The "Sumas Sapling" stands near Sumas Lake, northeast of Seattle. It is a hollow cedar, twenty-three feet in the clear, on the ground, and is estimated to be fifteen feet in diameter twenty feet above the ground. I have, in several instances, counted more than a hundred of these mammoth trees on an acre of land, and am informed that one tract has been out off that yielded over 1,000,000 feet of lumber per acre. In this case the trees stood so close together that many of the stumps had to be dug out, after the trees had been felled, before the logs could be gotten out. The system of logging in vogue here differs widely from that practiced in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, and elsewhere. No snow or ice are required here, and, in fact, if snow falls to any considerable depth while crews are in the woods a halt is called until it goes off.
Corduroy roads are built into the timber as fast as required, on which the teams travel, so that it is not necessary that the ground should be even frozen. Skids, twelve to eighteen inches thick, are laid across, these roads, about nine feet apart, and sunk into the ground so as to project about six inches above the surface; the bark is peeled off the top, they are kept greased, and the logs are "snaked" over them with four to seven yoke of cattle, as may be required. The wealthier operators use steam locomotives and cars, building tracks into the timber as fast and as far as needed. This great timber belt is co-extensive with Puget Sound, the Straits of Georgia, and the Cascade Mountains. I believe that at the present rate at which lumber is being consumed, there is fir, pine, and cedar enough in Washington Territory and British Columbia to last the world a thousand years.
Puget Sound is a great inland sea, extending nearly 200 miles from the ocean, having a surface of about 2,000 square miles, and a shore line of 1,594 miles, indented with numerous bays, harbors, and inlets, each with its peculiar name; and it contains numerous islands inhabited by farmers, lumbermen, herdsmen, and those engaged in quarrying lime and building stone. Nothing can surpass the beauty of these waters and their safety. Not a shoal exists within the Sound, the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Bay, Hood's Canal, or the Straits of Georgia, that would in any way interrupt their navigation by a seventy-four-gun ship. There is no country in the world that possesses waters equal to these. The shores of all the inlets and bays are remarkably bold, so much so that a ship's side would touch the shore before her keel would touch the ground. The country by which these waters are surrounded has a remarkably salubrious climate.