not be reached by the House except by unanimous consent. It is as follows:

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President is hereby authorized and directed to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, some suitable person qualified for such service, who, with one line officer of the navy and one medical officer of the navy, to be detailed or designated by the Secretary of the Navy, shall attend and represent the United States in any international congress or convention held by authority of law in any European nation to consider and act on said subject; and the sum of ten thousand dollars is hereby appropriated, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be used and expended, or so much thereof as may be needed, under the direction of the President, to compensate the person so appointed, and defray the necessary expenses of the person so appointed, and of the officers of the navy so detailed or designated. And the person so appointed and the officers of the navy so detailed or designated under the provisions of this act shall join in a report of the proceedings of such congress or convention, and of the conclusions reached thereby, if any, to the President, to be by him laid before Congress, to the end that an international system of examinations for color-blindness and tests for visual acuteness, and standards for colors for signals used at sea, may be established by law."

The bill was therefore again brought up in the present Forty-eighth Congress, and referred to the Naval Committee, who have heard the original petitioners as before. Their report is awaited. The Secretary of the Navy, in report of 1880, says: "The safety of a vessel and crew may turn upon the accuracy of the powers of vision, and hence the importance of ascertaining the soundness of the eye, both as regards color-perception and refraction. It is to be regretted that no uniform standards for such examinations exist among the various maritime nations as seem to be demanded in the interest of the safe navigation of the seas. Some movement upon this important subject is desirable, and I recommend that Congress authorize the creation of a commission, under the national sanction, to determine these matters by scientific and uniform methods."

President Arthur, in his first Message to Congress, called attention to the necessity of action to prevent the present frequent collisions at sea. He has sent the following message to the present Congress,

who will, if the Naval Committee report as before, have the bill under their consideration:

"To the Senate and House of Representatives:

"I transmit herewith for the consideration

of Congress a communication from the Secretary of the Navy, dated the 10th inst., inclosing a letter from the Surgeon-General of the Navy respecting the advisability of providing for representation on the part of the United States in any international convention that may be organized for the purpose of establishing uniform standards of measure of color-perception and acuteness of vision.

"CHESTER A. ARTHUR. "EXECUTIVE MANSION, December 17, 1883."

Whilst this international commission would have to investigate and report on defective vision as to the form and color sense in reference to mariners, and hence be in part composed of those capable of doing this, yet in reality that would be only a part of their work. The question of standard colors as to signal lights, the size of these lights, and how to be carried, are very important points, concerning which there is no concurrence. Even the international code of signals agreed to in 1880 applies only to naval vessels outside of the navigable waters of the United States. Within these waters the regulations of the Revised Statutes prevail. change of a few miles alters the signal code. The international code, when adopted for all merchant marines, calls for good visual power and freedom from colorblindness on the part of those governed by it.

A

But no provision exists for the assurance of these, which must be internationally agreed to as well. It is by no means understood, and it would hardly be believed, that, from want of international action and agreement, rules and regulations, even when existing, are habitually disregarded. The frightful losses on the ocean confirm this. England reports a collision "once in four hours." It is, of course, human greed and human carelessness versus human life and property. But international agreements can not be slighted as can national regulations. Official neglect to enforce international laws can not hold its place against complaint from friendly powers. The report of an international commission would carry such weight that the adoption of agreements would, by teaching the community, produce a moral force not to be withstood by political pressure.

At Port Gamble, a few miles above, is a somewhat larger settlement. Here also are saw-mills, and at the wharf lie several ships loading for foreign ports or for our own Atlantic cities. Opposite Port Gamble stands an Indian village and mission of old date, its church and houses appearing quite as habitable, as far as could be seen at a distance, as most of those on the white side of the channel. These Indians are nearly all employed about the mill or in the logging camps, and offer few signs of savagery. Crossing the inlet, the next stop is at Port Madison -a very pleasant place, upon a little bay wrapped in foliage, amid which gleam home-like white houses, orchards, and pretty gardens. Port Madison forms a supply point for considerable agricultural and shore country, and is largely engaged in boat-building. Here, too, Indians have a village, occupying a sandy peninsula, behind which is a lagoon where they beach their canoes, moddled after a style a trifle different from those seen in the strait.

Begun almost half a century ago, when old chief Seat was alive, the settlement had no growth until the recent impetus given it by the introduction of efficient transportation into the Territory, and the opening of coal seams. Immigrants and speculators fed the town after that, until now it numbers perhaps five thousand population, and has the conveniences of a city-gas-light, water-works, police, daily newspapers, etc. But as yet everything at Seattle is in a scattered, half-baked condition. The town has grown too fast to look well or healthy. Everybody has been in so great haste to get there and get a roof over his head that he has not minded much how it looked, or pulled many of the stumps out of his door-yard. tions to this ragged, flimsy aspect show what possibility the future holds of making pleasant homes there; and I have no doubt that when the frontier spirit shall have ripened into a better tone, Seattle will become a beautiful city, rising like a well-filled amphitheatre, and looking out. upon a magnificent water-front populous with commerce.

