XISHASTA1870

“‘’Tis, O, ’tis the cottage of me love;’

“and C. K.,” he continued familiarly, “you’re a judge of wimmen,” chucking his knuckles into my ribs, whereat I jumped; when he added, “There, I knew you was. Well, Sarah Jane is a derned magnificent female; number three boot, just the height for me.Venus deCopples, I call her, and would make the most touching artist’s wife in this planet. If I design to paint a head, or a foot, or an arm, get my little old Sarah Jane to peel the particular charm, and just whack her in on the canvas.”

We passed in through low doors, turned from a small, dark entry into the family sitting-room, andwere alone there in presence of a cheery log fire, which good-naturedly bade us welcome, crackling freely and tossing its sparks out upon floor of pine and coyote-skin rug. A few old framed prints hung upon dark walls, their faces looking serenely down upon the scanty, old-fashioned furniture and windows full of flowering plants. A low-cushioned chair, not long since vacated, was drawn close by the centre-table, whereon were a lamp and a large, open Bible, with a pair of silver-bowed spectacles lying upon its lighted page.

Smith made a gesture of silence toward the door, touched the Bible, and whispered, “Here’swhere old woman Copples lives, and it is a good thing; I read it aloud to her evenings, and I can just feel the high, local lights of it. It’ll fetch H. G. yet!”

At this juncture the door opened; a pale, thin, elderly woman entered, and with tired smile greeted me. While her hard, labor-stiffened, needle-roughened hand was in mine, I looked into her face and felt something (it may be, it must be, but little, yet something) of the sorrow of her life; that of a woman large in sympathy, deep in faith, eternal in constancy, thrown away on a rough, worthless fellow. All things she hoped for had failed her; the tenderness which never came, the hopes years ago in ashes, the whole world of her yearnings long buried, leaving only the duty of living and the hope of Heaven. As she sat down, took up her spectacles and knitting, and closed the Bible, she began pleasantly to talkto us of the warm, bright autumn nights, of Smith’s work, and then of my own profession, and of her niece, Sarah Jane. Her genuinely sweet spirit and natively gentle manner were very beautiful, and far overbalanced all traces of rustic birth and mountain life.

O, that unquenchable Christian fire, how pure the gold of its result! It needs no practised elegance, no social greatness, for its success; only the warm human heart, and out of it shall come a sacred calm and gentleness, such as no power, no wealth, no culture may ever hope to win.

No words of mine would outline the beauty of that plain, weary old woman, the sad, sweet patience of those gray eyes, nor the spirit of overflowing goodness which cheered and enlivened the half hour we spent there.

H. G. might perhaps be pardoned for showing an alacrity when the door again opened and Sarah Jane rolled—I might almost say trundled—in, and was introduced to me.

Sarah Jane was an essentially Californian product, as much so as one of those vast potatoes or massive pears; she had a suggestion of State-Fair in the fulness of her physique, yet withal was pretty and modest.

If I could have rid myself of a fear that her buttons might sooner or later burst off and go singing by my ear, I think I might have felt as H. G. did, that she was a “magnificent female,” with her smooth, brilliant skin and ropes of soft brown hair.

H. G., in presence of the ladies, lost something of his original flavor, and rose into studied elegance, greatly to the comfort of Sarah, whose glow of pride as his talk ran on came without show of restraint.

The supper was delicious.

But Sarah was quiet, quiet to H. G. and to me, until after tea, when the old lady said, “You young folks will have to excuse me this evening,” and withdrew to her chamber.

More logs were then piled on the sitting-room hearth, and we three gathered in a semi-circle.

Presently H. G. took the poker and twisted it about among coals and ashes, prying up the oak sticks, as he announced, in a measured, studied way, “An artist’s wife, that is,” he explained, “an Academician’s wife orter, well she’d ortersabethe beautiful, and take her regular æsthetics; and then again,” he continued in explanatory tone, “she’d orter to know how to keep a hotel, derned if she hadn’t, for it’s rough like furst off, ’fore a feller gets his name up. But then when he does, tho’, she’s got a salubrious old time of it. It’s touch a little bell” (he pressed the andiron-top to show us how the thing was done), “and ‘Brooks, the morning paper!’ Open your regular Herald:

“‘Art Notes.—Another of H. G. Smith’s tender works, entitled, “Off the Grade,” so full of out-of-doors and subtle feeling of nature, is now on exhibition at Goupil’s.’

“Look down a little further:

“‘Italian Opera.—Between the acts all eyes turned to thedistinguéMrs. H. G. Smith, who looked,’”—then turning to me, and waving his hand at Sarah Jane, “I leave it to you if she don’t.”

Sarah Jane assumed the pleasing color of the sugar-beet, without seeming inwardly unhappy.

“It’s only a question of time with H. G.,” continued my friend. “Art is long, you know—derned long—and it may be a year before I paint my great picture, but after that Smith works in lead harness.”

He used the poker freely, and more and more his flow of hopes turned a shade of sentiment to Sarah Jane, who smiled broader and broader, showing teeth of healthy whiteness.

At last I withdrew and sought my room, which was H. G.’s also, and his studio. I had gone with a candle round the walls whereon were tacked studies and sketches, finding here and there a bit of real merit among the profusion of trash, when the door burst open and my friend entered, kicked off his boots and trousers, and walked up and down at a sort of quadrille step, singing:

“‘Yes, it’s the cottage of me love;You bet, it’s the cottage of me love,’

“and, what’s more, H. G. has just had his genteel good-night kiss; and when and where is the good old bar-keep?”

I checked his exuberance as best I might, knowingfull well that the quiet and elegant dispenser of neat and mixed beverages hearing this inquiry would put in an appearance in person and offer a few remarks designed to provoke ill-feeling. So I at last got Smith in bed and the lamp out. All was quiet for a few moments, and when I had almost gotten asleep I heard my room-mate in low tones say to himself,—

“Married, by the Rev. Gospel, our talented California artist, Mr. H. G. Smith, to Miss Sarah Jane Copples. No cards.”

A pause, and then with more gentle utterance, “and that’s what’s the matter with H. G.”

Slowly from this atmosphere of art I passed away into the tranquil land of dreams.

Weescaped the harvesting season of 1870. I try to believe all its poetry is not forever immolated under the strong wheels of that pastoral Juggernaut of our day, the steam-reaper, and to be grateful that Ruths have not now to glean the fallen wheat-heads, and loaf around at questionable hours, setting their caps for susceptible ranchers. Whatever stirring rhythm may to-day measure time with the quick fire-breath of reaping-machines shall await a more poetic pen than this. Some modern Virgil coming along the boundless wheat plain may perhaps sing you bucolic phrases of the new iron age; but he will soon see his mistake, as will you. The harvest home, with its Longfellow mellowness of atmosphere, or even those ideally colored barns of Eastman Johnson’s, with corn and girls and some of the lingering personal relationship between crops and human hands; all that is tradition here, not even memory.

It is quite as well. These people are more germane with enterprise and hurry, and with the winding-up drink at some vulgar tavern when the hiredhands are paid off, and gather to have “a real nice time with the boys.”

This was over. The herds of men had poured back to their cities, and wandered away among distant mines as far as their earnings would carry them.

A few stranded bummers, who awoke from their “nice time” penniless, still lingered in pathetic humiliation round the scene of their labor, rather heightening that air of sleep which now pervaded every ranch in the Sacramento valley.

