uget Sound and Lakes Washington and Union added unusual features to
the landscape setting.

A detour of a day to Tacoma showed another beautifully located city high
above Puget Sound, which, having once been very prosperous, passed
through a reactionary stage, but is again alert and vigorous. Tacoma has
also fine buildings and attractive homes, and a great future lies before
it.

The railway journey from Seattle to Bellingham--about one hundred
miles--is interesting, for until we reach Everett we have Puget Sound
to our left and forests to our right, only broken at a few points by
small towns. Then we lose sight of the Sound until within a few miles of
Bellingham. The next reach of intervening waterway is termed Bellingham
Bay, and it furnishes a setting for a city situated both on hills and
lowland, withal very picturesque, Mt. Baker near in view and the Selkirk
range dimly visible. Bellingham is really a combination of four towns,
Whatcom, Fair Haven, Sea Home, and South Bellingham; it is a city of
about thirty-seven thousand inhabitants. The unifying process is going
on, and in a few years its separate identity will be forgotten, for with
its large interests--lumber and the salmon fisheries (here are located
the most important establishments in the world for the canning of
salmon)--Bellingham has a future before it, and my sojourn there is
fraught with many pleasant recollections of courtesies received, aside
from the good cheer of my daughter's home.

The State of Washington, with its fine climate, great forests, and
fertile soil, supplemented by natural beauty of landscape, proved a
revelation to me.

My way eastward lay over the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Three years
previous I had passed days in the Canadian Rockies; so Vancouver,
Glacier, Field, Laggan, and Banff recalled familiar associations, while
the intervening scenery had lost none of its exciting interest. Certain
it is that you rarely find finer mountains, either at home or abroad.

A few hours' stay in St. Paul and the renewal of some pleasant
associations, and I was speeding homeward, arriving in Milwaukee early
on the morning of September 30, 1908, almost a year from the time of my
departure.

In closing let me quote an extract, written eight years ago, on a return
with my daughter from over a year's absence abroad (including the
Western Orient): "Gazing on the lake front at Juneau Park and looking
onward to the terraced slopes of Prospect Aven