On the street we met a party of Indians in civilian dress, wearing closely cropped hair and moustaches.
Tacoma pays ninety dollars per ton for copper ore from Alaska.
Returning across the bay we met a flock of crows on the flotsam and jetsam which floats down from the saw-mills. Their antics reminded me of a party of school boys playing tag. At the steamer’s approach the leader gave a warning caw and they were up and away before the steamer struck their floating playground and scattered it to the waves.
At sunset the reflection of the sun-lit clouds on the waves and the fire and glow of the sparkling water, now ruby red, changing to turquoise blues and emerald greens, make a scene delightful to the eye of one who loves the sea.
CHAPTER III
OFF FOR ALASKA
“All aboard!” At ten o’clock we steamed out of the harbor of Seattle and headed toward Alaska, the land of icebergs, glaciers and gold fields. Seattle sat as serenely on her terraced slopes as Rome on her seven hills. The sun shone bright and clear on the snow-capped peaks of the Cascades. Mt. Tacoma stood out bold and clear against the sun-lit sky.
We steamed at full speed down Admiralty Inlet.
At noon we stop at Port Townsend, the port of entry for Puget sound. One sees at all these coast towns many Japanese, some dressed in nobby bicycle costumes, leading their wheels about the wharves, others wearing neat business suits and sporting canes. The less fortunate almond-eyed people are here too, dressed in the garb of the laborer, but it is to the former, the padrone, that the American employer goes for contract labor.
In any case the laborer pays his padrone a per cent. of his wages.