Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/307



other points by rail, is becoming a popular resort, owing to its fine situation and the delightful drives in its vicinity.

About five miles below Steilacoom the steamer enters The Narrows," a passage six miles long and one mile wide, through which the water runs with great force at the ebb and flow of the tide. This strait is the only passage between Puget Sound proper and Admiralty Inlet. Along it the government has several reservations for defensive or other purposes. The steamer route down the Sound is another narrow water-way directly north of the Narrows, named by Vancouver Colvo's Passage; but to reach Tacoma we turn Point Defiance on our right, leaving Gig Harbor on our left, and take a southeast course into Commencement Bay, at the south end of Admiralty Inlet, which is separated from Colvo's Passage by Vashon Island for about twelve miles. The bay is five or six miles long by about two and a half wide, and is well protected by Vashon Island. We steam along past old Tacoma, a milling town, and, finding some friends, are carried off to make acquaintance with the City of Destiny at our leisure.

To begin at the beginning, the old town of Tacoma was founded by Morton M. McCarver, a Kentuckian, an immigrant of 1843 to Oregon, from Iowa, where he laid out the town of Burlington, but, being of a restless and adventurous turn of mind, migrated to the Pacific Coast, where he figured in Oregon, and afterwards in California, legislation. In 1868 he went to Puget Sound with the intention of locating, in his own opinion, the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. He made a good guess, as it subsequently proved. The land which he, with two associates, purchased belonged to Job Carr. Here he erected a residence, and induced Hanson and Ackerson to locate a sawmill on the point where the old town stands. When the railroad company in 1873 came looking for their terminus, he was not in their way; he gave them two hundred or three hundred acres, and helped them to acquire several thousand more. But they put their terminus where Tacoma City now stands, and he died two years later. If he could have lived until now the disappointment would have been softened to him, for the old and new tow T ns are practically one.

I find a good deal said about the name Tacoma, which is