ck from side to side, as if enjoying the scenery. We never see more
than two of them together, and they generally separate soon.

X.

Puget Sound and Adjacent Waters.--Its Early Explorers.--Towns,
Harbors, and Channels.--Vancouver's Nomenclature.--Juan de
Fuca.--Mount Baker.--Chinese "Wing."--Ancient Indian Women.--Pink
Flowering Currant and Humming-Birds.--"Ah Sing."

PORT TOWNSEND, September 10, 1869.

We have been spending a day or two in travelling about the Sound by
steamer, touching at the various mill-towns and other ports, where the
boat calls, to receive and deliver the mails, or for other business.
Every time we pass over these waters, we admire anew their extent and
beauty, and their attractive surroundings, their lovely bays and
far-reaching inlets, their bold promontories and lofty shores, their
setting in the evergreen forest, and the great mountains in the
distance, standing guard on either side.

The early explorers who visited this part of the country evidently had a
high appreciation of it, as their accounts of it show. Vancouver, who
came in 1792, expressed so much admiration of these waters and their
surroundings, that his statements were received with hesitation, and it
was supposed that his enthusiasm as an explorer had led him to
exaggeration. But Wilkes, who followed him many years afterwards,
confirmed all that he had said, and, in his narrative, writes as follows
regarding this great inland sea:--

"Nothing can exceed the beauty of these waters, and their safety.
Not a shoal exists within the Straits of San Juan de Fuca,
Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, or Hood's Canal, that can in any way
interrupt their navigation by a seventy-four-gun ship. I venture
nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses
waters equal to these."

In another account Wilkes writes: "One of the most noble estuaries
in the world; without a danger of any kind to impede navigation;
with a surrounding country capable of affording all kinds of
supplies, harbors without obstruction at any season of the year,
and a climate unsurpassed in salubrity."

More recently the United States Coast Survey Report of 1858 declares,
that, "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."