from fresh-water overflow, at no great expense. This is the Beaver Marsh, and is just as productive as the first named. Both of these tracts have navigable sloughs through them, which enable the farmers to ship their crops from the banks. Wheat and barley are grown on these lands, but the quality as well as quantity of the oat crop renders this more profitable. Hay, fruits, and vegetables make large returns. Olympia Marsh is another reclaimed tract north of a ridge separating it from Swinomish Flats, and has a small settlement on the ridge, called Bay View, which possesses a growing lumber-trade. At the north end of Swinomish Slough is an island seven hundred and fifty acres in extent, also wholly reclaimed.
On the low ground towards the mouths of the Skagit sprucetrees grow and the earth is wet, but these lands also when reclaimed yield well, while ten miles up the river the valley when cleared is perfectlj' well adapted to general farming. The timber of the valley is red cedar and Douglas fir, the most valuable in the State for milling purposes. The jams of drift have been removed, and in their places are sometimes jams of saw-logs.
Logging-camps were the first settlements on the river, but there are now several incipient towns. The first, Skagit City, is at the point where the river divides into the several channels forming the delta, and is of little importance. Mount Vernon is the county-seat, and was the principal town in the county before the rise of Anacortes, with which it was recently brought into connection by railroad. Sedro, at the crossing of the Fairhaven and Southern Bail way, is simply a railroad station whose future is undetermined, although if it makes good use of its natural resources, as well as transportation advantages, it ought to become a business centre. Lyman is prettily situated on the river, with a deep-water frontage, a saw-mill, a general merchandise establishment, a good school-house, and other signs of prosperity. It is also on the line of the Seattle and Northern Bailroad from Sedro to Anacortes.
Above Lyman a short distance is Hamilton, named after its proprietor, William Hamilton, and famous for having a large orchard bearing excellent fruit, and for being opposite the iron mountain mentioned in another chapter and called Mount
