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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1889)
I'M ,L milky aara "r, of thaW-of the g!Mi.W i,h Hi. C-.lh.Jie M.jWy. lh M-gof ano.and th,.r!,.,:,T,,(Hei.orDDCal !, Int on purges similar to his own. And now, after the Up "f s ceDtury,' " culir-ly in order to remark that it ii a matter of con gratuMion that Captain Vancouver did not have among hi. " lip" on W " mwlprD 1 , gaW, a fint rlata .tail man of a fir.t class modern new.pat.cr, a man familiar with the character and value of iln, fnU, mines, fisheries and other foundation, and l-ulwarki of mighty states. Does anjbily at thi. day supi" that if England bad known what mighty "elements of empire" lay'plas tie and warm," in tho shadows of Baker and lUinier and 11.x! and Adam, and Jefferson, that the bound nry lino .f her es.iona on this coast would have een .ettlM by treaty? Or that the good oflices of tho wio and ju.t old Kainer Wilholm, as peaceful ar bitrator, would have Wen preferred to the dread ar bitramrnt of the .word and cannon? I think not. The lot, incalculable in valae, rankles in tho bosoms (f our trans-Atlantic rou.ini yet Ibs than ten )tntt ag I heard a very intelligent Englishman re rn.tk : " Ye., Oregon i. a great country; it will be a great .tate, and to will Washington Territory, but they .hould have Immu a British province." JuBt so; but it i. a fr cry between "is" and "should have Ihtd," or "might have liecn." My sometimo British interlocutor ha., sinro he expressed his regrets, taken the oath of allegiance to the .tars and stripes, and, it it to I presumed, i. sati.fied with things as they are. Vancouver also named Admiralty iulet, the main arm of the great inland tea known generally as Puget ound, though originally the Utter title was applied nnly to that rtion of the wound between Tacoraa and Oljmpia. Two years In-fore, Lieutenant Qaimpcr, after whom the jx-ninsula on which Tort Towosend is situated was named, ripWnl tho Htraits of Fnca in a HpanUh vrwl and otwrml the entrance to Admiral ty inlet, which he christened Eno. nada de Caamafio (Caaa.fi. inlet), in honor of a Mlow officer of the Hnih navy, but ho did not enter and explore it Vancouver anchor! hit ,,., j port D;(Covory bay, and sj.ent four weeks in exploring the entire ound region in Ut. Ho then mm WU(kt we alj bow to t a fct, Uut the entrance to Admiralty in. let it the gateway to the entire sound region, that any bound to any vrt, either on the inlet, sound or Houl t canal, must Jam through tho .traits at Tort Towotrnd, where the government, early recognizi JUci.mmand.ng potion, ublihed the port of en THE WEST SHORE. try for that region as one of its first official acts when the jurisdiction of the United States was extended 0Mount Baker is located in the northern part of the western division of what is soon to be the great state of Washington, within a few miles of the forty-ninth parallel of latitude, the boundary line between the British possessions and the United States. From its unfailing reservoir are developed the innumerable streams which find their outlet in that vast inland sea generally known as Puget sound, through the bkagit river, flowing southwesterly to its point of debouch ment at La Conner, and the Nooksack river flowing about due west into the sound at Lummi bay, one of the broad and beautiful estuaries which diversify and make splendid the glorious northwest. Ice and frost and rain bring their cosmic forces to play npon the granites and basalts and metamorphio rocks of that vastt region of arctio solitude and desolation, and tbeBe streams and rivers bear the silt, nature's ex haustless fertilizer, the result of the processes of cen turies of nature's secret chemistry, to bench land, ta ble land, meadow land and tide land, which become at once the servants and ministers of man's need and luxury. Viewed from this merely physical and mate rialistic standpoint, Mount Baker must, in the esti mation of the intelligent mind, be regarded as a valu ble factor in the prosperity of that immense region which comes within the immediate scope of its be nign influences. In a less practical age it would take its place as a new Olympus or Mount Ida. Let that pass. Mount Baker deserves notice as something more than the fountain head of fertilizing and commerce bearing streams. It is the central point of many mag nificent panoramas, in which all that is grand and beautiful in earth, sky and water are the foregrounds, the middle distances and the vanishing points, in which the atmosphere, with a skill which no living artist can hope to emulate, lays here a shadow, drops there a dash of purple or e broad space of rose-hued splendor, and flings on crag or flanking buttress a high light which brings the whole majestic picture into full relief. Seen from some lofty eminence, even a hundred miles away, the rugged outlines of its fast rotundity are " tempered all and softened into beauty." Viewed from the bluffs or beach at Port Townsend, at a time when the atmospherio conditions are favor able, tho mountain and its surroundings present scene of desolation, of upheaval and titanic fracture and seismic convulsions, which, in the nature of things, must have been in but small degree less terrible than those which but a few years ago made Krakatoa the swne of an event at which memory shudders and the full horror of which the imagination fails to grasp-