It is also the main fuel supply for domestic uses, although fir and yellow pine cordwood is extensively used when the cost of transportation is not too great.

Coal is also the chief fuel used in steamboats, both those plying over inland waters and the ocean-going boats as well.  Here also, however, the fir wood proves a good substitute and is used to some extent by local steamers on the Sound.

Coal is also used to create both steam and electricity for most of the large heating plants in the cities and in many factories and manufacturing plants, flour mills, elevators, etc.  The fact that vast coal measures lie within 50 miles of the seaports of Puget Sound is a very important factor in insuring the construction of manufacturing establishments and the concentration of transportation in these ports.

Coal is also used in all the large cities for the manufacture of illuminating gas and as a by-product of this industry coke, coal tar, and crude creosote are produced.

The coke from the ovens goes chiefly to the smelters for the reduction of ores, both of the precious metals and iron.

METAL MINING.

The mining industry other than coal is quite rapidly reaching importance among our industries.  There are in the state three large smelters, whose annual output of precious metals far surpasses in value the output of our coal mines.  The ores for these values, however, do not all come from the mines of this state.  Other states, British Columbia, Alaska, and some foreign countries help furnish the ores.  But Washington has within its borders a great mineralized territory, not yet thoroughly prospected and very little developed, yet which materially assists in supplying these smelters with their ores.

[Illustration:  Plate No. 17.—­Ocean-Going Raft, Built at Stella, Cowlitz County, by the Oregon Rafting Company.]

[Illustration:  Plate No. 18.—­Cowlitz county timber.  This Stick Was 301 Feet Long and 36 Feet in Circumference at Stump.]

The smelter at Everett receives a steady supply of arsenical ores of copper, lead, gold, silver and zinc from the mines of Snohomish county which are of magnitude sufficient to make profitable the railroad which has been built to Monte Cristo [Page 21] purposely for these ores.  This smelter has a special plant for saving the arsenic in these ores, which materially adds to the value of its output and is said to be the only one of its kind in the nation.

Besides the mines at Monte Cristo, there are copper mines being successfully worked at Index, whose ores are shipped both to Everett and Tacoma.