TRANSPORTATION.
Commerce and transportation are two affinities, ever seeking each other. They have found on Puget Sound an ideal trysting place. Here the ships of the ocean reach immense placid waters, not duplicated on either side of the continent, and for this reason the railroads have come from the interior to meet them. From foreign ports all over the world ocean carriers are bringing in great loads of merchandise and passengers, and the railroads coming from the Atlantic coast across the entire continent bring like loads of merchandise and human freight, and here they are exchanged. Teas from China and Japan for cotton from Galveston and cotton goods from Massachusetts; rice and silk, hemp, matting, tin, copper and Japanese bric-a-brac are exchanged for grain, flour, fish, lumber, fruit, iron and steel ware, paper, tobacco, etc. Merchandise of all sorts from Asia, the Philippines, South America and Australia is here exchanged for different stuffs raised or made in every part of the American continent and some from Europe. This commerce, however, is in its infancy. The Northern Pacific and Great Northern railways have fattened on it for years. All their rivals have looked on with envious eyes till now a mad rush is on among them all for vantage ground. The Milwaukee, Canadian Pacific and Burlington systems already run their trains here, while the Union Pacific and others are rushing for terminals on Puget Sound tide water. And while thus racing for the great long haul prizes, they are incidentally giving to the state a complete system of transportation in all its parts and for all its multitudinous productions.
Of almost equal importance to the state is its great fleet of local steamers which ply its inland waters, and the numerous electric lines that are rapidly uniting its cities and villages and giving a new and cheap method of migration. From the city of Spokane and radiating in every direction, electric lines are in operation and more are in course of construction, bringing the most distant points of the great "Inland Empire" into close touch with its metropolis and great distributing center. On the west side the same thing is true, only in less degree. Between these two groups of transportation facilities, and the commerce which the union of rail and tidewater has created, the citizens of Washington have found innumerable opportunities of employment.
These opportunities are increasing and broadening every year with the continued development of the state and in multiplied and varied form they await the newcomer who possesses the ability to rise to the demands of the situation.
Plate No. 23.—FERRY COUNTY VIEWS. Plant of Karamin Lumber Co., Karamin, Ferry County. (1) Track of Spokane & B. C. Railway. (2) Track of Spokane Falls & Northern Ry.
Plate No. 24.—Helphrey Ranch, Curlew, Ferry County.
OPPORTUNITIES IN WASHINGTON.
Washington is a land of widely diverging natural conditions. Its topographical characteristics vary from the low southern exposures of the inland river valleys, where strawberries mature as early as April, to the mountain summits of the Cascades and Olympics, where winter reigns supreme the year round. Between these extremes may be found every range of climate known to the semi-tropical and temperate zones.