Puget Sound

“ CHAPTER XII. CRUISE ON PUGET SOUND.
Put yourself in my place, reader, for a time—long enough to read this chapter. Think of yourself as young again, if elderly (I will not say old) ; play you have been old and now young again, until you find out about this trip on Puget Sound fifty and more years ago. Then think of Puget Sound in an inquiring mood, as though you knew nothing about it, only a little indefinite hear-say; enough to know there is such a name, but not what manner of place or how large or how small; whether it was one single channel, like a river, or numerous channels ”

“ I have had exceptional opportunities in listening to the thrice-told tales of parents and friends who had crossed the plains, as well as personal recollections of experiences and observation during a residence of over fifty years in the Northwest, acknowledging also the good fortune of having been one of the first white children born on Puget Sound.
Every old pioneer has a store of memories of adventures and narrow escapes, hardships bravely endured, fresh pleasures enjoyed, rude but genial merrymakings, of all the fascinating incidents that made up the wonder-life of long ago. ”

“ No one who has not been there can realize the beauty of Puget's Sound and its surroundings. One hundred miles long, but so full of inlets and straits that its navigable shore line measures one thousand seven hundred and sixty miles, dotted with lovely islets, with gigantic trees almost to the water's edge, with safe anchorage everywhere, and stretching southward, without shoals or bars, from the Straits of Fuca to the capital and centre of Washington Territory, it will be a magnificent entrepôt for the commerce of that grandest ocean of the world, the Pacific. ”

“ The towns of Puget Sound are of a very lively, progressive, and aspiring kind, fortunately with abundance of substance about them to warrant their ambition and make them grow. Like young sapling sequoias, they are sending out their roots far and near for nourishment, counting confidently on longevity and grandeur of stature. Seattle and Tacoma are at present far in the lead of all others in the race for supremacy, and these two are keen, active rivals, to all appearances well matched. ”

“ Puget Sound, with its numerous inlets, is a deep indentation of the Pacific coast, one hundred miles north of the Columbia. It has spacious harbors, securely land-locked, with a surrounding country abounding in timber, with exhaustless beds of coal, rich in agricultural resources, and with numerous mill-streams. Nature has stamped it with her seal, and set it apart to be the New England of the Pacific coast. ”

“ S. knew her, and told me that she was the daughter of the old chief, lately betrothed to a Cape Flattery Indian.
September 20, 1865.
Everywhere about Puget Sound and the adjoining waters are little arms of the sea running up into the land, like the fiords of Northern Europe. Many of them have large sawmills at the head. We have been travelling about, stopping here and there at the little settlements around the mills. We were everywhere most hospitably received. All strangers are welcomed as guests. ”

“ Puget Sound may be described as an arm of the Pacific which, running through the Strait of Fuca, extends for a hundred miles, more or less, southward into the State of Washington. Nothing can exceed the beauty of these deep, calm waters, or their excellence for the purpose of navigation; not a shoal exists either in the strait or the sound that can interfere with the progress of the largest ironclad. A ship’s side would strike the shore before her keel would touch the bottom. ”

“ With their own scenery so glorious ever on show, one would at first thought suppose that these happy Puget Sound people would never go sightseeing from home like less favored mortals. But they do all the same. Some go boating on the Sound or on the lakes and rivers, or with their families make excursions at small cost on the steamers. ”

“ The average traveler has but a faint idea of the wonderful resources of this grand empire. Puget Sound has about 1,800 miles of shore line, and all along this long stretch is one vast and almost unbroken forest of enormous trees. The forests are so vast that, although the saw-mills have been ripping 500,000,000 feet of lumber out of them every year for the past ten years, the spaces made by these inroads seem no more than garden patches. ”

“ With joy we saw fair Puget Sound, White, glistening peaks set all around. At Alki Point our feet we stayed, (The women wept, the children played) . On Chamber’s prairie, Whidby’s isle, Duwamish river, mile on mile Away from these, on lake or bay The lonely settlers blazed the way For civilization’s march and sway.
The mountains, forests, bays and streams, Their grandeur wove into our dreams; Our thoughts grew great and undismayed, We toiled and sang or waiting, prayed. ”

“ He was a pioneer of heart and courage—chivalrous Martin Toftezen. He had drifted around the Horn on a ship, and was tossed into the mouth of Puget Sound, where the [Pg 43] breath of the deep calmed to a gentle zephyr, and the wings of speed flapped in disconsolation. The bark was dashed ashore by the angry billows, caused by the agitating tide, and Toftezen stood in a transport of mingled awe and perturbation. Nature was grand, enchantingly sang the ripples up the fascinating arm, and mad in grandeur reared the snow-capped peaks, flinging smiles of welcome. "Why reject the poetic landscape? ”

“ It is advertised by the Puget City Company as possessing a beautiful situation, besides which no commerce from any of the seven inlets at the head of Puget Sound can reach the lower Sound "without passing before this rising young metropolis." Its "unexcelled deep water facilities and the railroads, Union and Northern Pacific," are among its advantages; and "the song of the saw-mill is heard all day long," building being active.
And here is Des Moines, twelve miles from Tacoma, and about an equal distance from Seattle. ”

“ Puget Sound, which has an average width of two miles, never less than one nor more than four, and a depth never less than eight fathoms, runs 100 miles inland in a southward direction from the Straits of Fuca ”

“ The cities of Puget Sound had a later start than most of the other cities of the Pacific coast, for this portion of the old Oregon territory was for a long time claimed by the English, and during that period was peopled only by Indians and trappers. In 1846 the present boundary was established, and Puget Sound passed into the possession of the United States.
Because of the dense forests, agriculture could not play an important part in the development of the sound region for some time. Lumbering was naturally the leading occupation. ”

