During Calm Weather, Or
When The Clouds Are Lifting And Rolling Off The Mountains After A
Storm, All These Views Are Truly Magnificent.
Mount Baker is one of
that wonderful series of old volcanoes that once flamed along the
summits of the Sierras and Cascades from Lassen to Mount St. Elias.
Its fires are sleeping now, and it is loaded with glaciers, streams of
ice having taken the place of streams of glowing lava. Vancouver
Island presents a charming variety of hill and dale, open sunny spaces
and sweeps of dark forest rising in swell beyond swell to the high
land in the distance.
But the Olympic Mountains most of all command attention, seen
tellingly near and clear in all their glory, rising from the water's
edge into the sky to a height of six or eight thousand feet. They
bound the strait on the south side throughout its whole extent,
forming a massive sustained wall, flowery and bushy at the base, a
zigzag of snowy peaks along the top, which have ragged-edged fields of
ice and snow beneath them, enclosed in wide amphitheaters opening to
the waters of the strait through spacious forest-filled valleys
enlivened with fine, dashing streams. These valleys mark the courses
of the Olympic glaciers at the period of their greatest extension,
when they poured their tribute into that portion of the great northern
ice sheet that overswept the south end of Vancouver Island and filled
the strait with flowing ice as it is now filled with ocean water.
The steamers of the Sound usually stop at Esquimalt on their way up,
thus affording tourists an opportunity to visit the interesting town
of Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. The Victoria harbor is
too narrow and difficult of access for the larger class of ships;
therefore a landing has to be made at Esquimalt. The distance,
however, is only about three miles, and the way is delightful, winding
on through a charming forest of Douglas spruce, with here and there
groves of oak and madrone, and a rich undergrowth of hazel, dogwood,
willow, alder, spiraea, rubus, huckleberry, and wild rose. Pretty
cottages occur at intervals along the road, covered with honeysuckle,
and many an upswelling rock, freshly glaciated and furred with yellow
mosses and lichen, telling interesting stories of the icy past.
Victoria is a quiet, handsome, breezy town, beautifully located on
finely modulated ground at the mouth of the Canal de Haro, with
charming views in front, of islands and mountains and far-reaching
waters, ever changing in the shifting lights and shades of the clouds
and sunshine. In the background there are a mile or two of field and
forest and sunny oak openings; then comes the forest primeval, dense
and shaggy and well-nigh impenetrable.
Notwithstanding the importance claimed for Victoria as a commercial
center and the capital of British Columbia, it has a rather young,
loose-jointed appearance. The government buildings and some of the
business blocks on the main streets are well built and imposing in
bulk and architecture.
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