The little Salal Prairie, five or six miles long, and six miles from Hop Ranch, breaks the continuity of the forests, but with that exception, it continues to the pass of the mountain. As to the size of the trees, I feel sure that I saw hundreds that would average ten feet in diameter. I measured two that were by no means singular, and one gave a circumference of thirty-three feet (equal to eleven feet diameter), and the other not much less. There is no doubt that many of these trees are 300 feet in height. I think it likely that the average height of the mill timber on the line of the road from Raging River, for two-thirds of the way up the main mountain (a distance of over twenty-five miles), is 250 feet, and 150 feet of this clear of limbs, and hence of knots. And I think that the average diameter of the butt-cuts of the mill timber would be near five feet. I found my greatest difficulty in estimating by the eye the average number of trees to an acre. I can only say that I not only never saw so many, but I never conceived it possible for such a number of large trees to be supported by the soil of an acre of ground. It was not unusual to see many trees of six to eight feet in diameter standing within ten feet of each other. I knew, of course, that there were single trees in California, and elsewhere, larger than any single specimens to be found here, but I did not know before going to Washington Territory that such forests as these were to be found on the face of the earth. [Sidenote: Lumber product per acre.] I shall leave to men better versed in the details of the lumber business than I to estimate the quantity of sawed lumber which would be yielded by an acre of such timber, and by the many thousands of acres which lie on, or near, the line of this railroad. Somebody published that the average yield of the Washington Territory forests would be 30,000 feet to the acre, and this may be, because there is much small and scattered timber; but if this amount be multiplied by six, it would not do justice to the forests I saw in the Snoqualmie valley. There are single trees that would make 30,000 feet of lumber. It is fortunate that the fir and cedar timber are preferred by the lumbermen, as these varieties constitute the larger portion of the forest. Undoubtedly the hemlock will all be wanted at an early day, and so of the larch and the less abundant trees, both evergreen and deciduous. The bearing of these facts on the interests of the railroad are obvious. Such bodies of timber, standing close to the road for a distance of eighty miles, would of itself guarantee the success of the road for a generation to come. And there is everything favorable in the position of the timber with reference to the track, especially if the track, in ascending the mountain, can be kept near the river. It is to be hoped that the timber along the right of way will be saved for sawing. It would be no small item in paying for the road.