“ Its capital was to be on Puget Sound. Here on the Columbia we should be away off to one side, out of touch with the people who would shortly become a great separate commonwealth.
It seemed advisable to look about a little, before making the move; so leaving the little wife and baby in the cabin home one bright morning in May, Oliver and I each made a pack of forty pounds and took the trail, bound for Puget Sound. We camped where night overtook us, sleeping in the open air without shelter or cover other than that afforded by some friendly tree with drooping limbs. ”

“ Directly to the north is the traditional Whulge, or Puget Sound, where the enemies of my people live, who, like my own, are dying out. This mighty land is a giant baby; wait half a century, and she will be a full-grown giantess. ”

“ The most charming days here are days of perfect calm, when all the winds are holding their breath and not a leaf stirs. The surface of the Sound shines like a silver mirror over all its vast extent, reflecting its lovely islands and shores ”

“ One can pass the entire summer on Puget Sound without seeing a bit of rough weather. The largest ocean liners ride here safe from the storms that pound sometimes against the outer coast line; for its waters compose one great harbor, protected by the forests and mountains. ”

“ A student of marine life who has considered the geography of Puget Sound even from afar, does not need to be told that it is a great, richly stocked aquarium of both animals and plants. Almost completely landlocked though sufficiently open at both ends to enable the water to flow through it with each run of tides, beset with innumerable irregular islands, and rock-shored everywhere, a piece of the sea could hardly be more ideally circumstanced for all kinds of organisms adapted to such conditions. ”

“ The route followed by our pioneers was the old emigrant road along the north side of the Platte River, down the Columbia and up the Willamette to Portland, Oregon Territory, which they afterwards left for their ultimate destination, Puget Sound, where they found Nature so bountiful, a climate so moderate and their surroundings so ennobling that I have often heard them say they had no wish to return to dwell in the country from whence they came. ”

“ They are deep, with high banks rising in some places to mountains, and capable of holding all the navies of the world. In a military sense Puget Sound can be easily defended from an enemy coming from the sea, and, though the country is mountainous, it is capable of sustaining a large population in the extensive valleys both east and west of the coast range. I have visited this portion of the United States on three occasions, and am always more and more impressed with its great importance and its probably rapid increase of population and wealth. ”

“ Several ships were loaded at Port Townsend, where the possession of three yoke of oxen gave them a decided advantage.
One ship, the G. W. Kendall, was sent from San Francisco to Puget Sound for ice. It is needless to say the captain did not get a cargo [Pg 439] of that luxury; he reported that water did not freeze in Puget Sound and consoled the owner of the ship by returning with a valuable cargo of piles. ”

“ The Puget Sound cities are destined to become among the chief marts of commerce and of trade upon the Pacific Coast, and they are filled with an energetic, intelligent population of the nation’s best. The climate, too, though mild, is cool enough for the preservation of vigor. Roses bloom all the winter through in Tacoma, they tell me. And the summers are never overhot. The humidity of the atmosphere is the strangest thing to one of us from the East. ”

“ Those resident in the East have little idea of what is to be found in the Puget sound region. How many, for example, know that Tacoma has close on to 75,000 population, that Seattle has 150,000 or thereabouts, that Everett claims nearly 25,000, and that Bellingham, well up toward the boundary line, has about 25,000 people who call it home? Yet all this is true, so rapidly has the coast country grown. Prosperity has not confined itself to one or two places, but has dealt its favors with an impartial hand, and the entire Puget sound country shows this. ”

“ Boas alone has given the proper weight to differences in form. [9] On Puget sound at the present time there are six types of canoes in use, which are distinguished by the Indians not on account of their size but by differences in the shape of the hull. The variation in shape is very wide. On these waters one type of canoe is built for going to sea, and the lines of the hull are designed with the idea of enabling the craft to ride waves without shipping water. Every inch of the model is carefully calculated to keep it “dry.” No better craft for rough water, by the way, has ever been devised. ”

“ A harbor like this, so safe and commodious and deep, upon Puget Sound, should be made to bear a commerce that is but yet in its infancy. I would like to see the prows of some of these great steamship lines entering your ports and carrying the American flag at the masthead. [Cheers.] I believe we have come to the time in our development as a people when we must step forward with bold progress, or we will lose the advantage we have already attained. We have within ourselves the resources, and a market of which the world is envious. ”

“ Mineral Lake and the Mountain. Distance, eighteen miles.
We are lovers of the water as well as the hills, out here in this northwestern corner of the Republic. We spend many days—and should spend more—in cruising among the hidden bays and park-like islands which make Puget Sound the most interesting body of water in America. We grow a bit boastful about the lakes that cluster around our cities. Nowhere better than from sea level, or from the lakes raised but little above it, does one realize the bulk, the dominance, and yet the grace, of this noble peak. ”

“ For many years the only place for one hundred miles or more along the eastern shores of Puget Sound, where the pioneer settlers could be hospitably entertained by white men and get a square meal, was Yesler’s cook house in Seattle, and whether he had money or not, no man ever found the latch string of the cook house drawn in, or went away hungry from the little cabin door ”

“ The sight of deer licking the salt from wet rocks on the beach is not uncommon. The steamer Traveler, first vessel to navigate rivers emptying into the Sound, was wrecked here March 1858. At that time the area was under charter to the Indian Department. The chain of snow sentinels which surround Puget Sound is best observed in mid-Sound. Mount Baker is a dazzling white cone far to the northeast; rising gradually from the ridges of the Cascades is Glacier Peak almost due east from Admiralty Inlet; Mount Rainier towers high in the southeast. ”

“ Checked by the impenetrable forests that covered all the interior of the country bordering on Puget Sound, the native Indians found pleasure and profit in investigating the marsh lands, tules and tide lands and beaver dams, and chasing the festive musk rat and the industrious beaver ”