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Title: Steep Trails
Author: John Muir
Editor: William Frederic Badè
Release date: September 1, 1995 [eBook #326]
Most recently updated: July 15, 2022
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/326
Credits: Judy Gibson and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STEEP TRAILS ***
[Illustration]
Steep Trails
by John Muir
California • Utah • Nevada • Washington
Oregon • The Grand Cañon
Contents
EDITOR’S NOTE
Steep Trails
I. Wild Wool
II. A Geologist’s Winter Walk
III. Summer Days at Mount Shasta
IV. A Perilous Night on Shasta’s Summit
V. Shasta Rambles and Modoc Memories
VI. The City of the Saints
VII. A Great Storm in Utah
VIII. Bathing in Salt Lake
IX. Mormon Lilies
X. The San Gabriel Valley
XI. The San Gabriel Mountains
XII. Nevada Farms
XIII. Nevada Forests
XIV. Nevada’s Timber Belt
XV. Glacial Phenomena in Nevada
XVI. Nevada’s Dead Towns
XVII. Puget Sound
XVIII. The Forests of Washington
XIX. People and Towns of Puget Sound
XX. An Ascent of Mount Rainier
XXI. The Physical and Climatic Characteristics of Oregon
XXII. The Forests of Oregon and their Inhabitants
XXIII. The Rivers of Oregon
XXIV. The Grand Cañon of the Colorado
Footnotes:
[Illustration:
Mountain Sheep
(_Ovis nelsoni_)
From a drawing by Allan Brooks]
Illustrations
Mountain Sheep (_Ovis nelsoni_)
TISSIACK FROM GLACIER POINT: TENAYA CAÑON ON THE LEFT
MOUNT SHASTA AFTER A SNOWSTORM
AT SHASTA SODA SPRINGS
IN THE WAHSATCH MOUNTAINS
SEGO LILIES (_Calochortus Nuttallii_)
SAN GABRIEL VALLEY
THE SAGE LEVELS OF THE NEVADA DESERT
MOUNT RAINIER FROM THE SODA SPRINGS
THE OREGON SEA-BLUFFS
CAPE HORN, COLUMBIA RIVER
THE GRAND CAÑON AT O’NEILL’S POINT
EDITOR’S NOTE
The papers brought together in this volume have, in a general way, been
arranged in chronological sequence. They span a period of twenty-nine
years of Muir’s life, during which they appeared as letters and
articles, for the most part in publications of limited and local
circulation. The Utah and Nevada sketches, and the two San Gabriel
papers, were contributed, in the form of letters, to the _San Francisco
Evening Bulletin_ toward the end of the seventies. Written in the
field, they preserve the freshness of the author’s first impressions of
those regions. Much of the material in the chapters on Mount Shasta
first took similar shape in 1874. Subsequently it was rewritten and
much expanded for inclusion in _Picturesque California, and the Region
West of the Rocky Mountains_, which Muir began to edit in 1888. In the
same work appeared the description of Washington and Oregon. The
charming little essay “Wild Wool” was written for the _Overland
Monthly_ in 1875. “A Geologist’s Winter Walk” is an extract from a
letter to a friend, who, appreciating its fine literary quality, took
the responsibility of sending it to the _Overland Monthly_ without the
author’s knowledge. The concluding chapter on “The Grand Cañon of the
Colorado” was published in the _Century Magazine_ in 1902, and exhibits
Muir’s powers of description at their maturity.
Some of these papers were revised by the author during the later years
of his life, and these revisions are a part of the form in which they
now appear. The chapters on Mount Shasta, Oregon, and Washington will
be found to contain occasional sentences and a few paragraphs that were
included, more or less verbatim, in _The Mountains of California_ and
_Our National Parks_. Being an important part of their present context,
these paragraphs could not be omitted without impairing the unity of
the author’s descriptions.
The editor feels confident that this volume will meet, in every way,
the high expectations of Muir’s readers. The recital of his experiences
during a stormy night on the summit of Mount Shasta will take rank
among the most thrilling of his records of adventure. His observations
on the dead towns of Nevada, and on the Indians gathering their harvest
of pine nuts, recall a phase of Western life that has left few traces
in American literature. Many, too, will read with pensive interest the
author’s glowing description of what was one time called the New
Northwest. Almost inconceivably great have been the changes wrought in
that region during the past generation. Henceforth the landscapes that
Muir saw there will live in good part only in his writings, for fire,
axe, plough, and gunpowder have made away with the supposedly boundless
forest wildernesses and their teeming life.
WILLIAM FREDERIC BADÈ
Berkeley, California
_May_, 1918
STEEP TRAILS
I. Wild Wool
Moral improvers have calls to preach. I have a friend who has a call to
plough, and woe to the daisy sod or azalea thicket that falls under the
savage redemption of his keen steel shares. Not content with the
so-called subjugation of every terrestrial bog, rock, and moorland, he
would fain discover some method of reclamation applicable to the ocean
and the sky, that in due calendar time they might be brought to bud and
blossom as the rose. Our efforts are of no avail when we seek to turn
his attention to wild roses, or to the fact that both ocean and sky are
already about as rosy as possible—the one with stars, the other with
dulse, and foam, and wild light. The practical developments of his
culture are orchards and clover-fields wearing a smiling, benevolent
aspect, truly excellent in their way, though a near view discloses
something barbarous in them all. Wildness charms not my friend, charm
it never so wisely: and whatsoever may be the character of his heaven,
his earth seems only a chaos of agricultural possibilities calling for
grubbing-hoes and manures.
Sometimes I venture to approach him with a plea for wildness, when he
good-naturedly shakes a big mellow apple in my face, reiterating his
favorite aphorism, “Culture is an orchard apple; Nature is a crab.” Not
all culture, however, is equally destructive and inappreciative. Azure
skies and crystal waters find loving recognition, and few there be who
would welcome the axe among mountain pines, or would care to apply any
correction to the tones and costumes of mountain waterfalls.
Nevertheless, the barbarous notion is almost universally entertained by
civilized man, that there is in all the manufactures of Nature
something essentially coarse which can and must be eradicated by human
culture. I was, therefore, delighted in finding that the wild wool
growing upon mountain sheep in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta was
much finer than the average grades of cultivated wool. This FINE
discovery was made some three months ago[1], while hunting among the
Shasta sheep between Shasta and Lower Klamath Lake. Three fleeces were
obtained—one that belonged to a large ram about four years old, another
to a ewe about the same age, and another to a yearling lamb. After
parting their beautiful wool on the side and many places along the
back, shoulders, and hips, and examining it closely with my lens, I
shouted: “Well done for wildness! Wild wool is finer than tame!”
My companions stooped down and examined the fleeces for themselves,
pulling out tufts and ringlets, spinning them between their fingers,
and measuring the length of the staple, each in turn paying tribute to
wildness. It WAS finer, and no mistake; finer than Spanish Merino. Wild
wool IS finer than tame.
“Here,” said I, “is an argument for fine wildness that needs no
explanation. Not that such arguments are by any means rare, for all
wildness is finer than tameness, but because fine wool is appreciable
by everybody alike—from the most speculative president of national
wool-growers’ associations all the way down to the gude-wife spinning
by her ingleside.”
Nature is a good mother, and sees well to the clothing of her many
bairns—birds with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining
jackets, and bears with shaggy furs. In the tropical south, where the
sun warms like a fire, they are allowed to go thinly clad; but in the
snowy northland she takes care to clothe warmly. The squirrel has socks
and mittens, and a tail broad enough for a blanket; the grouse is
densely feathered down to the ends of his toes; and the wild sheep,
besides his undergarment of fine wool, has a thick overcoat of hair
that sheds off both the snow and the rain. Other provisions and
adaptations in the dresses of animals, relating less to climate than to
the more mechanical circumstances of life, are made with the same
consummate skill that characterizes all the love work of Nature. Land,
water, and air, jagged rocks, muddy ground, sand beds, forests,
underbrush, grassy plains, etc., are considered in all their possible
combinations while the clothing of her beautiful wildlings is
preparing. No matter what the circumstances of their lives may be, she
never allows them to go dirty or ragged. The mole, living always in the
dark and in the dirt, is yet as clean as the otter or the wave-washed
seal; and our wild sheep, wading in snow, roaming through bushes, and
leaping among jagged storm-beaten cliffs, wears a dress so exquisitely
adapted to its mountain life that it is always found as unruffled and
stainless as a bird.
On leaving the Shasta hunting grounds I selected a few specimen tufts,
and brought them away with a view to making more leisurely
examinations; but, owing to the imperfectness of the instruments at my
command, the results thus far obtained must be regarded only as rough
approximations.
