mount shasta rises in solitary grandeur from the edge of a comparatively low and lightly sculptured lava plain near the northern extremity of the sierra, and maintains a far more impressive and commanding individuality than any other mountain within the limits of california. go where you may, within a radius of from fifty to a hundred miles or more, there stands before you the colossal cone of shasta, clad in ice and snow, the one grand unmistakable landmark—the pole star of the landscape. far to the southward mount whitney lifts its granite summit four or five hundred feet higher than shasta, but it is nearly snowless during the late summer, and is so feebly individualized that the traveler may search for it in vain among the many rival peaks crowded along the axis of the range to north and south of it, which all alike are crumbling residual masses brought into relief in the degradation of the general mass of the range. the highest point on mount shasta, as determined by the state geological survey, is 14,440 feet above mean tide. that of whitney, computed from fewer observations, is about 14,900 feet. but inasmuch as the average elevation of the plain out of which shasta rises is only about four thousand feet above the sea, while the actual base of the peak of mount whitney lies at an elevation of eleven thousand feet, the individual height of the former is about two and a half times as great as that of the latter.
approaching shasta from the south, one obtains glimpses of its snowy cone here and there through the trees from the tops of hills and ridges; but it is not until strawberry valley is reached, where there is a grand out-opening of the forests, that shasta is seen in all its glory. from base to crown clearly revealed with its wealth of woods and waters and fountain snow, rejoicing in the bright mountain sky, and radiating beauty on all the subject landscape like a sun. standing in a fringing thicket of purple spiraea in the immediate foreground is a smooth expanse of green meadow with its meandering stream, one of the smaller affluents of the sacramento; then a zone of dark, close forest, its countless spires of pine and fir rising above one another on the swelling base of the mountain in glorious array; and, over all, the great white cone sweeping far into the thin, keen sky—meadow, forest, and grand icy summit harmoniously blending and making one sublime picture evenly balanced.
the main lines of the landscape are immensely bold and simple, and so regular that it needs all its shaggy wealth of woods and chaparral and its finely tinted ice and snow and brown jutting crags to keep it from looking conventional. in general views of the mountain three distinct zones may be readily defined. the first, which may be called the chaparral zone, extends around the base in a magnificent sweep nearly a hundred miles in length on its lower edge, and with a breadth of about seven miles. it is a dense growth of chaparral from three to six or eight feet high, composed chiefly of manzanita, cherry, chincapin, and several species of ceanothus, called deerbrush by the hunters, forming, when in full bloom, one of the most glorious flowerbeds conceivable. the continuity of this flowery zone is interrupted here and there, especially on the south side of the mountain, by wide swaths of coniferous trees, chiefly the sugar and yellow pines, douglas spruce, silver fir, and incense cedar, many specimens of which are two hundred feet high and five to seven feet in diameter. goldenrods, asters, gilias, lilies, and lupines, with many other less conspicuous plants, occur in warm sheltered openings in these lower woods, making charming gardens of wildness where bees and butterflies are at home and many a shy bird and squirrel.
the next higher is the fir zone, made up almost exclusively of two species of silver fir. it is from two to three miles wide, has an average elevation above the sea of some six thousand feet on its lower edge and eight thousand on its upper, and is the most regular and best defined of the three.
the alpine zone has a rugged, straggling growth of storm-beaten dwarf pines (pinus albicaulis), which forms the upper edge of the timberline. this species reaches an elevation of about nine thousand feet, but at this height the tops of the trees rise only a few feet into the thin frosty air, and are closely pressed and shorn by wind and snow; yet they hold on bravely and put forth an abundance of beautiful purple flowers and produce cones and seeds. down towards the edge of the fir belt they stand erect, forming small, well-formed trunks, and are associated with the taller two-leafed and mountain pines and the beautiful williamson spruce. bryanthus, a beautiful flowering heathwort, flourishes a few hundred feet above the timberline, accompanied with kalmia and spiraea. lichens enliven the faces of the cliffs with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks of the rocks, up to a height of eleven thousand feet, there are a few tufts of dwarf daisies, wallflowers, and penstemons; but, notwithstanding these bloom freely, they make no appreciable show at a distance, and the stretches of rough brown lava beyond the storm-beaten trees seem as bare of vegetation as the great snow fields and glaciers of the summit.
