southern one Point Hudson. It is under the lee of the latter that the city is located. There is a strip of low-lying land along the front where the business of the town is centred, and rising abruptly back of it is a high bluff, level and bare, on which the residence portion of the city is laid off, which is much exposed to winds from all quarters.
This is one of the oldest towns in Washington, having been founded in 1851 by L. B. Hastings, F. W. Pettygrove, C. C. Bachelder, and A. A. Plummer. It was soon made the port of entry for this district, which it still remains, and which gives it the sobriquet of Key City. For many years there was a military post on the west shore of the bay, two and a half miles distant. The customs office, trade with the people at the fort and the scattered population along the shore of the Strait of Fuca, as well as of the more thickly inhabited Whidbey and Camano Islands, with some local lumbering and ship-building enterprises, kept the Port Townsend people fairly prosperous during the period from 1852 to 1888, and not only that, in an oyster-like content, but with a wide-awake, intelligent, courteous, and modish spirit. They had enough, they were able to wait, they cultivated social habits, and enjoyed the beauties of their situation. For one could not reasonably ask to be shown anything finer than can be seen from the bluffs at Port Townsend. To the northeast is Mount Baker, with its ragged double peak fretting the heavens. In the southeast is Mount Rainier; on the west, Mount Olympus; on the east, Whidbey Island, the garden of Puget Sound, and across the Strait the San Juan group, in the Fuca Sea.
It is claimed, and I have no doubt with truth, that the climate of this locality is superior to other parts of the Sound country, the average annual rainfall being sixteen or seventeen inches against from forty to sixty at Olympia. The southerly winds which prevail during winter, and bring copious rains to West Washington when they reach the Strait, seem to be met by the warm-air current from the Japanese gulf-stream and the rainclouds carried away eastward, for there is much less precipitation on Quimper Peninsula and the islands in the Fuca Sea than elsewhere. My attention was called to the fact that the flowering shrubs of three degrees farther south reappeared on the