As already stated, the clothing of our wild sheep is composed of fine
wool and coarse hair. The hairs are from about two to four inches long,
mostly of a dull bluish-gray color, though varying somewhat with the
seasons. In general characteristics they are closely related to the
hairs of the deer and antelope, being light, spongy, and elastic, with
a highly polished surface, and though somewhat ridged and spiraled,
like wool, they do not manifest the slightest tendency to felt or
become taggy. A hair two and a half inches long, which is perhaps near
the average length, will stretch about one fourth of an inch before
breaking. The diameter decreases rapidly both at the top and bottom,
but is maintained throughout the greater portion of the length with a
fair degree of regularity. The slender tapering point in which the
hairs terminate is nearly black: but, owing to its fineness as compared
with the main trunk, the quantity of blackness is not sufficient to
affect greatly the general color. The number of hairs growing upon a
square inch is about ten thousand; the number of wool fibers is about
twenty-five thousand, or two and a half times that of the hairs. The
wool fibers are white and glossy, and beautifully spired into ringlets.
The average length of the staple is about an inch and a half. A fiber
of this length, when growing undisturbed down among the hairs, measures
about an inch; hence the degree of curliness may easily be inferred. I
regret exceedingly that my instruments do not enable me to measure the
diameter of the fibers, in order that their degrees of fineness might
be definitely compared with each other and with the finest of the
domestic breeds; but that the three wild fleeces under consideration
are considerably finer than the average grades of Merino shipped from
San Francisco is, I think, unquestionable.
When the fleece is parted and looked into with a good lens, the skin
appears of a beautiful pale-yellow color, and the delicate wool fibers
are seen growing up among the strong hairs, like grass among stalks of
corn, every individual fiber being protected about as specially and
effectively as if inclosed in a separate husk. Wild wool is too fine to
stand by itself, the fibers being about as frail and invisible as the
floating threads of spiders, while the hairs against which they lean
stand erect like hazel wands; but, notwithstanding their great
dissimilarity in size and appearance, the wool and hair are forms of
the same thing, modified in just that way and to just that degree that
renders them most perfectly subservient to the well-being of the sheep.
Furthermore, it will be observed that these wild modifications are
entirely distinct from those which are brought chancingly into
existence through the accidents and caprices of culture; the former
being inventions of God for the attainment of definite ends. Like the
modifications of limbs—the fin for swimming, the wing for flying, the
foot for walking—so the fine wool for warmth, the hair for additional
warmth and to protect the wool, and both together for a fabric to wear
well in mountain roughness and wash well in mountain storms.
The effects of human culture upon wild wool are analogous to those
produced upon wild roses. In the one case there is an abnormal
development of petals at the expense of the stamens, in the other an
abnormal development of wool at the expense of the hair. Garden roses
frequently exhibit stamens in which the transmutation to petals may be
observed in various stages of accomplishment, and analogously the
fleeces of tame sheep occasionally contain a few wild hairs that are
undergoing transmutation to wool. Even wild wool presents here and
there a fiber that appears to be in a state of change. In the course of
my examinations of the wild fleeces mentioned above, three fibers were
found that were wool at one end and hair at the other. This, however,
does not necessarily imply imperfection, or any process of change
similar to that caused by human culture. Water lilies contain parts
variously developed into stamens at one end, petals at the other, as
the constant and normal condition. These half wool, half hair fibers
may therefore subserve some fixed requirement essential to the
perfection of the whole, or they may simply be the fine boundary-lines
where and exact balance between the wool and the hair is attained.
I have been offering samples of mountain wool to my friends, demanding
in return that the fineness of wildness be fairly recognized and
confessed, but the returns are deplorably tame. The first question
asked, is, “Now truly, wild sheep, wild sheep, have you any wool?”
while they peer curiously down among the hairs through lenses and
spectacles. “Yes, wild sheep, you HAVE wool; but Mary’s lamb had more.
In the name of use, how many wild sheep, think you, would be required
to furnish wool sufficient for a pair of socks?” I endeavor to point
out the irrelevancy of the latter question, arguing that wild wool was
not made for man but for sheep, and that, however deficient as clothing
for other animals, it is just the thing for the brave mountain-dweller
that wears it. Plain, however, as all this appears, the quantity
question rises again and again in all its commonplace tameness. For in
my experience it seems well-nigh impossible to obtain a hearing on
behalf of Nature from any other standpoint than that of human use.
Domestic flocks yield more flannel per sheep than the wild, therefore
it is claimed that culture has improved upon wildness; and so it has as
far as flannel is concerned, but all to the contrary as far as a
sheep’s dress is concerned. If every wild sheep inhabiting the Sierra
were to put on tame wool, probably only a few would survive the dangers
of a single season. With their fine limbs muffled and buried beneath a
tangle of hairless wool, they would become short-winded, and fall an
easy prey to the strong mountain wolves. In descending precipices they
would be thrown out of balance and killed, by their taggy wool catching
upon sharp points of rocks. Disease would also be brought on by the
dirt which always finds a lodgment in tame wool, and by the draggled
and water-soaked condition into which it falls during stormy weather.
No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so
insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the
relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the
world as made especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant, and
crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from
century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the
resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.
I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show
that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made
for itself. Not that Nature manifests any such thing as selfish
isolation. In the making of every animal the presence of every other
animal has been recognized. Indeed, every atom in creation may be said
to be acquainted with and married to every other, but with universal
union there is a division sufficient in degree for the purposes of the
most intense individuality; no matter, therefore, what may be the note
which any creature forms in the song of existence, it is made first for
itself, then more and more remotely for all the world and worlds.
Were it not for the exercise of individualizing cares on the part of
Nature, the universe would be felted together like a fleece of tame
wool. But we are governed more than we know, and most when we are
wildest. Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled
along appointed ways, _with_ one another, and _through the midst_ of
one another—killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in
harmonious proportions and quantities. And it is right that we should
thus reciprocally make use of one another, rob, cook, and consume, to
the utmost of our healthy abilities and desires. Stars attract one
another as they are able, and harmony results. Wild lambs eat as many
wild flowers as they can find or desire, and men and wolves eat the
lambs to just the same extent.
This consumption of one another in its various modifications is a kind
of culture varying with the degree of directness with which it is
carried out, but we should be careful not to ascribe to such culture
any improving qualities upon those on whom it is brought to bear. The
water-ousel plucks moss from the riverbank to build its nest, but is
does not improve the moss by plucking it. We pluck feathers from birds,
and less directly wool from wild sheep, for the manufacture of clothing
and cradle-nests, without improving the wool for the sheep, or the
feathers for the bird that wore them. When a hawk pounces upon a linnet
and proceeds to pull out its feathers, preparatory to making a meal,
the hawk may be said to be cultivating the linnet, and he certainly
does effect an improvement as far as hawk-food is concerned; but what
of the songster? He ceases to be a linnet as soon as he is snatched
from the woodland choir; and when, hawklike, we snatch the wild sheep
from its native rock, and, instead of eating and wearing it at once,
carry it home, and breed the hair out of its wool and the bones out of
its body, it ceases to be a sheep.
These breeding and plucking processes are similarly improving as
regards the secondary uses aimed at; and, although the one requires but
a few minutes for its accomplishment, the other many years or
centuries, they are essentially alike. We eat wild oysters alive with
great directness, waiting for no cultivation, and leaving scarce a
second of distance between the shell and the lip; but we take wild
sheep home and subject them to the many extended processes of
husbandry, and finish by boiling them in a pot—a process which
completes all sheep improvements as far as man is concerned. It will be
seen, therefore, that wild wool and tame wool—wild sheep and tame
sheep—are terms not properly comparable, nor are they in any correct
sense to be considered as bearing any antagonism toward each other;
they are different things. Planned and accomplished for wholly
different purposes.
Illustrative examples bearing upon this interesting subject may be
multiplied indefinitely, for they abound everywhere in the plant and
animal kingdoms wherever culture has reached. Recurring for a moment to
apples. The beauty and completeness of a wild apple tree living its own
life in the woods is heartily acknowledged by all those who have been
so happy as to form its acquaintance. The fine wild piquancy of its
fruit is unrivaled, but in the great question of quantity as human food
wild apples are found wanting. Man, therefore, takes the tree from the
woods, manures and prunes and grafts, plans and guesses, adds a little
of this and that, selects and rejects, until apples of every
conceivable size and softness are produced, like nut galls in response
to the irritating punctures of insects. Orchard apples are to me the
most eloquent words that culture has ever spoken, but they reflect no
imperfection upon Nature’s spicy crab. Every cultivated apple is a
crab, not improved, _but cooked_, variously softened and swelled out in
the process, mellowed, sweetened, spiced, and rendered pulpy and
foodful, but as utterly unfit for the uses of nature as a meadowlark
killed and plucked and roasted. Give to Nature every cultured
apple—codling, pippin, russet—and every sheep so laboriously
compounded—muffled Southdowns, hairy Cotswolds, wrinkled Merinos—and
she would throw the one to her caterpillars, the other to her wolves.
