velopment of new industries and the extension of others. Mr. Hill's road, the Great Northern, is to be pushed through the mountains in what is described as a scenic wonderland." It is thought that Fairhaven will be its terminus; but whether that prove true or not, a feeder all along the sound, at right angles to the main road, will tap all the country between the Cascades and the great harbor.

And what of the land which these railroads will open up? What of it, apart from its minerals and timber? It gives a name to the State-it is evergreen. Roses, nasturtiums, and chrysanthemums may be seen blooming in the gardens the year around. The ocean, and especially the Japan current, keep the climate equable. The mercury seldom rises above 90° in the summer, and to see it at zero in the winter is to see an extraordinary thing. The rains produce semi-tropical abundance of vegetation. Agriculture cuts a small figure yet, but where it is carried on, in the valleys and reclaimed marshes, oats grow higher than a man's head, and so does timothy. Oats will run from 60 to 100 bushels to the acre. Men have been known to make more than $800 from an acre of strawberries. If good land is chosen, and a market is handy, five acres will support a family well. Raspberries, currants, gooseberries, orchard fruits, all do well. There are some who think the sound country may yet supply the whole United States with prunes, so fine and abundant are those that are but just beginning to be grown there. Tobacco does well; and, by-theway, it is being grown and made into cigars in the Yakima country, in East Washington. Wherever the big timber is cleared and many of the farms are abandoned logging camps-there is found the richest soil imaginable. It raises hay, potatoes, oats, barley, wheat, hops, cherries, apples, berries, and all which that list implies. It is a natural grazing land. The grass is forever green, and cattle and sheep keep "hog-fat all the year."

East of the sound the land that can be farmed is practically all taken, but west of the sound is the great Olympic Peninsula, until lately almost uninhabited, and even now but little known. It has not been surveyed. Out of the heart of it rise the eternally snow-clad Olympic Mountains. On their sides roam the elk,

black bear, cougar, and other more or less noble beasts. Over the earth is a mass of timber, and at its feet a jungle. Fir, spruce, and white cedar are in the woods, and in the many waters wild-fowl abound. Frost is said not to know the country. On the Pacific coast side are many valleys, and some small prairies. In this absolutely new country the homesteaders are appearing in such numbers that it is said that between 700 and 800 settlers went in there last year to pre-empt the lands along the streams and on the prairies. There, entirely cut off from the world, they will wait until the lands are surveyed, and they can file their claims. They believe that a railroad from Gray's Harbor or Shoalwater Bay to the strait of Juan de Fuca will soon be built past all their holdings. It is likely, for, in addition to the timber, that is the best dairy country in the State. As one citizen put it, "They have more rain than we on the east of the sound, but the presence of water has never yet been considered an objection in the dairy trade.”

A question which agitates the minds of many persons in western Washington is whether it is possible for both Seattle and Tacoma-lying so near one another as they do-to become great cities; and if not, which will eventually become the chief and gigantic seaport whose development is so confidently looked for. I wish I could say. Indeed, since everywhere that I travel I find these rivalries between neighboring cities (Bismarck and Mandan, Rapid City and Deadwood, Helena and Butte, and so on through the list, which rightly begins with St. Paul and Minneapolis), I find myself constantly wishing that I could postpone the publication of these numbers of HARPER'S MAGAZINE for a trifling term of ten or a dozen years, so as to avoid this series of conundrums. In this case, in western Washington, there is a little speck upon the horizon. It calls to mind the small black cloud that shows itself in all wellregulated nautical tales as the herald of frightful disaster. It may be a hurricane or only a teacupful of wind. It is called South Bend, and it now pretends to threaten great mischief to Seattle, Tacoma, and Fairhaven, along with all the other points on Puget Sound.

It is on the Pacific coast, on the front of the Olympia peninsula, only four hours. from Portland by rail, and very much

nearer to Asia, Nicaragua, and Europe by water than the sound ports. South Bend is a yearling, and where it rubs its juvenile eyes the map shows only the words Shoalwater Bay, but that, being a libellous name, is now changed to Willapa Harbor. It is 57 miles north of Astoria, and is said to be a harbor of the first grade, variously credited with offering 29 to 32 feet of water at its bar. It is the only generally useful harbor between the Columbia River and the strait of Juan de Fuca. South Bend is about to be connected with the Northern Pacific Railroad system. In the region tributary to it is an extraordinary wealth of timber and of agricultural lands. The founders of the town insist that if there is to be an export trade in Washington products, no other port in the State can compete with it, since vessels from Puget Sound ports must double the Olympia peninsula before they reach the point at which South Bend shipments begin. South Bend is several hundreds of miles nearer to San Francisco, Nicaragua, and Cape Horn than any Puget Sound port. But it is too early to say more. The best possession of the new little seaport thus far is that essence which was deserted by all its companions in Pandora's box.

With a mention of those considerable islands in the Northwest which are, from a military point of view, the key to the British possessions in the North, we must end this view of the forty-second State in the Union. Of the islands, be it known that they are thinly wooded, but rich for agriculture. Sheep are raised there in great numbers, and more wool than they grow is shipped to the mainland, smuggled over from Vancouver Island. Smuggling wool, opium, and Chinamen are profitable callings up in the extreme north western corner of our country. San Juan Island is the seat of a great lime deposit that is of considerable value, and is already marketed all along the coast.