shasta is a fire-mountain, an old volcano gradually accumulated and built up into the blue deep of the sky by successive eruptions of ashes and molten lava which, shot high in the air and falling in darkening showers, and flowing from chasms and craters, grew outward and upward like the trunk of a knotty, bulging tree. not in one grand convulsion was shasta given birth, nor in any one special period of volcanic storm and stress, though mountains more than a thousand feet in height have been cast up like molehills in a night—quick contributions to the wealth of the landscapes, and most emphatic statements, on the part of nature, of the gigantic character of the power that dwells beneath the dull, dead-looking surface of the earth. but sections cut by the glaciers, displaying some of the internal framework of shasta, show that comparatively long periods of quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which the cooling lavas ceased to flow, and took their places as permanent additions to the bulk of the growing mountain. thus with alternate haste and deliberation eruption succeeded eruption, until mount shasta surpassed even its present sublime height.
then followed a strange contrast. the glacial winter came on. the sky that so often had been darkened with storms of cinders and ashes and lighted by the glare of volcanic fires was filled with crystal snow-flowers, which, loading the cooling mountain, gave birth to glaciers that, uniting edge to edge, at length formed one grand conical glacier—a down-crawling mantle of ice upon a fountain of smouldering fire, crushing and grinding its brown, flinty lavas, and thus degrading and remodeling the entire mountain from summit to base. how much denudation and degradation has been effected we have no means of determining, the porous, crumbling rocks being ill adapted for the reception and preservation of glacial inscriptions.
the summit is now a mass of ruins, and all the finer striations have been effaced from the flanks by post-glacial weathering, while the irregularity of its lavas as regards susceptibility to erosion, and the disturbance caused by inter- and post-glacial eruptions, have obscured or obliterated those heavier characters of the glacial record found so clearly inscribed upon the granite pages of the high sierra between latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes and 39 degrees. this much, however, is plain: that the summit of the mountain was considerably lowered, and the sides were deeply grooved and fluted while it was a center of dispersal for the glaciers of the circumjacent region. and when at length the glacial period began to draw near its close, the ice mantle was gradually melted off around the base of the mountain, and in receding and breaking up into its present fragmentary condition the irregular heaps and rings of moraine matter were stored upon its flanks on which the forests are growing. the glacial erosion of most of the shasta lavas gives rise to detritus composed of rough subangular boulders of moderate size and porous gravel and sand, which yields freely to the transporting power of running water. several centuries ago immense quantities of this lighter material were washed down from the higher slopes by a flood of extraordinary magnitude, caused probably by the sudden melting of the ice and snow during an eruption, giving rise to the deposition of conspicuous delta-like beds around the base. and it is upon these flood-beds of moraine soil, thus suddenly and simultaneously laid down and joined edge to edge, that the flowery chaparral is growing.
thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, nature accomplishes her beneficent designs—now a flood of fire, now a flood of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an outburst of organic life—forest and garden, with all their wealth of fruit and flowers, the air stirred into one universal hum with rejoicing insects, a milky way of wings and petals, girdling the newborn mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating against its sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees.
but with such grand displays as nature is making here, how grand are her reservations, bestowed only upon those who devotedly seek them! beneath the smooth and snowy surface the fountain fires are still aglow, to blaze forth afresh at their appointed times. the glaciers, looking so still and small at a distance, represented by the artist with a patch of white paint laid on by a single stroke of his brush, are still flowing onward, unhalting, with deep crystal currents, sculpturing the mountain with stern, resistless energy. how many caves and fountains that no eye has yet seen lie with all their fine furniture deep down in the darkness, and how many shy wild creatures are at home beneath the grateful lights and shadows of the woods, rejoicing in their fullness of perfect life!