It is now some thirty-six hundred years since Jacob kissed his mother
and set out across the plains of Padan-aram to begin his experiments
upon the flocks of his uncle, Laban; and, notwithstanding the high
degree of excellence he attained as a wool-grower, and the innumerable
painstaking efforts subsequently made by individuals and associations
in all kinds of pastures and climates, we still seem to be as far from
definite and satisfactory results as we ever were. In one breed the
wool is apt to wither and crinkle like hay on a sun-beaten hillside. In
another, it is lodged and matted together like the lush tangled grass
of a manured meadow. In one the staple is deficient in length, in
another in fineness; while in all there is a constant tendency toward
disease, rendering various washings and dippings indispensable to
prevent its falling out. The problem of the quality and quantity of the
carcass seems to be as doubtful and as far removed from a satisfactory
solution as that of the wool. Desirable breeds blundered upon by long
series of groping experiments are often found to be unstable and
subject to disease—bots, foot rot, blind staggers, etc.—causing
infinite trouble, both among breeders and manufacturers. Would it not
be well, therefore, for some one to go back as far as possible and take
a fresh start?
The source or sources whence the various breeds were derived is not
positively known, but there can be hardly any doubt of their being
descendants of the four or five wild species so generally distributed
throughout the mountainous portions of the globe, the marked
differences between the wild and domestic species being readily
accounted for by the known variability of the animal, and by the long
series of painstaking selection to which all its characteristics have
been subjected. No other animal seems to yield so submissively to the
manipulations of culture. Jacob controlled the color of his flocks
merely by causing them to stare at objects of the desired hue; and
possibly Merinos may have caught their wrinkles from the perplexed
brows of their breeders. The California species (_Ovis montana_)[2] is
a noble animal, weighing when full-grown some three hundred and fifty
pounds, and is well worthy the attention of wool-growers as a point
from which to make a new departure, for pure wildness is the one great
want, both of men and of sheep.
II. A Geologist’s Winter Walk[3]
After reaching Turlock, I sped afoot over the stubble fields and
through miles of brown hemizonia and purple erigeron, to Hopeton,
conscious of little more than that the town was behind and beneath me,
and the mountains above and before me; on through the oaks and
chaparral of the foothills to Coulterville; and then ascended the first
great mountain step upon which grows the sugar pine. Here I slackened
pace, for I drank the spicy, resiny wind, and beneath the arms of this
noble tree I felt that I was safely home. Never did pine trees seem so
dear. How sweet was their breath and their song, and how grandly they
winnowed the sky! I tingled my fingers among their tassels, and rustled
my feet among their brown needles and burrs, and was exhilarated and
joyful beyond all I can write.
When I reached Yosemite, all the rocks seemed talkative, and more
telling and lovable than ever. They are dear friends, and seemed to
have warm blood gushing through their granite flesh; and I love them
with a love intensified by long and close companionship. After I had
bathed in the bright river, sauntered over the meadows, conversed with
the domes, and played with the pines, I still felt blurred and weary,
as if tainted in some way with the sky of your streets. I determined,
therefore, to run out for a while to say my prayers in the higher
mountain temples. “The days are sunful,” I said, “and, though now
winter, no great danger need be encountered, and no sudden storm will
block my return, if I am watchful.”
The morning after this decision, I started up the cañon of Tenaya,
caring little about the quantity of bread I carried; for, I thought, a
fast and a storm and a difficult cañon were just the medicine I needed.
When I passed Mirror Lake, I scarcely noticed it, for I was absorbed in
the great Tissiack—her crown a mile away in the hushed azure; her
purple granite drapery flowing in soft and graceful folds down to my
feet, embroidered gloriously around with deep, shadowy forest. I have
gazed on Tissiack a thousand times—in days of solemn storms, and when
her form shone divine with the jewelry of winter, or was veiled in
living clouds; and I have heard her voice of winds, and snowy, tuneful
waters when floods were falling; yet never did her soul reveal itself
more impressively than now. I hung about her skirts, lingering timidly,
until the higher mountains and glaciers compelled me to push up the
cañon.
[Illustration: TISSIACK FROM GLACIER POINT: TENAYA CAÑON ON THE LEFT]
This cañon is accessible only to mountaineers, and I was anxious to
carry my barometer and clinometer through it, to obtain sections and
altitudes, so I chose it as the most attractive highway. After I had
passed the tall groves that stretch a mile above Mirror Lake, and
scrambled around the Tenaya Fall, which is just at the head of the lake
groves, I crept through the dense and spiny chaparral that plushes the
roots of the mountains here for miles in warm green, and was ascending
a precipitous rock front, smoothed by glacial action, when I suddenly
fell—for the first time since I touched foot to Sierra rocks. After
several somersaults, I became insensible from the shock, and when
consciousness returned I found myself wedged among short, stiff bushes,
trembling as if cold, not injured in the slightest.
Judging by the sun, I could not have been insensible very long;
probably not a minute, possibly an hour; and I could not remember what
made me fall, or where I had fallen from; but I saw that if I had
rolled a little further, my mountain climbing would have been finished,
for just beyond the bushes the cañon wall steepened and I might have
fallen to the bottom. “There,” said I, addressing my feet, to whose
separate skill I had learned to trust night and day on any mountain,
“that is what you get by intercourse with stupid town stairs, and dead
pavements.” I felt degraded and worthless. I had not yet reached the
most difficult portion of the cañon, but I determined to guide my
humbled body over the most nerve-trying places I could find; for I was
now awake, and felt confident that the last of the town fog had been
shaken from both head and feet.
I camped at the mouth of a narrow gorge which is cut into the bottom of
the main cañon, determined to take earnest exercise next day. No plushy
boughs did my ill-behaved bones enjoy that night, nor did my bumped
head get a spicy cedar plume pillow mixed with flowers. I slept on a
naked boulder, and when I awoke all my nervous trembling was gone.
The gorged portion of the cañon, in which I spent all the next day, is
about a mile and a half in length; and I passed the time in tracing the
action of the forces that determined this peculiar bottom gorge, which
is an abrupt, ragged-walled, narrow-throated cañon, formed in the
bottom of the wide-mouthed, smooth, and beveled main cañon. I will not
stop now to tell you more; some day you may see it, like a shadowy
line, from Cloud’s Rest. In high water, the stream occupies all the
bottom of the gorge, surging and chafing in glorious power from wall to
wall. But the sound of the grinding was low as I entered the gorge,
scarcely hoping to be able to pass through its entire length. By cool
efforts, along glassy, ice-worn slopes, I reached the upper end in a
little over a day, but was compelled to pass the second night in the
gorge, and in the moonlight I wrote you this short pencil-letter in my
notebook:—
The moon is looking down into the cañon, and how marvelously the great
rocks kindle to her light! Every dome, and brow, and swelling boss
touched by her white rays, glows as if lighted with snow. I am now only
a mile from last night’s camp; and have been climbing and sketching all
day in this difficult but instructive gorge. It is formed in the bottom
of the main cañon, among the roots of Cloud’s Rest. It begins at the
filled-up lake basin where I camped last night, and ends a few hundred
yards above, in another basin of the same kind. The walls everywhere
are craggy and vertical, and in some places they overlean. It is only
from twenty to sixty feet wide, and not, though black and broken
enough, the thin, crooked mouth of some mysterious abyss; but it was
eroded, for in many places I saw its solid, seamless floor.
I am sitting on a big stone, against which the stream divides, and
goes brawling by in rapids on both sides; half of my rock is white
in the light, half in shadow. As I look from the opening jaws of
this shadowy gorge, South Dome is immediately in front—high in the
stars, her face turned from the moon, with the rest of her body
gloriously muffled in waved folds of granite. On the left,
sculptured from the main Cloud’s Rest ridge, are three magnificent
rocks, sisters of the great South Dome. On the right is the
massive, moonlit front of Mount Watkins, and between, low down in
the furthest distance, is Sentinel Dome, girdled and darkened with
forest. In the near foreground Tenaya Creek is singing against
boulders that are white with snow and moonbeams. Now look back
twenty yards, and you will see a waterfall fair as a spirit; the
moonlight just touches it, bringing it into relief against a dark
background of shadow. A little to the left, and a dozen steps this
side of the fall, a flickering light marks my camp—and a precious
camp it is. A huge, glacier-polished slab, falling from the smooth,
glossy flank of Cloud’s Rest, happened to settle on edge against
the wall of the gorge. I did not know that this slab was
glacier-polished until I lighted my fire. Judge of my delight. I
think it was sent here by an earthquake. It is about twelve feet
square. I wish I could take it home[4] for a hearthstone. Beneath
this slab is the only place in this torrent-swept gorge where I
could find sand sufficient for a bed.