We quitted the hotel at Chico with relief, gratefully turning our backs upon the Chinamen, whose cookery had spoiled our two days’ peace. Mr. Freeman Clark will have to make out a better case for Confucius, or else these fellows were apostate. But they were soon behind us, a straight, dusty avenue leading us past clusters of ranches into a quiet expanse of level land, and beneath the occasional shadow of roadside oaks. Miles of harvested plain lay close shaven in monotonous Naples yellow, stretching on, soft and vague, losing itself in a gray, half-luminous haze. Now and then, through more transparent intervals, we could see the brown Sierra feet walling us in to eastward, their oak-clad tops fainter and fainter as they rose into this sky. Directly overhead hung an arch of pale blue, but a few degrees down the hue melted into golden gray. Looming through the mist before us rose sombre forms of trees, growing in processions along the margins of snow-fed streams, which flow from the Sierra acrossthe Sacramento plain. Through these silent, sleepy groves the seclusion is perfect. You come in from blinding, sun-scorched plains to the great, aged oaks, whose immense breadth of bough seems outstretched with effort to shade more and more ground.

Alders and cottonwoods line the stream banks; native grapes in tropical profusion drape the shores, and hang in trailing curtains from tree to tree. Here and there glimpses open into dark thickets. The stream comes into view between walls of green. Evening sunlight, broken with shadow, falls over rippling shallows; still expanses of deep pool reflect blue from the zenith, and flow on into dark-shaded coves beneath overhanging verdure. Vineyards and orchards gather themselves pleasantly around ranch-houses.

Men and women are dull, unrelieved; they are all alike. The eternal flatness of landscape, the monotony of endlessly pleasant weather, the scarcely varying year, the utter want of anything unforeseen, and absence of all surprise in life, are legible upon their quiet, uninteresting faces. They loaf through eleven months to harvest one. Individuality is wanting. The same kind of tiresome ranch-gossip you hear at one table spreads itself over listening acres to the next.

The great American poet, it may confidently be predicted, will not book his name from the Sacramento Valley. The people, the acres, the industry seem to be created solely to furnish vulgar fractionsin the census. It was not wholly fancy that detected in the grapes something of the same flatness and sugary insipidity which characterized the girls I chatted with on certain piazzas.

What an antipode is the condition of sterile poverty in the farm-life of the East! Frugality, energy, self-preserving mental activity contrast sharply with the contented lethargy of this commonplace opulence. Mile after mile, in recurring succession of wheatland and vineyard, oak-grove and dusty shabbiness of graceless ranch-buildings, stretches on, flanking our way on either side, until at last the undulations of the foot-hills are reached, and the first signs of vigorous life are observed in the trees. Attitude and consciousness are displayed in the lordly oaks which cluster upon brown hillsides. The Sacramento, which through the slumberous plain had flowed in a still, deep current, reflecting only the hot haze and motionless forms of the trees upon its banks, here courses along with the ripple of life, displaying through its clear waters bowlders and pebbles freighted from the higher mountains.

Our road, ascending through sunny valleys and among rolling, oak-clad hills, at length reaches the level of the pines, and, climbing to a considerable crest, descends among a fine coniferous forest into the deeply wooded valley of the Pitt. Lifted high against the sky, ragged hills of granite and limestone limit the view. The river, through a sharp, rocky cañon, has descended from the volcanic plains ofnortheastern California, cutting its way across the sea of hills which represents the Sierra Nevada, and falling toward the west in a series of white rapids.

Our camp in the cool mountain air banished the fatigues of weary miles; night, under the mountain stars, gave us refreshing sleep; and from the morning we crossed Pitt Ferry we dated a new life.

In a deep gorge between lofty, pine-clad walls we came upon the McCloud, a brilliantly pure stream, wearing its way through lava rocks, and still bearing the ice-chill of Shasta. Dark, feathery firs stand in files along the swift river. Oaks, with lustrous leaves, rise above hill-slopes of red and brown. Numbers of Indian camps are posted here. I find them picturesque: low, conical huts, opening upon small, smoking fires attended by squaws. Numberless salmon, split and drying in rows upon light scaffoldings, make their light-red conspicuous amid the generally dingy surroundings.

These Indian faces are fairly good-natured, especially when young. I visited one camp, upon the left river bank, finding Madam at home, seated by her fireside, engaged in maternal duties. I am almost afraid to describe the squalor and grotesque hideousness of her person. She was emaciated and scantily clad in a sort of short petticoat; shaggy, unkempt hair overhanging a pair of wild wolf’s eyes. The ribs and collar-bone stood out as upon an anatomical specimen; hard, black flesh clinging in formlessmasses upon her body and arms. Altogether she had the appearance of an animated mummy. Her child, a mere amorphous roll, clung to her, and emphasized, with cubbish fatness, the wan, shrunken form of its mother, looking like some ravenous leech which was draining the woman’s very blood. Shuddering, I hurried away to observe the husband.

The “buck” was spearing salmon a short distance down stream, his naked form poised upon a beam which projected over the river, his eyes riveted, and spear uplifted, waiting for the prey; sunlight, streaming down in broken masses through trees, fell brilliantly upon his muscular shoulder and tense, compact thigh, glancing now and then across rigid arms and the polished point of his spear. The swift, dark water rushed beneath him, flashing upon its surface a shimmering reflection of his red figure. Cast in bronze he would have made a companion for Quincy Ward’s Indian Hunter; and better than a companion, for in his wolfish sinew and panther muscle there was not, so far as I could observe, that free Greek suppleness which is so fine a feature in Mr. Ward’s statue; though Ajax, disguised as an American Indian, might be a better name for that great and powerful piece of sculpture.

A day’s march brought us from McCloud to the Sacramento, here a small stream, with banks fringed by a pleasing variety of trees and margins graceful with water-plants.

Northward for two days we followed closely theline of the Sacramento River, now descending along slopes to its bed, where the stream played among picturesque rocks and bowlders, and again climbing by toilsome ascents into the forest a thousand feet up on the cañon wall, catching glimpses of towering ridges of pine-clad Sierra above, and curves of the foaming river deep in the blue shadow beneath us.

More and more the woods became darkened with mountain pine. The air freshened by northern life gave us the inspiration of altitude.

At last, through a notch to the northward, rose the conical summit of Shasta, its pale, rosy lavas enamelled with ice. Body and base of the great peak were hidden by intervening hills, over whose smooth rolls of forest green the bright, blue sky and the brilliant Shasta summit were sharp and strong. From that moment the peak became the centre of our life. From every crest we strained our eyes forward, as now and then either through forest vistas the incandescent snow greeted us, or from some high summit the opening cañon walls displayed grander and grander views of the great volcano. It was sometimes, after all, a pleasure to descend from these cool heights, with theimpressionof the mountain upon our minds, to the cañon bottom, where, among the endlessly varying bits of beautiful detail, the mental strain wore off.

When our tents were pitched at Sisson’s, while a picturesque haze floated up from the southward, we enjoyed the grand, uncertain form of Shasta, with its heaven-piercing crests of white, and wide, placidsweep of base; full of lines as deeply reposeful as a Greek temple. Its dark head lifted among the fading stars of dawn, and, strongly set upon the arch of coming rose, appealed to our emotions; but best we liked to sit at evening near Munger’s easel, watching the great lava cone glow with light almost as wild and lurid as if its crater still streamed.

