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Rh. It is on this ground that this town has so loudly asserted its claim to become the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad—a grade of eighty feet to the mile being all that is required to construct the road through the Cascades from this point east. A wagon-road is now open, via this pass, to the plains on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains, and the Yakima Valley. This is the route by which cattle and sheep are driven from the great pastures of Eastern Washington to the markets of the Sound and Vancouver's Island.

Seattle is built upon the face of rather a steep slope; is pleasant and cheerful-looking, and contains about twelve hundred inhabitants. The Territorial University is located here, and is a fine structure—so situated that it can be seen for a long distance up and down the Sound. Seattle has a great extent of wharfage, which impresses us with the conviction of its business capacities. And, indeed, the harbor swarms with every description of water-craft, from the handsome steamer Olympia and the tall three-masted lumber ships, to the little, wheezy tug and graceful "plunger."

On the opposite side of the Sound are Ports Blakely and Freeport; the one a high, round promontory, and the other a long, low neck of land, projecting into the Sound so as to form a small bay with the first. Across the Sound, and nearly abreast of Seattle, is Port Madison, distant twelve miles, also situated on an inlet, so narrow as to compel our steamer to back out—there being no room for "rounding out." All these ports, like Seattle, are great lumbering establishments, and have each a village of from one to three hundred people depending on the mills for employment. Probably one-half the lumbering business of the Sound concentrates within twenty-five or thirty miles of Seattle.