The Voyage
Is About Four Days In Length And The Steamers Keep Within Sight Of The
Coast, But The Hills
Fronting the sea up to Oregon are mostly bare and
uninviting, the magnificent redwood forests stretching along this
portion of
The California coast seeming to keep well back, away from
the heavy winds, so that very little is seen of them; while there are
no deep inlets or lofty mountains visible to break the regular
monotony. Along the coast of Oregon the woods of spruce and fir come
down to the shore, kept fresh and vigorous by copious rains, and
become denser and taller to the northward until, rounding Cape
Flattery, we enter the Strait of Fuca, where, sheltered from the ocean
gales, the forests begin to hint the grandeur they attain in Puget
Sound. Here the scenery in general becomes exceedingly interesting;
for now we have arrived at the grand mountain-walled channel that
forms the entrance to that marvelous network of inland waters that
extends along the margin of the continent to the northward for a
thousand miles.
This magnificent inlet was named for Juan de Fuca, who discovered it
in 1592 while seeking a mythical strait, supposed to exist somewhere
in the north, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific. It is about
seventy miles long, ten or twelve miles wide, and extends to the
eastward in a nearly straight line between the south end of Vancouver
Island and the Olympic Range of mountains on the mainland.
Cape Flattery, the western termination of the Olympic Range, is
terribly rugged and jagged, and in stormy weather is utterly
inaccessible from the sea. Then the ponderous rollers of the deep
Pacific thunder amid its caverns and cliffs with the foam and uproar
of a thousand Yosemite waterfalls. The bones of many a noble ship lie
there, and many a sailor. It would seem unlikely that any living
thing should seek rest in such a place, or find it. Nevertheless,
frail and delicate flowers bloom there, flowers of both the land and
the sea; heavy, ungainly seals disport in the swelling waves, and find
grateful retreats back in the inmost bores of its storm-lashed
caverns; while in many a chink and hollow of the highest crags, not
visible from beneath, a great variety of waterfowl make homes and rear
their young.
But not always are the inhabitants safe, even in such wave-defended
castles as these, for the Indians of the neighboring shores venture
forth in the calmest summer weather in their frail canoes to spear the
seals in the narrow gorges amid the grinding, gurgling din of the
restless waters. At such times also the hunters make out to scale
many of the apparently inaccessible cliffs for the eggs and young of
the gulls and other water birds, occasionally losing their lives in
these perilous adventures, which give rise to many an exciting story
told around the campfires at night when the storms roar loudest.
Passing through the strait, we have the Olympic Mountains close at
hand on the right, Vancouver Island on the left, and the snowy peak of
Mount Baker straight ahead in the distance.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 86 of 159
Words from 44347 to 44873
of 82482