There is a peculiar feature of the affairs of Washington upon which I have not dwelt. The critics of the State think it an important element, but I cannot see that it cuts any figure in the future of the great commonwealth. It seems to some critics as if several regiments of our nomads, who keep moving West in the belief that they "must succeed there because they failed in the East," are gathered in this last of the States, principally at its

jumping-off edge, in the cities on Puget Sound. Town-site gambling is what attracted these persons. The booming of new towns, that vice which swept the Northwest like an epidemic, ran all along the Pacific coast. The snap of the whip took place at its end in southern California, but the whole of what they up in Washington call "the sound country," felt the strain and the final catastrophe in some degree.

"You could not expect us to develop our soil or our mines," said a leading spirit in one city, "when we could buy a town lot on one day, and four days afterward could sell it for fifty dollars more a front foot than we gave for it." And that is true. Wiser behavior was not to be expected where, after all, a great many persons went at first rather to make money than to establish homes and found families. The fever for town-lot gambling has abated, and we can look back on it as an episode. It must have raged marvellously, for before it ended some cities were far overbuilt. This was not peculiar to Washington; it was the case from Vancouver, in British Columbia, all the way down to southern California. A cruel but useful reaction came, and now one hears little more about the matter. The talk now is of smelteries and furnaces, of the possibilities of the trade with Asia, of the blessed prospects of new railroads from the East.

I rode up to Fairhaven, near the head of the sound-a very likely town, now that it too has lived down the epidemicand I heard of only one boom in progress; that was in the "city" of Everett, which was pluming itself upon the hope that a certain boating company was to put up works there for the building of vessels to carry petroleum to the Orient or somewhere; but I passed many dead boom towns, extinct volcanoes, so to speak, and they were often wonderful to look at. They were, for the most part, mere acres of stumps, clearings hastily made in the forest, with suggestions of streets and avenues laid out at right angles among the stumps, and dotted at long and irregular intervals with cabins, frame saloons, and perhaps a brick building or two-all rendering the scene the more confused and unkempt.

We have seen something of the scramble for public lands in the other States; the companion picture in Washington

was this mania for town sites-or rather for city sites, since a settlement in Washington is either a city or it is nothing at all. Some of the greatest corporations in the State-the railroads--were not above setting the example. Sometimes it was a railroad which, as a corporation, essayed to "boom" a tract of land on its route a terminal station, a divisional point, or a junction. Sometimes one of these corporations would strain not only to "boom" a city of its own creation, but to crush or cripple a near-by town which had grown up without leave.

It is as interesting a chapter as any in our new history, that which tells of how the planning and sale of new towns goes on in these new States; I now refer to what may be called the ordinary and customary method, such as obtained before the thing became a craze, and such as will obtain as long as there are virgin districts for men to rush in upon. Suppose a number of fine "leads " of ore are struck in any new neighborhood, the town-site man is soon on the ground. Something akin to nature used to build towns in the older States, wherever towns were needed, but in the new North west the speculator is up earlier than nature. Men have to nudge the slow old dame along out there. They note where the new mining prospects are, and then they look up the most likely town site. Often its natural position is self-evident; it is at the head of the valley below the mountains, or it is where two streams join. The capitalist "locates" the spot, and goes home for friends, relatives, and employés to claim homestead or timber lands where he wants the town to be. They make their claims. He sets up a store and post-office; a hotel also, if he has the means. He employs some of the squatters; the others go away, and only come back to "prove up." He pays them a hundred dollars each or two hundred dollars for their trouble, and they turn over their land to him. In one case that I know of two such land-grabbers thought better of their opportunity, and determined to hold on to the land they had pre-empted. That is considered the next worse thing to horse-stealing out West. Fancy, if you can, how society could exist were such men common! The theory and policy are to this effect, that a man shall accept for such services what sum will repay him for the trouble he has been put to, without computing the value

of his services or of his claim to the land baron who employs him.

rum.

But suppose that all works smoothly, as it usually does. The capitalist establishes his store, has one of his clerks empowered as recorder and notary, and opens a hotel. The miners come the second year to do that "improvement-work" which the law requires that they shall perform each year in order to keep their titles to their claims. They need giant - powder for blasting; they need picks and shovels and barrows; they need food, tobacco, and They gravitate to the only place at which these commodities are obtainable the new town site. A blacksmith sets up a shop, perhaps a saddle-maker comes, several saloon-keepers equip their establishments, a few painted women order shanties put up, and a "hurdy-gurdy" (dance-house) or variety show is started. The transition from wilderness to town is rapid and wonderful. The founder asks all he can get for his lots, and coins money like a mint. His customers stop at the hotel and gamble with the building lots they have bought. The revised maps contain the name of another city, usually called "So-and-so City," or "Such-andsuch City," in order that there shall be no mistake about its really being a city.

When it is carried to an excess, townlot and town-site gambling hinder the development of a region and bring together a great many unscrupulous and irresponsible men; but in the State of Washington, in the presence of the vast and varied resources of the soil, the mountains, and the waters, the epidemic that brought communal tragedy elsewhere can here be called only an incident.

So much, then, for Washington. It would seem to share with all the others many of their greatest resources, as if it were the essence and epitome of them all. If it is not "the last which shall be first," it is the one in which we see the summing up of all the rest. A sweeping glance. over it, in the mind's eye of one who knows it well, is like the transformation scene at the end of a Christmas pantomime, wherein we see gloriously some hint of all that went before-of all the climates, forests, metals, fruits, cereals, and vegetables of our entire country; of the men of all the world, the fishes cf both oceans. But the scenes that are hurried along the grooves were never hung before a paint bridge. They are real.