Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/256

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250
OREGON AND WASHINGTON.

"hail and farewell." And it must be testified that these people over on the Sound are by no means in a state of darkness or depression, notwithstanding their isolation; but wide-awake, intelligent, courteous, and modish. The population of Port Townsend is about five hundred.

Two miles and a half south-west of the town is the site of a United States military post, now abandoned. The prospect from this high bluff is remarkably fine. To the north-east, and nearly on the 49th parallel, is Mount Baker, with its ragged, double peak fretting the heavens. Far to the south-east is Mount Rainier, the most beautiful peak of the northern Andes; on the west, the Olympian Range; on the east, Whidby's Island, spread out like a garden; and across the straits, San Juan and Vancouver's islands dimly visible.

Leaving Port Townsend, we soon get a view of New Dungeness Light-house on the south, and the San Juan Archipelago on the north—the latter of which recalls the dispute about boundaries: the United States claiming that the English channel should be to the westward of the principal island, and Great Britain that it should be to the eastward. Looking back to the east, across the straits, we see still our mighty snow-peaks towering over a blue mountain-range, with an archipelago of islands intervening. On the southern view, the Olympian Ranges seem to bathe their feet in the waters of the strait, surpassingly beautiful in outline, delicately colored, tipped and rimmed with silvery lines and crests of snow—a marvel of aerial effect—a poet's dream—a vision of the air. Turning from this exquisite sublimity, we see on the north the rocky, but picturesque shores of Vancouver's Island, belonging to the possessions of Her