the john muir exhibit - writings - steep_trails - chapter 3
Chapter 3
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.
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 if 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 know. 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 you good behavior, and,
your wants being perceived with quick insight, complete hospitality
will be offered for body and mind to the extent of the larder.
These men know the mountains far and near, and their thousand voices,
like the leaves of a book. They can tell where the deer may be found
at any time of year or day, and what they are doing; and so of all the
other furred and feathered people they meet in their walks; and they
can send a thought to its mark as well as a bullet. The aims of such
people are not always the highest, yet how brave and manly and clean
are their lives compared with too many in crowded towns mildewed and
dwarfed in disease and crime! How fine a chance is here to begin life
anew in the free fountains and skylands of Shasta, where it is so easy
to live and to die! The future of the hunter is likely to be a good
one; no abrupt change about it, only a passing from wilderness to
wilderness, from one high place to another.
Now that the railroad has been built up the Sacramento, everybody with
money may go to Mount Shasta, the weak as well as the strong, fine-grained, succulent people, whose legs have never ripened, as well as
sinewy mountaineers seasoned long in the weather. This, surely, is
not the best way of going to the mountains, yet it is better than
staying below. Many still small voices will not be heard in the noisy
rush and din, suggestive of going to the sky in a chariot of fire or a
whirlwind, as one is shot to the Shasta mark in a booming palace-car
cartridge; up the rocky canyon, skimming the foaming river, above the
level reaches, above the dashing spray -- fine exhilarating translation,
yet a pity to go so fast in a blur, where so much might be seen and
enjoyed.
The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but
of men. Therefore we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going
to the mountains is going home. Yet how many are doomed to toil in
town shadows while the white mountains beckon all along the horizon!
Up the canyon to Shasta would be a cure for all care. But many on
arrival seem at a loss to know what to do with themselves, and seek
shelter in the hotel, as if that were the Shasta they had come for.
Others never leave the rail, content with the window views, and cling
to the comforts of the sleeping car like blind mice to their mothers.
Many are sick and have been dragged to the healing wilderness
unwillingly for body-good alone. Were the parts of the human machine
detachable like Yankee inventions, how strange would be the gatherings
on the mountains of pieces of people out of repair!
How sadly unlike the whole-hearted ongoing of the seeker after gold is
this partial, compulsory mountaineering! -- as if the mountain
treasuries contained nothing better than gold! Up the mountains they
go, high-heeled and high-hatted, laden like Christian with
mortifications and mortgages of divers sorts and degrees, some
suffering from the sting of bad bargains, others exulting in good
ones; hunters and fishermen with gun and rod and leggins; blythe and
jolly troubadours to whom all Shasta is romance; poets singing their
prayers; the weak and the strong, unable or unwilling to bear mental
taxation. But, whatever the motive, all will be in some measure
benefited. None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however
imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister will not preach a
perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and
the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly
displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer.
Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere
business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.
Possibly a branch railroad may some time be built to the summit of
Mount Shasta like the road on Mount Washington. In the mean time
tourists are dropped at Sisson's, about twelve miles from the summit,
whence as headquarters they radiate in every direction to the so-called "points of interest"; sauntering about the flowery fringes of
the Strawberry Meadows, bathing in the balm of the woods, scrambling,
fishing, hunting; riding about Castle Lake, the McCloud River, Soda
Springs, Big Spring, deer pastures, and elsewhere. Some demand bears,
and make excited inquiries concerning their haunts, how many there
might be altogether on the mountain, and whether they are grizzly,
brown, or black. Others shout, "Excelsior," and make off at once for
the upper snow fields. Most, however, are content with comparatively
level ground and moderate distances, gathering at the hotel every
evening laden with trophies -- great sheaves of flowers, cones of
various trees, cedar and fir branches covered with yellow lichens, and
possibly a fish or two, or quail, or grouse.
But the heads of deer, antelope, wild sheep, and bears are
conspicuously rare or altogether wanting in tourist collections in the
"paradise of hunters." There is a grand comparing of notes and
adventures. Most are exhilarated and happy, though complaints may
occasionally be heard -- "The mountain does not look so very high after
all, nor so very white; the snow is in patches like rags spread out to
dry," reminding one of Sydney Smith's joke against Jeffrey, "D -- n the
Solar System; bad light, planets too indistinct." But far the greater
number are in good spirits, showing the influence of holiday enjoyment
and mountain air. Fresh roses come to cheeks that long have been
pale, and sentiment often begins to blossom under the new inspiration.