Watkins thought it “photographic luck” that the mountain should so have draped itself with mist as to defy his camera. Palmer stayed at camp to make observations in the coloring of meerschaums at fixed altitudes, and to watch now and then the station barometer.

Shasta from Sisson’s is a broad, triple mountain, the central summit being flanked on the west by a large and quite perfect crater, whose rim reaches about twelve thousand feet altitude. On the west a broad, shoulder-like spur juts from the general slope. The cone rises from its base eleven thousand feet in one sweep.

A forest of tall, rich pines surrounds Strawberry Valley and the little group of ranches near Sisson’s. Under this high sky, and a pure quality of light, the whole varied foreground of green and gold stretches out toward the rocky mountain base in charming contrast. Brooks from the snow thread their way through open meadow, waving overhead a tent-work of willows, silvery and cool.

Shasta, as a whole, is the single cone of an immense, extinct volcano. It occupies almost precisely theaxial line of the Sierra Nevada, but the range, instead of carrying its great, wave-like ridge through this region, breaks down in the neighborhood of Lassen’s Butte, and for eighty miles northward is only represented by low, confused masses of mountain cut through and through by the cañon of the McCloud, Pitt, and Sacramento.

A broad, volcanic plain, interrupted here and there by inconsiderable chains, occupies the country east of Scott’s Mountain. From this general plain, whose altitude is from twenty-five hundred to thirty-five hundred feet, rises Mount Shasta. About its base cluster hillocks of a hundred little volcanoes, but they are utterly inconspicuous under the shadow of the great peak. The volcanic plain-land is partly overgrown by forest, and in part covers itself with fields of grass or sage. Riding over it in almost any part the one great point in the landscape is the cone of Shasta; its crest of solid white, its vast altitude, the pale-gray or rosy tints of its lavas, and the dark girdle of forest which swells up over cañon-carved foothills give it a grandeur equalled by hardly any American mountain.

September eleventh found the climbers of our party—S. F. Emmons, Frederick A. Clark, Albert B. Clark, Mr. Sisson, the pioneer guide of the region, and myself—mounted upon our mules, heading for the crater cone over rough rocks and among the stunted firs and pines which mark the upper limit of forest growth. The morning was cool and clear, witha fresh north wind sweeping round the volcano, and bringing in its descent invigorating cold of the snow region. When we had gone as far as our mules could carry us, threading their difficult way among piles of lava, we dismounted and made up our packs of beds, instruments, food and fuel for a three days’ trip, turned the animals over to George and John, our two muleteers, bade them good-day, and with Sisson, who was to accompany us up the first ascent, struck out on foot. Already above vegetation, we looked out over all the valley south and west, observing its arabesque of forest, meadow, and chaparral, the files of pines which struggled up almost to our feet, and just below us the volcano slope strewn with red and brown wreck and patches of shrunken snowdrift.

Our climb up the steep western crater slope was slow and tiresome, quite without risk or excitement. The footing, altogether of lodgeddébris, at times gave way provokingly, and threw us out of balance. Once upon the spiry pinnacles which crown the rim, a scene of wild power broke upon us. The round bowl, about a mile in diameter and nearly a thousand feet deep, lay beneath us, its steep, shelving sides of shattered lava mantled in places to the very bottom by fields of snow.

We clambered along the edge toward Shasta, and came to a place where for a thousand feet it was a mere blade of ice, sharpened by the snow into a thin, frail edge, upon which we walked in cautious balance,a misstep likely to hurl us down into the chaos of lava blocks within the crater.

Passing this, we reached the north edge of the rim, and from a rugged mound of shattered rock looked down into a gorge between us and the main Shasta. There, winding its huge body along, lay a glacier, riven with sharp, deep crevasses yawning fifty or sixty feet wide, the blue hollows of their shadowed depth contrasting with the brilliant surfaces of ice.

We studied its whole length from the far, high Shasta crest down in winding course, deepening its cañon more and more as it extends, crowding past our crater cone, and at last terminating in bold ice-billows and a wide belt of hilly moraine. The surface over half of its length was quite clean, but directly opposite us occurs a fine ice cascade; its entire surface is cut with transverse crevasses, which have a general tendency to curve downward; and all this dislocation is accompanied by a freight of lava blocks which shoot down the cañon walls on either side, bounding out all over the glacier.

In a later trip, while Watkins was making his photographic views, I climbed about, going to the edges of some crevasses and looking over into their blue vaults, where icicles overhang, and a whispered sound of waterflow comes up faintly from beneath.

From a point about midway across where I had climbed and rested upon the brink of an ice-cliff, the glacier below me breaking off into its wild pile ofcascade blocks andsérac, I looked down over all the lower flow, broken with billowy upheavals, and bright with bristling spires of sunlit ice. Upon the right rose the great cone of Shasta, formed of chocolate-colored lavas, its sky line a single curved sweep of snow cut sharply against a deep blue sky. To the left the precipices of the lesser cone rose to the altitude of twelve thousand feet, their surfaces half jagged ledges of lava and half irregular sheets of ice. From my feet the glacier sank rapidly between volcanic walls, and the shadow of the lesser cone fell in a dark band across the brilliantly lighted surface. Looking down its course, my eye ranged over sunny and shadowed zones of ice and over the gray bowlder region of the terminal moraine; still lower, along the former track of ancient and grander glaciers, and down upon undulating, pine-clad foothills, descending in green steps, reaching out like promontories into the sea of plain which lay outspread nine thousand feet below, basking in the half-tropical sunshine, its checkered green fields and orchards ripening their wheat and figs.

Our little party separated, each going about his labor. The Clarks, with theodolite and barometer, were engaged on a pinnacle over on the western crater-edge. Mr. Sisson, who had helped us thus far with a huge pack-load of wood, now said good-by, and was soon out of sight on his homeward tramp. Emmons and I geologized about the rim and interior slope, getting at last out of sight of one another.

In mid-crater sprang up a sharp cone several hundred feet high, composed of much shattered lava, and indicating doubtless the very latest volcanic activity. At its base lay a small lakelet, frozen over with rough, black ice. Far below us cold gray banks and floating flocks of vapor began to drift and circle about the lava slopes, rising higher at sunset, till they quite enveloped us, and at times shut out the view.

Later we met for bivouac, spread our beds upon smalldébrisunder lee of a mass of rock on the rim, and built a little camp-fire, around which we sat closely. Clouds still eddied about us, opening now wide rifts of deep-blue sky, and then glimpses of the Shasta summit glowing with evening light, and again views down upon the far earth, where sunlight had long faded, leaving forest and field and village sunken in purple gloom. Through the old, broken crater lip, over foreground of pallid ice and sharp, black lava rocks, the clouds whirled away, and, yawning wide, revealed an objectless expanse, out of which emerged dim mountain tops, for a moment seen, then veiled. Thus, in the midst of clouds, I found it extremely interesting to watch them and their habits. Drifting slowly across the crater-bowl, I saw them float over and among the points of cindery lava, whose savage forms contrasted wonderfully with the infinite softness of their texture.

