716 
Modern Business Geography 
M.D. Boland 
Fic. 149. Loading lumber at Seattle. Washington cuts more timber than any other state in the 
Union, and lumber is shipped from Seattle to ports all over the world, the largest amount going to 
the North Atlantic ports. 
Seattle to express trains that have the right of way even over passen- 
ger trains for the three thousand miles across the continent. 
So valuable has land become in Seattle and so troublesome are hills 
in the heart of a city, that the city cut off the top of one of its beauti- 
ful hills and washed the material down into the bay to fill up many 
acres of shallow water and make them into land. 
The work of our chief seaports. Eleven cities — New York, Bos- 
ton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, New Orleans, Galveston with 
Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle — are the 
great seaports of the United States. They handle four fifths of all the 
foreign commerce and an even larger part of the coastwise commerce of 
the country. Like the great department stores located at busy corners 
in a large city, they hum with the business of buying and selling. 
There is ever an outpouring of goods purchased by their customers, 
and an inpouring of goods from distant parts. They have grown great 
largely because they can be readily reached. 
THE LAKE PORTS 
Next to our seaports in importance come the ports of the Great 
Lakes. If goods collected on land are to be carried by lake, they are 
naturally taken to the nearest point on the lake, which means one of