Though no longer the fair playground it was in the twentieth century, Seattle is a vital and vigorous city. Today's Seattle sprawls from Everett to Tacoma, encompassing sixteen hundred square kilometers along the coast of Puget Sound. It remains an outpost of the United and Canadian American States. Hemmed in by the Salish-Shidhe Council nation on three sides and the Pacific Ocean on the fourth, Seattle is an active port city and still very much an important gateway to the Orient.