I found it strange and suggestive that fields of perpetual snow should mantle the slopes of an old lava caldron, that the very volcano’s throat should bechoked with a pure little lakelet, and sealed with unmelting ice. That power of extremes which held sway over lifeless nature before there were human hearts to experience its crush expressed itself with poetic eloquence. Had Lowell been in our bivouac, I know he must have felt again the power of his own perfect figure of

“Burned-out craters healed with snow.”

It was a wild moment, wind smiting in shocks against the rock beside us, flaring up our little fire, and whirling on with its cloud-freight into the darkening crater gulf.

We turned in; the Clarks together, Emmons and I in our fur bags. Upon cold stone our bed was anything but comfortable, angular fragments of trachyte finding their way with great directness among our ribs and under shoulder-blades, keeping us almost awake, in that despairing semi-consciousness where dreams and thoughts tangle in tiresome confusion.

Just after midnight, from sheer weariness, I arose, finding the sky cloudless, its whole black dome crowded with stars. A silver dawn over the slope of Shasta brightened till the moon sailed clear. Under its light all the rugged topography came out with unnatural distinctness, every impression of height and depth greatly exaggerated. The empty crater lifted its rampart into the light. I could not tell which seemed most desolate, that dim, moonlit rim with pallid snow-mantle and gaunt crags, or the solid, blackshadow which was cast downward from southern walls, darkening half the bowl. From the silent air every breath of wind or whisper of sound seemed frozen. Naked lava slopes and walls, the high, gray body of Shasta with ridge and gorge, glacier and snow-field, all cold and still under the icy brightness of the moon, produced a scene of arctic terribleness such as I had never imagined. I looked down, eagerly straining my eyes, through the solemn crater’s lip, hoping to catch a glimpse of the lower world; but far below, hiding the earth, stretched out a level plain of cloud, upon which the light fell cold and gray as upon a frozen ocean.

I scrambled back to bed, and happily to sleep, a real sound, dreamless repose.

We breakfasted some time after sunrise, and were soon under way with packs on our shoulders.

The day was brilliant and cloudless, the cold, still air full of life and inspiration. Through its clear blue the Shasta peak seemed illusively near, and we hurried down to the saddle which connects our cone with the peak, and across the head of a small tributary glacier, and up over the firstdébrisslopes. It was a slow, tedious three hours’ climb over stones which lay as steeply as loose material possibly can, up to the base of a red trachyte spur; then on up a gorge, and out upon a level mountain shoulder, where are considerable flats covered with deep ice. To the north it overflows in a much-crevassed tributary of the glacier we had studied below.

Here we rested, and hung the barometer from Clark’s tripod.

The further ascent lies up a long scoria ridge of loose, red pumiceous rock for seven or eight hundred feet, then across another level step, curved with rugged ice, and up into a sort of corridor between two steep, much-broken, and stained ridges. Here in the hollow are boiling sulphurous springs and hot earth. We sat down by them, eating our lunch in the lee of some stones.

A short, rapid climb brought us to the top, four hours and thirty minutes’ working time from our crater bivouac.

There is no reason why anyone of sound wind and limb should not, after a little mountaineering practice, be able to make the Shasta climb. There is nowhere the shadow of danger, and never a real piece of mountain climbing—climbing, I mean, with hands and feet—no scaling of walls or labor involving other qualities than simple muscular endurance. The fact that two young girls have made the ascent proves it a comparatively easy one. Indeed, I have never reached a corresponding altitude with so little labor and difficulty. Whoever visits California, and wishes to depart from the beaten track of Yosemite scenes, could not do better than come to Strawberry Valley and get Mr. Sisson to pilot him up Shasta.

When I ask myself to-day what were the sensations on Shasta, they render themselves into three—geography, shadows, and uplifted isolation.

After we had walked along a short, curved ridge which forms the summit, representing, as I believe, all that remains of the original crater, it became my occupation to study the view.

A singularly transparent air revealed every plain and peak on till the earth’s curve rolled them under remote horizons. The whole great disk of world outspread beneath wore an aspect of glorious cheerfulness. The Cascade Range, a roll of blue forest land, stretched northward, surmounted at intervals by volcanoes; the lower, like symmetrical Mount Pitt, bare and warm with rosy lava colors; those farther north lifting against the pale horizon-blue solid white cones upon which strong light rested with brilliance. It seemed incredible that we could see so far toward the Columbia River, almost across the State of Oregon; but there stood Pitt, Jefferson, and the Three Sisters in unmistakable plainness. Northeast and east spread those great plains out of which rise low lava chains, and a few small, burned-out volcanoes, and there, too, were the group of Klamath and Goose Lakes lying in mid plain glassing the deep upper violet. Farther and farther from our mountain base in that direction the greenness of forest and meadow fades out into rich, mellow brown, with warm cloudings of sienna over bare lava hills, and shades, as you reach the eastern limit, in pale ash and lavender and buff, where stretches of level land slope down over Madelin plains into Nevada deserts. An unmistakable purity and delicacy of tint, with transparent air and paleness oftone, give all desert scenes the aspect of water-color drawings. Even at this immense distance I could see the gradual change from rich, warm hues of rocky slope, or plain overspread with ripened vegetation, out to the high, pale key of the desert.

Southeast the mountain spurs are smoothed into a broad glacis, densely overgrown with chaparral, and ending in open groves around plains of yellow grass.

A little farther begin the wild, cañon-curved piles of green mountains which represent the Sierras, and afar, towering over them, eighty miles away, the lava dome of Lassen’s Peak standing up bold and fine. South, the Sacramento cañon cuts down to unseen depths, its deep trough opening a view of the California plain, a brown, sunny expanse, over which loom in vanishing perspective the coast-range peaks. West of us, and quite around the semi-circle of view, stretches a vast sea of ridges, chains, peaks, and sharp walls of cañons, as wild and tumultuous as an ocean storm. Here and there above the blue billows rise snow-crests and shaggy rock-chains, but the topography is indistinguishable. With difficulty I could trace for a short distance the Klamath cañon course, recognizing Siskiyou peaks, where Professor Brewer and I had been years before; but in that broad area no further unravelling was possible. So high is Shasta, so dominant above the field of view, we looked over it all as upon a great shield which rose gently in all directions to the sky.

Whichever way we turned, the great cone fell offfrom our feet in dizzying abruptness. We looked down steep slopes ofnévé, on over shattered ice-wreck, where glaciers roll over cliffs, and around the whole, broad, massive base curved deeply through its lava crusts in straight cañons.

These flutings of ancient and grander glaciers are flanked by straight, long moraines, for the most part bare, but reaching down part way into the forest. It is interesting to observe that those on the north and east, by greater massiveness and length, indicate that in former days the glacier distribution was related to the points of compass about as it is now. What volumes of geographical history lay in view! Old mountain uplift; volcanoes built upon the plain of fiery lava; the chill of ice and wearing force of torrent, written in glacier-gorge and water-carved cañon!

I think such vastness of prospect now and then extremely valuable in itself; it forcibly widens one’s conception of country, driving away such false notion of extent or narrowing idea of limitation as we get in living on lower plains.

