truly magnificent. Mount Baker is one of that wonderful
series of old volcanoes that once flamed along the summits of the
Sierras and Cascades from Lassen to Mount St. Elias. Its fires are
sleeping now, and it is loaded with glaciers, streams of ice having
taken the place of streams of glowing lava. Vancouver Island presents a
charming variety of hill and dale, open sunny spaces and sweeps of dark
forest rising in swell beyond swell to the high land in the distance.

But the Olympic Mountains most of all command attention, seen tellingly
near and clear in all their glory, rising from the water's edge into the
sky to a height of six or eight thousand feet. They bound the strait on
the south side throughout its whole extent, forming a massive sustained
wall, flowery and bushy at the base, a zigzag of snowy peaks along
the top, which have ragged-edged fields of ice and snow beneath them,
enclosed in wide amphitheaters opening to the waters of the strait
through spacious forest-filled valleys enlivened with fine, dashing
streams. These valleys mark the courses of the Olympic glaciers at the
period of their greatest extension, when they poured their tribute into
that portion of the great northern ice sheet that overswept the south
end of Vancouver Island and filled the strait with flowing ice as it is
now filled with ocean water.

The steamers of the Sound usually stop at Esquimalt on their way up,
thus affording tourists an opportunity to visit the interesting town of
Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. The Victoria harbor is too
narrow and difficult of access for the larger class of ships; therefore
a landing has to be made at Esquimalt. The distance, however, is only
about three miles, and the way is delightful, winding on through a
charming forest of Douglas spruce, with here and there groves of oak
and madrone, and a rich undergrowth of hazel, dogwood, willow, alder,
spiraea, rubus, huckleberry, and wild rose. Pretty cottages occur
at intervals along the road, covered with honeysuckle, and many an
upswelling rock, freshly glaciated and furred with yellow mosses and
lichen, telling interesting stories of the icy past.

Victoria is a quiet, handsome, breezy town, beautifully located on
finely modulated ground at the mouth of the Canal de Haro, with charming
views in front, of islands and mountains and far-reaching waters, ever
changing in the shifting lights and shades of the clouds and sunshine.
In the backgrou