WONDERLAND .                             71
again, this time right across the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, an outlet to the open sea. As the kingly form of Mount Tacoma recedes into the distance, that of Mount Baker increases in distinctness, while we have also a fine view of the Olympic Mountains on our left, and the lofty ranges of Vancouver Island, for whose beautiful capital we are now steering, right before us.
So exceedingly picturesque and generally attractive is the appearance presented by the City of Victoria to an approaching steamer, that it is with no little satisfaction that the traveler learns that a stop of several hours will be made in its harbor. While there is no lack of American cities that have attained, within a period corresponding to that of the growth of Victoria, far greater magnitude and commercial importance, the beautiful capital of British Columbia is fashioned after so very different a pattern, and presents, if not to old-world eyes, at least to most Americans, so quaint an appearance, with its ivy-covered houses, its admirable roads and its fortifications, that it is haru to believe that it is really the young city it is. It is, however, but little more than forty years since the United States ship Vincennes, entering the Sound through the Straits of Fuca, found what is now its site a most forbidding picture of savage life. It was the Caribou mining excitement of 1868, that first brought any considerable population-and that a mere transient one-around the post established here, a few years before, by the Hudson's Bay Company. In I870, although it had in the meantime been made the capital of the Province, Victoria contained but 3,270 inhabitants. Its present population is about 12,000, and there is probably no more self-contained city of its size in the world, for it has its own orchards and pastures, forests and'coal fields, while its manufactories are as varied as those of many cities ten times its size.
It is not, however, with these things that the transient visitor is chiefly concerned, nor even with the exceptionally fine climate it enjoys, except in so far as the clear skies and balmy air he is almost certain to find' there may contribute to the sum total of his enjoyment. It is rather with its superb situation, with the sea on three sides, bordered by picturesque shores and grassy hills. These will assuredly delight him, as will also-and possibly still morea drive through its glorious woods, with their lovely undergrowth of almost tropical luxuriance, to the neighboring village of Esquimalt, with its fine harbor, its immense dry dock, its naval arsenal, and the ships of the British Naval Squadron of the Pacific, of which it is the rendezvous. Returning to the city, he may stroll into one of its old curiosity shops, filled with a tempting display of those various artistic products in which the native races of the northwest coast so greatly excel. On his way back to the steamer, he will not fail to admire the striking picture presented by the almost land-locked inner harbor, with its shipping, its Indian canoes, its narrow rocky entrance, and its white lighthouse, standing out against the dark foliage of the adjacent woods; nor the glistening peaks of the Olympic Mountains, over in Washington Territory; nor yet the trim and tasteful, but unpretentious, government buildings overlooking James Bay.