I never tire of overlooking these great, wide fields, studying their rich variety, and giving myself up to the expansion which is the instant and lasting reward. In presence of these vast spaces and all but unbounded outlook, the hours hurry by with singular swiftness. Minutes or miles are nothing; days and degrees seem best fitted for one’s thoughts. So it came sooner than I could have believed that the sun neared its setting, sinking into a warm, bright stratum of air.The light stretched from north to south, reflecting itself with an equal depth all along the east, until a perfect ring of soft, glowing rose edged the whole horizon. Over us the ever-dark heaven hung near and flat. Light swept eastward across the earth, every uplift of hill-ridge or solitary cone warm and bright with its reflections, and from each object upon the plains, far and near, streamed out dense, sharp shadows, slowly lengthening their intense images. We were far enough lifted above it all to lose the ordinary landscape impression, and reach that extraordinary effect of black-and-bright topography seen upon the moon through a telescope.

Afar in the north, bars of blue shadow streamed out from the peaks, tracing themselves upon rosy air. All the eastern slope of Shasta was of course in dark shade, the gray glacier forms, broken ridges of stone, and forest, all dim and fading. A long cone of cobalt-blue, the shadow of Shasta fell strongly defined over the bright plain, its apex darkening the earth a hundred miles away. As the sun sank, this gigantic spectral volcano rose on the warm sky till its darker form stood huge and terrible over the whole east. It was intensely distinct at the summit, just as far-away peaks seen against the east in evening always are, and faded at base as it entered the stratum of earth mist.

Grand and impressive we had thought Shasta when studying in similar light from the plain. Infinitely more impressive was this phantom volcano as it stood overshadowing the land and slowly fading into night.

Before quitting the ridge, Fred Clark and I climbed together out upon the highest pinnacle, a trachyte needle rising a few feet above the rest, and so small we could barely balance there together, but we stood a moment and waved the American flag, looking down over our shoulders eleven thousand feet.

A fierce wind blew from the southwest, coming in gusts of great force. Below, we could hear it beat surf-like upon the crags. We hurried down to the hot-spring flat, and just over the curve of its southern descent made our bivouac. Even here the wind howled, merciless and cold.

We turned to and built of lava blocks a square pen about two and a half feet high, filled the chinks with pebbles, and banked it with sand. I have seen other brown-stone fronts more imposing than our Shasta home, but I have rarely felt more grateful to four walls than to that little six-by-six pen. I have not forgotten that through its chinks the sand and pebbles pelted us all night, nor was I oblivious when sudden gusts toppled over here and there a good-sized rock upon our feet. When we sat up for our cup of coffee, which Clark artistically concocted over the scanty and economical fire, the walls sheltered our backs; and for that we were thankful, even if the wind had full sweep at our heads and stole the very draught from our lips, whirling it about north forty east by compass, in the form of an infinitesimal spray. The zephyr, as we courteously called it, had a fashion of dropping vertically out of the sky upon our fire and leaving aclean hearth. For the space of a few moments after these meteorological jokes there was a lively gathering of burning knots from among our legs and coats and blankets.

There are times when the extreme of discomfort so overdoes itself as to extort a laugh and put one in the best of humor. This tempest descended to so many absurd personal tricks altogether beneath the dignity of a reputable hurricane, that at last it seemed to us a sort of furious burlesque.

Not so the cold; that commanded entire respect, whether carefully abstracting our animal heat through the bed of gravel on which we lay, or brooding over us hungry for those pleasant little waves of motion which, taking Tyndall for granted, radiated all night long, in spite of wildcat bags, from our unwilling particles. I abominate thermometers at such times. Not one of my set ever owned up the real state of things. Whenever I am nearly frozen and conscious of every indurated bone, that bland little instrument is sure to read twenty or thirty degrees above any unprejudiced estimate. Lying there and listening to the whispering sounds that kindly drifted, ever adding to our cover, and speculating as to any further possible meteorological affliction, was but indifferent amusement, from which I escaped to a slumber of great industry. We lay like sardines, hoping to encourage animal heat, but with small success.

The sunrise effect, with all its splendor, I find it convenient to leave to some future traveller. I shallbe generous with him, and say nothing of that hour of gold. It had occurred long before we awoke, and many precious minutes were consumed in united appeals to one another to get up and make coffee. It was horridly cold and uncomfortable where we were, but no one stirred. How natural it is under such circumstances to

“Rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of.”

I lay musing on this, finding it singular that I should rather be there stiff and cold while my like-minded comrades appealed to me, than to get up and comfort myself with camp-fire and breakfast. We severally awaited developments.

At last Clark gave up and made the fire, and he has left me in doubt whether he loved cold less or coffee more.

Digging out our breakfast from drifted sand was pleasant enough, nor did we object to excavating the frozen shoes, but the mixture of disintegrated trachyte discovered among the sugar, and the manner in which our brown-stone front had blown over and flattened out the family provisions, were received by us as calamity.

However, we did justice to Clark’s coffee, and socially toasted our bits of meat, while we chatted and ate zestfully portions not too freely brecciated with lava sand. I have been at times all but morbidly aware of the power of local attachment, finding itabsurdly hard to turn the key on doors I have entered often and with pleasure. My own early home, though in other hands, holds its own against greater comfort, larger cheer; and a hundred times, when our little train moved away from grand old trees or willow-shaded springs by mountain camps, I have felt all the pathos of nomadism, from the Aryan migration down.

As we shouldered our loads and took to the ice-field I looked back on our modest edifice, and for the first time left my camp with gay relief.

Elation of success and the vital mountain air lent us their quickening impulse. We tramped rapidly across the ice-field and down a long spur of red trachyte, which extended in a southerly course around the head of a glacier. It was our purpose to descend the southern slope of the mountain, to a camp which had been left there awaiting us. The declivity in that direction is more gentle than by our former trail, and had, besides, the merit of lying open to our view almost from the very start. It was interesting, as we followed the red trachyte spur, to look down to our left uponnévéof the McCloud glacier. From its very head, dislocation and crevasses had begun, the whole mass moving away from the wall, leaving a deep gap between ice and rock. In its further descent this glacier pours over such steep cascades, and is so tortuous among the lava crags, that we could only see its beginning. To avoid those great pyramidal masses which sprang fully a thousand feet from the generalflank of the mountain, we turned to the right and entered the head of one of those long, eroded glacier cañons which are scored down the slope. The ridges from both sides had poured in their freight ofdébrisuntil the cañon was one mass of rock fragments of every conceivable size and shape. Here and there considerable masses of ice and relics of former glaciers lay up and down the shaded sides, and, as we descended, occupied the whole broad bottom of the gorge. We congratulated ourselves when the steep, upperdébrisslope was passed and we found ourselves upon the wavy ice of the old glacier. Numerous streams flowed over its irregular face, losing themselves in the cracks and reappearing among the accumulation of bowlders upon its surface. Here and there glacier tables of considerable size rose above the general level, supported on slender ice-columns. As the angle here was very steep, we amused ourselves by prying these off their pedestals with our alpine stocks, and watching them slide down before us.

More and more the ice became burdened with rocks, until at last it wholly disappeared under accumulation of moraine. Over this, for a half mile, we tramped, thinking the glacier ended; but in one or two depressions I again caught sight of the ice, which led me to believe that a very large portion of this rocky gorge may be underlaid by old glacial remains.

