g Ohop Valley.]

II.

THE NATIONAL PARK, ITS ROADS AND ITS NEEDS.

There are plenty of higher mountains, but it is the decided
isolation--the absolute standing alone in full majesty of its own
mightiness--that forms the attraction of Rainier. * * * It is no
squatting giant, perched on the shoulders of other mountains.
From Puget Sound, it is a sight for the gods, and one feels in
the presence of the gods.--_Paul Fountain: "The Seven Eaglets of
the West"_ (London, 1905).

The first explorers to climb the Mountain, forty years ago, were
compelled to make their way from Puget Sound through the dense growths
of one of the world's greatest forests, over lofty ridges and deep
canyons, and across perilous glacial torrents. The hardships of a
journey to the timber line were more formidable than the difficulties
encountered above it.

[Illustration: Cowlitz Chimneys, seen from basin below Frying-Pan
Glacier.]

Even from the East the first railroad to the Coast had just reached
San Francisco. Thence the traveler came north to the Sound by boat.
The now busy cities of Seattle and Tacoma were, one, an ambitious
village of 1,107 inhabitants; the other, a sawmill, with seventy
persons living around it. They were frontier settlements, outposts of
{p.044} civilization; but civilization paid little attention to them
and their great Mountain, until the railways, some years later, began
to connect them with the big world of people and markets beyond the
Rockies.

[Illustration: On the way out from Tacoma, over the partly wooded
prairie, the automobilist sees many scenes like this old road near
Spanaway Lake.]

How different the case to-day! Six transcontinental railroads now
deliver their trains in the Puget Sound cities. These are: The
Northern Pacific, which was the first trunk line to reach the Sound;
the Great Northern; the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; the Chicago,
Milwaukee & Puget Sound; the Oregon-Washington (Union Pacific), and
the Canadian Pacific. A seventh, the North Coast, is planned.

[Illustration {p.046}: View Northward from top of Pinnacle Peak in
the Tatoosh range to Paradise Valley, Nisqually Glacier and Gibraltar
Rock, eight miles away.]

[Illustration {p.047}: Looking Northeast from slope of Pinnacle Peak,
across Paradise, Stevens, Cowlitz and Frying Pan Glaciers. These two
views form virtually a panorama.]

Arriving in Seattle or Tacoma, the traveler has his