I expected to sleep on the boulders, for I spent most of the
afternoon on the slippery wall of the cañon, endeavoring to get
around this difficult part of the gorge, and was compelled to
hasten down here for water before dark. I shall sleep soundly on
this sand; half of it is mica. Here, wonderful to behold, are a few
green stems of prickly rubus, and a tiny grass. They are here to
meet us. Ay, even here in this darksome gorge, “frightened and
tormented” with raging torrents and choking avalanches of snow. Can
it be? As if rubus and the grass leaf were not enough of God’s
tender prattle words of love, which we so much need in these mighty
temples of power, yonder in the “benmost bore” are two blessed
adiantums. Listen to them! How wholly infused with God is this one
big word of love that we call the world! Good-night. Do you see the
fire-glow on my ice-smoothed slab, and on my two ferns and the
rubus and grass panicles? And do you hear how sweet a sleep- song
the fall and cascades are singing?
The water-ground chips and knots that I found fastened between the
rocks kept my fire alive all through the night. Next morning I rose
nerved and ready for another day of sketching and noting, and any form
of climbing. I escaped from the gorge about noon, after accomplishing
some of the most delicate feats of mountaineering I ever attempted; and
here the cañon is all broadly open again—the floor luxuriantly forested
with pine, and spruce, and silver fir, and brown-trunked libocedrus.
The walls rise in Yosemite forms, and Tenaya Creek comes down seven
hundred feet in a white brush of foam. This is a little Yosemite
valley. It is about two thousand feet above the level of the main
Yosemite, and about twenty-four hundred below Lake Tenaya.
I found the lake frozen, and the ice was so clear and unruffled that
the surrounding mountains and the groves that look down upon it were
reflected almost as perfectly as I ever beheld them in the calm evening
mirrors of summer. At a little distance, it was difficult to believe
the lake frozen at all; and when I walked out on it, cautiously
stamping at short intervals to test the strength of the ice, I seemed
to walk mysteriously, without adequate faith, on the surface of the
water. The ice was so transparent that I could see through it the
beautifully wave-rippled, sandy bottom, and the scales of mica glinting
back the down-pouring light. When I knelt down with my face close to
the ice, through which the sunbeams were pouring, I was delighted to
discover myriads of Tyndall’s six-rayed water flowers, magnificently
colored.
A grand old mountain mansion is this Tenaya region! In the glacier
period it was a _mer de glace_, far grander than the _mer de glace_ of
Switzerland, which is only about half a mile broad. The Tenaya _mer de
glace_ was not less than two miles broad, late in the glacier epoch,
when all the principal dividing crests were bare; and its depth was not
less than fifteen hundred feet. Ice streams from Mounts Lyell and Dana,
and all the mountains between, and from the nearer Cathedral Peak,
flowed hither, welded into one, and worked together. After eroding this
Tanaya Lake basin, and all the splendidly sculptured rocks and
mountains that surround and adorn it, and the great Tenaya Cañon, with
its wealth of all that makes mountains sublime, they were welded with
the vast South, Lyell, and Illilouette glaciers on one side, and with
those of Hoffman on the other—thus forming a portion of a yet grander
_mer de glace_ in Yosemite Valley.
I reached the Tenaya Cañon, on my way home, by coming in from the
northeast, rambling down over the shoulders of Mount Watkins, touching
bottom a mile above Mirror Lake. From thence home was but a saunter in
the moonlight.
After resting one day, and the weather continuing calm, I ran up over
the left shoulder of South Dome and down in front of its grand split
face to make some measurements, completed my work, climbed to the right
shoulder, struck off along the ridge for Cloud’s Rest, and reached the
topmost heave of her sunny wave in ample time to see the sunset.
Cloud’s Rest is a thousand feet higher than Tissiack. It is a wavelike
crest upon a ridge, which begins at Yosemite with Tissiack, and runs
continuously eastward to the thicket of peaks and crests around Lake
Tenaya. This lofty granite wall is bent this way and that by the
restless and weariless action of glaciers just as if it had been made
of dough. But the grand circumference of mountains and forests are
coming from far and near, densing into one close assemblage; for the
sun, their god and father, with love ineffable, is glowing a sunset
farewell. Not one of all the assembled rocks or trees seemed remote.
How impressively their faces shone with responsive love!
I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me
strong. Down through the junipers; down through the firs; now in jet
shadows, now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare, clanking
rocks; past the huge ghost of South Dome rising weird through the firs;
past the glorious fall of Nevada, the groves of Illilouette; through
the pines of the valley; beneath the bright crystal sky blazing with
stars. All of this mountain wealth in one day!—one of the rich ripe
days that enlarge one’s life; so much of the sun upon one side of it,
so much of the moon and stars on the other.
III. Summer Days at Mount Shasta
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.
[Illustration: MOUNT SHASTA AFTER A SNOWSTORM]
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 cañon, 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
cañon 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.
[Illustration: AT SHASTA SODA SPRINGS]
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 _névé_, 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.
IV. A Perilous Night on Shasta’s Summit
Toward the end of summer, after a light, open winter, one may reach the
summit of Mount Shasta without passing over much snow, by keeping on
the crest of a long narrow ridge, mostly bare, that extends from near
the camp-ground at the timberline. But on my first excursion to the
summit the whole mountain, down to its low swelling base, was smoothly
laden with loose fresh snow, presenting a most glorious mass of winter
mountain scenery, in the midst of which I scrambled and reveled or lay
snugly snowbound, enjoying the fertile clouds and the snow-bloom in all
their growing, drifting grandeur.
I had walked from Redding, sauntering leisurely from station to station
along the old Oregon stage road, the better to see the rocks and
plants, birds and people, by the way, tracing the rushing Sacramento to
its fountains around icy Shasta. The first rains had fallen on the
lowlands, and the first snows on the mountains, and everything was
fresh and bracing, while an abundance of balmy sunshine filled all the
noonday hours. It was the calm afterglow that usually succeeds the
first storm of the winter. I met many of the birds that had reared
their young and spent their summer in the Shasta woods and chaparral.
They were then on their way south to their winter homes, leading their
young full-fledged and about as large and strong as the parents.
Squirrels, dry and elastic after the storms, were busy about their
stores of pine nuts, and the latest goldenrods were still in bloom,
though it was now past the middle of October. The grand color glow—the
autumnal jubilee of ripe leaves—was past prime, but, freshened by the
rain, was still making a fine show along the banks of the river and in
the ravines and the dells of the smaller streams.
At the salmon-hatching establishment on the McCloud River I halted a
week to examine the limestone belt, grandly developed there, to learn
what I could of the inhabitants of the river and its banks, and to give
time for the fresh snow that I knew had fallen on the mountain to
settle somewhat, with a view to making the ascent. A pedestrian on
these mountain roads, especially so late in the year, is sure to excite
curiosity, and many were the interrogations concerning my ramble. When
I said that I was simply taking a walk, and that icy Shasta was my
mark, I was invariably admonished that I had come on a dangerous quest.
The time was far too late, the snow was too loose and deep to climb,
and I should be lost in drifts and slides. When I hinted that new snow
was beautiful and storms not so bad as they were called, my advisers
shook their heads in token of superior knowledge and declared the
ascent of “Shasta Butte” through loose snow impossible. Nevertheless,
before noon of the second of November I was in the frosty azure of the
utmost summit.
When I arrived at Sisson’s everything was quiet. The last of the summer
visitors had flitted long before, and the deer and bears also were
beginning to seek their winter homes. My barometer and the sighing
winds and filmy half-transparent clouds that dimmed the sunshine gave
notice of the approach of another storm, and I was in haste to be off
and get myself established somewhere in the midst of it, whether the
summit was to be attained or not. Sisson, who is a mountaineer,
speedily fitted me out for storm or calm as only a mountaineer could,
with warm blankets and a week’s provisions so generous in quantity and
kind that they easily might have been made to last a month in case of
my being closely snowbound. Well I knew the weariness of snow-climbing,
and the frosts, and the dangers of mountaineering so late in the year;
therefore I could not ask a guide to go with me, even had one been
willing. All I wanted was to have blankets and provisions deposited as
far up in the timber as the snow would permit a pack animal to go.
There I could build a storm nest and lie warm, and make raids up and
around the mountain in accordance with the weather.
Setting out on the afternoon of November first, with Jerome Fay,
mountaineer and guide, in charge of the animals, I was soon plodding
wearily upward through the muffled winter woods, the snow of course
growing steadily deeper and looser, so that we had to break a trail.
The animals began to get discouraged, and after night and darkness came
on they became entangled in a bed of rough lava, where, breaking
through four or five feet of mealy snow, their feet were caught between
angular boulders. Here they were in danger of being lost, but after we
had removed packs and saddles and assisted their efforts with ropes,
they all escaped to the side of a ridge about a thousand feet below the
timberline.
