Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/289

 he

north, showing their sources to be in the Olympic Eange. There are many lesser streams on the same side, and also many coming from highlands south of the mouth of the Chehalis. Above Montesano the Chehalis receives the Satsop from the Olympics, and Black Eiver from the Cascades. The aggregate length of streams available for logging purposes is two thousand miles. Such figures stagger comprehension, standing on the shore of this broad, bright, but lonely bay, its townlets crowded for room in the edge of those "continuous woods" which are their dependence and their glory.

As to agriculture, its day has hardly begun. The lands of the Chehalis raise cereal and root crops, fruit, and hops equally well. There is a ready market in the towns for everything produced. The country near the coast, on account of its moist and cool climate, is an excellent one for grasses and dairying. The valleys of the streams named above are rich and fertile. In the Humptulips are about thirty townships of excellent land, little of which is occupied. Other valleys are almost unexplored.

The industries of the county are not yet shaped, if we except lumbering, ship-building, and fish-canning. The only one I heard spoken as about to be commenced was brickmaking, there being a quality of clay near the city of Gray's Harbor which it was believed would make a brick which could be vitrified, and which was desired for the construction of a grand hotel. I also heard it mentioned that the hemlock growing so abundantly near the coast offered inducements for tanneries to be located, in this region.

There are banks of cod and halibut off the coast for deepsea fishing; salmon ("Columbia Eiver turkey," I have heard it called) in abundance in the harbor and rivers tributary, and trout in the mountain-streams. There are in the harbor porgies, tom-cods, rock-trout, flounders, herring, smelt, sardines, and salmon-trout, while the tide-flats abound in clams and softshell crabs.

Some idea of the commerce of the lower Chehalis Yalley may be gathered from the fact that for one year, ending July 1, 1890, there was imported seventy thousand tons of merchandise. This trade was carried on with San Francisco and Portland. It remains to be seen what effect the completion of rail