ut such openings are infrequent, for few settlers have yet pushed
far into the forests of the Skagit valley. To make a clearing of
any size, tear out the stumps, and prepare the land for cultivation,
requires many years of hard labor.

How silently and yet with what momentum the river sweeps on! The
water is clear in summer, but in winter it must be very muddy,
for the Skagit is building one of the largest deltas upon Puget
Sound.

[Illustration: FIG. 56.--SKAGIT RIVER IN ITS MIDDLE COURSE]

At Marble Mountain the traveller may, if he wishes, leave his horses,
hire an Indian canoe, and float down the river to the nearest railroad
station. The ride in the cedar canoe, with an Indian at the stern
carefully guiding it past snags and boulders, is one of the pleasantest
portions of the trip. The winding river is followed for nearly fifty
miles. There is mile after mile of silent forest, the solitude
broken only here and there by camps of Indians who are spending
the summer by the river, fishing and picking huckleberries. Now
and then a call comes from one of these camps, and in spite of the
danger of being swamped by the swift current, the canoe is turned
toward the shore, but the stop is only for a moment.

At last a new railroad grade comes in sight, with gangs of men at
work. The valley of the Skagit contains one of the finest bodies
of timber in Washington, and the railroad is being built for the
purpose of reaching this timber. There is little other inducement
for the building of a railroad; for beside a few summer visitors,
the only inhabitants are the scattered prospectors and miners.

We enter the train at a little town in the woods and are soon speeding
down the valley toward the mouth of the river. Clearings appear in
the forest, and at last the view opens out over extensive meadows
which stretch away, almost as level as a floor, to the waters of
the sound. Here and there the meadows are broken by forest trees
or irregular groups of farm buildings. Rich lands form the delta
of the Skagit River. The value of these natural meadows was quickly
recognized by the early settlers, for not only was the land exceedingly
fertile, but it did not have to be cleared in order to be transformed
into productive grain-fields.

For centuries, ever since the melting of the great glaciers which
once descended the Cascade Range and crept down the sound, the
river has been building this delta. It grew rapidly, for immense
accumu