through the streets you will be quite ready to have the steamer set off
for Victoria. The voyage lasts but about thirty-six hours, and would be
shorter were it not that the steamer makes numerous landings. Thus you
get glimpses of Seattle, Steilacoom, Tacoma, and of the so-called saw-mill
ports--Port Madison, Port Gamble, Port Ludlow, and Port Townsend--the
last named being also the boundary of our Uncle Samuel's dominions for
the present, and the port of entry for this district, with a custom-house
which looks like a barn, and a collector and inspectors, the latter of
whom examine your trunk as you return from Victoria to save you from the
sin of smuggling.

From Port Townsend your boat strikes across the straits of San Juan de
Fuca to Victoria; and just here, as you are crossing from American
to English territory, you get the most magnificent views of the grand
Olympian range of mountains and of Mount Regnier. Also, the captain will
point out to you in the distance that famous island of San Juan which
formed the subject or object, or both, of our celebrated boundary dispute
with great Britain, and you will wonder how small an object can nearly
make nations go to war, and for what a petty thing we set several kings
and great lords to studying geography and treaties and international law,
and boring themselves, and filling enterprising newspapers with dozens
of columns of dull history; and you will wonder the more at the stupid
pertinacity of these English in clinging to the little island of San Juan
when you reach Victoria, and see that we shall presently take that dull
little town too, not because we want it or need it, but to save it from
perishing of inanition.

It is something to have taste and a sense of the beautiful. Certainly the
English, who discovered the little landlocked harbor of Victoria and chose
it as the site of a town, displayed both. It is by natural advantages one