To go farther was out of the question, so we were compelled to camp as
best we could. A pitch pine fire speedily changed the temperature and
shed a blaze of light on the wild lava-slope and the straggling
storm-bent pines around us. Melted snow answered for coffee, and we had
plenty of venison to roast. Toward midnight I rolled myself in my
blankets, slept an hour and a half, arose and ate more venison, tied
two days’ provisions to my belt, and set out for the summit, hoping to
reach it ere the coming storm should fall. Jerome accompanied me a
little distance above camp and indicated the way as well as he could in
the darkness. He seemed loath to leave me, but, being reassured that I
was at home and required no care, he bade me good-bye and returned to
camp, ready to lead his animals down the mountain at daybreak.
After I was above the dwarf pines, it was fine practice pushing up the
broad unbroken slopes of snow, alone in the solemn silence of the
night. Half the sky was clouded; in the other half the stars sparkled
icily in the keen, frosty air; while everywhere the glorious wealth of
snow fell away from the summit of the cone in flowing folds, more
extensive and continuous than any I had ever seen before. When day
dawned the clouds were crawling slowly and becoming more massive, but
gave no intimation of immediate danger, and I pushed on faithfully,
though holding myself well in hand, ready to return to the timber; for
it was easy to see that the storm was not far off. The mountain rises
ten thousand feet above the general level of the country, in blank
exposure to the deep upper currents of the sky, and no labyrinth of
peaks and cañons I had ever been in seemed to me so dangerous as these
immense slopes, bare against the sky.
The frost was intense, and drifting snow dust made breathing at times
rather difficult. The snow was as dry as meal, and the finer particles
drifted freely, rising high in the air, while the larger portions of
the crystals rolled like sand. I frequently sank to my armpits between
buried blocks of loose lava, but generally only to my knees. When tired
with walking I still wallowed slowly upward on all fours. The steepness
of the slope—thirty-five degrees in some places—made any kind of
progress fatiguing, while small avalanches were being constantly set in
motion in the steepest places. But the bracing air and the sublime
beauty of the snowy expanse thrilled every nerve and made absolute
exhaustion impossible. I seemed to be walking and wallowing in a cloud;
but, holding steadily onward, by half-past ten o’clock I had gained the
highest summit.
I held my commanding foothold in the sky for two hours, gazing on the
glorious landscapes spread maplike around the immense horizon, and
tracing the outlines of the ancient lava-streams extending far into the
surrounding plains, and the pathways of vanished glaciers of which
Shasta had been the center. But, as I had left my coat in camp for the
sake of having my limbs free in climbing, I soon was cold. The wind
increased in violence, raising the snow in magnificent drifts that were
drawn out in the form of wavering banners blowing in the sun. Toward
the end of my stay a succession of small clouds struck against the
summit rocks like drifting icebergs, darkening the air as they passed,
and producing a chill as definite and sudden as if ice-water had been
dashed in my face. This is the kind of cloud in which snow-flowers
grow, and I turned and fled.
Finding that I was not closely pursued, I ventured to take time on the
way down for a visit to the head of the Whitney Glacier and the “Crater
Butte.” After I had reached the end of the main summit ridge the
descent was but little more than one continuous soft, mealy, muffled
slide, most luxurious and rapid, though the hissing, swishing speed
attained was obscured in great part by flying snow dust—a marked
contrast to the boring seal-wallowing upward struggle. I reached camp
about an hour before dusk, hollowed a strip of loose ground in the lee
of a large block of red lava, where firewood was abundant, rolled
myself in my blankets, and went to sleep.
Next morning, having slept little the night before the ascent and being
weary with climbing after the excitement was over, I slept late. Then,
awaking suddenly, my eyes opened on one of the most beautiful and
sublime scenes I ever enjoyed. A boundless wilderness of storm clouds
of different degrees of ripeness were congregated over all the lower
landscape for thousands of square miles, colored gray, and purple, and
pearl, and deep-glowing white, amid which I seemed to be floating;
while the great white cone of the mountain above was all aglow in the
free, blazing sunshine. It seemed not so much an ocean as a land of
clouds—undulating hill and dale, smooth purple plains, and silvery
mountains of cumuli, range over range, diversified with peak and dome
and hollow fully brought out in light and shade.
I gazed enchanted, but cold gray masses, drifting like dust on a
wind-swept plain, began to shut out the light, forerunners of the
coming storm I had been so anxiously watching. I made haste to gather
as much wood as possible, snugging it as a shelter around my bed. The
storm side of my blankets was fastened down with stakes to reduce as
much as possible the sifting-in of drift and the danger of being blown
away. The precious bread sack was placed safely as a pillow, and when
at length the first flakes fell I was exultingly ready to welcome them.
Most of my firewood was more than half rosin and would blaze in the
face of the fiercest drifting; the winds could not demolish my bed, and
my bread could be made to last indefinitely; while in case of need I
had the means of making snowshoes and could retreat or hold my ground
as I pleased.
Presently the storm broke forth into full snowy bloom, and the
thronging crystals darkened the air. The wind swept past in hissing
floods, grinding the snow into meal and sweeping down into the hollows
in enormous drifts all the heavier particles, while the finer dust was
sifted through the sky, increasing the icy gloom. But my fire glowed
bravely as if in glad defiance of the drift to quench it, and,
notwithstanding but little trace of my nest could be seen after the
snow had leveled and buried it, I was snug and warm, and the passionate
uproar produced a glad excitement.
Day after day the storm continued, piling snow on snow in weariless
abundance. There were short periods of quiet, when the sun would seem
to look eagerly down through rents in the clouds, as if to know how the
work was advancing. During these calm intervals I replenished my
fire—sometimes without leaving the nest, for fire and woodpile were so
near this could easily be done—or busied myself with my notebook,
watching the gestures of the trees in taking the snow, examining
separate crystals under a lens, and learning the methods of their
deposition as an enduring fountain for the streams. Several times, when
the storm ceased for a few minutes, a Douglas squirrel came frisking
from the foot of a clump of dwarf pines, moving in sudden interrupted
spurts over the bossy snow; then, without any apparent guidance, he
would dig rapidly into the drift where were buried some grains of
barley that the horses had left. The Douglas squirrel does not strictly
belong to these upper woods, and I was surprised to see him out in such
weather. The mountain sheep also, quite a large flock of them, came to
my camp and took shelter beside a clump of matted dwarf pines a little
above my nest.
The storm lasted about a week, but before it was ended Sisson became
alarmed and sent up the guide with animals to see what had become of me
and recover the camp outfit. The news spread that “there was a man on
the mountain,” and he must surely have perished, and Sisson was blamed
for allowing any one to attempt climbing in such weather; while I was
as safe as anybody in the lowlands, lying like a squirrel in a warm,
fluffy nest, busied about my own affairs and wishing only to be let
alone. Later, however, a trail could not have been broken for a horse,
and some of the camp furniture would have had to be abandoned. On the
fifth day I returned to Sisson’s, and from that comfortable base made
excursions, as the weather permitted, to the Black Butte, to the foot
of the Whitney Glacier, around the base of the mountain, to Rhett and
Klamath Lakes, to the Modoc region and elsewhere, developing many
interesting scenes and experiences.
But the next spring, on the other side of this eventful winter, I saw
and felt still more of the Shasta snow. For then it was my fortune to
get into the very heart of a storm, and to be held in it for a long
time.
On the 28th of April 1875 I led a party up the mountain for the purpose
of making a survey of the summit with reference to the location of the
Geodetic monument. On the 30th, accompanied by Jerome Fay, I made
another ascent to make some barometrical observations, the day
intervening between the two ascents being devoted to establishing a
camp on the extreme edge of the timberline. Here, on our red trachyte
bed, we obtained two hours of shallow sleep broken for occasional
glimpses of the keen, starry night. At two o’clock we rose, breakfasted
on a warmed tin-cupful of coffee and a piece of frozen venison broiled
on the coals, and started for the summit. Up to this time there was
nothing in sight that betokened the approach of a storm; but on gaining
the summit, we saw toward Lassen’s Butte hundreds of square miles of
white cumuli boiling dreamily in the sunshine far beneath us, and
causing no alarm.
The slight weariness of the ascent was soon rested away, and our
glorious morning in the sky promised nothing but enjoyment. At 9 a.m.
the dry thermometer stood at 34 degrees in the shade and rose steadily
until at 1 p.m. it stood at 50 degrees, probably influenced somewhat by
radiation from the sun-warmed cliffs. A common bumblebee, not at all
benumbed, zigzagged vigorously about our heads for a few moments, as if
unconscious of the fact that the nearest honey flower was a mile
beneath him.