Tramping over this unstable moraine, where melting ice had left the bowlders in every state of uncertain equilibrium, we were greatly fatigued, and atlast, the strain telling seriously on our legs, we climbed over a ridge to the left of our amphitheatre into the next cañon, which was very broad and open, with gentle, undulating surface diversified by rock plateaus and fields of glacier sand. Here, by the margin of a little snow-brook, and among piles of immensedébris, Emmons and I sat down to lunch, and rested until our friends came up.

A few scanty bunches of alpine plants began to deck the gray earth and gradually to gather themselves in bits of open sward, here and there decorated with delicate flowers. Near one little spring meadow we came upon gardens of a pale yellow flower with an agreeable, aromatic perfume, and after another mile of straining on among erratic bowlders and over the thick-strewn rock of the old moraines, we came to the advanced guard of the forest. Battle-twisted and gnarled old specimens of trees, of rugged, muscular trunk, and scanty, irregular branch, they showed in every line and color a life-long struggle against their enemies, the avalanche and cold. Gathering closer, they grew in groves separated by long, open, grassy glades, the clumps of trees twisting their roots among the glacier blocks.

For a long time we followed the pathway of an avalanche. To the right and left of us, upon considerable heights, the trees were sound and whole, and preserved, even at their ripe age, the health of youth. But down the straight pathway of the valley every tree had been swept away, the prostrate trunks, lyinghere and there, half buried in drifts of sand and rock. Here, over the whole surface, a fresh young growth not more than six or seven years old has sprung up, and begun a hopeless struggle for ground which the snow claims for its own. Before us opened winding avenues through forest; green meadows spread their pale, fresh herbage in sunny beauty. Along the little stream which, after a mile’s musical cascades, we knew flowed past camp, tender green plants and frail mountain flowers edged our pathway. All was still and peaceful with the soft, brooding spirit of life. The groves were absolutely alive like ourselves, and drinking in the broad, affluent light in their silent, beautiful way. Back over sunny tree-tops, the great cone of rock and ice loomed in the cold blue; but we gladly turned away and let our hearts open to the gentle influence of our new world.

There, at last, as we tramped over a knoll, were the mules dozing in sunshine or idling about among trees, and there that dear, blue wreath floating up from our camp-fire and drifting softly among boughs of overhanging fir.

I always feel a strange renewal of life when I come down from one of these climbs; they are with me points of departure more marked and powerful than I can account for upon any reasonable ground. In spite of any scientific labor or presence of fatigue, the lifeless region, with its savage elements of sky, ice and rock, grasps one’s nature, and, whether he will or no, compels it into a stern, strong accord. Then,as you come again into softer air, and enter the comforting presence of trees, and feel the grass under your feet, one fetter after another seems to unbind from your soul, leaving it free, joyous, grateful!

Thereare certain women, I am informed, who place men under their spell without leaving them the melancholy satisfaction of understanding how the thing was done. They may have absolutely repulsive features, and a pretty permanent absence of mind; without that charm of cheerful grace before which we are said to succumb. Yet they manage to assume command of certain. It is thus with mules. I have heard them called awkward and personally plain, nor is it denied that their disposition, though rich in individuality, lacks some measure of qualities which should endear them to humanity. Despite all this, and even more, they have a way of tenderly getting the better of us, and, in the long run, absolutely enthroning themselves in our affections. Mystery as it is, I confess to its potent sway, long ago owning it beyond solution.

Live on the intimate terms of brother-explorer with your mule, be thoughtful for his welfare, and you by-and-by take an emotional start toward him which will surprise you. You look into that reserved face, the embodiment of self-contained drollery, and begin todetect soft thought and tender feeling; and sometimes, as you cinch your saddle a little severely, the calm, reproachful visage will swing round and melt you with a single look. Nothing is left but to rub the velvet nose and loosen up the girth. When the mere brightness and gayety of mountain life carries one away with their hilarious current, there is something in the meek and humble air of a lot of pack animals altogether chastening in its prompt effect.

My “‘69” was one of these insidious beings who within a week of our first meeting asserted supremacy over my life, and formed a silent partnership with my conscience. She was a chubby, black mule, so sleek and rotund as distantly to suggest a pig on stilts. Upon the eye which still remained, a cataract had begun to spread its dimming film. Her make-up was also defective in a weak pair of hind legs, which gave way suddenly in going up steep places. She was clumsy, and in rugged pathways would squander much time in the selection of her foothold. At these moments, when she deliberated, as I fancied, needlessly long, I have very gently suggested with Spanish spur that it might be as well to start; the serious face then turned upon me, its mild eye looking into mine one long, earnest gaze, as much as to say, “I love and would spare you; remember Balaam!” I yielded.

These animals are always of the opposition party; they reverse your wishes, and from one year’s end to another defy your best judgment. Yet I love them, and only in extreme moments “go for” them with afence-rail or theodolite-tripod. Nothing can be pleasanter than to ride them through forest roads, chatting in a bright company, and catching glimpses of far, quiet scenery framed by the long, furry ears.

So we thought on that sunny morning when we left Sisson’s, starting ahead of wagons and pack animals, and riding out into the woodland on our trip round Shasta; a march of a hundred miles, with many proposed side-excursions into the mountain.

The California haze had again enveloped Shasta, this time nearly obscuring it. In forest along the southeast base, we came upon the stream flowing from McCloud Glacier, its cold waters milky white with fine, sandy sediment. Such dense, impenetrable fields of chaparral cover the south foothills that we were only able to fight our way through limited parts, getting, however, a clear idea of lava flows and topography. Farther east, the plains rise to seven thousand feet, and fine wood ridges sweep down from Shasta, inviting approach.

While Munger and Watkins camped to make studies and negatives of the peak, Fred Clark and I packed one mule with a week’s provisions, and, mounting our saddle-animals, struck off into dark, silent forest.

It was a steep climb of eight or ten miles up tree-covered ridges and among outcrops of gray trachyte, nearly every foot showing more or less evidence of glacial action; long trains of morainal rocks upon which large forest-trees seemed satisfied to grow;great, rough regions of terminal rubbish, with enclosed patches of level earth commonly grass-grown and picturesque. It was sunset before we came upon water, and then it flowed a thousand feet below us in the bottom of a sharp, narrow cañon, cut abruptly down in what seemed glacialdébris. I thought it unwise to take our mules down its steep wall if there were any camp-spot high up in the opener head of the cañon, and went off on foot to climb the wooded moraines still farther, hoping to come upon a bit of alpine sward with icy pool, or even upon a spring. When up between two and three hundred feet the trees became less and less frequent, rugged trains of stone and glacier-scored rock in places covering the spurs. I could now overlook the snow amphitheatre, which opened vast and shadowy above. Not a sign of vegetation enlivened its stony bed. The icy brook flowed between slopes ofdébris. At my feet a trachyte ridge narrowed the stream with a tortuous bed, and led it to the edge of a five-hundred-feet cliff, over which poured a graceful cascade. Finding no camp-spot there, I turned northward and made a detour through deep woods, by-and-by coming back to Clark. We faced the necessity, and by dark were snugly camped in the wild cañon bottom. It was one of the loneliest bivouacs of my life: shut in by high, dark walls, a few clustered trees growing here and there, others which floods had undermined lying prostrate, rough bowlders thrown about, an icy stream hurrying by, and chilly winds coming down from theheight, against which our blankets only half defended us.

Our excursion next day was south and west, across high, scantily wooded moraines, till we came to the deep cañon of the McCloud Glacier.

