Fuca. These are visible advantages which cannot be gainsaid.
But not twenty miles away, where Hood's Canal makes its great bend, is Union City, under the management of the Oregon Improvement Company. This is not a new town, having had an existence for several years, but its pretensions are similar to those of Detroit. The Port Townsend and Southern will come here without doubt, and the Union Pacific also. Lots are selling at from one hundred to one thousand dollars. If you demur to the latter price for lots lately carved out of the forest, you will be told that it has cost something to do the carving, and that you get certain improvements in addition which you have no right to expect in a new country, all of which is true.
Then, again, there is Puget City, situated a little more than half-way from Tacoma to Olympia in a straight line, on the east shore of the Sound. It is advertised by the Puget City Company as possessing a beautiful situation, besides which no commerce from any of the seven inlets at the head of Puget Sound can reach the lower Sound "without passing before this rising young metropolis." Its "unexcelled deep water facilities and the railroads, Union and Northern Pacific," are among its advantages; and "the song of the saw-mill is heard all day long," building being active.
And here is Des Moines, twelve miles from Tacoma, and about an equal distance from Seattle. It was laid out in 1889 by the Des Moines Improvement Company, of Tacoma, who erected a saw-mill, the output of which, twenty thousand feet per diem, was applied to the erection of business houses and residences. A brick-yard, a pottery-factory, shingle-mill, and other industries were at once inaugurated, and the work went bravely on until the company's means were exhausted. Now, I understand, the population, which consisted principally of the company's employees, is daily diminishing, and that those who remain are in want.
Perhaps these reverses came from bad management, for there is nothing to be said against the country that does not apply to almost every portion of the Puget Sound region,—namely, that it requires labor and capital for its development; and what new
