Mexico weekly ledger., 1890-07-03
NATURES WONDERS.
A Grand Row of Volcanoes That
Once Lit up the Pacific
Coast,
A Region Once Torn With Earthquakes that
Is now Bright With Flowers and
Marvelously Productive Of
Everything Man Needs.

Everything Man Needs.
Correspondence OF the Ledger.
TACOMA, WASH, June 20.-A
good many years ago nature main
tanned the grandest array of light
houses on this coast that the world
has ever seen. They were a row
of grand volcanoes, beginning with
Shasta, in northern California,
14,442 feet high; then Hood in
Oregon 11,225 feet, St. Helens
$3.50, Adams $3.50, Tacoma, A.
444, Baker 800 feet, all in the
new State of Washington, and
Mount st. Elias, 1850 feet in
Alaska. All these were once vol
canoes and their fires illumined
the Pacific for many miles, making
a scene grander than any witnessed
by mortal eye, and equalled only
by the mighty spectaoles portrayed
in song and story by the sublime
imaginations of Milton or of Dante.
While these grand beacons were
burning and possibly before their
fires were. kindled, mighty forests
of frond and fern grew, and IN the
progress of time and nature were
converted into coal beds of vaster
extent and depth than any found
elsewhere. At some more recent
time vast commissions of nature
tore open that great seam in the
side of the continent now known
as Puget Sound, and formed a
harbor more than $50 miles long
whose waters average from 200 to
700 feet deep and whose shores are
so bold that an ocean vessel may
tie up to the trees along them at
almost any point. Later the fires
from the volcanoes became extinct.
Winthrop says he saw an OCCASION
al light from st. Helen's in 1859,
and the older settlers on the coast
claim to have seen a blaze from
Bakers even more recently. But
as a spectacle these mountains have
long since changed from blazing
cones to silent. snow covered
peaks-the pillars of cloud of
modern day, instead of the pillars
of fire they were in the darker ages
long since ended.
The volcano and the earthquake,
the sublime and the terrible, have
given place to the grand and beau
tiful and on the same majestic
scale which nature has always
done business on this part of the
cast. In place of the impenetra-
BILE jungle of frond and ferns which
ages ago were converted into coal
beds from ten to twenty-four feet
thick which now underlie whole
townships near this city, a large
part of the west end of the State is
now covered with forests of fir and
cedar. Many Of the trees grow to
a height of 500 feet and all are as
straight as arrows. In some places
they grow so thickly together that
their scanty tops shut out the sun
light. MIR. ]. R. Mcdonald, ar
old lumberman, says he has count
ed 100 trees on single acre which
would average 5000 feet of lumber
each. Some of these fir trees are
eight and nine feet through at the
stump and where they stang
thlckest have no limbs for the frs
100 to ITO feet. A single beam fo'
the keelson of chip was sawet
from one of these trees one day
last month by one of the Tacom'
} mills, that was 1876 feet long ant
1Sx12 inches in size from end t,
: end.
, The valley lands are the richest
l though the uplands when cleare'
of the timber grow fine crops. Th'
valleys are covered with a dens
: growth of alder, vine, maple ant
, underbrush of various sorts. Blu
comparatively little of this land i
yet under cultivation, and tina
q near the cities is largely devote'
, to fruit raising and gardening. Thi
q Is the strawberry season and tn
berries now coming to this marke
n would surprise any eastern gard
:. ner. Other berries grow wit
h equal thrift and in great profusion
" Last year J. P. Stewart, a banke
# at Puyalup, nine miles from thi
# city, sold s1,010 worth of rasI
:, berries from one and one-sixt
v acres. The larger fruits are chic
v ly pears, plums, prunes, peache
q and apples. Pears and prune
n especially thrive here.
J. ANY eastern farmer looking o
,r this soil would say it would hart
5, ly grow white beans, and yet
will grow white beans and lots {
n other things in profusion. 1t seem
10 to be mere gravel bed and y,
there is a virtue in it that seem
inexhaustible or next to it. Whel
70 it comes from it is hard to see an
- vet it is there. Once the timber
TO cut off, the ground, if left TO itsel
"a begins to send up rank growth