standing on the edge of the strawberry meadows in the sun-days of summer, not a foot or feather or leaf seems to stir; and the grand, towering mountain with all its inhabitants appears in rest, calm as a star. yet how profound is the energy ever in action, and how great is the multitude of claws and teeth, wings and eyes, wide awake and at work and shining! going into the blessed wilderness, the blood of the plants throbbing beneath the life-giving sunshine seems to be heard and felt; plant growth goes on before our eyes, and every tree and bush and flower is seen as a hive of restless industry. the deeps of the sky are mottled with singing wings of every color and tone—clouds of brilliant chrysididae dancing and swirling in joyous rhythm, golden-barred vespidae, butterflies, grating cicadas and jolly rattling grasshoppers—fairly enameling the light, and shaking all the air into music. happy fellows they are, every one of them, blowing tiny pipe and trumpet, plodding and prancing, at work or at play.
though winter holds the summit, shasta in summer is mostly a massy, bossy mound of flowers colored like the alpenglow that flushes the snow. there are miles of wild roses, pink bells of huckleberry and sweet manzanita, every bell a honey-cup, plants that tell of the north and of the south; tall nodding lilies, the crimson sarcodes, rhododendron, cassiope, and blessed linnaea; phlox, calycanthus, plum, cherry, crataegus, spiraea, mints, and clovers in endless variety; ivesia, larkspur, and columbine; golden aplopappus, linosyris 5, bahia, wyethia, arnica, brodiaea, etc.,—making sheets and beds of light edgings of bloom in lavish abundance for the myriads of the air dependent on their bounty.
the common honeybees, gone wild in this sweet wilderness, gather tons of honey into the hollows of the trees and rocks, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom, shaking the clustered bells of the generous manzanita, now humming aloft among polleny willows and firs, now down on the ashy ground among small gilias and buttercups, and anon plunging into banks of snowy cherry and buckthorn. they consider the lilies and roll into them, pushing their blunt polleny faces against them like babies on their mother's bosom; and fondly, too, with eternal love does mother nature clasp her small bee-babies and suckle them, multitudes at once, on her warm shasta breast. besides the common honeybee there are many others here, fine, burly, mossy fellows, such as were nourished on the mountains many a flowery century before the advent of the domestic species—bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters. butterflies, too, and moths of every size and pattern; some wide-winged like bats, flapping slowly and sailing in easy curves; others like small flying violets shaking about loosely in short zigzag flights close to the flowers, feasting in plenty night and day.
deer in great abundance come to shasta from the warmer foothills every spring to feed in the rich, cool pastures, and bring forth their young in the ceanothus tangles of the chaparral zone, retiring again before the snowstorms of winter, mostly to the southward and westward of the mountain. in like manner the wild sheep of the adjacent region seek the lofty inaccessible crags of the summit as the snow melts, and are driven down to the lower spurs and ridges where there is but little snow, to the north and east of shasta.
bears, too, roam this foodful wilderness, feeding on grass, clover, berries, nuts, ant eggs, fish, flesh, or fowl,—whatever comes in their way,—with but little troublesome discrimination. sugar and honey they seem to like best of all, and they seek far to find the sweets; but when hard pushed by hunger they make out to gnaw a living from the bark of trees and rotten logs, and might almost live on clean lava alone.
notwithstanding the california bears have had as yet but little experience with honeybees, they sometimes succeed in reaching the bountiful stores of these industrious gatherers and enjoy the feast with majestic relish. but most honeybees in search of a home are wise enough to make choice of a hollow in a living tree far from the ground, whenever such can be found. there they are pretty secure, for though the smaller brown and black bears climb well, they are unable to gnaw their way into strong hives, while compelled to exert themselves to keep from falling and at the same time endure the stings of the bees about the nose and eyes, without having their paws free to brush them off. but woe to the unfortunates who dwell in some prostrate trunk, and to the black bumblebees discovered in their mossy, mouselike nests in the ground. with powerful teeth and claws these are speedily laid bare, and almost before time is given for a general buzz the bees, old and young, larvae, honey, stings, nest, and all, are devoured in one ravishing revel.
