In to the Yukon

by William Seymour Edwards

Saturday, after we had spent the morning in seeing the shops and wandering along the fine streets of the choicer residence section of the city, we all took the tourist electric car, which, at 2 P. M., sets out and tours the town with a guide who, through a megaphone, explains the sights.

Seattle now claims one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, and probably has almost that number. A distinctly new city, yet growing marvelously, and already possessing many great buildings of which a much larger town might well boast.

Toward evening, at 4:30 P. M., we took the through electric flyer, and sped across a country of many truck gardens and apple orchards, some thirty-five miles to Tacoma, that distance farther up the Sound, and once the rival of Seattle. A city more spread out and less well built, the creation of the promoters of the Northern Pacific Railway Co., in the palmy days of Henry Villard. Tacoma, too, possesses superb docking facilities and a good two miles of huge warehouses and monstrous wharves, where, also, great ships are constantly loaded and unloaded for the Orient, South Africa and all the world, but whence few or no ships depart for the Northern Continent of Alaska. Tacoma seemed less alive and alert than Seattle, fewer people on the streets, smaller shops and business blocks, and the people moving more leisurely along the thoroughfares. In Seattle the houses mostly fresh painted; in Tacoma the houses looking dingy and as though not painted now for many a month. Seattle is noted for the public spirit of its citizens; they work and pull together for the common weal, but Tacoma is so dominated by the railway influence which created it, that the people are lacking in the vigor of the rival town.

As our electric train came to a standstill, W—— rode up on his bicycle, and he was surely glad to see us. Messrs. S—— and M—— had come over with us for the ride, and we all five set right off to find our dinner. “Cracked Crabs” was again the word, and W—— added, “Puget Sound oysters broiled on toast.” A delicate little oyster about the size of one’s finger nail, and most savory. When our party left the table, we were as contented a group as ever had dined.

We lodged with W——, and were delightfully cared for—a large, sunny room overlooking such a garden of roses and green turf as I never before have seen. Roses as big as peonies and grass as green and thick as the velvet turf of the Oxford “quads.” Our host gave us each morning a dainty breakfast, and then we foraged for ourselves during the day.

In the morning of Sunday we attended the Congregational Church, and in the afternoon rode on the electric car to the park, a few miles—two or three—out of the city, along the shores of one of the fine bays that indent the Sound. Not so fine a park as Vancouver’s, but one that some day will probably rank among the more beautiful ones of our American cities.

On Monday we wandered about the town, visited its museum, saw the fine public buildings, and spent several hours in going over and through the most extensive sawmill plant on the coast—“in the world,” they say. The big business originally instituted by one of the early pioneers, is now managed by his four sons, all graduates of Yale. We met the elder of them in blue overalls and slouch hat, all mill dust. A keen, intelligent face. He works with his men and keeps the details of the business well in hand. How different, I thought, from the English manner of doing things. These men are rich, millionaires; college bred, they work with their men. In England they tell you that no man who would give his son a business career would think of sending him to college. Oxford or Cambridge would there unfit him for business life. He would come out merely a “gentleman,” which there means a man who does nothing, who earns no bread, but who lives forever a parasite on the toil of others.

In these great mills the monstrous fir and pine logs of Washington are sawed up, cut, planed, and loaded directly into ships for all the markets of the earth—Europe, South Africa, Australia, China, South America and New York, wherever these splendid woods are in demand. The forests of Washington and British Columbia are said to possess the finest timber in the world, and all the world seems to be now seeking to have of it.