“RAFAEL ESPINOSA" was the name upon the card which the servant brought to Francis, as he sat in his room in the hotel, that night. As the caller was shown in it was evident that he was in particularly good humor.

"I am going to tell you about it," said he to his host, who alluded to his beaming look. "I have made many enemies today. A strange reason for being happy, you think? But let me explain. Perhaps you did me the honor to read my editorial of this morning."

Stevenson had to admit that such was not the case.

"Ah well, it was a poor thing; nevertheless I have reason to know that it caused a

profound sensation. In the Concordia, where I went to eat an ice, nothing else was talked of. On all sides I was denounced. I was informed that tomorrow's La Patria will call me a traitor to my country, and I have no doubt that the Voz De Mexico will declare me a traitor to my religion." Espinosa smiled cheerfully, as if he were especially pleased.

"You don't seem down," said Francis,

to be greatly cast "What could there

have been in your article thus to stir church and state alike?"

"I am going to tell you, my friend. was writing about the relations of Mexic with the United States. I depicted steady march of your country towards o borders, alluded to the vast portions of o ancient territory that you had taken from us referred to the present invasion of your pers ple, peaceful and civilizing now, yet nox the less powerful, and then I predicted, -this is the thing, I predicted that before the end of this century Mexico would be a par of the United States."

"But do you really believe that?" "Indubitably. It is what you call

'Manifold destiny,' is it not?"

"O, there's no doubt that we could take your territory if we wanted it," said Stevenson, with that easy assumption of indisputable superiority so common in Americans conversing with Mexicans and so galling to the latter. "But I don't believe we want it. We've got enough on our hands now, without having to look after you."

"One word, my friend. Have present that I do not say 'at once'. Not yet, I admit, but after a time. I predict it."

66

'Well, prophecy is usually safe. But I don't wonder that you are without honor in your own country if you make such predictions as that to your countrymen. I confess I don't see why you should be so happy over it. It can't be that you are glad to make enemies. What is the point?”

"I am about to put you in knowledge. The thing is this. I have my ambitions. I see clearly that annexation or conquest must surely come. You will get our country, just as surely as you got the rest. Do I grieve for this? As a mere Mexican, yes. But as a lover of liberty, and as a philanthropist, no. It will be best for us. Look at California, at San Francisco. What you have done there, you will do here. It is certain to come. Now look. I am yet I have desires to be a public man.

young.

Well, I appear as the prophet and advocate f annexation. For the present it is a loss; brings me enmity. But wait. Pass on in dvance twenty years. My ideas have iumphed. I triumph with them. Who nows? I may be a delegate in the Amerian Congress from Mexico. You smile? Let me tell you a thing. I have just come rom a conversation with the Mexican corresondent of the New York Statesman. He is enthusiastic over my editorial. He has telegraphed a half column about it to his paper. He will mention me as a rising Mexican. Already I shall begin to attract attention, and to be viewed with favor in your country." There was a pause, after Espinosa's eager words. Francis seemed to be meditating. Finally he spoke. "Well, it's a bold thing to do, certainly. Your plan is, then, to become popular in the States, to make up for opposition here?"

"Exactly so, and at the same time to try to educate my countrymen to see this as I do."

Francis eyed the Mexican closely as he said slowly, "Has your contemplated marriage with my cousin grown out of this idea of yours?"

"What a miracle!" returned the other, laughing. "It was the very thing I was going to speak of, and you divine it before I utter a word. Yes, that enters into my plans. You will see that I have thought profoundly on this affair. Once united the two countries, what Mexican would be in such good position politically, as he who has an American wife? Already we see the advantage of such a union, in Don Porfirio himself, as also in the General Treviño, and in the honorable Secretary of Relations, Mariscal. Without doubt it will be very advantageous to me."

"Then I suppose you have on the lookout for an American wife for some time, ever since you first entertained this project ?" "Up to a certain point, my friend, it is

Until my

American ladies we see here. most fortunate meeting with your sympathetic cousin, I was in despair, I confess it, of finding a suitable wife among your countrywomen."

"Now let me tell you," said Francis with considerable asperity, "that you have a great deal to learn before you can become a good American. One thing is to change your ideas about marriage. We don't go to work in that business-like, and if you will excuse me, unfeeling way to find a wife. With us

it is a question of affection, or personal attachment."