In the mean time clouds were growing down in Shasta Valley—massive
swelling cumuli, displaying delicious tones of purple and gray in the
hollows of their sun-beaten bosses. Extending gradually southward
around on both sides of Shasta, these at length united with the older
field towards Lassen’s Butte, thus encircling Mount Shasta in one
continuous cloud zone. Rhett and Klamath Lakes were eclipsed beneath
clouds scarcely less brilliant than their own silvery disks. The Modoc
Lava Beds, many a snow-laden peak far north in Oregon, the Scott and
Trinity and Siskiyou Mountains, the peaks of the Sierra, the blue Coast
Range, Shasta Valley, the dark forests filling the valley of the
Sacramento, all in turn were obscured or buried, leaving the lofty cone
on which we stood solitary in the sunshine between two skies—a sky of
spotless blue above, a sky of glittering cloud beneath. The creative
sun shone glorious on the vast expanse of cloudland; hill and dale,
mountain and valley springing into existence responsive to his rays and
steadily developing in beauty and individuality. One huge mountain-cone
of cloud, corresponding to Mount Shasta in these newborn cloud ranges,
rose close alongside with a visible motion, its firm, polished bosses
seeming so near and substantial that we almost fancied that we might
leap down upon them from where we stood and make our way to the
lowlands. No hint was given, by anything in their appearance, of the
fleeting character of these most sublime and beautiful cloud mountains.
On the contrary they impressed one as being lasting additions to the
landscape.
The weather of the springtime and summer, throughout the Sierra in
general, is usually varied by slight local rains and dustings of snow,
most of which are obviously far too joyous and life-giving to be
regarded as storms—single clouds growing in the sunny sky, ripening in
an hour, showering the heated landscape, and passing away like a
thought, leaving no visible bodily remains to stain the sky. Snowstorms
of the same gentle kind abound among the high peaks, but in spring they
not unfrequently attain larger proportions, assuming a violence and
energy of expression scarcely surpassed by those bred in the depths of
winter. Such was the storm now gathering about us.
It began to declare itself shortly after noon, suggesting to us the
idea of at once seeking our safe camp in the timber and abandoning the
purpose of making an observation of the barometer at 3 p.m.,—two having
already been made, at 9 a.m., and 12 m., while simultaneous
observations were made at Strawberry Valley. Jerome peered at short
intervals over the ridge, contemplating the rising clouds with anxious
gestures in the rough wind, and at length declared that if we did not
make a speedy escape we should be compelled to pass the rest of the day
and night on the summit. But anxiety to complete my observations
stifled my own instinctive promptings to retreat, and held me to my
work. No inexperienced person was depending on me, and I told Jerome
that we two mountaineers should be able to make our way down through
any storm likely to fall.
Presently thin, fibrous films of cloud began to blow directly over the
summit from north to south, drawn out in long fairy webs like carded
wool, forming and dissolving as if by magic. The wind twisted them into
ringlets and whirled them in a succession of graceful convolutions like
the outside sprays of Yosemite Falls in flood time; then, sailing out
into the thin azure over the precipitous brink of the ridge they were
drifted together like wreaths of foam on a river. These higher and
finer cloud fabrics were evidently produced by the chilling of the air
from its own expansion caused by the upward deflection of the wind
against the slopes of the mountain. They steadily increased on the
north rim of the cone, forming at length a thick, opaque, ill-defined
embankment from the icy meshes of which snow-flowers began to fall,
alternating with hail. The sky speedily darkened, and just as I had
completed my last observation and boxed my instruments ready for the
descent, the storm began in serious earnest. At first the cliffs were
beaten with hail, every stone of which, as far as I could see, was
regular in form, six-sided pyramids with rounded base, rich and
sumptuous-looking, and fashioned with loving care, yet seemingly thrown
away on those desolate crags down which they went rolling, falling,
sliding in a network of curious streams.
After we had forced our way down the ridge and past the group of
hissing fumaroles, the storm became inconceivably violent. The
thermometer fell 22 degrees in a few minutes, and soon dropped below
zero. The hail gave place to snow, and darkness came on like night. The
wind, rising to the highest pitch of violence, boomed and surged amid
the desolate crags; lightning flashes in quick succession cut the
gloomy darkness; and the thunders, the most tremendously loud and
appalling I ever heard, made an almost continuous roar, stroke
following stroke in quick, passionate succession, as though the
mountain were being rent to its foundations and the fires of the old
volcano were breaking forth again.
Could we at once have begun to descend the snow slopes leading to the
timber, we might have made good our escape, however dark and wild the
storm. As it was, we had first to make our way along a dangerous ridge
nearly a mile and a half long, flanked in many places by steep
ice-slopes at the head of the Whitney Glacier on one side and by
shattered precipices on the other. Apprehensive of this coming
darkness, I had taken the precaution, when the storm began, to make the
most dangerous points clear to my mind, and to mark their relations
with reference to the direction of the wind. When, therefore, the
darkness came on, and the bewildering drift, I felt confident that we
could force our way through it with no other guidance. After passing
the “Hot Springs” I halted in the lee of a lava-block to let Jerome,
who had fallen a little behind, come up. Here he opened a council in
which, under circumstances sufficiently exciting but without evincing
any bewilderment, he maintained, in opposition to my views, that it was
impossible to proceed. He firmly refused to make the venture to find
the camp, while I, aware of the dangers that would necessarily attend
our efforts, and conscious of being the cause of his present peril,
decided not to leave him.
Our discussions ended, Jerome made a dash from the shelter of the
lava-block and began forcing his way back against the wind to the “Hot
Springs,” wavering and struggling to resist being carried away, as if
he were fording a rapid stream. After waiting and watching in vain for
some flaw in the storm that might be urged as a new argument in favor
of attempting the descent, I was compelled to follow. “Here,” said
Jerome, as we shivered in the midst of the hissing, sputtering
fumaroles, “we shall be safe from frost.” “Yes,” said I, “we can lie in
this mud and steam and sludge, warm at least on one side; but how can
we protect our lungs from the acid gases, and how, after our clothing
is saturated, shall we be able to reach camp without freezing, even
after the storm is over? We shall have to wait for sunshine, and when
will it come?”
The tempered area to which we had committed ourselves extended over
about one fourth of an acre; but it was only about an eighth of an inch
in thickness, for the scalding gas jets were shorn off close to the
ground by the oversweeping flood of frosty wind. And how lavishly the
snow fell only mountaineers may know. The crisp crystal flowers seemed
to touch one another and fairly to thicken the tremendous blast that
carried them. This was the bloom-time, the summer of the cloud, and
never before have I seen even a mountain cloud flowering so profusely.
When the bloom of the Shasta chaparral is falling, the ground is
sometimes covered for hundreds of square miles to a depth of half an
inch. But the bloom of this fertile snow cloud grew and matured and
fell to a depth of two feet in a few hours. Some crystals landed with
their rays almost perfect, but most of them were worn and broken by
striking against one another, or by rolling on the ground. The touch of
these snow-flowers in calm weather is infinitely gentle—glinting,
swaying, settling silently in the dry mountain air, or massed in flakes
soft and downy. To lie out alone in the mountains of a still night and
be touched by the first of these small silent messengers from the sky
is a memorable experience, and the fineness of that touch none will
forget. But the storm-blast laden with crisp, sharp snow seems to crush
and bruise and stupefy with its multitude of stings, and compels the
bravest to turn and flee.
The snow fell without abatement until an hour or two after what seemed
to be the natural darkness of the night. Up to the time the storm first
broke on the summit its development was remarkably gentle. There was a
deliberate growth of clouds, a weaving of translucent tissue above,
then the roar of the wind and the thunder, and the darkening flight of
snow. Its subsidence was not less sudden. The clouds broke and
vanished, not a crystal was left in the sky, and the stars shone out
with pure and tranquil radiance.
During the storm we lay on our backs so as to present as little surface
as possible to the wind, and to let the drift pass over us. The mealy
snow sifted into the folds of our clothing and in many places reached
the skin. We were glad at first to see the snow packing about us,
hoping it would deaden the force of the wind, but it soon froze into a
stiff, crusty heap as the temperature fell, rather augmenting our novel
misery.
When the heat became unendurable, on some spot where steam was escaping
through the sludge, we tried to stop it with snow and mud, or shifted a
little at a time by shoving with our heels; for to stand in blank
exposure to the fearful wind in our frozen-and-broiled condition seemed
certain death. The acrid incrustations sublimed from the escaping gases
frequently gave way, opening new vents to scald us; and, fearing that
if at any time the wind should fall, carbonic acid, which often formed
a considerable portion of the gaseous exhalations of volcanoes, might
collect in sufficient quantities to cause sleep and death, I warned
Jerome against forgetting himself for a single moment, even should his
sufferings admit of such a thing.
Accordingly, when during the long, dreary watches of the night we
roused from a state of half-consciousness, we called each other by name
in a frightened, startled way, each fearing the other might be benumbed
or dead. The ordinary sensations of cold give but a faint conception of
that which comes on after hard climbing with want of food and sleep in
such exposure as this. Life is then seen to be a fire, that now
smoulders, now brightens, and may be easily quenched. The weary hours
wore away like dim half-forgotten years, so long and eventful they
seemed, though we did nothing but suffer. Still the pain was not always
of that bitter, intense kind that precludes thought and takes away all
capacity for enjoyment. A sort of dreamy stupor came on at times in
which we fancied we saw dry, resinous logs suitable for campfires, just
as after going days without food men fancy they see bread.