Excep

The streets are filled with bustling crowds, while the wharves swarm with

shipping and lumber rafts: I saw four ocean steamers loading at one time. The shops all prosper, and merchants, manufacturers, and builders are overworked. This condition of things, together with the fact that the population has increased twenty per cent. during the past twelvemonth, causes property to be held at a high price; nevertheless, it is constantly changing hands, showing self-confidence in the minds of the citizens. The magnitude of Seattle's commerce is more easily accounted for when we remember how much distant outside trade comes to this largest town, especially from the logging camps, and how much shipping is supplied with stores for long voyages and with refitting work. But the appearance of excessive activity is partly owing to the great number of persons who are constantly coming and going. Three large hotels and countless little ones open their doors, yet it is often difficult to get a bed.

This floating crowd is not all of it new to the country, however, and the majority hails from Oregon and California, for as yet little of the forth-coming tide of East

ern and foreign immigration has reached these parts; but the people of the Pacific coast are strangely nomadic-a fact especially true of the unmarried. You can hardly enter into conversation with a working-man who can not give you some account of almost any settled district west of the Rocky Mountains, often including the Sandwich Islands, Australia, and the Chinese ports. It is one of the great drawbacks to large industrial enterprises that steady labor can not be counted upon. Partly because of their feeling of independence, partly the vagabondish spirit engendered by their long and gradually progressive journey hither from the Atlantic States, men are likely to forsake their employers at very short notice, and go somewhere else with ill-defined purpose. It is largely in attempting to protect themselves, against this annoyance, which is fatal to success in many commercial schemes, that the Chinese have been encouraged by capitalists.

The greatest source of wealth to Seattle and all this half of Washington Territory is the lumbering.

The only escape from the unbroken forest anywhere west of the mountains is to go out upon the water. As this forest is the main feature of the scenery, so is it the chief factor in local wealth. Yet it was not until 1853 that the first saw-mill was built here. It had a daily capacity of eight to ten thousand feet of lumber. Now the aggregate cutting of the mills is over a million feet every day. The area of these vast woods-counting nothing in the passes or east of the Cascades -is nearly as large as the State of Iowa, and is estimated to hold 160,000,000,000 feet of timber, not more than three per cent. of which has been sawed or destroyed during the past twenty-five years.

This great timber tract is so penetrated by the ramifications of Puget Sound (as all these waters south of the Strait of Fuca are popularly termed, though originally the name was applied to only a portion) as to make more than 1500 miles of coast-line, at almost any point of which ships may approach very close to the land to be loaded. Through it, also, flow many navigable rivers, whose banks are not too abrupt to prevent easy handling of logs, which are often chuted down from the lofty ridges directly into the water, and rafted from far inland at trifling expense.

The principal growths are, fir of two kinds, three sorts of spruce, cedar of two species, larch, and hemlock; in addition to which, white oak, maple, cottonwood, ash, alder, etc., occur. The yellow or Douglas fir, a stately tree often 250 feet in height, exceeds in value and quantity all the others combined, the cedar ranking second. Then comes the pine, 120 to 160 feet in height; the silver-fir, 150 feet; white cedar (cypress), 100 feet; and black spruce, 150 feet. Cedars are known of 63

feet girth and 120 feet height.

The best timber flourishes somewhat back from the mixed forest of the shore, where the foot-hills begin. In such localities the tall and vertically tapering firs, unsurpassed in all the world for size, length, toughness, and durability, are peculiarly fitted for naval construction, equalling the Eastern white oak. Hence

and to a growing degree of the Eastern United States, come out of these forests. At Port Gamble the visitor is shown the base of the tree that nourished the spars of the Great Eastern; and he is told of the flag-staff, 185 feet in length, and straight as a plummet, which would have been sent to the Boston Peace Jubilee had not a crooked road prevented getting it out in time.

Spars and ship timbers, however, form only a fraction of the business of the mills. The principal demand is for building material of all kinds; and to supply this a vast capital is invested in securing the right to the forest, in cutting the trees, transporting the logs, and sawing the bright, fragrant planks and scantling.

The cutting and hauling out of the logs are usually committed to contractors, who receive about $6 a thousand feet for logs delivered in navigable waters, the mills always buying logs in preference to encroaching on their own property. A contractor's method is to hire six or eight men, and provide several yoke of oxen. He builds a rude camp in the place chosen for chopping, and boards his crew, who are paid from three to five dollars a day, and will produce perhaps 30,000 feet of logs daily. These are hauled out of the woods by the ox teams, or by windlasses, or (in a few localities) by short railways, and are slid into the water of river or sound, where they are made up into rafts, and towed by powerful tug-boats to the mill. The general length of the logs is twenty-four and thirty-two feet; but sometimes logs of one hundred feet are prepared for special purposes.