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.
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