I describe this gorge, as it is one of several similar, all peculiar to Shasta. We had climbed to a point about ten thousand feet above the sea, and were upon the eastern edge of a cañon of eleven or twelve hundred feet depth. From the very crest of the Shasta, with here and there a few patches of snow, a long and remarkably evendébrisslope swept down. It seemed as if these small pieces of trachyte formed a great part of the region, for to the very bottom our cañon walls were worked out of it. A half mile below us the left bank was curiously eroded by side streams, resulting in a family of pillars from one to seven hundred feet high, each capped with some hard lava bowlder which had protected the softdébrisbeneath from weathering. From its loftynévéthe McCloud Glacier descended over rugged slopes in one long cascade to a little above our station, where it impinged against a great rock buttress and turned sharply from the south wall toward us, rounding over in a great, solid ice-dome eight or nine hundred feet high. For a mile farther a huge accumulation looking like a river ofdébriscumbered the bottom. Here and there, on close scrutiny, we found it to be pierced with caverns whose ice-walls showed that the glacier underlay all this vast amount of stone. Bowlders rattled continuallyfrom the upper glacier and down both cañon walls, increasing the already great burden. Along both sides were evidences of motion in the lateral moraine embankments, and a very perceptible rounding up of terminal ramparts, from which in white torrent poured the sub-glacial brook.

It is instructive to consider what an amount of freighting labor this shrunken ice-stream has to perform besides dragging its own vast weight along. In descending Shasta we had found glacial ice which evidently for a mile or more deeply underlaid a mass of rock similar to this. It is one of the curiosities of Mount Shasta that such a great bulk of ice should be buried, and in large part preserved, by loads of rock fragments. Fine contrasts of color were afforded high up among theséracby a combination of blue ice and red lavas. We hammered and surveyed here for half the day, then descended to our mules, who bore us eagerly back to their home, our weird little cañon camp.

A pleasant day’s march, altogether in woods and over glacial ridges, during which not a half hour passed without opening views of the cone, brought us high on the northern slope, at the upper forest limit, in a region of barren avalanche tracks and immense moraines.

Between those great, straight ridges which jut almost parallel from the volcano’s base are wide, shelving valleys, the pathways of extinct glaciers; and here the forest, although it must once have obtainedfoothold, has been uprooted and swept away before powerful avalanches, crushed and up-piled trunks in sad wreck marking spots where the snow-rush stopped.

Two brooks, separated by a wide, gently rounding zone of drift, flowed down through the glacier valley which opened directly in front of our camp.

Early next morning Clark and I made up a bag of lunch, shouldered our instruments, and set out for a day on the glacier. Our slow, laborious ascent of the valley was not altogether uninteresting. Constant views obtained of moraines on either side gave us much pleasure and study. It was instructive to observe that the bases of their structure were solid floors of lava, upon which, in rude though secure masonry, were piled embankments not less than half a mile wide and four hundred feet high. Among the huge rocks which formed the upper structure the tree-forms were peculiar. Apparently every tree had made an effort to fill some gap and round out the smooth general surface. No matter how deeply twisted between high bowlders, the branches spread themselves out in a continuous, dense mat, stretching from stone to stone. It was only rarely, and in the less elevated parts of the moraine, that we could see a trunk. The whole effect was of a causeway of rock overgrown by some dense, green vine.

Similar patches of stunted trees grew here and there over the bottom of our broad amphitheatre. Oftentimes we threaded our way among dense thickets of pines, never over six or eight feet in height, havingtrunks often two and three feet in diameter, and more than once we walked over their tops, our feet sinking but two or three inches into the dense mat of foliage. Here and there, half buried in the drift, we came across the tall, noble trunks of avalanche-killed trees. In comparing their straight, symmetrical growth with the singularly matted condition of the living-dwarfed trees, I find the indication of a great climatic change. Not only are the present avalanches too great to permit their growth, but the violent cold winds which drift over this region bend down the young trees to such an extent that there are no longer tall, normal specimens. Around the upper limits of aborescent vegetation we passed some most enchanting spots; groves, not over eight feet in height, of large trees whose white trunks and interwoven boughs formed a colonnade, over which stretched thick, living thatch. Under these strange galleries we walked upon soft, velvety turf and an elastic cushion of pine-needles; nor could we resist the temptation of lying down here to rest beneath the dense roof. As we looked back, charming little vistas opened between the old and dwarfed stems. In one direction we could see the moraine with its long, graded slope and variegated green and brown surface; in another, the open pathway of the old glacier worn deeper and deeper between lofty, forest-clad spurs; and up to the great snow mass above us, with its slender peak in the heavens looking down upon magnificent sweep ofnévé.

Only the strong desire for glaciers led us away from these delightful groves. A short tramp over sand and bowlders brought us to the foot of a broad, irregular, terminal moraine. Two or three milky cascades poured out from under the great bowlder region and united to form two important streams. We followed one of these in our climb up the moraine, and after an hour’s hard work found ourselves upon an immense pile of lava blocks, from which we could overlook the whole.

In irregular curve it continues not less than three miles around the end of the glacier, and in no place that I saw was less than a half mile in width. Where we had attacked it the width cannot be less than a mile, and the portion over which we had climbed must reach a thickness of five or six hundred feet.

About a half mile above us, though but little lifted from our level, undulating hillocks of ice marked the division between glacier and moraine; above that, it stretched in uninterrupted white fields. The moraine in every direction extended in singularly abrupt hills, separated by deep, irregular pits and basins of a hundred and more feet deep.

As we climbed on, the footing became more and more insecure, piles of rock giving way under our weight. Before long we came to a region of circular, funnel-shaped craters, where evidently the underlying glacier had melted out and a whole freight of bowlders fallen in with a rush. Around the edges of these horrible traps we threaded our way with extreme caution;now and then a bowlder, dislodging under our feet, rolled down into these pits, and many tons would settle out of sight. Altogether it was the most dangerous kind of climbing I have ever seen. You were never sure of your foothold. More than once, when crossing a comparatively smooth, level bowlder-field, the rocks began to sink under us, and we sprang on from stone to stone while the great mass caved and sank slowly behind us. At times, while making our way over solid-seeming stretches, the sound of a deep, sub-glacial stream flowing far beneath us came up faint and muffled through the chinks of the rock. This sort of music is not encouraging to the nerves. To the siren babble of mountain brook is added all the tragic nearness of death.

We looked far and wide in hope of some solid region which should lead us up to the ice, but it was all alike, and we hurried on, the rocks settling and sinking beneath our tread, until we made our way to the edge, and climbed with relief upon the hard, white surface. After we had gained the height of a hundred feet, climbing up a comparatively smooth slope between brooks which flowed over it, a look back gave a more correct idea of the general billowy character of our moraine; and here and there in its deeper indentations we could detect the underlying ice.

It is, then, here as upon the McCloud Glacier. For at least a mile’s width the whole lower zone is buried under accumulation of morainal matter. Instead ofending like most Swiss glaciers, this ice wastes chiefly in contact with the ground, and when considerable caverns are formed the overlying moraine crushes its way through the rotten roof, making the funnels we had seen.

