Other scenic routes are planned to cross the Cascade mountains. Two are nearly completed, viz., the McClellan Pass Highway, paralleling the Sunset as far as North Yakima, and one along the north bank of the Columbia. A third will sometime cross and connect the Skagit Valley with the Methow.

[WILD ELK IN THE OLYMPIC MOUNTAINS.]

This book cannot expect to win the largest measure of approval from the followers of Nimrod unless a few paragraphs are devoted to the opportunities for the chase and the plentifulness of game fish and birds. Of course, the real sportsman would rather discover the prey for himself. To tell minutely where every prize is to be found would be like disclosing the end of an interesting story before the beginning had been read. But even if it were well to do so, every page in this publication would be needed just to mention each stream and lake containing fish, every coppice concealing fowl, and every wood protecting the quarry.

That the common species of game are plentiful is superfluous to say. On holidays and at week ends, during the open season, it is a familiar sight to witness the khaki-suited brave looking sportsmen, with guns or fish baskets and rods, clambering onto the trains or hiking to the nearest point where the welcome woods and the realm of habitation meet. It is equally common to behold this same army of hunters trailing along at the close of the holiday, burdened with fish of many species, vari-colored fowl, or the hides of various game animals.

Game birds are very prolific. Among the most prominent are the Chinese pheasant, bob white and California quail, Hungarian partridge, and native prairie chickens; all are found along the streams or in the clearings and fields of nearly every part of the state. Blue grouse are quite plentiful in western Washington and in the wooded sections of eastern Washington. Ruffled grouse are plentiful in the Okanogan Highlands and in several of the western counties. All species of ducks are to be found on Puget Sound and along the rivers and lakes tributary thereto, also along many streams and lakes of the Inland Empire; while geese infest the Columbia and Snake river regions in eastern Washington.