"Affection?" cried Rafael. "Most certainly! Why I am marvelously affectionate towards your cousin. I am terribly smitten with her, I assure it you. with her, I assure it you. I ask your par

don, but to me it seems a strange thing that you should think a Mexican does not know how to love. Ah! it is the grand passion with us. And do you think that we children of the passionate South are behind you of the North, in the intensity of our love? I certify to you, my friend, that I have the very strongest sentiment for Miss Estevenson, --the very strongest. Proudly would I fight for her. Yes, and if there were need, the good God knows, I would gladly die for her."

Espinosa was so evidently hurt by the other's suspicion, and so plainly honest in his declarations, that Francis felt a sense of compunction. "Well, well," said he, "I must not wrong you. Besides, it is not a case for my interference. We in America leave these things to go very much their own way. If Victoria is satisfied I would be the last in the world to put an obstacle in your way.

"A thousand thanks for that word!" said Rafael effusively. "Then I may count upon your favor?"

"O," returned Francis, with rising caution, I simply say that I should wish to further my cousin's happiness."

"Then all will be well," exclaimed Espinosa joyously. "My errand meets with

with whom they leave their parents' home to found new ones; she knows that this is the common lot. She wonders who will come to ask her to leave father and mother and live with him all the rest of her days; she forms an ideal of what this man shall be, she clothes him with every noble attribute he must be brave, and tender, and earnest, and devoted; he must love her as she will love him beside."

more than all the earth

He paused a moment. His heart was beating uncomfortably fast, X was looking at him in breathless suspense.

"Go on, go on!" she exclaimed, "What comes next; I never heard anything like it -I am charmed with the idea. Am I old enough to be thinking about a man for my own self?"

It was with difficulty that Ralph Arnold kept from throwing himself at her feet; but he went on in an unsteady voice:

"Yes, you are old enough. This is what comes next. The girl and her lover spend as much time in each other's society as possible; he takes her to walk, to ride, to the theatre, to church; they sit together alone in the twilight and make plans for the future. The wedding-day comes: she wears a beautiful gown of white; a veil covers her from head to foot; there are orange-blossoms in her hair; the house is all decked with flowers. The ministerthe priest is there. The father with reluctance gives up his darling child to the bridegroom, who puts upon her finger a gold ring to signify that she now belongs to him. Clasping hands they stand there in the presence of the man of God, and of their dearest friends, and promise to live true to each other, to love none other whatever fate may befall them. The ceremony is then over. The mother weeps a little as she thinks that her daughter is going to leave her, but she remembers that she forsook father and mother for her lover, and that it is great Nature's law as well as the

law of Scripture that a woman shall give up all to cleave unto her husband."

X rose in great excitement. "O, it is a beautiful custom! I shall follow it in every detail just as soon as my father can make the necessary arrangements. Do they consult the augurs in regard to the omens? Is the girl's hair cut off? Do they sacrifice any victims on the altar to propitiate the gods? Is salted meal prepared and are libations poured out?"

'No, those rites are no longer observed. Friends bring gifts for the young pair and offer congratulations, then the new-made husband and wife seek their own home.”

The girl sank down in her chair and fixed her eyes on the distant landscape, she seemed lost in meditation, and the young man did not wish to disturb her, though he would have given much to know her thoughts. He looked about the large, beautiful apartment adorned with flowers everywhere, warm, glowing, semi-tropical blossoms. He pictured X in bridal garments in the centre of the room leaning on her father's arm; he saw himself standing near her; he heard the words uttered that made them one; he bent to kiss her it was an intoxicating vision, a lovely mirage of the brain. The girl herself dispelled it.

"You said that the man came to ask the woman. Is that always the way? Could not she go and ask him if she chose ?"

"Why I certainly, yes; only the other way is more usual."

"I shall do the asking," she said decidedly. "It would pain me to say no if the wrong one sought me for a wife, and I shall not delay, I shall seek my husband at once ?"

She left her seat and came directly in front of Arnold. There was an air of queenly condescension in her whole bearing. Diana must have looked so when she stooped to the sleeping Endymion; the primitive woman would appear thus before she learned the restraints inexorable custom has imposed

THERE are few regions more difficult to travel over than the unsettled portions of the Puget Sound basin, the timber is so heavy and the undergrowth so dense. Places less than ten miles apart are often separated as completely as if several hundred miles of open country lay between them. In fact little is generally known concerning the country outside of the government surveys.

