Most visitors to Victoria go to the stores of the Hudson’s Bay Company, presumably on account of the romantic associations, or to purchase a bit of fur or some other wild-Indianish trinket as a memento.  At certain seasons of the year, when the hairy harvests are gathered in, immense bales of skins may be seen in these unsavory warehouses, the spoils of many thousand hunts over mountain and plain, by lonely river and shore.  The skins of bears, wolves, beavers, otters, fishers, martens, lynxes, panthers, wolverine, reindeer, moose, elk, wild goats, sheep, foxes, squirrels, and many others of our “poor earth-born companions and fellow mortals” may here be found.

Vancouver is the southmost and the largest of the countless islands forming the great archipelago that stretches a thousand miles to the northward.  Its shores have been known a long time, but little is known of the lofty mountainous interior on account of the difficulties in the way of explorations—­lake, bogs, and shaggy tangled forests.  It is mostly a pure, savage wilderness, without roads or clearings, and silent so far as man is concerned.  Even the Indians keep close to the shore, getting a living by fishing, dwelling together in villages, and traveling almost wholly by canoes.  White settlements are few and far between.  Good agricultural lands occur here and there on the edge of the wilderness, but they are hard to clear, and have received but little attention thus far.  Gold, the grand attraction that lights the way into all kinds of wildernesses and makes rough places smooth, has been found, but only in small quantities, too small to make much motion.  Almost all the industry of the island is employed upon lumber and coal, in which, so far as known, its chief wealth lies.

Leaving Victoria for Port Townsend, after we are fairly out on the free open water, Mount Baker is seen rising solitary over a dark breadth of forest, making a glorious show in its pure white raiment.  It is said to be about eleven thousand feet high, is loaded with glaciers, some of which come well down into the woods, and never, so far as I have heard, has been climbed, though in all probability it is not inaccessible.  The task of reaching its base through the dense woods will be likely to prove of greater difficulty than the climb to the summit.

In a direction a little to the left of Mount Baker and much nearer, may be seen the island of San Juan, famous in the young history of the country for the quarrels concerning its rightful ownership between the Hudson’s Bay Company and Washington Territory, quarrels which nearly brought on war with Great Britain.  Neither party showed any lack of either pluck or gunpowder.  General Scott was sent out by President Buchanan to negotiate, which resulted in a joint occupancy of the island.  Small quarrels, however, continued to arise until the year 1874, when the peppery question was submitted to the Emperor of Germany for arbitration.  Then the whole island was given to the United States.