Frozen, blistered, famished, benumbed, our bodies seemed lost to us at
times—all dead but the eyes. For the duller and fainter we became the
clearer was our vision, though only in momentary glimpses. Then, after
the sky cleared, we gazed at the stars, blessed immortals of light,
shining with marvelous brightness with long lance rays, near-looking
and new-looking, as if never seen before. Again they would look
familiar and remind us of stargazing at home. Oftentimes imagination
coming into play would present charming pictures of the warm zone
below, mingled with others near and far. Then the bitter wind and the
drift would break the blissful vision and dreary pains cover us like
clouds. “Are you suffering much?” Jerome would inquire with pitiful
faintness. “Yes,” I would say, striving to keep my voice brave, “frozen
and burned; but never mind, Jerome, the night will wear away at last,
and tomorrow we go a-Maying, and what campfires we will make, and what
sunbaths we will take!”
The frost grew more and more intense, and we became icy and covered
over with a crust of frozen snow, as if we had lain cast away in the
drift all winter. In about thirteen hours—every hour like a year—day
began to dawn, but it was long ere the summit’s rocks were touched by
the sun. No clouds were visible from where we lay, yet the morning was
dull and blue, and bitterly frosty; and hour after hour passed by while
we eagerly watched the pale light stealing down the ridge to the hollow
where we lay. But there was not a trace of that warm, flushing sunrise
splendor we so long had hoped for.
As the time drew near to make an effort to reach camp, we became
concerned to know what strength was left us, and whether or no we could
walk; for we had lain flat all this time without once rising to our
feet. Mountaineers, however, always find in themselves a reserve of
power after great exhaustion. It is a kind of second life, available
only in emergencies like this; and, having proved its existence, I had
no great fear that either of us would fail, though one of my arms was
already benumbed and hung powerless.
At length, after the temperature was somewhat mitigated on this
memorable first of May, we arose and began to struggle homeward. Our
frozen trousers could scarcely be made to bend at the knee, and we
waded the snow with difficulty. The summit ridge was fortunately
wind-swept and nearly bare, so we were not compelled to lift our feet
high, and on reaching the long home slopes laden with loose snow we
made rapid progress, sliding and shuffling and pitching headlong, our
feebleness accelerating rather than diminishing our speed. When we had
descended some three thousand feet the sunshine warmed our backs and we
began to revive. At 10 a.m. we reached the timber and were safe.
Half an hour later we heard Sisson shouting down among the firs, coming
with horses to take us to the hotel. After breaking a trail through the
snow as far as possible he had tied his animals and walked up. We had
been so long without food that we cared but little about eating, but we
eagerly drank the coffee he prepared for us. Our feet were frozen, and
thawing them was painful, and had to be done very slowly by keeping
them buried in soft snow for several hours, which avoided permanent
damage. Five thousand feet below the summit we found only three inches
of new snow, and at the base of the mountain only a slight shower of
rain had fallen, showing how local our storm had been, notwithstanding
its terrific fury. Our feet were wrapped in sacking, and we were soon
mounted and on our way down into the thick sunshine—“God’s Country,” as
Sisson calls the Chaparral Zone. In two hours’ ride the last snowbank
was left behind. Violets appeared along the edges of the trail, and the
chaparral was coming into bloom, with young lilies and larkspurs about
the open places in rich profusion. How beautiful seemed the golden
sunbeams streaming through the woods between the warm brown boles of
the cedars and pines! All my friends among the birds and plants seemed
like _old_ friends, and we felt like speaking to every one of them as
we passed, as if we had been a long time away in some far, strange
country.
In the afternoon we reached Strawberry Valley and fell asleep. Next
morning we seemed to have risen from the dead. My bedroom was flooded
with sunshine, and from the window I saw the great white Shasta cone
clad in forests and clouds and bearing them loftily in the sky.
Everything seemed full and radiant with the freshness and beauty and
enthusiasm of youth. Sisson’s children came in with flowers and covered
my bed, and the storm on the mountaintop banished like a dream.
V. Shasta Rambles and Modoc Memories
Arctic beauty and desolation, with their blessings and dangers, all may
be found here, to test the endurance and skill of adventurous climbers;
but far better than climbing the mountain is going around its warm,
fertile base, enjoying its bounties like a bee circling around a bank
of flowers. The distance is about a hundred miles, and will take some
of the time we hear so much about—a week or two—but the benefits will
compensate for any number of weeks. Perhaps the profession of doing
good may be full, but every body should be kind at least to himself.
Take a course of good water and air, and in the eternal youth of Nature
you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.
Some have strange, morbid fears as soon as they find themselves with
Nature, even in the kindest and wildest of her solitudes, like very
sick children afraid of their mother—as if God were dead and the devil
were king.
One may make the trip on horseback, or in a carriage, even; for a good
level road may be found all the way round, by Shasta Valley, Sheep
Rock, Elk Flat, Huckleberry Valley, Squaw Valley, following for a
considerable portion of the way the old Emigrant Road, which lies along
the east disk of the mountain, and is deeply worn by the wagons of the
early gold-seekers, many of whom chose this northern route as perhaps
being safer and easier, the pass here being only about six thousand
feet above sea level. But it is far better to go afoot. Then you are
free to make wide waverings and zigzags away from the roads to visit
the great fountain streams of the rivers, the glaciers also, and the
wildest retreats in the primeval forests, where the best plants and
animals dwell, and where many a flower-bell will ring against your
knees, and friendly trees will reach out their fronded branches and
touch you as you pass. One blanket will be enough to carry, or you may
forego the pleasure and burden altogether, as wood for fires is
everywhere abundant. Only a little food will be required. Berries and
plums abound in season, and quail and grouse and deer—the magnificent
shaggy mule deer as well as the common species.
As you sweep around so grand a center, the mountain itself seems to
turn, displaying its riches like the revolving pyramids in jewelers’
windows. One glacier after another comes into view, and the outlines of
the mountain are ever changing, though all the way around, from
whatever point of view, the form is maintained of a grand, simple cone
with a gently sloping base and rugged, crumbling ridges separating the
glaciers and the snowfields more or less completely. The play of
colors, from the first touches of the morning sun on the summit, down
the snowfields and the ice and lava until the forests are aglow, is a
never-ending delight, the rosy lava and the fine flushings of the snow
being ineffably lovely. Thus one saunters on and on in the glorious
radiance in utter peace and forgetfulness of time.
Yet, strange to say, there are days even here somewhat dull-looking,
when the mountain seems uncommunicative, sending out no appreciable
invitation, as if not at home. At such time its height seems much less,
as if, crouching and weary, it were taking rest. But Shasta is always
at home to those who love her, and is ever in a thrill of enthusiastic
activity—burning fires within, grinding glaciers without, and fountains
ever flowing. Every crystal dances responsive to the touches of the
sun, and currents of sap in the growing cells of all the vegetation are
ever in a vital whirl and rush, and though many feet and wings are
folded, how many are astir! And the wandering winds, how busy they are,
and what a breadth of sound and motion they make, glinting and bubbling
about the crags of the summit, sifting through the woods, feeling their
way from grove to grove, ruffling the loose hair on the shoulders of
the bears, fanning and rocking young birds in their cradles, making a
trumpet of every corolla, and carrying their fragrance around the
world.
In unsettled weather, when storms are growing, the mountain looms
immensely higher, and its miles of height become apparent to all,
especially in the gloom of the gathering clouds, or when the storm is
done and they are rolling away, torn on the edges and melting while in
the sunshine. Slight rainstorms are likely to be encountered in a trip
round the mountain, but one may easily find shelter beneath
well-thatched trees that shed the rain like a roof. Then the shining of
the wet leaves is delightful, and the steamy fragrance, and the burst
of bird song from a multitude of thrushes and finches and warblers that
have nests in the chaparral.
The nights, too, are delightful, watching with Shasta beneath the great
starry dome. A thousand thousand voices are heard, but so finely
blended they seem a part of the night itself, and make a deeper
silence. And how grandly do the great logs and branches of your
campfire give forth the heat and light that during their long
century-lives they have so slowly gathered from the sun, storing it
away in beautiful dotted cells and beads of amber gum! The neighboring
trees look into the charmed circle as if the noon of another day had
come, familiar flowers and grasses that chance to be near seem far more
beautiful and impressive than by day, and as the dead trees give forth
their light all the other riches of their lives seem to be set free and
with the rejoicing flames rise again to the sky. In setting out from
Strawberry Valley, by bearing off to the northwestward a few miles you
may see
“...beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads,
And [bless] the monument of the man of flowers,
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers.”
