standing in one place all their lives they now, like sight-seeing
tourists, go round the world, meeting many a relative from the old

home forest, some like themselves, wandering free, clad in broad
canvas foliage, others planted head downward in mud, holding wharf

platforms aloft to receive the wares of all nations.
The mills of Puget sound and those of the redwood region of California

are said to be the largest and most effectivelumber-makers in the
world. Tacoma alone claims to have eleven sawmills, and Seattle about

as many; while at many other points on the Sound, where the conditions
are particularly favorable, there are immenselumbering

establishments, as at Ports Blakely, Madison, Discovery, Gamble,
Ludlow, etc., with a capacity all together of over three million feet

a day. Nevertheless, the observer coming up the Sound sees not nor
hears anything of this fierce storm of steel that is devouring the

forests, save perhaps the shriek of some whistle or the columns of
smoke that mark the position of the mills. All else seems as serene

and unscathed as the silent watching mountains.
XIX

People and Towns of Puget Sound
As one strolls in the woods about the logging camps, most of the

lumbermen are found to be interesting people to meet, kind and
obliging and sincere, full of knowledge concerning the bark and

sapwood and heartwood of the trees they cut, and how to fell them
without unnecessary breakage, on ground where they may be most

advantageously sawed into logs and loaded for removal. The work is
hard, and all of the older men have a tired, somewhat haggard

appearance. Their faces are doubtful in color, neither sickly nor
quite healthy-looking, and seamed with deep wrinkles like the bark of

the spruces, but with no trace of anxiety. Their clothing is full of
rosin and never wears out. A little of everything in the woods is

stuck fast to these loggers, and their trousers grow constantly
thicker with age. In all their movements and gestures they are heavy

and deliberate like the trees above them, and they walk with a
swaying, rocking gait altogether free from quick, jerky fussiness, for

chopping and log rolling have quenched all that. They are also slow
of speech, as if partly out of breath, and when one tries to draw them

out on some subject away from logs, all the fresh, leafy, outreaching
branches of the mind seem to have been withered and killed with

fatigue, leaving their lives little more than dry lumber. Many a tree
have these old axemen felled, but, round-shouldered and stooping, they

too are beginning to lean over. Many of their companions are already
beneath the moss, and among those that we see at work some are now

dead at the top (bald), leafless, so to speak, and tottering to their
fall.

A very different man, seen now and then at long intervals but usually
invisible, is the free roamer of the wilderness--hunter, prospector,

explorer, seeking he knows not what. Lithe and sinewy, he walks
erect, making his way with the skill of wild animals, all his senses

in action, watchful and alert, looking keenly at everything in sight,
his imagination well nourished in the wealth of the wilderness, coming

into contact with free nature in a thousand forms, drinking at the
fountains of things, responsive to wild influences, as trees to the

winds. Well he knows the wild animals his neighbors, what fishes are
in the streams, what birds in the forests, and where food may be

found. Hungry at times and weary, he has correspondingenjoyment in
eating and resting, and all the wilderness is home. Some of these

rare, happy rovers die alone among the leaves. Others half settle
down and change in part into farmers; each, making choice of some

fertile spot where the landscape attracts him, builds a small cabin,
where, with few wants to supply from garden or field, he hunts and

farms in turn, going perhaps once a year to the settlements, until
night begins to draw near, and, like forest shadows, thickens into

darkness and his day is done. In these Washington wilds, living
alone, all sorts of men may perchance be found--poets, philosophers,

and even full-blown transcendentalists, though you may go far to find
them.

Indians are seldom to be met with away from the Sound, excepting about
the few outlying hop ranches, to which they resort in great numbers

during the picking season. Nor in your walks in the woods will you be
likely to see many of the wild animals, however far you may go, with

the exception of the Douglas squirrel and the mountain goat. The
squirrel is everywhere, and the goat you can hardly fail to find if

you climb any of the high mountains. The deer, once very abundant,
may still be found on the islands and along the shores of the Sound,

but the large gray wolves render their existence next to impossible at
any considerable distance back in the woods of the mainland, as they

can easily run them down unless they are near enough to the coast to
make their escape by plunging into the water and swimming to the

islands off shore. The elk and perhaps also the moose still exist in
the most remote and inaccessible solitudes of the forest, but their

numbers have been greatly reduced of late, and even the most
experienced hunters have difficulty in finding them. Of bears there

are two species, the black and the large brown, the former by far the
more common of the two. On the shaggy bottom-lands where berries are

plentiful, and along the rivers while salmon are going up to spawn,
the black bear may be found, fat and at home. Many are killed every

year, both for their flesh and skins. The large brown species likes
higher and opener ground. He is a dangerous animal, a near relative

of the famous grizzly, and wise hunters are very fond of letting him
alone.

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. Tacoma occupies near the

head of the Sound a site of great natural beauty. It is the terminus
of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and calls itself the "City of

Destiny." Seattle is also charmingly located about twenty miles down
the Sound from Tacoma, on Elliott Bay. It is the terminus of the

Seattle, Lake Shore, and Eastern Railroad, now in process of
construction, and calls itself the "Queen City of the Sound" and the

"Metropolis of Washington." What the populations of these towns
number I am not able to say with anything like exactness. They are

probably about the same size and they each claim to have about twenty
thousand people; but their figures are so rapidly changing, and so

often mixed up with counts that refer to the future that exact
measurements of either of these places are about as hard to obtain as

measurements of the clouds of a growing storm. Their edges run back
for miles into the woods among the trees and stumps and brush which

hide a good many of the houses and the stakes which mark the lots; so
that, without being as yet very large towns, they seem to fade away

into the distance.
But, though young and loose-jointed, they are fast taking on the forms

and manners of old cities, putting on airs, as some would say, like
boys in haste to be men. They are already towns "with all modern

improvements, first-class in every particular," as is said of hotels.
They have electric motors and lights, paved broadways and boulevards,

substantial business blocks, schools, churches, factories, and
foundries. The lusty, titanic clang of boiler making may be heard

there, and plenty of the languid music of pianos mingling with the
babel noises of commerce carried on in a hundred tongues. The main

streets are crowded with bright, wide-awake lawyers, ministers,
merchants, agents for everything under the sun; ox drivers and loggers

in stiff, gummy overalls; back-slanting dudes, well-tailored and
shiny; and fashions and bonnets of every feather and color bloom gayly

in the noisy throng and advertise London and Paris. Vigorous life and
strife are to be seen everywhere. The spirit of progress is in the

air. Still it is hard to realize how much good work is being done
here of a kind that makes for civilization--the enthusiastic, exulting

energy displayed in the building of new towns, railroads, and mills,
in the opening of mines of coal and iron and the development of

natural resources in general. To many, especially in the Atlantic
States, Washington is hardly known at all. It is regarded as being

yet a far wild west--a dim, nebulous expanse of woods--by those who do
not know that railroads and steamers have brought the country out of