Thankful that we had not assisted at one of these engulfments, we scrambled on up the smooth, roof-like slope, steadying our ascent by the tripod legs used as alpine stock. When we had climbed perhaps a thousand feet the surface angle became somewhat gentler, and we were able to overlook before us the whole broad incline up to the very peak. For a mile or a mile and a half the sharp, blue edges of crevasses were apparent here and there, yawning widely for the length of a thousand feet, and at other places intersecting each other confusedly, resulting in piled-up masses of shattered ice.

We were charmed to enter this wild region, and hurried to the edge of an immense chasm. It could hardly have been less than a thousand or twelve hundred feet in length. The solid, white wall of the opposite side—sixty feet over—fell smooth and vertical for a hundred feet or more, where rough wedged blocks and bridges of clear blue ice stretched from wall to wall. From these and from numerous overhanging shelves hung the long, crystal threads of icicles, and beyond, dark and impenetrable, opened ice-caverns of unknown limit. We cautiously walked along this brink, examining with deep interest all the lines of stratification and veining, and the strangesuccession of views down into the fractured regions below.

I had the greatest desire to be let down with a line and make my way among these pillars and bridges of ice, but our little twenty feet of slender rope forbade the attempt. Farther up, the crevasses walled us about more and more. At last we got into a region where they cut into one another, breaking the whole glacier body into a confused pile of ice blocks. Here we had great difficulty in seeing our way for more than a very few feet, and were constantly obliged to climb to the top of some dangerous block to get an outlook, and before long, instead of a plain with here and there a crevasse, we were in a mass of crevasses separated only by thin and dangerous blades of ice.

We still pushed on, tied together with our short line, jumping over pits and chasms, holding our breath over slender snow-ridges, and beginning to think the work serious. We climbed an ice-crag together; all around rose strange, sharp forms; below, in every direction, yawned narrow cuts, caves trimmed with long stalactites of ice, walls ornamented with crystal pilasters, and dark-blue grottoes opening down into deeper and more gloomy chambers, as silent and cold as graves.

Far above, the summit rose white and symmetrical, its sky line sweeping down sharp against the blue. Below, over ice-wreck and frozen waves, opened the deep valley of our camp, leading our vision down to distant forest slopes.

We were in the middle of a vast, convex glacier surface which embraced the curve of Shasta for four miles around, and at least five on the slope line, ice stretching in every direction and actually bounding the view on all sides except where we looked down.

The idea of a mountain glacier formed from Swiss or Indian views is always of a stream of ice walled in by more or less lofty ridges. Here a great, curved cover of ice flows down the conical surface of a volcano without lateral walls, a few lava pinnacles and inconspicuous piles ofdébrisseparating it from the next glacier, but they were unseen from our point. Sharp, white profiles met the sky. It became evident we could go no farther in the old direction, and we at once set about retracing our steps, but in the labyrinth soon lost the barely discernible tracks and never refound them. Whichever way we turned, impassable gulfs opened before us, but just a little way to the right or left it seemed safe and traversable.

At last I got provoked at the ill-luck, and suggested to Clark that we might with advantage take a brief intermission for lunch, feeling that a lately quieted stomach is the best defence for nerves. So when we got into a pleasant, open spot, where the glacier became for a little way smooth and level, we sat down, leisurely enjoying our repast. We saw a possible way out of our difficulty, and sat some time chatting pleasantly. When there was no morelunch we started again, and only three steps away came upon a narrow crack edged by sharp ice-jaws. There was something noticeable in the hollow, bottomless darkness seen through it which arrested us, and when we had jumped across to the other side, both knelt and looked into its depths. We saw a large, domed grotto walled in with shattered ice and arched over by a roof of frozen snow so thin that the light came through quite easily. The middle of this dome overhung a terrible abyss. A block of ice thrown in fell from ledge to ledge, echoing back its stroke fainter and fainter. We had unconsciously sat for twenty minutes lunching and laughing on the thin roof, with only a few inches of frozen snow to hold us up over that still, deep grave; a noonday sun rapidly melting its surface, the warmth of our persons slowly thawing it, and both of us playfully drumming the frail crest with our tripod legs. We looked at one another, and agreed that we had lost confidence in glaciers.

Splendid rifts now opened to north of us, with slant sunshine lighting up one side in vivid contrast with the cold, shadowed wall. We greatly enjoyed a tall precipice with a gaping crevasse at its base, and found real pleasure in the north edge of the great ice-field, whither we now turned. A low moraine, with here and there a mass of rock which might be solid, flanked the glacier, but was separated from it by a deeply melted crevasse, opening irregular caverns along the wall down under thevery glacier body. We were some time searching a point where this gulf might be safely crossed. A thin tongue of ice, sharpened by melting to a mere blade, jutted from the solid glacier over to the moraine, offering us a passage of some danger and much interest. We edged our way along astride its crest, until a good spring carried us over a final crevasse and up upon the moraine, which we found to be dangerously built up of honeycombed ice and bowlders. The same perilous sinks and holes surrounded us, and alternated with hollow archways over subterranean streams. It was a relief, after an hour’s labor, to find ourselves on solid lava, although the ridge, which proved to be a chain of old craters, was one of the most dreary reaches I have ever seen.

In the evidence of glacier motion there had seemed a form of life, but here among silent, rigid crater rims and stark fields of volcanic sand we walked upon ground lifeless and lonely beyond description: a frozen desert at nine thousand feet altitude. Among the huge, rude forms of lava we tramped along, happy when the tracks of mountain sheep suggested former explorers, and pleased if a snow-bank under rock shadow gave birth to spring or pool. But the severe impression of arctic dreariness passed off when, reaching a rim, we looked over and down upon the volcano’s north foot, a superb sweep of forest country waved with ridgy flow of lava and gracefully curved moraines.

Afar off, the wide, sunny Shasta Valley, dotted with miniature volcanoes, and checked with the yellow and green of grain and garden, spread pleasantly away to the north, bounded by Clamath hills and horizoned by the blue rank of Siskiyou Mountains. To our left the cone slope stretched away to Sisson’s, the sharp form of the Black Cone rising in the gap between Shasta and Scott Mountain.

Here again the tremendous contrast between lava and ice about us and that lovely expanse of ranches and verdure impressed anew its peculiar force.

We tramped on along the glacier edge, over rough ridges and slopes of old moraine, rounding at last the ice terminus, and crossing the valley to camp, where our three mules welcomed us with friendly discord.

A day’s march over forest-covered moraines and through open glades brought us to the main camp at Sheep Rock, uniting us with our friends. The heavier air of this lower level soothed us into a pleasant laziness which lasted over Sunday, resting our strained muscles and opening the heart anew to human and sacred influence. If we are sometimes at pain when realizing within what narrow range of latitude mankind reaches finer development, how short a step it is from tropical absence of spiritual life to dull, boreal stupidity, it is added humiliation to experience our marked limitation in altitude. At fourteen thousand feet little is left me but bodily appetite and impression of sense. The habit of scientificobservation, which in time becomes one of the involuntary processes, goes on as do heart-beat and breathing; a certain general awe overshadows the mind; but on descending again to lowlands one after another the whole riches of the human organization come back with delicious freshness. Something of this must account for my delight in finding the family of Preuxtemps (a half-Cherokee mountaineer known hereabouts as Pro-tem) camped near us. Pro-tem was a barbarian by choice, and united all the wilder instincts with a domestic passion worthy his Caucasian ancestor, and quite charming in its childlike manifestation.

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