Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/25

Rh eager landscape lover of the present day, when scenery is in fashion. He says in one place, "To describe the beauties of this region will, on some future occasion, be a very greatful task for the pen of a skilled panegyrist. The serenity of the climate, the immeasurable pleasing landscapes and the abundant fertility that unassisted nature puts forth, require only to be enriched by the industry of man, with villages,

mansions, cottages and other buildings to render it the most lovely country that can be imagined. The labor of the inhabitants would be amply rewarded in the bounties which nature seems ready to bestow on cultivation." "A picture so pleasing could not fail to call to our remembrance certain delightful and beloved situations in old England." So warm, indeed, were the praises he sung that his statements were received in England with a good deal of hesitation. But they were amply corroborated by Wilkes and others who followed many years later. "Nothing," says Wilkes, "can exceed the beauty of these waters and their safety. Not a shoal exists in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, or Hood's Canal, that can in any way interrupt their navigation by a 74-gun ship. I venture nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses waters like these." And again, quoting from the United States coast survey, "For depth of water, boldness of approaches, freedom from hidden dangers and the immeasurable sea of gigantic timber coming down to the very shores, these waters are unsurpassed, unapproachable."

The Sound region has a fine, fresh, clean climate, well washed both winter and summer with copious rains and swept with winds and clouds that come