cross our road. The larger game, if there were any near, took warning from the noisy rattling of our wagon and hid themselves from observation.
A few years later, when the railroad up the Cowlitz Valley had been completed, I again visited Olympia, and found the road to run through a wild and densely-timbered country almost from the Columbia to the Chehalis River. There were, it is true, a few stations cut out of the forest, with no excuse for being except that all railroads must have "stations" scattered along,—to give tourists, by their forlon aspect, a contempt for the country, I privately remarked.
But on this May-day, 1890, I found the stations had grown into towns, and there were so many of them that I seemed to be travelling over town-sites all the way to my destination. Not that all of these twenty or more embryo cities were astoundingly large and populous for their age, but that there was so much evidence of growth as to keep up a feeling of curiosity and surprise as to what brought these people here, and how they accomplished so much in so short a time. How many sturdy strokes it took to clear away the heavy forest to make room for farms and towns! Yet the work had been done, and in the place of the noble firs I had so much admired stood homes, school-houses, churches, hotels, stores, mills, and all the ordinary conveniences of established society. It was a revelation.
That the Cowlitz Valley is a fertile one none can doubt who travel through it, but it is not a wide or long one. It rather consists of small side valleys, in each of which there is room for a settlement. The real wealth of the Cowlitz country consists of lumber and coal, with other minerals used in manufactures.
At Kelso, which calls itself the "Gateway to the Sound Country," are two saw-mills and four shingle-mills. The place has about six hundred inhabitants, and is the prospective seat of a Presbyterian Academy. Winlock and Toledo are two thriving settlements within a few miles of each other, in Lewis County.
The chief town of the county of Cowlitz is Castle Rock, which has about eight hundred inhabitants. It is located in the midst of good farming-lands, large coal-fields, and fine timber, and is a point of supply for several mines in their first stage of develop-
