There stands fair Daphne, changed to a laurel tree.
In the legends of the Silash Indians Mount Rainier has always been held as a place of superstitious regard. It was the refuge of the last man when the waters of Puget Sound swept inland, drowning every living thing except one man. Chased by the waves, he reached the summit, where he was standing waist deep in the water when the Tamanous, the god of the mountain, commanded the waters to recede. Slowly they receded, but the man had turned to stone. The Tamanous broke loose one of his ribs and changing it to a woman, stood it by his side, then waving his magic wand over the two, bade them to awake. Joyfully this strange Adam and Eve passed down the mountain side, where they made their home on the forested slopes. These were the first parents of the Silash Indians.
In the very center of the Cascade range stands another mountain of equal beauty, Mount St. Helens.
Washington is the home of the genuine sea serpent. He makes his headquarters in Rock Lake, where he disports himself in the water, devouring every living thing that ventures into it or dares to come on the shore. Only a few years ago he swallowed an entire band of Indians.
Expansion seems to be the law of our national and commercial life. Beyond the placid Pacific are six hundred million people who want the things we produce. China and Japan furnish a market for our wheat. The cry now is for more ships to carry our produce to Asia, Australia, to islands of the Pacific and to Alaska, not to speak of the Philippines. Manila is the center of the great Asiatic ports, including those of British India and Australia. Our trade with the Orient is growing and Manila will make a fine distributing depot. These eastern countries use annually over eighty-six million dollars’ worth of cotton goods and nearly forty million dollars’ worth of iron and steel manufactures. This we can produce in this country as cheap if not cheaper than in any other country. Seattle is the best point from which to export, as the route is shorter than from San Francisco.
The battleship Iowa is in dry dock here. I should liked to have been a marine myself and have stood behind one of those big guns when Cervera left the harbor of Santiago. And now I’d like to train that same gun on the anti-expansionist and send him to the bottom of the sea, there to sleep with the Spaniards and other useless things. Officers and marines alike are proud of their ship and delighted to explain the mechanism of the guns.
We took a steamer over to Tacoma one morning, where we had the pleasure of seeing the North Pacific steamship Glenogle, which had just arrived from Japan, unload her cargo. She brought two thousand tons of tea, over two thousand pounds of rice, two thousand and twelve bails of matting, two hundred and eighty-six bails of straw braid, one hundred and thirty-nine cases of porcelain, two hundred and eighty-five packages of curios, three thousand packages of bamboo ware, silk goods and a multitude of small articles made the load. She had forty Japanese passengers for this port, and left forty-five at Victoria.
STREET IN TACOMA, WASHINGTON.
The air was fragrant with the odor of roses and beautiful pinks.