So much has already been said in preceding pages about Puget Sound that it would seem the subject might be somewhat overdone.  But it still remains to be said that justice can never be done to the scenic glories of this beautiful inland sea.  The views from different points, and from almost every point on the Sound, are of sublime grandeur.  On the east are the Cascade Mountains, ranging from 5,000 to 14,444 feet in height, Mount Rainier for Tacoma, (as it is also called) being of the latter altitude, and only third in height of the mountains of the United States.  On the west are the Olympic Mountains, the highest peaks of which reach up to 8,000 feet.  Both ranges, brilliantly snow-crowned, are within view at the same time from various points, and the scenery in its entirety, with its continual changefulness and features of sublimity, can not be excelled.  Strangers and travelers who have visited every part of the world never leave the deck of the steamers while going through the waters of the Sound country.  In noting a single feature, Mount Rainier, Senator George F. Edmunds wrote as follows:  “I have been through the Swiss mountains, and am compelled to own that there is no comparison between the finest effects exhibited there and what is seen in approaching this grand and isolated mountain.  I would be willing to go 500 miles again to see that scene.  The Continent is yet in ignorance of what will be one of the grandest show places, as well as sanitariums.  If Switzerland is rightly called the play-ground of Europe, I am satisfied that around the base of Mt.  Rainier will become a prominent place of resort, not for America only, but for the world besides, with thousands of sites for building purposes that are nowhere excelled for the grandeur of the view that can be obtained from them, with topographical features that would make the most perfect system of drainage both possible and easy, and with a most agreeable and health-giving climate.”

A more enthusiastic writer says:  “Puget Sound scenery is the grandest scenery in the world.  One has here in combination the sublimity of Switzerland, the picturesqueness of the Rhine, the rugged beauty of Norway, the breezy variety of the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, or the Hebrides of the North Sea, the soft, rich-toned skies of Italy, the pastoral landscape of England, with velvet meadows and magnificent groves, massed with floral bloom, and the blending tints and bold color of the New England Indian summer.  Features with which nothing within the vision of another city can be placed in comparison are the Olympic range of mountains in front of Seattle, and the sublime snow peaks of the Rainier, Baker, Adams, and St. Helens, with their glaciers and robes of eternal white, and the great falls of the Snoqualmie, 280 feet high, near by.”

[Illustration:  Mount st. Helens, Washington, from near mouth of the Willamette river.  Reached via the Union Pacific Ry.]