The Great Railway Pipe Dream

Our British cousins are often noted for their amusing blunders in regard to geographical matters, seeming to show a sublime indifference to the little trifles of place and distance. An ardent Briton, across the Straits, argues in a communication that the Esquimalt terminus should be the location for the Canadian Pacific Railroad. This florid rhetorician forecasts that American cousins, suffering under commercial depression and engrossed in a Presidential election, will soon reveal their own plans for northern railroads to the Pacific. They will most probably prolong the line from Tacoma to Holmes Harbor on Whidbey Island. From Tenino, some sixteen miles southeast of Olympia, a railway can be constructed at no great cost to Port Townsend, and one can see from a steamer’s deck how easily such a line could be prolonged to the safe and large harbor of Ebey's Hook, or Angeles, or the Fuca Straits. For more than a quarter of a century, 'Puget Sound' has been an increasing port for merchantmen with a very small record of maritime disaster, unlike Burrard Inlet. It is pleasing to know our neighbors have faith in the commercial enterprise of the American people, but from a local standpoint, our writer's geographical logic is rather amusing and perplexing.