the antelope may still be found in considerable numbers to the northeastward of shasta, but the elk, once abundant, have almost entirely gone from the region. the smaller animals, such as the wolf, the various foxes, wildcats, coon, squirrels, and the curious wood rat that builds large brush huts, abound in all the wilder places; and the beaver, otter, mink, etc., may still be found along the sources of the rivers. the blue grouse and mountain quail are plentiful in the woods and the sage-hen on the plains about the northern base of the mountain, while innumerable smaller birds enliven and sweeten every thicket and grove.
there are at least five classes of human inhabitants about the shasta region: the indians, now scattered, few in numbers and miserably demoralized, though still offering some rare specimens of savage manhood; miners and prospectors, found mostly to the north and west of the mountain, since the region about its base is overflowed with lava; cattle-raisers, mostly on the open plains to the northeastward and around the klamath lakes; hunters and trappers, where the woods and waters are wildest; and farmers, in shasta valley on the north side of the mountain, wheat, apples, melons, berries, all the best production of farm and garden growing and ripening there at the foot of the great white cone, which seems at times during changing storms ready to fall upon them—the most sublime farm scenery imaginable.
the indians of the mccloud river that have come under my observation differ considerably in habits and features from the diggers and other tribes of the foothills and plains, and also from the pah utes and modocs. they live chiefly on salmon. they seem to be closely related to the tlingits of alaska, washington, and oregon, and may readily have found their way here by passing from stream to stream in which salmon abound. they have much better features than the indians of the plains, and are rather wide awake, speculative and ambitious in their way, and garrulous, like the natives of the northern coast.
before the modoc war they lived in dread of the modocs, a tribe living about the klamath lake and the lava beds, who were in the habit of crossing the low sierra divide past the base of shasta on freebooting excursions, stealing wives, fish, and weapons from the pitts and mcclouds. mothers would hush their children by telling them that the modocs would catch them.
during my stay at the government fish-hatching station on the mccloud i was accompanied in my walks along the riverbank by a mccloud boy about ten years of age, a bright, inquisitive fellow, who gave me the indian names of the birds and plants that we met. the water-ousel he knew well and he seemed to like the sweet singer, which he called "sussinny." he showed me how strips of the stems of the beautiful maidenhair fern were used to adorn baskets with handsome brown bands, and pointed out several plants good to eat, particularly the large saxifrage growing abundantly along the river margin. once i rushed suddenly upon him to see if he would be frightened; but he unflinchingly held his ground, struck a grand heroic attitude, and shouted, "me no fraid; me modoc!"
mount shasta, so far as i have seen, has never been the home of indians, not even their hunting ground to any great extent, above the lower slopes of the base. they are said to be afraid of fire-mountains and geyser basins as being the dwelling places of dangerously powerful and unmanageable gods. however, it is food and their relations to other tribes that mainly control the movements of indians; and here their food was mostly on the lower slopes, with nothing except the wild sheep to tempt them higher. even these were brought within reach without excessive climbing during the storms of winter.
on the north side of shasta, near sheep rock, there is a long cavern, sloping to the northward, nearly a mile in length, thirty or forty feet wide, and fifty feet or more in height, regular in form and direction like a railroad tunnel, and probably formed by the flowing away of a current of lava after the hardening of the surface. at the mouth of this cave, where the light and shelter is good, i found many of the heads and horns of the wild sheep, and the remains of campfires, no doubt those of indian hunters who in stormy weather had camped there and feasted after the fatigues of the chase. a wild picture that must have formed on a dark night—the glow of the fire, the circle of crouching savages around it seen through the smoke, the dead game, and the weird darkness and half-darkness of the walls of the cavern, a picture of cave-dwellers at home in the stone age!
