The Shining Waters Stretch Away Into
The Leafy Wilderness, Now Like The Reaches Of Some Majestic River And
Again Expanding Into Broad Roomy Spaces Like Mountain Lakes, Their
Farther Edges Fading Gradually And Blending With The Pale Blue Of The
Sky.
The wooded shores with an outer fringe of flowering bushes sweep
onward in beautiful curves around bays, and capes,
And jutting
promontories innumerable; while the islands, with soft, waving
outlines, lavishly adorned with spruces and cedars, thicken and enrich
the beauty of the waters; and the white spirit mountains looking down
from the sky keep watch and ward over all, faithful and changeless as
the stars.
All the way from the Strait of Juan de Fuca up to Olympia, a hopeful
town situated at the head of one of the farthest-reaching of the
fingers of the Sound, we are so completely inland and surrounded by
mountains that it is hard to realize that we are sailing on a branch
of the salt sea. We are constantly reminded of Lake Tahoe. There is
the same clearness of the water in calm weather without any trace of
the ocean swell, the same picturesque winding and sculpture of the
shoreline and flowery, leafy luxuriance; only here the trees are
taller and stand much closer together, and the backgrounds are higher
and far more extensive. Here, too, we find greater variety amid the
marvelous wealth of islands and inlets, and also in the changing views
dependent on the weather. As we double cape after cape and round the
uncounted islands, new combinations come to view in endless variety,
sufficient to fill and satisfy the lover of wild beauty through a
whole life.
Oftentimes in the stillest weather, when all the winds sleep and no
sign of storms is felt or seen, silky clouds form and settle over all
the land, leaving in sight only a circle of water with indefinite
bounds like views in mid-ocean; then, the clouds lifting, some islet
will be presented standing alone, with the topes of its trees dipping
out of sight in pearly gray fringes; or, lifting higher, and perhaps
letting in a ray of sunshine through some rift overhead, the whole
island will be set free and brought forward in vivid relief amid the
gloom, a girdle of silver light of dazzling brightness on the water
about its shores, then darkening again and vanishing back into the
general gloom. Thus island after island may be seen, singly or in
groups, coming and going from darkness to light like a scene of
enchantment, until at length the entire cloud ceiling is rolled away,
and the colossal cone of Mount Rainier is seen in spotless white
looking down over the forests from a distance of sixty miles, but so
lofty and so massive and clearly outlined as to impress itself upon us
as being just back of a strip of woods only a mile or two in breadth.
For the tourist sailing to Puget Sound from San Francisco there is but
little that is at all striking in the scenery within reach by the way
until the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca is reached.
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