For several years prior to the year 1881 the writer was almost continually traveling over different portions of western Washington. Most of this travel was on foot or in an open boat, and when on the land much of it was through regions where there were few or no settlers and trails, or means of determining one's course, except streams, mountains, or other natural land marks. When one is once accustomed to traveling in the forest these marks are all that is necessary to enable him to find his way; but it would be folly for one from an open country to attempt to penetrate these woods at all, unless in company with an efficient guide.

The Nootsack is the most northern river on the east side of Puget Sound. It drains most of Whatcom County, and its mouth is

north, or rather west, of the town of Whatcom. The north fork of the Nootsack has its rise on the north side of Mount Baker, the middle fork on its west side, while the southern slope of the mountain is drained by the south fork. The Skagit River is the largest river flowing into Puget Sound. It rises in British Columbia, north of Mount Baker, and flows east, southeast, south, southwest, and west. It drains every side of Mount Baker not drained by the Nootsack. Until 1880 it was supposed that no part of the south fork of the Nootsack approached within twenty-five miles of the Skagit; and most maps still represent the Skagit thus far south of the south fork of the Nootsack at the point of nearest approach. The Samish River flows into Bellingham Bay south of Whatcom. Most people supposed that it extended back to the main mountain range between the Skagit and the Nootsack. In fact, a short distance from salt water it divides, turns on itself, and does not pass beyond the foothills.

In 1880, Williamson, the pioneer settler of the upper Skagit valley, told me that he had traveled northward from his place

through a mountain pass, and had found a river, the Nootsack, as he supposed, which at that point was not over nine miles distant from the Skagit. Excepting what Indians had told him, this was the extent of his information. Williamson's hop ranch was located about one mile north of the river, not far from the Skagit coal mines, which are about forty miles from the mouth of the Skagit. In August, 1881, I made ready for a trip from Williamson's through this pass, and thence down this river to settlements.

Arriving at the hop ranch I found a large number of Indians busy picking hops, and tried to get one as a guide for the trip, but failed.

One tall sinewy Indian, apparently an excellent hunter and woodsman, whose name was "Elk," was pointed out as the best guide; but he declined to go. He held his hands up so that the fingers of one hand lay at right angles across the fingers of the other, and explained that the way was impassable from fallen timber and tangled undergrowth. "Wake close! Hyu stick!" was his expressive remonstrance.

I therefore prepared to go alone. My outfit consisted of about ten days' food, a hunting knife and small revolver, and a piece of unbleached cotton cloth six feet wide by nine feet long and not over a pound in weight for a tent. As it was necessary to go as light as possible, I took no blankets; and as I was going to follow the river valley down to settlements, I did not consider a compass necessary.

It was noon before a start was made from the Williamson hop ranch. The route selected followed Williamson's Creek up into and through Williamson's Pass.

There was

a light drizzling rain, the kind so common on Puget Sound, at the time I started; but this all ceased when I reached the summit of the pass, some four miles north of Williamson's; and from there on, no evidences were visible of its having rained for several days. I reached the Nootsack River, and

made a distance of over a mile in traveling along its bank, down stream, before I made camp, and the first day's tramp was ended.

A

The place first reached on the Nootsack. cannot be mistaken. It is a bluff of white quartz gravel, over five hundred feet high, with the river running at the foot of it. Williamson's Creek, flowing from the pass to the Skagit River, also has white quartz gravel and black sand in its bed. After passing the summit of the pass a mountain valley is entered, which is closed in on every side by spurs from the southwest flank of Mount Baker. The mountains to the southwest of this valley are high enough to shut out the moist winds from the Sound, and to give it a climate and vegetable growth entirely different from the Skagit or the lower portion of the Nootsack. few spruce trees are seen, but no cedar or fir. The timber on the bottoms, near the river, consists of scattering white pine, of huge dimensions, with alder and scattering vine maple undergrowth. On the benches, the timber consists of large white pine, growing thicker than that on the bottoms but of less size, and found amid dense hemlock thickets. The sides of the mountains are covered with almost clear white pine, but of still smaller growth. The mountain tops produce the genuine white fir, except that the sides and top of Mount Baker at the upper end of the valley are covered with eternal snow. From the top of the bluff, where the river is first reached, the view of Mount Baker is sublime, as it is there fully revealed to the eye in the stillness of the mountains, white-robed, solemn and grand.

Fire has been through this valley, probably not far from the time of the great forest fires of 1868, and has killed many of the giant pines; but, on the bottoms, hundreds are still alive, of such size that a single tree, forty feet from the ground, would exceed sixty inches in diameter. The bodies of these trees run trim and clean, from eighty to one hundred feet from the