interest in hunting is almost universal, so deeply is it rooted as an inherited instinct ever ready to rise and make itself known. fine scenery may not stir a fiber of mind or body, but how quick and how true is the excitement of the pursuit of game! then up flames the slumbering volcano of ancient wildness, all that has been done by church and school through centuries of cultivation is for the moment destroyed, and the decent gentleman or devout saint becomes a howling, bloodthirsty, demented savage. it is not long since we all were cavemen and followed game for food as truly as wildcat or wolf, and the long repression of civilization seems to make the rebound to savage love of blood all the more violent. this frenzy, fortunately, does not last long in its most exaggerated form, and after a season of wildness refined gentlemen from cities are not more cruel than hunters and trappers who kill for a living.
dwelling apart in the depths of the woods are the various kinds of mountaineers,—hunters, prospectors, and the like,—rare men, "queer characters," and well worth knowing. their cabins are located with reference to game and the ledges to be examined, and are constructed almost as simply as those of the wood rats made of sticks laid across each other without compass or square. but they afford good shelter from storms, and so are "square" with the need of their builders. these men as a class are singularly fine in manners, though their faces may be scarred and rough like the bark of trees. on entering their cabins you will promptly be placed on your good behavior, and, your wants being perceived with quick insight, complete hospitality will be offered for body and mind to the extent of the larder.
these men know the mountains far and near, and their thousand voices, like the leaves of a book. they can tell where the deer may be found at any time of year or day, and what they are doing; and so of all the other furred and feathered people they meet in their walks; and they can send a thought to its mark as well as a bullet. the aims of such people are not always the highest, yet how brave and manly and clean are their lives compared with too many in crowded towns mildewed and dwarfed in disease and crime! how fine a chance is here to begin life anew in the free fountains and skylands of shasta, where it is so easy to live and to die! the future of the hunter is likely to be a good one; no abrupt change about it, only a passing from wilderness to wilderness, from one high place to another.
now that the railroad has been built up the sacramento, everybody with money may go to mount shasta, the weak as well as the strong, fine-grained, succulent people, whose legs have never ripened, as well as sinewy mountaineers seasoned long in the weather. this, surely, is not the best way of going to the mountains, yet it is better than staying below. many still small voices will not be heard in the noisy rush and din, suggestive of going to the sky in a chariot of fire or a whirlwind, as one is shot to the shasta mark in a booming palace-car cartridge; up the rocky canyon, skimming the foaming river, above the level reaches, above the dashing spray—fine exhilarating translation, yet a pity to go so fast in a blur, where so much might be seen and enjoyed.
the mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but of men. therefore we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going to the mountains is going home. yet how many are doomed to toil in town shadows while the white mountains beckon all along the horizon! up the canyon to shasta would be a cure for all care. but many on arrival seem at a loss to know what to do with themselves, and seek shelter in the hotel, as if that were the shasta they had come for. others never leave the rail, content with the window views, and cling to the comforts of the sleeping car like blind mice to their mothers. many are sick and have been dragged to the healing wilderness unwillingly for body-good alone. were the parts of the human machine detachable like yankee inventions, how strange would be the gatherings on the mountains of pieces of people out of repair!
how sadly unlike the whole-hearted ongoing of the seeker after gold is this partial, compulsory mountaineering!—as if the mountain treasuries contained nothing better than gold! up the mountains they go, high-heeled and high-hatted, laden like christian with mortifications and mortgages of divers sorts and degrees, some suffering from the sting of bad bargains, others exulting in good ones; hunters and fishermen with gun and rod and leggins; blythe and jolly troubadours to whom all shasta is romance; poets singing their prayers; the weak and the strong, unable or unwilling to bear mental taxation. but, whatever the motive, all will be in some measure benefited. none may wholly escape the good of nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings. the minister will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of nature, so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer. fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.
