The Streets
Are Well Laid Out And Well Tended, And The Houses, With Their
Luxuriant Gardens About Them, Have An Air Of Taste And Refinement
Seldom Found In Towns Set On The Edge Of A Wild Forest.
The people
seem to have come here to make true homes, attracted by the beauty and
fresh breezy healthfulness of the place as well as by business
advantages, trusting to natural growth and advancement instead of
restless "booming" methods.
They perhaps have caught some of the
spirit of calm moderation and enjoyment from their English neighbors
across the water. Of late, however, this sober tranquillity has begun
to give way, some whiffs from the whirlwind of real estate speculation
up the Sound having at length touched the town and ruffled the surface
of its calmness.
A few miles up the bay is Fort Townsend, which makes a pretty picture
with the green woods rising back of it and the calm water in front.
Across the mouth of the Sound lies the long, narrow Whidbey Island,
named by Vancouver for one of his lieutenants. It is about thirty
miles in length, and is remarkable in this region of crowded forests
and mountains as being comparatively open and low. The soil is good
and easily worked, and a considerable portion of the island has been
under cultivation for many years. Fertile fields, open, parklike
groves of oak, and thick masses of evergreens succeed one another in
charming combinations to make this "the garden spot of the Territory."
Leaving Port Townsend for Seattle and Tacoma, we enter the Sound and
sail down into the heart of the green, aspiring forests, and find,
look where we may, beauty ever changing, in lavish profusion. Puget
Sound, "the Mediterranean of America" as it is sometimes called, is in
many respects one of the most remarkable bodies of water in the world.
Vancouver, who came here nearly a hundred years ago and made a careful
survey of it, named the larger northern portion of it "Admiralty
Inlet" and one of the long, narrow branches "Hood's Canal'" applying
the name "Puget Sound" only to the comparatively small southern
portion. The latter name, however, is now applied generally to the
entire inlet, and is commonly shortened by the people hereabouts to
"The Sound." The natural wealth and commercial advantages of the
Sound region were quickly recognized, and the cause of the activity
prevailing here is not far to seek. Vancouver, long before
civilization touched these shores, spoke of it in terms of unstinted
praise. He was sent out by the British government with the principal
object in view of "acquiring accurate knowledge as to the nature and
extent of any water communication which may tend in any considerable
degree to facilitate an intercourse for the purposes of commerce
between the northwest coast and the country on the opposite side of
the continent," vague traditions having long been current concerning a
strait supposed to unite the two oceans. Vancouver reported that he
found the coast from San Francisco to Oregon and beyond to present a
nearly straight solid barrier to the sea, without openings, and we may
well guess the joy of the old navigator on the discovery of these
waters after so long and barren a search to the southward.
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