d something unsurpassed. A ride over these
placid waters, in and out, around rocky headlands, among woody mountains,
along beautiful beaches and graceful tongues of velvety meadows--all
'neath the shadows of towering, snow-clad peaks, is a delight worth days
of travel to experience. It enraptures the artist and enthuses even
ordinarily prosy folks. There is no single feature wanting to make of
such places as Tacoma, Seattle, and Port Townsend, the most delightful
and agreeable watering places in the world. Surrounded by magnificent and
picturesque scenery, with beautiful drives and lovely bays for yachting
purposes, with splendid fishing and sport of every description to be had,
with a climate that would charm a misanthrope, why should they not become
the favorite resorts on the Great West Coast? These facts led to the
building of the magnificent Hotel Tacoma, at a cost of a quarter of a
million dollars. Other such caravansaries will follow, and in time Puget
Sound will be famous the world over for its incomparable attractions for
the health and pleasure seeker.

The average traveler has but a faint idea of the wonderful resources of
this grand empire. Puget Sound has about 1,800 miles of shore line, and
all along this long stretch is one vast and almost unbroken forest of
enormous trees. The forests are so vast that, although the saw-mills have
been ripping 500,000,000 feet of lumber out of them every year for the
past ten years, the spaces made by these inroads seem no more than garden
patches. An official estimate places the amount of standing timber in that
area at 500,000,000,000 feet, or a thousand years' supply, even at the
enormous rate the timber is now being felled and sawed.

In the vicinity of Olympia, the capital of Washington, are a number of
popular resorts for sportsmen and campers--beautiful lakes filled with
voracious trout, and streams alive with the speckled mountain beauties.
The forests abound in bear and deer, while grouse, pheasants, quail, and
water-fowl afford fine sport to the hunter of small game.

THE NEW EMPIRE OF EASTERN WASHINGTON.

The recent extensions of the Union Pacific System have aided in the most
important way the development of the richest and most fertile lands of
Eastern Washington. The great plains of the Upper Columbia, stretching
from the river away to the far north, are incomparably rich, the soil of
great depth and wondrous fertility, rainless harvests, and a luxuriance