possibly a branch railroad may some time be built to the summit of mount shasta like the road on mount washington. in the mean time tourists are dropped at sisson's, about twelve miles from the summit, whence as headquarters they radiate in every direction to the so-called "points of interest"; sauntering about the flowery fringes of the strawberry meadows, bathing in the balm of the woods, scrambling, fishing, hunting; riding about castle lake, the mccloud river, soda springs, big spring, deer pastures, and elsewhere. some demand bears, and make excited inquiries concerning their haunts, how many there might be altogether on the mountain, and whether they are grizzly, brown, or black. others shout, "excelsior," and make off at once for the upper snow fields. most, however, are content with comparatively level ground and moderate distances, gathering at the hotel every evening laden with trophies—great sheaves of flowers, cones of various trees, cedar and fir branches covered with yellow lichens, and possibly a fish or two, or quail, or grouse.
but the heads of deer, antelope, wild sheep, and bears are conspicuously rare or altogether wanting in tourist collections in the "paradise of hunters." there is a grand comparing of notes and adventures. most are exhilarated and happy, though complaints may occasionally be heard—"the mountain does not look so very high after all, nor so very white; the snow is in patches like rags spread out to dry," reminding one of sydney smith's joke against jeffrey, "d—n the solar system; bad light, planets too indistinct." but far the greater number are in good spirits, showing the influence of holiday enjoyment and mountain air. fresh roses come to cheeks that long have been pale, and sentiment often begins to blossom under the new inspiration.
the shasta region may be reserved as a national park, with special reference to the preservation of its fine forests and game. this should by all means be done; but, as far as game is concerned, it is in little danger from tourists, notwithstanding many of them carry guns, and are in some sense hunters. going in noisy groups, and with guns so shining, they are oftentimes confronted by inquisitive douglas squirrels, and are thus given opportunities for shooting; but the larger animals retire at their approach and seldom are seen. other gun people, too wise or too lifeless to make much noise, move slowly along the trails and about the open spots of the woods, like benumbed beetles in a snowdrift. such hunters are themselves hunted by the animals, which in perfect safety follow them out of curiosity.
during the bright days of midsummer the ascent of shasta is only a long, safe saunter, without fright or nerve strain, or even serious fatigue, to those in sound health. setting out from sisson's on horseback, accompanied by a guide leading a pack animal with provision, blankets, and other necessaries, you follow a trail that leads up to the edge of the timberline, where you camp for the night, eight or ten miles from the hotel, at an elevation of about ten thousand feet. the next day, rising early, you may push on to the summit and return to sisson's. but it is better to spend more time in the enjoyment of the grand scenery on the summit and about the head of the whitney glacier, pass the second night in camp, and return to sisson's on the third day. passing around the margin of the meadows and on through the zones of the forest, you will have good opportunities to get ever-changing views of the mountain and its wealth of creatures that bloom and breathe.
the woods differ but little from those that clothe the mountains to the southward, the trees being slightly closer together and generally not quite so large, marking the incipient change from the open sunny forests of the sierra to the dense damp forests of the northern coast, where a squirrel may travel in the branches of the thick-set trees hundreds of miles without touching the ground. around the upper belt of the forest you may see gaps where the ground has been cleared by avalanches of snow, thousands of tons in weight, which, descending with grand rush and roar, brush the trees from their paths like so many fragile shrubs or grasses.
at first the ascent is very gradual. the mountain begins to leave the plain in slopes scarcely perceptible, measuring from two to three degrees. these are continued by easy gradations mile after mile all the way to the truncated, crumbling summit, where they attain a steepness of twenty to twenty-five degrees. the grand simplicity of these lines is partially interrupted on the north subordinate cone that rises from the side of the main cone about three thousand feet from the summit. this side cone, past which your way to the summit lies, was active after the breaking-up of the main ice-cap of the glacial period, as shown by the comparatively unwasted crater in which it terminates and by streams of fresh-looking, unglaciated lava that radiate from it as a center.
