the salt sea. We are constantly reminded of Lake Tahoe. There is
the same clearness of the water in calm weather without any trace of
the ocean swell, the same picturesque winding and sculpture of the
shoreline and flowery, leafy luxuriance; only here the trees are
taller and stand much closer together, and the backgrounds are higher
and far more extensive.
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