This is one of the few places in California where the charming linnaea
is found, though it is common to the northward through Oregon and
Washington. Here, too, you may find the curious but unlovable
darlingtonia, a carnivorous plant that devours bumblebees,
grasshoppers, ants, moths, and other insects, with insatiable appetite.
In approaching it, its suspicious-looking yellow-spotted hood and
watchful attitude will be likely to make you go cautiously through the
bog where it stands, as if you were approaching a dangerous snake. It
also occurs in a bog near Sothern’s Station on the stage road, where I
first saw it, and in other similar bogs throughout the mountains
hereabouts.
The “Big Spring” of the Sacramento is about a mile and a half above
Sisson’s, issuing from the base of a drift-covered hill. It is lined
with emerald algae and mosses, and shaded with alder, willow, and thorn
bushes, which give it a fine setting. Its waters, apparently unaffected
by flood or drouth, heat or cold, fall at once into white rapids with a
rush and dash, as if glad to escape from the darkness to begin their
wild course down the cañon to the plain.
Muir’s Peak, a few miles to the north of the spring, rises about three
thousand feet above the plain on which it stands, and is easily
climbed. The view is very fine and well repays the slight walk to its
summit, from which much of your way about the mountain may be studied
and chosen. The view obtained of the Whitney Glacier should tempt you
to visit it, since it is the largest of the Shasta glaciers and its
lower portion abounds in beautiful and interesting cascades and
crevasses. It is three or four miles long and terminates at an
elevation of about nine thousand five hundred feet above sea level, in
moraine-sprinkled ice cliffs sixty feet high. The long gray slopes
leading up to the glacier seem remarkably smooth and unbroken. They are
much interrupted, nevertheless, with abrupt, jagged precipitous gorges,
which though offering instructive sections of the lavas for
examination, would better be shunned by most people. This may be done
by keeping well down on the base until fronting the glacier before
beginning the ascent.
The gorge through which the glacier is drained is raw-looking, deep and
narrow, and indescribably jagged. The walls in many places overhang; in
others they are beveled, loose, and shifting where the channel has been
eroded by cinders, ashes, strata of firm lavas, and glacial drift,
telling of many a change from frost to fire and their attendant floods
of mud and water. Most of the drainage of the glacier vanishes at once
in the porous rocks to reappear in springs in the distant valley, and
it is only in time of flood that the channel carries much water; then
there are several fine falls in the gorge, six hundred feet or more in
height. Snow lies in it the year round at an elevation of eight
thousand five hundred feet, and in sheltered spots a thousand feet
lower. Tracing this wild changing channel-gorge, gully, or cañon, the
sections will show Mount Shasta as a huge palimpsest, containing the
records, layer upon layer, of strangely contrasted events in its
fiery-icy history. But look well to your footing, for the way will test
the skill of the most cautious mountaineers.
Regaining the low ground at the base of the mountain and holding on in
your grand orbit, you pass through a belt of juniper woods, called “The
Cedars,” to Sheep Rock at the foot of the Shasta Pass. Here you strike
the old emigrant road, which leads over the low divide to the eastern
slopes of the mountain. In a north-northwesterly direction from the
foot of the pass you may chance to find Pluto’s Cave, already
mentioned; but it is not easily found, since its several mouths are on
a level with the general surface of the ground, and have been made
simply by the falling-in of portions of the roof. Far the most
beautiful and richly furnished of the mountain caves of California
occur in a thick belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty generally
developed along the western flank of the Sierra from the McCloud River
to the Kaweah, a distance of nearly four hundred miles. These volcanic
caves are not wanting in interest, and it is well to light a pitch pine
torch and take a walk in these dark ways of the underworld whenever
opportunity offers, if for no other reason to see with new appreciation
on returning to the sunshine the beauties that lie so thick about us.
Sheep Rock is about twenty miles from Sisson’s, and is one of the
principal winter pasture grounds of the wild sheep, from which it takes
its name. It is a mass of lava presenting to the gray sage plain of
Shasta Valley a bold craggy front two thousand feet high. Its summit
lies at an elevation of five thousand five hundred feet above the sea,
and has several square miles of comparatively level surface, where
bunchgrass grows and the snow does not lie deep, thus allowing the
hardy sheep to pick up a living through the winter months when deep
snows have driven them down from the lofty ridges of Shasta.
From here it might be well to leave the immediate base of the mountain
for a few days and visit the Lava Beds made famous by the Modoc War.
They lie about forty miles to the northeastward, on the south shore of
Rhett or Tule[7] Lake, at an elevation above sea level of about
forty-five hundred feet. They are a portion of a flow of dense black
vesicular lava, dipping northeastward at a low angle, but little
changed as yet by the weather, and about as destitute of soil as a
glacial pavement. The surface, though smooth in a general way as seen
from a distance, is dotted with hillocks and rough crater-like pits,
and traversed by a network of yawning fissures, forming a combination
of topographical conditions of very striking character. The way lies by
Mount Bremer, over stretches of gray sage plains, interrupted by rough
lava slopes timbered with juniper and yellow pine, and with here and
there a green meadow and a stream.
This is a famous game region, and you will be likely to meet small
bands of antelope, mule deer, and wild sheep. Mount Bremer is the most
noted stronghold of the sheep in the whole Shasta region. Large flocks
dwell here from year to year, winter and summer, descending
occasionally into the adjacent sage plains and lava beds to feed, but
ever ready to take refuge in the jagged crags of their mountain at
every alarm. While traveling with a company of hunters I saw about
fifty in one flock.
The Van Bremer brothers, after whom the mountain is named, told me that
they once climbed the mountain with their rifles and hounds on a grand
hunt; but, after keeping up the pursuit for a week, their boots and
clothing gave way, and the hounds were lamed and worn out without
having run down a single sheep, notwithstanding they ran night and day.
On smooth spots, level or ascending, the hounds gained on the sheep,
but on descending ground, and over rough masses of angular rocks they
fell hopelessly behind. Only half a dozen sheep were shot as they
passed the hunters stationed near their paths circling round the rugged
summit. The full-grown bucks weigh nearly three hundred and fifty
pounds.
The mule deer are nearly as heavy. Their long, massive ears give them a
very striking appearance. One large buck that I measured stood three
feet and seven inches high at the shoulders, and when the ears were
extended horizontally the distance across from tip to tip was two feet
and one inch.
From the Van Bremer ranch the way to the Lava Beds leads down the
Bremer Meadows past many a smooth grassy knoll and jutting cliff, along
the shore of Lower Klamath Lake, and thence across a few miles of sage
plain to the brow of the wall-like bluff of lava four hundred and fifty
feet above Tule Lake. Here you are looking southeastward, and the Modoc
landscape, which at once takes possession of you, lies revealed in
front. It is composed of three principal parts; on your left lies the
bright expanse of Tule Lake, on your right an evergreen forest, and
between the two are the black Lava Beds.
When I first stood there, one bright day before sundown, the lake was
fairly blooming in purple light, and was so responsive to the sky in
both calmness and color it seemed itself a sky. No mountain shore hides
its loveliness. It lies wide open for many a mile, veiled in no mystery
but the mystery of light. The forest also was flooded with sun-purple,
not a spire moving, and Mount Shasta was seen towering above it
rejoicing in the ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. But neither the
glorified woods on the one hand, nor the lake on the other, could at
first hold the eye. That dark mysterious lava plain between them
compelled attention. Here you trace yawning fissures, there clusters of
somber pits; now you mark where the lava is bent and corrugated in
swelling ridges and domes, again where it breaks into a rough mass of
loose blocks. Tufts of grass grow far apart here and there and small
bushes of hardy sage, but they have a singed appearance and can do
little to hide the blackness. Deserts are charming to those who know
how to see them—all kinds of bogs, barrens, and heathy moors; but the
Modoc Lava Beds have for me an uncanny look. As I gazed the purple
deepened over all the landscape. Then fell the gloaming, making
everything still more forbidding and mysterious. Then, darkness like
death.
Next morning the crisp, sunshiny air made even the Modoc landscape less
hopeless, and we ventured down the bluff to the edge of the Lava Beds.
Just at the foot of the bluff we came to a square enclosed by a stone
wall. This is a graveyard where lie buried thirty soldiers, most of
whom met their fate out in the Lava Beds, as we learn by the boards
marking the graves—a gloomy place to die in, and deadly-looking even
without Modocs. The poor fellows that lie here deserve far more pity
than they have ever received. Picking our way over the strange ridges
and hollows of the beds, we soon came to a circular flat about twenty
yards in diameter, on the shore of the lake, where the comparative
smoothness of the lava and a few handfuls of soil have caused the grass
tufts to grow taller. This is where General Canby was slain while
seeking to make peace with the treacherous Modocs.
Two or three miles farther on is the main stronghold of the Modocs,
held by them so long and defiantly