rests begin
to hint the grandeur they attain in Puget Sound. Here the scenery in
general becomes exceedingly interesting; for now we have arrived at the
grand mountain-walled channel that forms the entrance to that marvelous
network of inland waters that extends along the margin of the continent
to the northward for a thousand miles.

This magnificent inlet was named for Juan de Fuca, who discovered it in
1592 while seeking a mythical strait, supposed to exist somewhere in the
north, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific. It is about seventy miles
long, ten or twelve miles wide, and extends to the eastward in a nearly
straight line between the south end of Vancouver Island and the Olympic
Range of mountains on the mainland.

Cape Flattery, the western termination of the Olympic Range, is terribly
rugged and jagged, and in stormy weather is utterly inaccessible from
the sea. Then the ponderous rollers of the deep Pacific thunder amid
its caverns and cliffs with the foam and uproar of a thousand Yosemite
waterfalls. The bones of many a noble ship lie there, and many a sailor.
It would seem unlikely that any living thing should seek rest in such a
place, or find it. Nevertheless, frail and delicate flowers bloom there,
flowers of both the land and the sea; heavy, ungainly seals disport in
the swelling waves, and find grateful retreats back in the inmost bores
of its storm-lashed caverns; while in many a chink and hollow of the
highest crags, not visible from beneath, a great variety of waterfowl
make homes and rear their young.

But not always are the inhabitants safe, even in such wave-defended
castles as these, for the Indians of the neighboring shores venture
forth in the calmest summer weather in their frail canoes to spear
the seals in the narrow gorges amid the grinding, gurgling din of the
restless waters. At such times also the hunters make out to scale many
of the apparently inaccessible cliffs for the eggs and young of the
gulls and other water birds, occasionally losing their lives in these
perilous adventures, which give rise to many an exciting story told
around the campfires at night when the storms roar loudest.

Passing through the strait, we have the Olympic Mountains close at hand
on the right, Vancouver Island on the left, and the snowy peak of Mount
Baker straight ahead in the distance. During calm weather, or when the
clouds are lifting and rolling off the mountains after a storm, all
these views are