ground. The Seattle and Northern Kailroad was immediately built to the coal-mines of the Skagit Yalley at Hamilton. The Union Pacific graded a few miles, and transferred its rights to the Northern Pacific, which for the present uses the track of the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern from Sedro to Seattle, giving Anacortes connection with Queen City before the end of the first year of its history as a town. The Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Eoad will be extended to a connection with the Canadian Pacific in a few months, giving Anacortes as well as Seattle a terminus, which, with the Seattle and Northern, connecting with the Great Northern at Spokane, will give the City of the Sea three transcontinental roads almost from the first. These, with first-class steamers running to all points on the Sound, to Victoria, and to San Francisco, leave the traveller free to go where he lists, the world being literally "all before him where to choose."
Of the local advantages of Anacortes, one is that all the rivers of that part of Washington east of the Fuca Sea and Strait have their valleys opening towards Fidalgo Island, hence their products should naturally centre here. These are the Snohomish, Stillaguamish, Skagit, Samish, and Nooksahk. The Saraish— the smallest of them all, running into the south end of Bellingham Bay—furnished from six logging-camps last year ten million six hundred and thirty thousand feet of lumber to the mills of Puget Sound, which was but a small percentage of the lumber production from the camps in this region. One camp on the Skagit marketed in one year nine million feet, the price ranging from six dollars and fifty cents to seven dollars per thousand. There is wealth for you. Then follow all other kinds of wealth, — mineral, agricultural, manufacturing,—and the market for these is all the world, because the shipping of all the world comes here.
Again, Anacortes places great stress upon the superiority of Ship Harbor. The tidal currents in the channel in front of the city are about three knots an hour,—never four,—whereas the tidal currents of New York and San Francisco are six knots. In the inner harbors of Fidalgo and Padilla Bays the currents are very gentle, and these bays have deep-water branches ultimately to be converted into slip harbors, the best of all,
