CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CITY OF DESTINY.
Returning over the route by which we came to Kamilche and Olympia, only touching at the capital long enough to take on passengers for down the Sound, we find the same fair picture of blue water, wooded headlands, distant mountains, and summer skies which we enjoyed on the previous trip. Steilacoom is the first place of any importance we come to, and is really in a beautiful location on a high gravelly prairie, diversified wiih groves of fine timber, gemmed here and there with small clear lakes bordered by deciduous trees. It is said there is no finer view of the Cascade snow-peaks, from Rainier to Hood, than is to be seen here, while the Olympics are also in full view across the Sound.
The harbor at Steilacoom is good, and there is plenty of waterpower in Steilacoom Creek which comes in at this place, some of which is already utilized for milling purposes, the head of the creek being in a lake four miles distant and two hundred feet higher. About a mile east of the harbor is the site of old Fort Steilacoom, the buildings of which were turned over to the Territory for an insane hospital. The territorial penitentiary on McXeil Island, opposite Steilacoom, is a fine building, and standing so prominently on these lonety shores reminds one of Hawthorne: "The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities, to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another as a site for a prison."
Steilacoom has long been a quiet and dull town of a few hundred inhabitants,—for it is one of the oldest in Washington, having been founded in 1850 by Lafayette Balch, who owned a brig and brought a cargo of goods to this port, where he built a house and laid out a town. Since the admission of the State, and even before, Steilacoom had started on a new career of progress, and, being now connected with Tacoma, Olympia, and
