Fuca and Admiralty Inlet, on the king's birthday.

We steamed serenely on, over the clear, still water, to Port Madison,
and then crossed the inlet to Seattle. Thence we proceeded south, and
passed Vashon Island, which has many attractive features.
Quartermaster's Harbor, at the southern end, is a lovely place; and
beautiful shells and fossils are to be found there. Occasionally we came
across a great boom of logs, travelling down to some sawmill; or a
crested cormorant, seated on a fragment of drift, sailed for a while in
our company. We passed on through the "Narrows," and entered Puget Sound
proper, named for Peter Puget, one of Vancouver's lieutenants, who
explored it.

All Vancouver's friends, patrons, and officers--lieutenants, pursers,
pilots, and pilot's mates--are abundantly honored in the names scattered
about this region. He appears, too, to have had a good appreciation of
nature, and praised, in his report, the landscape and the flowers. He
regarded somewhat, in his nomenclature, the natural features of the
country; as in Point Partridge, the eastern headland of Whidby Island;
Hazel Point, on Hood's Canal; Cypress Island, one of the San Juan
group; and Birch Bay, south of the delta of Fraser River.

The Spanish explorers in this region do not seem to have taken much
pains to record and publish the result of their discoveries. Vancouver
held on to his with true English grip, and often supplanted their names
by others of his own choosing.

At night we reached Steilacoom, where there was formerly a military
post. It has an imposing situation, with a fine mountain view; and there
are some excellent military roads leading from it in various directions.

We spent a pleasant day at Olympia, which lies at the southern extremity
of the Sound, and resembles a New-England village, with its maples
shading the streets, and flower-gardens. It has an excellent class of
people, as have the towns upon the Sound in general; and the evidences
of taste and culture, which are continually seen, are one of the
pleasantest characteristics of this new and thinly settled part of the
country.

There are no sawmills on the Straits of Fuca, and the slight
settlements along its shores have scarcely marred their primitive
wildness and beauty. The original forest-line is hardly broken; the deer
still come down to the water's edge; and the face of the country has
apparently not changed since Vancouver, nearly a hundred years ago,
sto