" Miners were sent into the mountains to search for coal and iron-ore and veins of silver, lead, and gold-bearing ores. Engineers with barometers strapped to their backs were ordered into the highlands to search for railroad routes. Timber examiners were Ordered to examine the forests that stand between the rugged flanks of the Cascade Eange and the waters of Puget Sound to estimate the probable amount of marketable lumber they contained. Other men were sent to watch the sweep of the tides through narrow passages and to examine harbors. Presently gaunt men, toil-worn and haggard, and who carried burdens on their backs, emerged from the forests and stood on steamboat-landings. This man carried silver-ore, that man iron-ore, and yonder was a man who was blackened with coal-dust, and the sack that hung heavily over his back contained coking coal. That group of worn, tired-eyed men with intelligent faces were engineers from mountain-passes. Farther down stood men the pockets of whose canvas jackets bulged with notebooks that were stuffed with information relative to the value of the timber and the character of the soil of several counties. From out of forests, floating down rivers in canoes, from off the rapid tide-water, out of mountain-passes, from the plains east of the Cascade Range, from probable town-sites, men hurried to Tacoma and to Nelson Bennett's office. The information was gathered. It was attentively studied, laboriously compared, and thoroughly digested. Maps were drawn and the resources of the region examined were marked on them. Slowly the evidence was sifted. This point was rejected because of the harbor, that because the land directly tributary was not arable when cleared, and another because it was too far from coal and iron. It was finally decided that the new city should be built on the shores of Bellingham Bay. When this conclusion was arrived at, to act followed instantly. An extensive tract of land was bought for a large sum. A city was laid out. Engineers located a railroad that extends from Fairhaven to New Westminster in British Columbia, and from Fairhaven to a point far east of the Cascade Mountains. Hundreds of men began to fell trees and to shovel dirt along the railroad line. Other men cleared the timber off of the town-site and burned it. Streets were graded and town-lots offered for sale. Steel rails, locomotives,