The Shasta region may be reserved as a national park, with special
reference to the preservation of its fine forests and game. This
should by all means be done; but, as far as game is concerned, it is
in little danger from tourists, notwithstanding many of them carry
guns, and are in some sense hunters. Going in noisy groups, and with
guns so shining, they are oftentimes confronted by inquisitive Douglas
squirrels, and are thus give opportunities for shooting; but the
larger animals retire at their approach and seldom are seen. Other
gun people, too wise or too lifeless to make much noise, move slowly
along the trails and about the open spots of the woods, like benumbed
beetles in a snowdrift. Such hunters are themselves hunted by the
animals, which in perfect safety follow them out of curiosity.
During the bright days of midsummer the ascent of Shasta is only a
long, safe saunter, without fright or nerve strain, or even serious
fatigue, to those in sound health. Setting out from Sisson's on
horseback, accompanied by a guide leading a pack animal with
provision, blankets, and other necessaries, you follow a trail that
leads up to the edge of the timberline, where you camp for the night,
eight or ten miles from the hotel, at an elevation of about ten
thousand feet. The next day, rising early, you may push on to the
summit and return to Sisson's. But it is better to spend more time in
the enjoyment of the grand scenery on the summit and about the head of
the Whitney Glacier, pass the second night in camp, and return to
Sisson's on the third day. Passing around the margin of the meadows
and on through the zones of the forest, you will have good
opportunities to get ever-changing views of the mountain and its
wealth of creatures that bloom and breathe.
The woods differ but little from those that clothe the mountains to
the southward, the trees being slightly closer together and generally
not quite so large, marking the incipient change from the open sunny
forests of the Sierra to the dense damp forests of the northern coast,
where a squirrel may travel in the branches of the thick-set trees
hundreds of miles without touching the ground. Around the upper belt
of the forest you may see gaps where the ground has been cleared by
avalanches of snow, thousands of tons in weight, which, descending
with grand rush and roar, brush the trees from their paths like so
many fragile shrubs or grasses.
At first the ascent is very gradual. The mountain begins to leave the
plain in slopes scarcely perceptible, measuring from two to three
degrees. These are continued by easy gradations mile after mile all
the way to the truncated, crumbling summit, where they attain a
steepness of twenty to twenty-five degrees. The grand simplicity of
these lines is partially interrupted on the north subordinate cone
that rises from the side of the main cone about three thousand feet
from the summit. This side cone, past which your way to the summit
lies, was active after the breaking-up of the main ice-cap of the
glacial period, as shown by the comparatively unwasted crater in which
it terminates and by streams of fresh-looking, unglaciated lava that
radiate from it as a center.
The main summit is about a mile and a half in diameter from southwest
to northeast, and is nearly covered with snow and neve, bounded by
crumbling peaks and ridges, among which we look in vain for any sure
plan of an ancient crater. The extreme summit is situated on the
southern end of a narrow ridge that bounds the general summit on the
east. Viewed from the north, it appears as an irregular blunt point
about ten feet high, and is fast disappearing before the stormy
atmospheric action to which it is subjected.
At the base of the eastern ridge, just below the extreme summit, hot
sulphurous gases and vapor escape with a hissing, bubbling noise from
a fissure in the lava. Some of the many small vents cast up a spray
of clear hot water, which falls back repeatedly until wasted in vapor.
The steam and spray seem to be produced simply by melting snow coming
in the way of the escaping gases, while the gases are evidently
derived from the heated interior of the mountain, and may be regarded
as the last feeble expression of the mighty power that lifted the
entire mass of the mountain from the volcanic depths far below the
surface of the plain.
The view from the summit in clear weather extends to an immense
distance in every direction. Southeastward, the low volcanic portion
of the Sierra is seen like a map, both flanks as well as the crater-dotted axis, as far as Lassen's Butte
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, 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.
[Back to chapter 2]
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