of
Mount Erie is entrancing would be strictly correct, however trite the expression. Behold how, far away south, the "Jupiter Hills" seem to bathe their feet in the waters of the Strait, surpassingly beautiful in outline, delicately colored, tipped and rimmed with shining lines and crests of snow—a marvel of aerial effect—a poet's dream—a vision of the air! Turn from this exquisite sublimity to the half a hundred islands of the archipelago, on the west and north, each with its peculiar shape to distinguish it, its miniature bays, capes, and promontories, its bits of prairie or forest-crowned ridges, but always picturesque. Turn towards the east and see again Mount Baker and the great masses of forest that extend from the summits of the Cascades to the shores of the Sound, marking where the Skagit winds its devious way to its outlet, and fail to dream of the future which awaits this region! Do we need to hear that the Skagit valley is fertile, or that its foot-hills are full of coal, iron, and other valuable minerals? From what we have seen of other parts of West Washington, we know this without being told. But of course we are told so by everybody, as if the discovery were a new one.
Let us talk a little about the Skagit River region while it is in mind. Although this river is the largest which empties into Puget Sound, the remoteness of the country from the beaten track of commerce caused it to be overlooked for settlement in the earlier history of the Sound. Its channel was obstructed by frequent "jams" of drift, which prevented navigation for more than a few miles. But in 1869 J. S. Conner located on a rocky blutf at the southern end of Swinomish Slough, and commenced diking and cultivating the tide-marsh-land on the delta at the mouth of the Skagit. So successful was he that others soon gathered about him, and he laid out a town which he called La Conner, after his wife, Louisa Agnes Conner, which was until quite recently the only one in this region. It has now five hundred inhabitants and a good trade, a body of land ten miles long by three and a half in width being reclaimed by diking and converted into farms where from one hundred to one hundred and fifty bushels of oats to the acre is the annual product. This tract is known as the Swinomish Flats. South of it is another tract of five thousand acres, also redeemed, but