the main summit is about a mile and a half in diameter from southwest to northeast, and is nearly covered with snow and neve, bounded by crumbling peaks and ridges, among which we look in vain for any sure plan of an ancient crater. the extreme summit is situated on the southern end of a narrow ridge that bounds the general summit on the east. viewed from the north, it appears as an irregular blunt point about ten feet high, and is fast disappearing before the stormy atmospheric action to which it is subjected.
at the base of the eastern ridge, just below the extreme summit, hot sulphurous gases and vapor escape with a hissing, bubbling noise from a fissure in the lava. some of the many small vents cast up a spray of clear hot water, which falls back repeatedly until wasted in vapor. the steam and spray seem to be produced simply by melting snow coming in the way of the escaping gases, while the gases are evidently derived from the heated interior of the mountain, and may be regarded as the last feeble expression of the mighty power that lifted the entire mass of the mountain from the volcanic depths far below the surface of the plain.
the view from the summit in clear weather extends to an immense distance in every direction. southeastward, the low volcanic portion of the sierra is seen like a map, both flanks as well as the crater-dotted axis, as far as lassen's butte 6, a prominent landmark and an old volcano like shasta, between ten and eleven thousand feet high, and distant about sixty miles. some of the higher summit peaks near independence lake, one hundred and eighty miles away, are at times distinctly visible. far to the north, in oregon, the snowy volcanic cones of mounts pitt, jefferson, and the three sisters rise in clear relief, like majestic monuments, above the dim dark sea of the northern woods. to the northeast lie the rhett and klamath lakes, the lava beds, and a grand display of hill and mountain and gray rocky plains. the scott, siskiyou, and trinity mountains rise in long, compact waves to the west and southwest, and the valley of the sacramento and the coast mountains, with their marvelous wealth of woods and waters, are seen; while close around the base of the mountain lie the beautiful shasta valley, strawberry valley, huckleberry valley, and many others, with the headwaters of the shasta, sacramento, and mccloud rivers. some observers claim to have seen the ocean from the summit of shasta, but i have not yet been so fortunate.
the cinder cone near lassen's butte is remarkable as being the scene of the most recent volcanic eruption in the range. it is a symmetrical truncated cone covered with gray cinders and ashes, with a regular crater in which a few pines an inch or two in diameter are growing. it stands between two small lakes which previous to the last eruption, when the cone was built, formed one lake. from near the base of the cone a flood of extremely rough black vesicular lava extends across what was once a portion of the bottom of the lake into the forest of yellow pine.
this lava flow seems to have been poured out during the same eruption that gave birth to the cone, cutting the lake in two, flowing a little way into the woods and overwhelming the trees in its way, the ends of some of the charred trunks still being visible, projecting from beneath the advanced snout of the flow where it came to rest; while the floor of the forest for miles around is so thickly strewn with loose cinders that walking is very fatiguing. the pitt river indians tell of a fearful time of darkness, probably due to this eruption, when the sky was filled with falling cinders which, as they thought, threatened every living creature with destruction, and say that when at length the sun appeared through the gloom it was red like blood.
less recent craters in great numbers dot the adjacent region, some with lakes in their throats, some overgrown with trees, others nearly bare—telling monuments of nature's mountain fires so often lighted throughout the northern sierra. and, standing on the top of icy shasta, the mightiest fire-monument of them all, we can hardly fail to look forward to the blare and glare of its next eruption and wonder whether it is nigh. elsewhere men have planted gardens and vineyards in the craters of volcanoes quiescent for ages, and almost without warning have been hurled into the sky. more than a thousand years of profound calm have been known to intervene between two violent eruptions. seventeen centuries intervened between two consecutive eruptions on the island of ischia. few volcanoes continue permanently in eruption. like gigantic geysers, spouting hot stone instead of hot water, they work and sleep, and we have no sure means of knowing whether they are only sleeping or dead.
