Adding these differences together, we see that longitude alone makes a total of nine hundred and fifty-four miles in favor of Puget Sound between Liverpool and Yokohama. When the Northern Pacific Railroad is completed, Chicago will be fully six hundred miles nearer Asia by Puget Sound than by San Francisco. Vessels sailing from Japan to San Francisco follow the Kuro-Siwo, the heated river, which of itself bears them towards Puget Sound at the rate of eighty miles a day. They follow it into northern latitudes till within three or four hundred miles of the coast of British Columbia, then shape their course southward past Puget Sound to the Golden Gate. In navigation, then, Asia is nearly, if not quite, one thousand miles nearer the ports of Puget Sound than San Francisco. The time will come when not only Puget Sound, but every bay and inlet of the northwest coast, will be whitened with sails of vessels bringing the products of the Orient, not only for those who dwell upon the Pacific slope, but for the mighty multitude of the Empire of the Northwest, of the Mississippi Valley, and the Atlantic States. From those land-locked harbors steamships shall depart for other climes, freighted with the products of this region, spun and woven, hammered and smelted, sawed and planed, by the millions of industrious workers who are to improve the unparalleled capabilities of this vast domain. There is not on the face of the globe a country so richly endowed as this of the Northwest. Here we find every element necessary for the development of a varied industry,--agricultural, mining, manufacturing, mercantile, and commercial,--all this with a climate like that of southern France, or central and northern Europe. "The climate," says Mr. Roberts, "of this favored region is very remarkable, and will always remain an attractive feature; which must, therefore, aid greatly in the speedy settlement of this portion of the Pacific coast. Even in the coldest winters there is practically no obstruction to navigation from ice; vessels can enter and depart at all times; and the winters are so mild that summer flowers which in the latitude of Philadelphia, on the Atlantic coast, we are obliged to place in the hot-house, are left out in the open garden without being injured. The cause of this mildness is usually, and I think correctly, ascribed to the warm-water equatorial current, which, impinging against the Pacific coast, north of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, passes along nearly parallel with the shore, diffusing its genial warmth over the land far into the interior. Of the fact there is no doubt, whatever may be the cause" (Report, p. 14). The climate of eastern Washington, amid the mountains, corresponds with that of Pennsylvania; but upon the sea-coast and along the waters of Puget Sound roses blossom in the open air throughout the year, and the residents gather green peas and strawberries in March and April.