HE Oregon Railway & Navigation Company's steamers leave Tacoma, for Seattle, at four o'clock in the morning, and at six-thirty in the evening, so we were unable to see this portion of the sound until our return trip. Seattle is another of those rushing, pushing, thriving, Western towns, whose energy and dash always surprise Eastern people. The population of the city is 15,000 souls; it has gas-works, water-works, and a street railway, and does more business, and handles more money each year than many an Eastern city of 50,000 or more.
The annual lumber shipments alone aggregate over a million dollars, from ten saw-mills that cost over four millions, and the value of the salmon-canning product is nearly a million more. The soil of the valleys adjacent to Seattle is peculiarly adapted to hop-raising, and that industry is extensively carried on by a large number of farmers. Some of the largest and finest hop-ranches in the world are located in the vicinity, and their product is shipped to various American and European ports, over 100,000 tons having been shipped in 1888, bringing the growers the handsome sum of $560,327.
During the fifteen years since the beginning of this important cultivation, the hop crop is said never to have failed, nor has it been attacked by disease, nor deteriorated by reason of the roots being kept on the same land without replanting. It is believed that the Dwamish, the White River, and the Puyallup Valleys could easily produce as many hops as are now raised in the United States, if labor could be obtained to pick them. Indians have been mainly relied upon to do the picking, and they have flocked to the Sound from nearly all parts of the Territory, even from beyond the mountains. Many have come in canoes from regions near the outlet of the Sound, from British Columbia, and even from far off Alaska, to engage temporarily in this occupation; then to purchase goods and return to their wigwams. They excel the whites in their skill as pickers, and, as a rule, conduct themselves peaceably.
Elliot Bay, on which Seattle is built, affords a fine harbor and good anchorage, while Lakes Union and Washington, large bodies of fresh water—the former eleven and the latter eighteen feet above tide level—lie just outside the city limits, opposite. There are rich coal mines at hand, which produce nearly a million dollars worth each year. Large fertile tracts of agricultural lands, in the near vicinity, produce grain, vegetables, and fruits of many varieties, and in great luxuriance. Iron ore of an excellent quality abounds in the hills and mountains back of the city, and with all these natural resources and advantages at her command, Seattle is sure to become a great metropolis in the near future. The climate of the Puget Sound country is temperate; snow seldom falls before Christmas, never to a greater depth than a few inches in the valleys and lowlands, and seldom lies more than a few days at a time. My friend, Mr. W. A. Perry, of Seattle, in a letter dated December 6, says: