<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<h1> STEEP TRAILS </h1>
<h2> California-Utah-Nevada-Washington<br/> Oregon-The Grand Canyon </h2>
<p><br/></p>
<h2> by John Muir </h2>
<p><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"></SPAN></p>
<h3> EDITOR'S NOTE </h3>
<p>The papers brought together in this volume have, in a general way, been
arranged in chronological sequence. They span a period of twenty-nine
years of Muir's life, during which they appeared as letters and articles,
for the most part in publications of limited and local circulation. The
Utah and Nevada sketches, and the two San Gabriel papers, were
contributed, in the form of letters, to the San Francisco Evening Bulletin
toward the end of the seventies. Written in the field, they preserve the
freshness of the author's first impressions of those regions. Much of the
material in the chapters on Mount Shasta first took similar shape in 1874.
Subsequently it was rewritten and much expanded for inclusion in
Picturesque California, and the Region West of the Rocky Mountains, which
Muir began to edit in 1888. In the same work appeared the description of
Washington and Oregon. The charming little essay "Wild Wool" was written
for the Overland Monthly in 1875. "A Geologist's Winter Walk" is an
extract from a letter to a friend, who, appreciating its fine literary
quality, took the responsibility of sending it to the Overland Monthly
without the author's knowledge. The concluding chapter on "The Grand
Canyon of the Colorado" was published in the Century Magazine in 1902, and
exhibits Muir's powers of description at their maturity.</p>
<p>Some of these papers were revised by the author during the later years of
his life, and these revisions are a part of the form in which they now
appear. The chapters on Mount Shasta, Oregon, and Washington will be found
to contain occasional sentences and a few paragraphs that were included,
more or less verbatim, in The Mountains of California and Our National
Parks. Being an important part of their present context, these paragraphs
could not be omitted without impairing the unity of the author's
descriptions.</p>
<p>The editor feels confident that this volume will meet, in every way, the
high expectations of Muir's readers. The recital of his experiences during
a stormy night on the summit of Mount Shasta will take rank among the most
thrilling of his records of adventure. His observations on the dead towns
of Nevada, and on the Indians gathering their harvest of pine nuts, recall
a phase of Western life that has left few traces in American literature.
Many, too, will read with pensive interest the author's glowing
description of what was one time called the New Northwest. Almost
inconceivably great have been the changes wrought in that region during
the past generation. Henceforth the landscapes that Muir saw there will
live in good part only in his writings, for fire, axe, plough, and
gunpowder have made away with the supposedly boundless forest wildernesses
and their teeming life.</p>
<p>William Frederic Bade</p>
<p>Berkeley, California</p>
<p>May, 1918</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"></SPAN></p>
<h2> STEEP TRAILS </h2>
<p><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><br/></p>
<blockquote>
<p><big><b>CONTENTS</b></big></p>
<p><br/></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0001"> EDITOR'S NOTE </SPAN></p>
<p><br/></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0002"> <big><b>STEEP TRAILS</b></big> </SPAN></p>
<p><br/></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0003"> I. WILD WOOL </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0004"> II. A Geologist's Winter Walk </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0005"> III. Summer Days at Mount Shasta </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0006"> IV. A Perilous Night on Shasta's Summit </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0007"> V. Shasta Rambles and Modoc Memories </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0008"> VI. The City of the Saints </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0009"> VII. A Great Storm in Utah </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0010"> VIII. Bathing in Salt Lake </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0011"> IX. Mormon Lilies </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0012"> X. The San Gabriel Valley </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0013"> XI. The San Gabriel Mountains </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0014"> XII. Nevada Farms </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0015"> XIII. Nevada Forests </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0016"> XIV. Nevada's Timber Belt </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0017"> XV. Glacial Phenomena in Nevada </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVI. Nevada's Dead Towns </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0019"> XVII. Puget Sound </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0020"> XVIII. The Forests of Washington </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0021"> XIX. People and Towns of Puget Sound </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0022"> XX. An Ascent of Mount Rainier </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0023"> XXI. The Physical and Climatic Characteristics
of Oregon </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0024"> XXII. The Forests of Oregon and their
Inhabitants </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0025"> XXIII. The Rivers of Oregon </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_4_0026"> XXIV. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado </SPAN></p>
<p><SPAN href="#link2H_FOOT"> Footnotes: </SPAN></p>
</blockquote>
<p><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"></SPAN></p>
<h2> I. WILD WOOL </h2>
<p>Moral improvers have calls to preach. I have a friend who has a call to
plough, and woe to the daisy sod or azalea thicket that falls under the
savage redemption of his keen steel shares. Not content with the so-called
subjugation of every terrestrial bog, rock, and moorland, he would fain
discover some method of reclamation applicable to the ocean and the sky,
that in due calendar time they might be brought to bud and blossom as the
rose. Our efforts are of no avail when we seek to turn his attention to
wild roses, or to the fact that both ocean and sky are already about as
rosy as possible—the one with stars, the other with dulse, and foam,
and wild light. The practical developments of his culture are orchards and
clover-fields wearing a smiling, benevolent aspect, truly excellent in
their way, though a near view discloses something barbarous in them all.
Wildness charms not my friend, charm it never so wisely: and whatsoever
may be the character of his heaven, his earth seems only a chaos of
agricultural possibilities calling for grubbing-hoes and manures.</p>
<p>Sometimes I venture to approach him with a plea for wildness, when he
good-naturedly shakes a big mellow apple in my face, reiterating his
favorite aphorism, "Culture is an orchard apple; Nature is a crab." Not
all culture, however, is equally destructive and inappreciative. Azure
skies and crystal waters find loving recognition, and few there be who
would welcome the axe among mountain pines, or would care to apply any
correction to the tones and costumes of mountain waterfalls. Nevertheless,
the barbarous notion is almost universally entertained by civilized man,
that there is in all the manufactures of Nature something essentially
coarse which can and must be eradicated by human culture. I was,
therefore, delighted in finding that the wild wool growing upon mountain
sheep in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta was much finer than the average
grades of cultivated wool. This FINE discovery was made some three months
ago <SPAN href="#linknote-1" name="linknoteref-1" id="linknoteref-1"><small>1</small></SPAN>,
while hunting among the Shasta sheep between Shasta and Lower Klamath
Lake. Three fleeces were obtained—one that belonged to a large ram
about four years old, another to a ewe about the same age, and another to
a yearling lamb. After parting their beautiful wool on the side and many
places along the back, shoulders, and hips, and examining it closely with
my lens, I shouted: "Well done for wildness! Wild wool is finer than
tame!"</p>
<p>My companions stooped down and examined the fleeces for themselves,
pulling out tufts and ringlets, spinning them between their fingers, and
measuring the length of the staple, each in turn paying tribute to
wildness. It WAS finer, and no mistake; finer than Spanish Merino. Wild
wool IS finer than tame.</p>
<p>"Here," said I, "is an argument for fine wildness that needs no
explanation. Not that such arguments are by any means rare, for all
wildness is finer than tameness, but because fine wool is appreciable by
everybody alike—from the most speculative president of national
wool-growers' associations all the way down to the gude-wife spinning by
her ingleside."</p>
<p>Nature is a good mother, and sees well to the clothing of her many bairns—birds
with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining jackets, and bears
with shaggy furs. In the tropical south, where the sun warms like a fire,
they are allowed to go thinly clad; but in the snowy northland she takes
care to clothe warmly. The squirrel has socks and mittens, and a tail
broad enough for a blanket; the grouse is densely feathered down to the
ends of his toes; and the wild sheep, besides his undergarment of fine
wool, has a thick overcoat of hair that sheds off both the snow and the
rain. Other provisions and adaptations in the dresses of animals, relating
less to climate than to the more mechanical circumstances of life, are
made with the same consummate skill that characterizes all the love work
of Nature. Land, water, and air, jagged rocks, muddy ground, sand beds,
forests, underbrush, grassy plains, etc., are considered in all their
possible combinations while the clothing of her beautiful wildlings is
preparing. No matter what the circumstances of their lives may be, she
never allows them to go dirty or ragged. The mole, living always in the
dark and in the dirt, is yet as clean as the otter or the wave-washed
seal; and our wild sheep, wading in snow, roaming through bushes, and
leaping among jagged storm-beaten cliffs, wears a dress so exquisitely
adapted to its mountain life that it is always found as unruffled and
stainless as a bird.</p>
<p>On leaving the Shasta hunting grounds I selected a few specimen tufts, and
brought them away with a view to making more leisurely examinations; but,
owing to the imperfectness of the instruments at my command, the results
thus far obtained must be regarded only as rough approximations.</p>
<p>As already stated, the clothing of our wild sheep is composed of fine wool
and coarse hair. The hairs are from about two to four inches long, mostly
of a dull bluish-gray color, though varying somewhat with the seasons. In
general characteristics they are closely related to the hairs of the deer
and antelope, being light, spongy, and elastic, with a highly polished
surface, and though somewhat ridged and spiraled, like wool, they do not
manifest the slightest tendency to felt or become taggy. A hair two and a
half inches long, which is perhaps near the average length, will stretch
about one fourth of an inch before breaking. The diameter decreases
rapidly both at the top and bottom, but is maintained throughout the
greater portion of the length with a fair degree of regularity. The
slender tapering point in which the hairs terminate is nearly black: but,
owing to its fineness as compared with the main trunk, the quantity of
blackness is not sufficient to affect greatly the general color. The
number of hairs growing upon a square inch is about ten thousand; the
number of wool fibers is about twenty-five thousand, or two and a half
times that of the hairs. The wool fibers are white and glossy, and
beautifully spired into ringlets. The average length of the staple is
about an inch and a half. A fiber of this length, when growing undisturbed
down among the hairs, measures about an inch; hence the degree of
curliness may easily be inferred. I regret exceedingly that my instruments
do not enable me to measure the diameter of the fibers, in order that
their degrees of fineness might be definitely compared with each other and
with the finest of the domestic breeds; but that the three wild fleeces
under consideration are considerably finer than the average grades of
Merino shipped from San Francisco is, I think, unquestionable.</p>
<p>When the fleece is parted and looked into with a good lens, the skin
appears of a beautiful pale-yellow color, and the delicate wool fibers are
seen growing up among the strong hairs, like grass among stalks of corn,
every individual fiber being protected about as specially and effectively
as if inclosed in a separate husk. Wild wool is too fine to stand by
itself, the fibers being about as frail and invisible as the floating
threads of spiders, while the hairs against which they lean stand erect
like hazel wands; but, notwithstanding their great dissimilarity in size
and appearance, the wool and hair are forms of the same thing, modified in
just that way and to just that degree that renders them most perfectly
subservient to the well-being of the sheep. Furthermore, it will be
observed that these wild modifications are entirely distinct from those
which are brought chancingly into existence through the accidents and
caprices of culture; the former being inventions of God for the attainment
of definite ends. Like the modifications of limbs—the fin for
swimming, the wing for flying, the foot for walking—so the fine wool
for warmth, the hair for additional warmth and to protect the wool, and
both together for a fabric to wear well in mountain roughness and wash
well in mountain storms.</p>
<p>The effects of human culture upon wild wool are analogous to those
produced upon wild roses. In the one case there is an abnormal development
of petals at the expense of the stamens, in the other an abnormal
development of wool at the expense of the hair. Garden roses frequently
exhibit stamens in which the transmutation to petals may be observed in
various stages of accomplishment, and analogously the fleeces of tame
sheep occasionally contain a few wild hairs that are undergoing
transmutation to wool. Even wild wool presents here and there a fiber that
appears to be in a state of change. In the course of my examinations of
the wild fleeces mentioned above, three fibers were found that were wool
at one end and hair at the other. This, however, does not necessarily
imply imperfection, or any process of change similar to that caused by
human culture. Water lilies contain parts variously developed into stamens
at one end, petals at the other, as the constant and normal condition.
These half wool, half hair fibers may therefore subserve some fixed
requirement essential to the perfection of the whole, or they may simply
be the fine boundary-lines where and exact balance between the wool and
the hair is attained.</p>
<p>I have been offering samples of mountain wool to my friends, demanding in
return that the fineness of wildness be fairly recognized and confessed,
but the returns are deplorably tame. The first question asked, is, "Now
truly, wild sheep, wild sheep, have you any wool?" while they peer
curiously down among the hairs through lenses and spectacles. "Yes, wild
sheep, you HAVE wool; but Mary's lamb had more. In the name of use, how
many wild sheep, think you, would be required to furnish wool sufficient
for a pair of socks?" I endeavor to point out the irrelevancy of the
latter question, arguing that wild wool was not made for man but for
sheep, and that, however deficient as clothing for other animals, it is
just the thing for the brave mountain-dweller that wears it. Plain,
however, as all this appears, the quantity question rises again and again
in all its commonplace tameness. For in my experience it seems well-nigh
impossible to obtain a hearing on behalf of Nature from any other
standpoint than that of human use. Domestic flocks yield more flannel per
sheep than the wild, therefore it is claimed that culture has improved
upon wildness; and so it has as far as flannel is concerned, but all to
the contrary as far as a sheep's dress is concerned. If every wild sheep
inhabiting the Sierra were to put on tame wool, probably only a few would
survive the dangers of a single season. With their fine limbs muffled and
buried beneath a tangle of hairless wool, they would become short-winded,
and fall an easy prey to the strong mountain wolves. In descending
precipices they would be thrown out of balance and killed, by their taggy
wool catching upon sharp points of rocks. Disease would also be brought on
by the dirt which always finds a lodgment in tame wool, and by the
draggled and water-soaked condition into which it falls during stormy
weather.</p>
<p>No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable
an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which
culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the world as made
especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant, and crystal
controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to
century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness
the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.</p>
<p>I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show
that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made for
itself. Not that Nature manifests any such thing as selfish isolation. In
the making of every animal the presence of every other animal has been
recognized. Indeed, every atom in creation may be said to be acquainted
with and married to every other, but with universal union there is a
division sufficient in degree for the purposes of the most intense
individuality; no matter, therefore, what may be the note which any
creature forms in the song of existence, it is made first for itself, then
more and more remotely for all the world and worlds.</p>
<p>Were it not for the exercise of individualizing cares on the part of
Nature, the universe would be felted together like a fleece of tame wool.
But we are governed more than we know, and most when we are wildest.
Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled along appointed
ways, WITH one another, and THROUGH THE MIDST of one another—killing
and being killed, eating and being eaten, in harmonious proportions and
quantities. And it is right that we should thus reciprocally make use of
one another, rob, cook, and consume, to the utmost of our healthy
abilities and desires. Stars attract one another as they are able, and
harmony results. Wild lambs eat as many wild flowers as they can find or
desire, and men and wolves eat the lambs to just the same extent.</p>
<p>This consumption of one another in its various modifications is a kind of
culture varying with the degree of directness with which it is carried
out, but we should be careful not to ascribe to such culture any improving
qualities upon those on whom it is brought to bear. The water-ousel plucks
moss from the riverbank to build its nest, but is does not improve the
moss by plucking it. We pluck feathers from birds, and less directly wool
from wild sheep, for the manufacture of clothing and cradle-nests, without
improving the wool for the sheep, or the feathers for the bird that wore
them. When a hawk pounces upon a linnet and proceeds to pull out its
feathers, preparatory to making a meal, the hawk may be said to be
cultivating the linnet, and he certainly does effect an improvement as far
as hawk-food is concerned; but what of the songster? He ceases to be a
linnet as soon as he is snatched from the woodland choir; and when,
hawklike, we snatch the wild sheep from its native rock, and, instead of
eating and wearing it at once, carry it home, and breed the hair out of
its wool and the bones out of its body, it ceases to be a sheep.</p>
<p>These breeding and plucking processes are similarly improving as regards
the secondary uses aimed at; and, although the one requires but a few
minutes for its accomplishment, the other many years or centuries, they
are essentially alike. We eat wild oysters alive with great directness,
waiting for no cultivation, and leaving scarce a second of distance
between the shell and the lip; but we take wild sheep home and subject
them to the many extended processes of husbandry, and finish by boiling
them in a pot—a process which completes all sheep improvements as
far as man is concerned. It will be seen, therefore, that wild wool and
tame wool—wild sheep and tame sheep—are terms not properly
comparable, nor are they in any correct sense to be considered as bearing
any antagonism toward each other; they are different things. Planned and
accomplished for wholly different purposes.</p>
<p>Illustrative examples bearing upon this interesting subject may be
multiplied indefinitely, for they abound everywhere in the plant and
animal kingdoms wherever culture has reached. Recurring for a moment to
apples. The beauty and completeness of a wild apple tree living its own
life in the woods is heartily acknowledged by all those who have been so
happy as to form its acquaintance. The fine wild piquancy of its fruit is
unrivaled, but in the great question of quantity as human food wild apples
are found wanting. Man, therefore, takes the tree from the woods, manures
and prunes and grafts, plans and guesses, adds a little of this and that,
selects and rejects, until apples of every conceivable size and softness
are produced, like nut galls in response to the irritating punctures of
insects. Orchard apples are to me the most eloquent words that culture has
ever spoken, but they reflect no imperfection upon Nature's spicy crab.
Every cultivated apple is a crab, not improved, BUT COOKED, variously
softened and swelled out in the process, mellowed, sweetened, spiced, and
rendered pulpy and foodful, but as utterly unfit for the uses of nature as
a meadowlark killed and plucked and roasted. Give to Nature every cultured
apple—codling, pippin, russet—and every sheep so laboriously
compounded—muffled Southdowns, hairy Cotswolds, wrinkled Merinos—and
she would throw the one to her caterpillars, the other to her wolves.</p>
<p>It is now some thirty-six hundred years since Jacob kissed his mother and
set out across the plains of Padan-aram to begin his experiments upon the
flocks of his uncle, Laban; and, notwithstanding the high degree of
excellence he attained as a wool-grower, and the innumerable painstaking
efforts subsequently made by individuals and associations in all kinds of
pastures and climates, we still seem to be as far from definite and
satisfactory results as we ever were. In one breed the wool is apt to
wither and crinkle like hay on a sun-beaten hillside. In another, it is
lodged and matted together like the lush tangled grass of a manured
meadow. In one the staple is deficient in length, in another in fineness;
while in all there is a constant tendency toward disease, rendering
various washings and dippings indispensable to prevent its falling out.
The problem of the quality and quantity of the carcass seems to be as
doubtful and as far removed from a satisfactory solution as that of the
wool. Desirable breeds blundered upon by long series of groping
experiments are often found to be unstable and subject to disease—bots,
foot rot, blind staggers, etc.—causing infinite trouble, both among
breeders and manufacturers. Would it not be well, therefore, for some one
to go back as far as possible and take a fresh start?</p>
<p>The source or sources whence the various breeds were derived is not
positively known, but there can be hardly any doubt of their being
descendants of the four or five wild species so generally distributed
throughout the mountainous portions of the globe, the marked differences
between the wild and domestic species being readily accounted for by the
known variability of the animal, and by the long series of painstaking
selection to which all its characteristics have been subjected. No other
animal seems to yield so submissively to the manipulations of culture.
Jacob controlled the color of his flocks merely by causing them to stare
at objects of the desired hue; and possibly Merinos may have caught their
wrinkles from the perplexed brows of their breeders. The California
species (Ovis montana) <SPAN href="#linknote-2" name="linknoteref-2" id="linknoteref-2"><small>2</small></SPAN> is a noble animal, weighing when
full-grown some three hundred and fifty pounds, and is well worthy the
attention of wool-growers as a point from which to make a new departure,
for pure wildness is the one great want, both of men and of sheep.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"></SPAN></p>
<h2> II. A Geologist's Winter Walk <SPAN href="#linknote-3" name="linknoteref-3" id="linknoteref-3"><small>3</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>After reaching Turlock, I sped afoot over the stubble fields and through
miles of brown hemizonia and purple erigeron, to Hopeton, conscious of
little more than that the town was behind and beneath me, and the
mountains above and before me; on through the oaks and chaparral of the
foothills to Coulterville; and then ascended the first great mountain step
upon which grows the sugar pine. Here I slackened pace, for I drank the
spicy, resiny wind, and beneath the arms of this noble tree I felt that I
was safely home. Never did pine trees seem so dear. How sweet was their
breath and their song, and how grandly they winnowed the sky! I tingled my
fingers among their tassels, and rustled my feet among their brown needles
and burrs, and was exhilarated and joyful beyond all I can write.</p>
<p>When I reached Yosemite, all the rocks seemed talkative, and more telling
and lovable than ever. They are dear friends, and seemed to have warm
blood gushing through their granite flesh; and I love them with a love
intensified by long and close companionship. After I had bathed in the
bright river, sauntered over the meadows, conversed with the domes, and
played with the pines, I still felt blurred and weary, as if tainted in
some way with the sky of your streets. I determined, therefore, to run out
for a while to say my prayers in the higher mountain temples. "The days
are sunful," I said, "and, though now winter, no great danger need be
encountered, and no sudden storm will block my return, if I am watchful."</p>
<p>The morning after this decision, I started up the canyon of Tenaya, caring
little about the quantity of bread I carried; for, I thought, a fast and a
storm and a difficult canyon were just the medicine I needed. When I
passed Mirror Lake, I scarcely noticed it, for I was absorbed in the great
Tissiack—her crown a mile away in the hushed azure; her purple
granite drapery flowing in soft and graceful folds down to my feet,
embroidered gloriously around with deep, shadowy forest. I have gazed on
Tissiack a thousand times—in days of solemn storms, and when her
form shone divine with the jewelry of winter, or was veiled in living
clouds; and I have heard her voice of winds, and snowy, tuneful waters
when floods were falling; yet never did her soul reveal itself more
impressively than now. I hung about her skirts, lingering timidly, until
the higher mountains and glaciers compelled me to push up the canyon.</p>
<p>This canyon is accessible only to mountaineers, and I was anxious to carry
my barometer and clinometer through it, to obtain sections and altitudes,
so I chose it as the most attractive highway. After I had passed the tall
groves that stretch a mile above Mirror Lake, and scrambled around the
Tenaya Fall, which is just at the head of the lake groves, I crept through
the dense and spiny chaparral that plushes the roots of the mountains here
for miles in warm green, and was ascending a precipitous rock front,
smoothed by glacial action, when I suddenly fell—for the first time
since I touched foot to Sierra rocks. After several somersaults, I became
insensible from the shock, and when consciousness returned I found myself
wedged among short, stiff bushes, trembling as if cold, not injured in the
slightest.</p>
<p>Judging by the sun, I could not have been insensible very long; probably
not a minute, possibly an hour; and I could not remember what made me
fall, or where I had fallen from; but I saw that if I had rolled a little
further, my mountain climbing would have been finished, for just beyond
the bushes the canyon wall steepened and I might have fallen to the
bottom. "There," said I, addressing my feet, to whose separate skill I had
learned to trust night and day on any mountain, "that is what you get by
intercourse with stupid town stairs, and dead pavements." I felt degraded
and worthless. I had not yet reached the most difficult portion of the
canyon, but I determined to guide my humbled body over the most
nerve-trying places I could find; for I was now awake, and felt confident
that the last of the town fog had been shaken from both head and feet.</p>
<p>I camped at the mouth of a narrow gorge which is cut into the bottom of
the main canyon, determined to take earnest exercise next day. No plushy
boughs did my ill-behaved bones enjoy that night, nor did my bumped head
get a spicy cedar plume pillow mixed with flowers. I slept on a naked
boulder, and when I awoke all my nervous trembling was gone.</p>
<p>The gorged portion of the canyon, in which I spent all the next day, is
about a mile and a half in length; and I passed the time in tracing the
action of the forces that determined this peculiar bottom gorge, which is
an abrupt, ragged-walled, narrow-throated canyon, formed in the bottom of
the wide-mouthed, smooth, and beveled main canyon. I will not stop now to
tell you more; some day you may see it, like a shadowy line, from Cloud's
Rest. In high water, the stream occupies all the bottom of the gorge,
surging and chafing in glorious power from wall to wall. But the sound of
the grinding was low as I entered the gorge, scarcely hoping to be able to
pass through its entire length. By cool efforts, along glassy, ice-worn
slopes, I reached the upper end in a little over a day, but was compelled
to pass the second night in the gorge, and in the moonlight I wrote you
this short pencil-letter in my notebook:—</p>
<p>The moon is looking down into the canyon, and how marvelously the<br/>
great rocks kindle to her light! Every dome, and brow, and<br/>
swelling boss touched by her white rays, glows as if lighted with<br/>
snow. I am now only a mile from last night's camp; and have been<br/>
climbing and sketching all day in this difficult but instructive<br/>
gorge. It is formed in the bottom of the main canyon, among the<br/>
roots of Cloud's Rest. It begins at the filled-up lake basin where<br/>
I camped last night, and ends a few hundred yards above, in another<br/>
basin of the same kind. The walls everywhere are craggy and<br/>
vertical, and in some places they overlean. It is only from twenty<br/>
to sixty feet wide, and not, though black and broken enough, the<br/>
thin, crooked mouth of some mysterious abyss; but it was eroded,<br/>
for in many places I saw its solid, seamless floor.<br/>
<br/>
I am sitting on a big stone, against which the stream divides, and<br/>
goes brawling by in rapids on both sides; half of my rock is white<br/>
in the light, half in shadow. As I look from the opening jaws of<br/>
this shadowy gorge, South Dome is immediately in front—high in the<br/>
stars, her face turned from the moon, with the rest of her body<br/>
gloriously muffled in waved folds of granite. On the left,<br/>
sculptured from the main Cloud's Rest ridge, are three magnificent<br/>
rocks, sisters of the great South Dome. On the right is the<br/>
massive, moonlit front of Mount Watkins, and between, low down in<br/>
the furthest distance, is Sentinel Dome, girdled and darkened with<br/>
forest. In the near foreground Tenaya Creek is singing against<br/>
boulders that are white with snow and moonbeams. Now look back<br/>
twenty yards, and you will see a waterfall fair as a spirit; the<br/>
moonlight just touches it, bringing it into relief against a dark<br/>
background of shadow. A little to the left, and a dozen steps this<br/>
side of the fall, a flickering light marks my camp—and a precious<br/>
camp it is. A huge, glacier-polished slab, falling from the<br/>
smooth, glossy flank of Cloud's Rest, happened to settle on edge<br/>
against the wall of the gorge. I did not know that this slab was<br/>
glacier-polished until I lighted my fire. Judge of my delight. I<br/>
think it was sent here by an earthquake. It is about twelve feet<br/>
square. I wish I could take it home <SPAN href="#linknote-4"<br/>
name="linknoteref-4" id="linknoteref-4">4</SPAN> for a hearthstone.<br/>
Beneath this slab is the only place in this torrent-swept gorge<br/>
where I could find sand sufficient for a bed.<br/>
<br/>
I expected to sleep on the boulders, for I spent most of the<br/>
afternoon on the slippery wall of the canyon, endeavoring to get<br/>
around this difficult part of the gorge, and was compelled to<br/>
hasten down here for water before dark. I shall sleep soundly on<br/>
this sand; half of it is mica. Here, wonderful to behold, are a<br/>
few green stems of prickly rubus, and a tiny grass. They are here<br/>
to meet us. Ay, even here in this darksome gorge, "frightened and<br/>
tormented" with raging torrents and choking avalanches of snow.<br/>
Can it be? As if rubus and the grass leaf were not enough of God's<br/>
tender prattle words of love, which we so much need in these mighty<br/>
temples of power, yonder in the "benmost bore" are two blessed<br/>
adiantums. Listen to them! How wholly infused with God is this<br/>
one big word of love that we call the world! Good-night. Do you<br/>
see the fire-glow on my ice-smoothed slab, and on my two ferns and<br/>
the rubus and grass panicles? And do you hear how sweet a sleep-<br/>
song the fall and cascades are singing?<br/></p>
<p>The water-ground chips and knots that I found fastened between the rocks
kept my fire alive all through the night. Next morning I rose nerved and
ready for another day of sketching and noting, and any form of climbing. I
escaped from the gorge about noon, after accomplishing some of the most
delicate feats of mountaineering I ever attempted; and here the canyon is
all broadly open again—the floor luxuriantly forested with pine, and
spruce, and silver fir, and brown-trunked libocedrus. The walls rise in
Yosemite forms, and Tenaya Creek comes down seven hundred feet in a white
brush of foam. This is a little Yosemite valley. It is about two thousand
feet above the level of the main Yosemite, and about twenty-four hundred
below Lake Tenaya.</p>
<p>I found the lake frozen, and the ice was so clear and unruffled that the
surrounding mountains and the groves that look down upon it were reflected
almost as perfectly as I ever beheld them in the calm evening mirrors of
summer. At a little distance, it was difficult to believe the lake frozen
at all; and when I walked out on it, cautiously stamping at short
intervals to test the strength of the ice, I seemed to walk mysteriously,
without adequate faith, on the surface of the water. The ice was so
transparent that I could see through it the beautifully wave-rippled,
sandy bottom, and the scales of mica glinting back the down-pouring light.
When I knelt down with my face close to the ice, through which the
sunbeams were pouring, I was delighted to discover myriads of Tyndall's
six-rayed water flowers, magnificently colored.</p>
<p>A grand old mountain mansion is this Tenaya region! In the glacier period
it was a mer de glace, far grander than the mer de glace of Switzerland,
which is only about half a mile broad. The Tenaya mer de glace was not
less than two miles broad, late in the glacier epoch, when all the
principal dividing crests were bare; and its depth was not less than
fifteen hundred feet. Ice streams from Mounts Lyell and Dana, and all the
mountains between, and from the nearer Cathedral Peak, flowed hither,
welded into one, and worked together. After eroding this Tanaya Lake
basin, and all the splendidly sculptured rocks and mountains that surround
and adorn it, and the great Tenaya Canyon, with its wealth of all that
makes mountains sublime, they were welded with the vast South, Lyell, and
Illilouette glaciers on one side, and with those of Hoffman on the other—thus
forming a portion of a yet grander mer de glace in Yosemite Valley.</p>
<p>I reached the Tenaya Canyon, on my way home, by coming in from the
northeast, rambling down over the shoulders of Mount Watkins, touching
bottom a mile above Mirror Lake. From thence home was but a saunter in the
moonlight.</p>
<p>After resting one day, and the weather continuing calm, I ran up over the
left shoulder of South Dome and down in front of its grand split face to
make some measurements, completed my work, climbed to the right shoulder,
struck off along the ridge for Cloud's Rest, and reached the topmost heave
of her sunny wave in ample time to see the sunset.</p>
<p>Cloud's Rest is a thousand feet higher than Tissiack. It is a wavelike
crest upon a ridge, which begins at Yosemite with Tissiack, and runs
continuously eastward to the thicket of peaks and crests around Lake
Tenaya. This lofty granite wall is bent this way and that by the restless
and weariless action of glaciers just as if it had been made of dough. But
the grand circumference of mountains and forests are coming from far and
near, densing into one close assemblage; for the sun, their god and
father, with love ineffable, is glowing a sunset farewell. Not one of all
the assembled rocks or trees seemed remote. How impressively their faces
shone with responsive love!</p>
<p>I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me
strong. Down through the junipers; down through the firs; now in jet
shadows, now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare, clanking rocks;
past the huge ghost of South Dome rising weird through the firs; past the
glorious fall of Nevada, the groves of Illilouette; through the pines of
the valley; beneath the bright crystal sky blazing with stars. All of this
mountain wealth in one day!—one of the rich ripe days that enlarge
one's life; so much of the sun upon one side of it, so much of the moon
and stars on the other.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"></SPAN></p>
<h2> III. Summer Days at Mount Shasta </h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <SPAN href="#linknote-5" name="linknoteref-5" id="linknoteref-5"><small>5</small></SPAN>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>There are at least five classes of human inhabitants about the Shasta
region: the Indians, now scattered, few in numbers and miserably
demoralized, though still offering some rare specimens of savage manhood;
miners and prospectors, found mostly to the north and west of the
mountain, since the region about its base is overflowed with lava;
cattle-raisers, mostly on the open plains to the northeastward and around
the Klamath Lakes; hunters and trappers, where the woods and waters are
wildest; and farmers, in Shasta Valley on the north side of the mountain,
wheat, apples, melons, berries, all the best production of farm and garden
growing and ripening there at the foot of the great white cone, which
seems at times during changing storms ready to fall upon them—the
most sublime farm scenery imaginable.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>Interest in hunting is almost universal, so deeply is it rooted as an
inherited instinct ever ready to rise and make itself known. Fine scenery
may not stir a fiber of mind or body, but how quick and how true is the
excitement of the pursuit of game! Then up flames the slumbering volcano
of ancient wildness, all that has been done by church and school through
centuries of cultivation is for the moment destroyed, and the decent
gentleman or devout saint becomes a howling, bloodthirsty, demented
savage. It is not long since we all were cavemen and followed game for
food as truly as wildcat or wolf, and the long repression of civilization
seems to make the rebound to savage love of blood all the more violent.
This frenzy, fortunately, does not last long in its most exaggerated form,
and after a season of wildness refined gentlemen from cities are not more
cruel than hunters and trappers who kill for a living.</p>
<p>Dwelling apart in the depths of the woods are the various kinds of
mountaineers,—hunters, prospectors, and the like,—rare men,
"queer characters," and well worth knowing. Their cabins are located with
reference to game and the ledges to be examined, and are constructed
almost as simply as those of the wood rats made of sticks laid across each
other without compass or square. But they afford good shelter from storms,
and so are "square" with the need of their builders. These men as a class
are singularly fine in manners, though their faces may be scarred and
rough like the bark of trees. On entering their cabins you will promptly
be placed on your good behavior, and, your wants being perceived with
quick insight, complete hospitality will be offered for body and mind to
the extent of the larder.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The Shasta region may be reserved as a national park, with special
reference to the preservation of its fine forests and game. This should by
all means be done; but, as far as game is concerned, it is in little
danger from tourists, notwithstanding many of them carry guns, and are in
some sense hunters. Going in noisy groups, and with guns so shining, they
are oftentimes confronted by inquisitive Douglas squirrels, and are thus
given opportunities for shooting; but the larger animals retire at their
approach and seldom are seen. Other gun people, too wise or too lifeless
to make much noise, move slowly along the trails and about the open spots
of the woods, like benumbed beetles in a snowdrift. Such hunters are
themselves hunted by the animals, which in perfect safety follow them out
of curiosity.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <SPAN href="#linknote-6" name="linknoteref-6" id="linknoteref-6"><small>6</small></SPAN>, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"></SPAN></p>
<h2> IV. A Perilous Night on Shasta's Summit </h2>
<p>Toward the end of summer, after a light, open winter, one may reach the
summit of Mount Shasta without passing over much snow, by keeping on the
crest of a long narrow ridge, mostly bare, that extends from near the
camp-ground at the timberline. But on my first excursion to the summit the
whole mountain, down to its low swelling base, was smoothly laden with
loose fresh snow, presenting a most glorious mass of winter mountain
scenery, in the midst of which I scrambled and reveled or lay snugly
snowbound, enjoying the fertile clouds and the snow-bloom in all their
growing, drifting grandeur.</p>
<p>I had walked from Redding, sauntering leisurely from station to station
along the old Oregon stage road, the better to see the rocks and plants,
birds and people, by the way, tracing the rushing Sacramento to its
fountains around icy Shasta. The first rains had fallen on the lowlands,
and the first snows on the mountains, and everything was fresh and
bracing, while an abundance of balmy sunshine filled all the noonday
hours. It was the calm afterglow that usually succeeds the first storm of
the winter. I met many of the birds that had reared their young and spent
their summer in the Shasta woods and chaparral. They were then on their
way south to their winter homes, leading their young full-fledged and
about as large and strong as the parents. Squirrels, dry and elastic after
the storms, were busy about their stores of pine nuts, and the latest
goldenrods were still in bloom, though it was now past the middle of
October. The grand color glow—the autumnal jubilee of ripe leaves—was
past prime, but, freshened by the rain, was still making a fine show along
the banks of the river and in the ravines and the dells of the smaller
streams.</p>
<p>At the salmon-hatching establishment on the McCloud River I halted a week
to examine the limestone belt, grandly developed there, to learn what I
could of the inhabitants of the river and its banks, and to give time for
the fresh snow that I knew had fallen on the mountain to settle somewhat,
with a view to making the ascent. A pedestrian on these mountain roads,
especially so late in the year, is sure to excite curiosity, and many were
the interrogations concerning my ramble. When I said that I was simply
taking a walk, and that icy Shasta was my mark, I was invariably
admonished that I had come on a dangerous quest. The time was far too
late, the snow was too loose and deep to climb, and I should be lost in
drifts and slides. When I hinted that new snow was beautiful and storms
not so bad as they were called, my advisers shook their heads in token of
superior knowledge and declared the ascent of "Shasta Butte" through loose
snow impossible. Nevertheless, before noon of the second of November I was
in the frosty azure of the utmost summit.</p>
<p>When I arrived at Sisson's everything was quiet. The last of the summer
visitors had flitted long before, and the deer and bears also were
beginning to seek their winter homes. My barometer and the sighing winds
and filmy half-transparent clouds that dimmed the sunshine gave notice of
the approach of another storm, and I was in haste to be off and get myself
established somewhere in the midst of it, whether the summit was to be
attained or not. Sisson, who is a mountaineer, speedily fitted me out for
storm or calm as only a mountaineer could, with warm blankets and a week's
provisions so generous in quantity and kind that they easily might have
been made to last a month in case of my being closely snowbound. Well I
knew the weariness of snow-climbing, and the frosts, and the dangers of
mountaineering so late in the year; therefore I could not ask a guide to
go with me, even had one been willing. All I wanted was to have blankets
and provisions deposited as far up in the timber as the snow would permit
a pack animal to go. There I could build a storm nest and lie warm, and
make raids up and around the mountain in accordance with the weather.</p>
<p>Setting out on the afternoon of November first, with Jerome Fay,
mountaineer and guide, in charge of the animals, I was soon plodding
wearily upward through the muffled winter woods, the snow of course
growing steadily deeper and looser, so that we had to break a trail. The
animals began to get discouraged, and after night and darkness came on
they became entangled in a bed of rough lava, where, breaking through four
or five feet of mealy snow, their feet were caught between angular
boulders. Here they were in danger of being lost, but after we had removed
packs and saddles and assisted their efforts with ropes, they all escaped
to the side of a ridge about a thousand feet below the timberline.</p>
<p>To go farther was out of the question, so we were compelled to camp as
best we could. A pitch pine fire speedily changed the temperature and shed
a blaze of light on the wild lava-slope and the straggling storm-bent
pines around us. Melted snow answered for coffee, and we had plenty of
venison to roast. Toward midnight I rolled myself in my blankets, slept an
hour and a half, arose and ate more venison, tied two days' provisions to
my belt, and set out for the summit, hoping to reach it ere the coming
storm should fall. Jerome accompanied me a little distance above camp and
indicated the way as well as he could in the darkness. He seemed loath to
leave me, but, being reassured that I was at home and required no care, he
bade me good-bye and returned to camp, ready to lead his animals down the
mountain at daybreak.</p>
<p>After I was above the dwarf pines, it was fine practice pushing up the
broad unbroken slopes of snow, alone in the solemn silence of the night.
Half the sky was clouded; in the other half the stars sparkled icily in
the keen, frosty air; while everywhere the glorious wealth of snow fell
away from the summit of the cone in flowing folds, more extensive and
continuous than any I had ever seen before. When day dawned the clouds
were crawling slowly and becoming more massive, but gave no intimation of
immediate danger, and I pushed on faithfully, though holding myself well
in hand, ready to return to the timber; for it was easy to see that the
storm was not far off. The mountain rises ten thousand feet above the
general level of the country, in blank exposure to the deep upper currents
of the sky, and no labyrinth of peaks and canyons I had ever been in
seemed to me so dangerous as these immense slopes, bare against the sky.</p>
<p>The frost was intense, and drifting snow dust made breathing at times
rather difficult. The snow was as dry as meal, and the finer particles
drifted freely, rising high in the air, while the larger portions of the
crystals rolled like sand. I frequently sank to my armpits between buried
blocks of loose lava, but generally only to my knees. When tired with
walking I still wallowed slowly upward on all fours. The steepness of the
slope—thirty-five degrees in some places—made any kind of
progress fatiguing, while small avalanches were being constantly set in
motion in the steepest places. But the bracing air and the sublime beauty
of the snowy expanse thrilled every nerve and made absolute exhaustion
impossible. I seemed to be walking and wallowing in a cloud; but, holding
steadily onward, by half-past ten o'clock I had gained the highest summit.</p>
<p>I held my commanding foothold in the sky for two hours, gazing on the
glorious landscapes spread maplike around the immense horizon, and tracing
the outlines of the ancient lava-streams extending far into the
surrounding plains, and the pathways of vanished glaciers of which Shasta
had been the center. But, as I had left my coat in camp for the sake of
having my limbs free in climbing, I soon was cold. The wind increased in
violence, raising the snow in magnificent drifts that were drawn out in
the form of wavering banners blowing in the sun. Toward the end of my stay
a succession of small clouds struck against the summit rocks like drifting
icebergs, darkening the air as they passed, and producing a chill as
definite and sudden as if ice-water had been dashed in my face. This is
the kind of cloud in which snow-flowers grow, and I turned and fled.</p>
<p>Finding that I was not closely pursued, I ventured to take time on the way
down for a visit to the head of the Whitney Glacier and the "Crater
Butte." After I had reached the end of the main summit ridge the descent
was but little more than one continuous soft, mealy, muffled slide, most
luxurious and rapid, though the hissing, swishing speed attained was
obscured in great part by flying snow dust—a marked contrast to the
boring seal-wallowing upward struggle. I reached camp about an hour before
dusk, hollowed a strip of loose ground in the lee of a large block of red
lava, where firewood was abundant, rolled myself in my blankets, and went
to sleep.</p>
<p>Next morning, having slept little the night before the ascent and being
weary with climbing after the excitement was over, I slept late. Then,
awaking suddenly, my eyes opened on one of the most beautiful and sublime
scenes I ever enjoyed. A boundless wilderness of storm clouds of different
degrees of ripeness were congregated over all the lower landscape for
thousands of square miles, colored gray, and purple, and pearl, and
deep-glowing white, amid which I seemed to be floating; while the great
white cone of the mountain above was all aglow in the free, blazing
sunshine. It seemed not so much an ocean as a land of clouds—undulating
hill and dale, smooth purple plains, and silvery mountains of cumuli,
range over range, diversified with peak and dome and hollow fully brought
out in light and shade.</p>
<p>I gazed enchanted, but cold gray masses, drifting like dust on a
wind-swept plain, began to shut out the light, forerunners of the coming
storm I had been so anxiously watching. I made haste to gather as much
wood as possible, snugging it as a shelter around my bed. The storm side
of my blankets was fastened down with stakes to reduce as much as possible
the sifting-in of drift and the danger of being blown away. The precious
bread sack was placed safely as a pillow, and when at length the first
flakes fell I was exultingly ready to welcome them. Most of my firewood
was more than half rosin and would blaze in the face of the fiercest
drifting; the winds could not demolish my bed, and my bread could be made
to last indefinitely; while in case of need I had the means of making
snowshoes and could retreat or hold my ground as I pleased.</p>
<p>Presently the storm broke forth into full snowy bloom, and the thronging
crystals darkened the air. The wind swept past in hissing floods, grinding
the snow into meal and sweeping down into the hollows in enormous drifts
all the heavier particles, while the finer dust was sifted through the
sky, increasing the icy gloom. But my fire glowed bravely as if in glad
defiance of the drift to quench it, and, notwithstanding but little trace
of my nest could be seen after the snow had leveled and buried it, I was
snug and warm, and the passionate uproar produced a glad excitement.</p>
<p>Day after day the storm continued, piling snow on snow in weariless
abundance. There were short periods of quiet, when the sun would seem to
look eagerly down through rents in the clouds, as if to know how the work
was advancing. During these calm intervals I replenished my fire—sometimes
without leaving the nest, for fire and woodpile were so near this could
easily be done—or busied myself with my notebook, watching the
gestures of the trees in taking the snow, examining separate crystals
under a lens, and learning the methods of their deposition as an enduring
fountain for the streams. Several times, when the storm ceased for a few
minutes, a Douglas squirrel came frisking from the foot of a clump of
dwarf pines, moving in sudden interrupted spurts over the bossy snow;
then, without any apparent guidance, he would dig rapidly into the drift
where were buried some grains of barley that the horses had left. The
Douglas squirrel does not strictly belong to these upper woods, and I was
surprised to see him out in such weather. The mountain sheep also, quite a
large flock of them, came to my camp and took shelter beside a clump of
matted dwarf pines a little above my nest.</p>
<p>The storm lasted about a week, but before it was ended Sisson became
alarmed and sent up the guide with animals to see what had become of me
and recover the camp outfit. The news spread that "there was a man on the
mountain," and he must surely have perished, and Sisson was blamed for
allowing any one to attempt climbing in such weather; while I was as safe
as anybody in the lowlands, lying like a squirrel in a warm, fluffy nest,
busied about my own affairs and wishing only to be let alone. Later,
however, a trail could not have been broken for a horse, and some of the
camp furniture would have had to be abandoned. On the fifth day I returned
to Sisson's, and from that comfortable base made excursions, as the
weather permitted, to the Black Butte, to the foot of the Whitney Glacier,
around the base of the mountain, to Rhett and Klamath Lakes, to the Modoc
region and elsewhere, developing many interesting scenes and experiences.</p>
<p>But the next spring, on the other side of this eventful winter, I saw and
felt still more of the Shasta snow. For then it was my fortune to get into
the very heart of a storm, and to be held in it for a long time.</p>
<p>On the 28th of April <SPAN href="#linknote-1875" name="linknoteref-1875" id="linknoteref-1875"><small>1875</small></SPAN> I led a party up the
mountain for the purpose of making a survey of the summit with reference
to the location of the Geodetic monument. On the 30th, accompanied by
Jerome Fay, I made another ascent to make some barometrical observations,
the day intervening between the two ascents being devoted to establishing
a camp on the extreme edge of the timberline. Here, on our red trachyte
bed, we obtained two hours of shallow sleep broken for occasional glimpses
of the keen, starry night. At two o'clock we rose, breakfasted on a warmed
tin-cupful of coffee and a piece of frozen venison broiled on the coals,
and started for the summit. Up to this time there was nothing in sight
that betokened the approach of a storm; but on gaining the summit, we saw
toward Lassen's Butte hundreds of square miles of white cumuli boiling
dreamily in the sunshine far beneath us, and causing no alarm.</p>
<p>The slight weariness of the ascent was soon rested away, and our glorious
morning in the sky promised nothing but enjoyment. At 9 a.m. the dry
thermometer stood at 34 degrees in the shade and rose steadily until at 1
p.m. it stood at 50 degrees, probably influenced somewhat by radiation
from the sun-warmed cliffs. A common bumblebee, not at all benumbed,
zigzagged vigorously about our heads for a few moments, as if unconscious
of the fact that the nearest honey flower was a mile beneath him.</p>
<p>In the mean time clouds were growing down in Shasta Valley—massive
swelling cumuli, displaying delicious tones of purple and gray in the
hollows of their sun-beaten bosses. Extending gradually southward around
on both sides of Shasta, these at length united with the older field
towards Lassen's Butte, thus encircling Mount Shasta in one continuous
cloud zone. Rhett and Klamath Lakes were eclipsed beneath clouds scarcely
less brilliant than their own silvery disks. The Modoc Lava Beds, many a
snow-laden peak far north in Oregon, the Scott and Trinity and Siskiyou
Mountains, the peaks of the Sierra, the blue Coast Range, Shasta Valley,
the dark forests filling the valley of the Sacramento, all in turn were
obscured or buried, leaving the lofty cone on which we stood solitary in
the sunshine between two skies—a sky of spotless blue above, a sky
of glittering cloud beneath. The creative sun shone glorious on the vast
expanse of cloudland; hill and dale, mountain and valley springing into
existence responsive to his rays and steadily developing in beauty and
individuality. One huge mountain-cone of cloud, corresponding to Mount
Shasta in these newborn cloud ranges, rose close alongside with a visible
motion, its firm, polished bosses seeming so near and substantial that we
almost fancied that we might leap down upon them from where we stood and
make our way to the lowlands. No hint was given, by anything in their
appearance, of the fleeting character of these most sublime and beautiful
cloud mountains. On the contrary they impressed one as being lasting
additions to the landscape.</p>
<p>The weather of the springtime and summer, throughout the Sierra in
general, is usually varied by slight local rains and dustings of snow,
most of which are obviously far too joyous and life-giving to be regarded
as storms—single clouds growing in the sunny sky, ripening in an
hour, showering the heated landscape, and passing away like a thought,
leaving no visible bodily remains to stain the sky. Snowstorms of the same
gentle kind abound among the high peaks, but in spring they not
unfrequently attain larger proportions, assuming a violence and energy of
expression scarcely surpassed by those bred in the depths of winter. Such
was the storm now gathering about us.</p>
<p>It began to declare itself shortly after noon, suggesting to us the idea
of at once seeking our safe camp in the timber and abandoning the purpose
of making an observation of the barometer at 3 p.m.,—two having
already been made, at 9 a.m., and 12 m., while simultaneous observations
were made at Strawberry Valley. Jerome peered at short intervals over the
ridge, contemplating the rising clouds with anxious gestures in the rough
wind, and at length declared that if we did not make a speedy escape we
should be compelled to pass the rest of the day and night on the summit.
But anxiety to complete my observations stifled my own instinctive
promptings to retreat, and held me to my work. No inexperienced person was
depending on me, and I told Jerome that we two mountaineers should be able
to make our way down through any storm likely to fall.</p>
<p>Presently thin, fibrous films of cloud began to blow directly over the
summit from north to south, drawn out in long fairy webs like carded wool,
forming and dissolving as if by magic. The wind twisted them into ringlets
and whirled them in a succession of graceful convolutions like the outside
sprays of Yosemite Falls in flood time; then, sailing out into the thin
azure over the precipitous brink of the ridge they were drifted together
like wreaths of foam on a river. These higher and finer cloud fabrics were
evidently produced by the chilling of the air from its own expansion
caused by the upward deflection of the wind against the slopes of the
mountain. They steadily increased on the north rim of the cone, forming at
length a thick, opaque, ill-defined embankment from the icy meshes of
which snow-flowers began to fall, alternating with hail. The sky speedily
darkened, and just as I had completed my last observation and boxed my
instruments ready for the descent, the storm began in serious earnest. At
first the cliffs were beaten with hail, every stone of which, as far as I
could see, was regular in form, six-sided pyramids with rounded base, rich
and sumptuous-looking, and fashioned with loving care, yet seemingly
thrown away on those desolate crags down which they went rolling, falling,
sliding in a network of curious streams.</p>
<p>After we had forced our way down the ridge and past the group of hissing
fumaroles, the storm became inconceivably violent. The thermometer fell 22
degrees in a few minutes, and soon dropped below zero. The hail gave place
to snow, and darkness came on like night. The wind, rising to the highest
pitch of violence, boomed and surged amid the desolate crags; lightning
flashes in quick succession cut the gloomy darkness; and the thunders, the
most tremendously loud and appalling I ever heard, made an almost
continuous roar, stroke following stroke in quick, passionate succession,
as though the mountain were being rent to its foundations and the fires of
the old volcano were breaking forth again.</p>
<p>Could we at once have begun to descend the snow slopes leading to the<br/>
timber, we might have made good our escape, however dark and wild the<br/>
storm. As it was, we had first to make our way along a dangerous<br/>
ridge nearly a mile and a half long, flanked in many places by steep<br/>
ice-slopes at the head of the Whitney Glacier on one side and by<br/>
shattered precipices on the other. Apprehensive of this coming darkness,<br/>
I had taken the precaution, when the storm began, to make the most<br/>
dangerous points clear to my mind, and to mark their relations with<br/>
reference to the direction of the wind. When, therefore, the darkness<br/>
came on, and the bewildering drift, I felt confident that we could<br/>
force our way through it with no other guidance. After passing the "Hot<br/>
Springs" I halted in the lee of a lava-block to let Jerome, who had<br/>
fallen a little behind, come up. Here he opened a council in which,<br/>
under circumstances sufficiently exciting but without evincing any<br/>
bewilderment, he maintained, in opposition to my views, that it was<br/>
impossible to proceed. He firmly refused to make the venture to find the<br/>
camp, while I, aware of the dangers that would necessarily attend our<br/>
efforts, and conscious of being the cause of his present peril, decided<br/>
not to leave him.<br/>
<br/>
Our discussions ended, Jerome made a dash from the shelter of the<br/>
lava-block and began forcing his way back against the wind to the "Hot<br/>
Springs," wavering and struggling to resist being carried away, as if he<br/>
were fording a rapid stream. After waiting and watching in vain for<br/>
some flaw in the storm that might be urged as a new argument in favor of<br/>
attempting the descent, I was compelled to follow. "Here," said Jerome,<br/>
as we shivered in the midst of the hissing, sputtering fumaroles, "we<br/>
shall be safe from frost." "Yes," said I, "we can lie in this mud and<br/>
steam and sludge, warm at least on one side; but how can we protect our<br/>
lungs from the acid gases, and how, after our clothing is saturated,<br/>
shall we be able to reach camp without freezing, even after the storm is<br/>
over? We shall have to wait for sunshine, and when will it come?"<br/></p>
<p>The tempered area to which we had committed ourselves extended over about
one fourth of an acre; but it was only about an eighth of an inch in
thickness, for the scalding gas jets were shorn off close to the ground by
the oversweeping flood of frosty wind. And how lavishly the snow fell only
mountaineers may know. The crisp crystal flowers seemed to touch one
another and fairly to thicken the tremendous blast that carried them. This
was the bloom-time, the summer of the cloud, and never before have I seen
even a mountain cloud flowering so profusely.</p>
<p>When the bloom of the Shasta chaparral is falling, the ground is sometimes
covered for hundreds of square miles to a depth of half an inch. But the
bloom of this fertile snow cloud grew and matured and fell to a depth of
two feet in a few hours. Some crystals landed with their rays almost
perfect, but most of them were worn and broken by striking against one
another, or by rolling on the ground. The touch of these snow-flowers in
calm weather is infinitely gentle—glinting, swaying, settling
silently in the dry mountain air, or massed in flakes soft and downy. To
lie out alone in the mountains of a still night and be touched by the
first of these small silent messengers from the sky is a memorable
experience, and the fineness of that touch none will forget. But the
storm-blast laden with crisp, sharp snow seems to crush and bruise and
stupefy with its multitude of stings, and compels the bravest to turn and
flee.</p>
<p>The snow fell without abatement until an hour or two after what seemed to
be the natural darkness of the night. Up to the time the storm first broke
on the summit its development was remarkably gentle. There was a
deliberate growth of clouds, a weaving of translucent tissue above, then
the roar of the wind and the thunder, and the darkening flight of snow.
Its subsidence was not less sudden. The clouds broke and vanished, not a
crystal was left in the sky, and the stars shone out with pure and
tranquil radiance.</p>
<p>During the storm we lay on our backs so as to present as little surface as
possible to the wind, and to let the drift pass over us. The mealy snow
sifted into the folds of our clothing and in many places reached the skin.
We were glad at first to see the snow packing about us, hoping it would
deaden the force of the wind, but it soon froze into a stiff, crusty heap
as the temperature fell, rather augmenting our novel misery.</p>
<p>When the heat became unendurable, on some spot where steam was escaping
through the sludge, we tried to stop it with snow and mud, or shifted a
little at a time by shoving with our heels; for to stand in blank exposure
to the fearful wind in our frozen-and-broiled condition seemed certain
death. The acrid incrustations sublimed from the escaping gases frequently
gave way, opening new vents to scald us; and, fearing that if at any time
the wind should fall, carbonic acid, which often formed a considerable
portion of the gaseous exhalations of volcanoes, might collect in
sufficient quantities to cause sleep and death, I warned Jerome against
forgetting himself for a single moment, even should his sufferings admit
of such a thing.</p>
<p>Accordingly, when during the long, dreary watches of the night we roused
from a state of half-consciousness, we called each other by name in a
frightened, startled way, each fearing the other might be benumbed or
dead. The ordinary sensations of cold give but a faint conception of that
which comes on after hard climbing with want of food and sleep in such
exposure as this. Life is then seen to be a fire, that now smoulders, now
brightens, and may be easily quenched. The weary hours wore away like dim
half-forgotten years, so long and eventful they seemed, though we did
nothing but suffer. Still the pain was not always of that bitter, intense
kind that precludes thought and takes away all capacity for enjoyment. A
sort of dreamy stupor came on at times in which we fancied we saw dry,
resinous logs suitable for campfires, just as after going days without
food men fancy they see bread.</p>
<p>Frozen, blistered, famished, benumbed, our bodies seemed lost to us at
times—all dead but the eyes. For the duller and fainter we became
the clearer was our vision, though only in momentary glimpses. Then, after
the sky cleared, we gazed at the stars, blessed immortals of light,
shining with marvelous brightness with long lance rays, near-looking and
new-looking, as if never seen before. Again they would look familiar and
remind us of stargazing at home. Oftentimes imagination coming into play
would present charming pictures of the warm zone below, mingled with
others near and far. Then the bitter wind and the drift would break the
blissful vision and dreary pains cover us like clouds. "Are you suffering
much?" Jerome would inquire with pitiful faintness. "Yes," I would say,
striving to keep my voice brave, "frozen and burned; but never mind,
Jerome, the night will wear away at last, and tomorrow we go a-Maying, and
what campfires we will make, and what sunbaths we will take!"</p>
<p>The frost grew more and more intense, and we became icy and covered over
with a crust of frozen snow, as if we had lain cast away in the drift all
winter. In about thirteen hours—every hour like a year—day
began to dawn, but it was long ere the summit's rocks were touched by the
sun. No clouds were visible from where we lay, yet the morning was dull
and blue, and bitterly frosty; and hour after hour passed by while we
eagerly watched the pale light stealing down the ridge to the hollow where
we lay. But there was not a trace of that warm, flushing sunrise splendor
we so long had hoped for.</p>
<p>As the time drew near to make an effort to reach camp, we became concerned
to know what strength was left us, and whether or no we could walk; for we
had lain flat all this time without once rising to our feet. Mountaineers,
however, always find in themselves a reserve of power after great
exhaustion. It is a kind of second life, available only in emergencies
like this; and, having proved its existence, I had no great fear that
either of us would fail, though one of my arms was already benumbed and
hung powerless.</p>
<p>At length, after the temperature was somewhat mitigated on this memorable
first of May, we arose and began to struggle homeward. Our frozen trousers
could scarcely be made to bend at the knee, and we waded the snow with
difficulty. The summit ridge was fortunately wind-swept and nearly bare,
so we were not compelled to lift our feet high, and on reaching the long
home slopes laden with loose snow we made rapid progress, sliding and
shuffling and pitching headlong, our feebleness accelerating rather than
diminishing our speed. When we had descended some three thousand feet the
sunshine warmed our backs and we began to revive. At 10 a.m. we reached
the timber and were safe.</p>
<p>Half an hour later we heard Sisson shouting down among the firs, coming
with horses to take us to the hotel. After breaking a trail through the
snow as far as possible he had tied his animals and walked up. We had been
so long without food that we cared but little about eating, but we eagerly
drank the coffee he prepared for us. Our feet were frozen, and thawing
them was painful, and had to be done very slowly by keeping them buried in
soft snow for several hours, which avoided permanent damage. Five thousand
feet below the summit we found only three inches of new snow, and at the
base of the mountain only a slight shower of rain had fallen, showing how
local our storm had been, notwithstanding its terrific fury. Our feet were
wrapped in sacking, and we were soon mounted and on our way down into the
thick sunshine—"God's Country," as Sisson calls the Chaparral Zone.
In two hours' ride the last snowbank was left behind. Violets appeared
along the edges of the trail, and the chaparral was coming into bloom,
with young lilies and larkspurs about the open places in rich profusion.
How beautiful seemed the golden sunbeams streaming through the woods
between the warm brown boles of the cedars and pines! All my friends among
the birds and plants seemed like OLD friends, and we felt like speaking to
every one of them as we passed, as if we had been a long time away in some
far, strange country.</p>
<p>In the afternoon we reached Strawberry Valley and fell asleep. Next
morning we seemed to have risen from the dead. My bedroom was flooded with
sunshine, and from the window I saw the great white Shasta cone clad in
forests and clouds and bearing them loftily in the sky. Everything seemed
full and radiant with the freshness and beauty and enthusiasm of youth.
Sisson's children came in with flowers and covered my bed, and the storm
on the mountaintop banished like a dream.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"></SPAN></p>
<h2> V. Shasta Rambles and Modoc Memories </h2>
<p>Arctic beauty and desolation, with their blessings and dangers, all may be
found here, to test the endurance and skill of adventurous climbers; but
far better than climbing the mountain is going around its warm, fertile
base, enjoying its bounties like a bee circling around a bank of flowers.
The distance is about a hundred miles, and will take some of the time we
hear so much about—a week or two—but the benefits will
compensate for any number of weeks. Perhaps the profession of doing good
may be full, but every body should be kind at least to himself. Take a
course of good water and air, and in the eternal youth of Nature you may
renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you. Some have
strange, morbid fears as soon as they find themselves with Nature, even in
the kindest and wildest of her solitudes, like very sick children afraid
of their mother—as if God were dead and the devil were king.</p>
<p>One may make the trip on horseback, or in a carriage, even; for a good
level road may be found all the way round, by Shasta Valley, Sheep Rock,
Elk Flat, Huckleberry Valley, Squaw Valley, following for a considerable
portion of the way the old Emigrant Road, which lies along the east disk
of the mountain, and is deeply worn by the wagons of the early
gold-seekers, many of whom chose this northern route as perhaps being
safer and easier, the pass here being only about six thousand feet above
sea level. But it is far better to go afoot. Then you are free to make
wide waverings and zigzags away from the roads to visit the great fountain
streams of the rivers, the glaciers also, and the wildest retreats in the
primeval forests, where the best plants and animals dwell, and where many
a flower-bell will ring against your knees, and friendly trees will reach
out their fronded branches and touch you as you pass. One blanket will be
enough to carry, or you may forego the pleasure and burden altogether, as
wood for fires is everywhere abundant. Only a little food will be
required. Berries and plums abound in season, and quail and grouse and
deer—the magnificent shaggy mule deer as well as the common species.</p>
<p>As you sweep around so grand a center, the mountain itself seems to turn,
displaying its riches like the revolving pyramids in jewelers' windows.
One glacier after another comes into view, and the outlines of the
mountain are ever changing, though all the way around, from whatever point
of view, the form is maintained of a grand, simple cone with a gently
sloping base and rugged, crumbling ridges separating the glaciers and the
snowfields more or less completely. The play of colors, from the first
touches of the morning sun on the summit, down the snowfields and the ice
and lava until the forests are aglow, is a never-ending delight, the rosy
lava and the fine flushings of the snow being ineffably lovely. Thus one
saunters on and on in the glorious radiance in utter peace and
forgetfulness of time.</p>
<p>Yet, strange to say, there are days even here somewhat dull-looking, when
the mountain seems uncommunicative, sending out no appreciable invitation,
as if not at home. At such time its height seems much less, as if,
crouching and weary, it were taking rest. But Shasta is always at home to
those who love her, and is ever in a thrill of enthusiastic activity—burning
fires within, grinding glaciers without, and fountains ever flowing. Every
crystal dances responsive to the touches of the sun, and currents of sap
in the growing cells of all the vegetation are ever in a vital whirl and
rush, and though many feet and wings are folded, how many are astir! And
the wandering winds, how busy they are, and what a breadth of sound and
motion they make, glinting and bubbling about the crags of the summit,
sifting through the woods, feeling their way from grove to grove, ruffling
the loose hair on the shoulders of the bears, fanning and rocking young
birds in their cradles, making a trumpet of every corolla, and carrying
their fragrance around the world.</p>
<p>In unsettled weather, when storms are growing, the mountain looms
immensely higher, and its miles of height become apparent to all,
especially in the gloom of the gathering clouds, or when the storm is done
and they are rolling away, torn on the edges and melting while in the
sunshine. Slight rainstorms are likely to be encountered in a trip round
the mountain, but one may easily find shelter beneath well-thatched trees
that shed the rain like a roof. Then the shining of the wet leaves is
delightful, and the steamy fragrance, and the burst of bird song from a
multitude of thrushes and finches and warblers that have nests in the
chaparral.</p>
<p>The nights, too, are delightful, watching with Shasta beneath the great
starry dome. A thousand thousand voices are heard, but so finely blended
they seem a part of the night itself, and make a deeper silence. And how
grandly do the great logs and branches of your campfire give forth the
heat and light that during their long century-lives they have so slowly
gathered from the sun, storing it away in beautiful dotted cells and beads
of amber gum! The neighboring trees look into the charmed circle as if the
noon of another day had come, familiar flowers and grasses that chance to
be near seem far more beautiful and impressive than by day, and as the
dead trees give forth their light all the other riches of their lives seem
to be set free and with the rejoicing flames rise again to the sky. In
setting out from Strawberry Valley, by bearing off to the northwestward a
few miles you may see</p>
<p>"...beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,<br/>
The slight Linnaea hang its twin-born heads,<br/>
And [bless] the monument of the man of flowers,<br/>
Which breathes his sweet fame through the northern bowers."<br/></p>
<p>This is one of the few places in California where the charming linnaea is
found, though it is common to the northward through Oregon and Washington.
Here, too, you may find the curious but unlovable darlingtonia, a
carnivorous plant that devours bumblebees, grasshoppers, ants, moths, and
other insects, with insatiable appetite. In approaching it, its
suspicious-looking yellow-spotted hood and watchful attitude will be
likely to make you go cautiously through the bog where it stands, as if
you were approaching a dangerous snake. It also occurs in a bog near
Sothern's Station on the stage road, where I first saw it, and in other
similar bogs throughout the mountains hereabouts.</p>
<p>The "Big Spring" of the Sacramento is about a mile and a half above
Sisson's, issuing from the base of a drift-covered hill. It is lined with
emerald algae and mosses, and shaded with alder, willow, and thorn bushes,
which give it a fine setting. Its waters, apparently unaffected by flood
or drouth, heat or cold, fall at once into white rapids with a rush and
dash, as if glad to escape from the darkness to begin their wild course
down the canyon to the plain.</p>
<p>Muir's Peak, a few miles to the north of the spring, rises about three
thousand feet above the plain on which it stands, and is easily climbed.
The view is very fine and well repays the slight walk to its summit, from
which much of your way about the mountain may be studied and chosen. The
view obtained of the Whitney Glacier should tempt you to visit it, since
it is the largest of the Shasta glaciers and its lower portion abounds in
beautiful and interesting cascades and crevasses. It is three or four
miles long and terminates at an elevation of about nine thousand five
hundred feet above sea level, in moraine-sprinkled ice cliffs sixty feet
high. The long gray slopes leading up to the glacier seem remarkably
smooth and unbroken. They are much interrupted, nevertheless, with abrupt,
jagged precipitous gorges, which though offering instructive sections of
the lavas for examination, would better be shunned by most people. This
may be done by keeping well down on the base until fronting the glacier
before beginning the ascent.</p>
<p>The gorge through which the glacier is drained is raw-looking, deep and
narrow, and indescribably jagged. The walls in many places overhang; in
others they are beveled, loose, and shifting where the channel has been
eroded by cinders, ashes, strata of firm lavas, and glacial drift, telling
of many a change from frost to fire and their attendant floods of mud and
water. Most of the drainage of the glacier vanishes at once in the porous
rocks to reappear in springs in the distant valley, and it is only in time
of flood that the channel carries much water; then there are several fine
falls in the gorge, six hundred feet or more in height. Snow lies in it
the year round at an elevation of eight thousand five hundred feet, and in
sheltered spots a thousand feet lower. Tracing this wild changing
channel-gorge, gully, or canyon, the sections will show Mount Shasta as a
huge palimpsest, containing the records, layer upon layer, of strangely
contrasted events in its fiery-icy history. But look well to your footing,
for the way will test the skill of the most cautious mountaineers.</p>
<p>Regaining the low ground at the base of the mountain and holding on in
your grand orbit, you pass through a belt of juniper woods, called "The
Cedars," to Sheep Rock at the foot of the Shasta Pass. Here you strike the
old emigrant road, which leads over the low divide to the eastern slopes
of the mountain. In a north-northwesterly direction from the foot of the
pass you may chance to find Pluto's Cave, already mentioned; but it is not
easily found, since its several mouths are on a level with the general
surface of the ground, and have been made simply by the falling-in of
portions of the roof. Far the most beautiful and richly furnished of the
mountain caves of California occur in a thick belt of metamorphic
limestone that is pretty generally developed along the western flank of
the Sierra from the McCloud River to the Kaweah, a distance of nearly four
hundred miles. These volcanic caves are not wanting in interest, and it is
well to light a pitch pine torch and take a walk in these dark ways of the
underworld whenever opportunity offers, if for no other reason to see with
new appreciation on returning to the sunshine the beauties that lie so
thick about us.</p>
<p>Sheep Rock is about twenty miles from Sisson's, and is one of the
principal winter pasture grounds of the wild sheep, from which it takes
its name. It is a mass of lava presenting to the gray sage plain of Shasta
Valley a bold craggy front two thousand feet high. Its summit lies at an
elevation of five thousand five hundred feet above the sea, and has
several square miles of comparatively level surface, where bunchgrass
grows and the snow does not lie deep, thus allowing the hardy sheep to
pick up a living through the winter months when deep snows have driven
them down from the lofty ridges of Shasta.</p>
<p>From here it might be well to leave the immediate base of the mountain for
a few days and visit the Lava Beds made famous by the Modoc War. They lie
about forty miles to the northeastward, on the south shore of Rhett or
Tule <SPAN href="#linknote-7" name="linknoteref-7" id="linknoteref-7"><small>7</small></SPAN>
Lake, at an elevation above sea level of about forty-five hundred feet.
They are a portion of a flow of dense black vesicular lava, dipping
northeastward at a low angle, but little changed as yet by the weather,
and about as destitute of soil as a glacial pavement. The surface, though
smooth in a general way as seen from a distance, is dotted with hillocks
and rough crater-like pits, and traversed by a network of yawning
fissures, forming a combination of topographical conditions of very
striking character. The way lies by Mount Bremer, over stretches of gray
sage plains, interrupted by rough lava slopes timbered with juniper and
yellow pine, and with here and there a green meadow and a stream.</p>
<p>This is a famous game region, and you will be likely to meet small bands
of antelope, mule deer, and wild sheep. Mount Bremer is the most noted
stronghold of the sheep in the whole Shasta region. Large flocks dwell
here from year to year, winter and summer, descending occasionally into
the adjacent sage plains and lava beds to feed, but ever ready to take
refuge in the jagged crags of their mountain at every alarm. While
traveling with a company of hunters I saw about fifty in one flock.</p>
<p>The Van Bremer brothers, after whom the mountain is named, told me that
they once climbed the mountain with their rifles and hounds on a grand
hunt; but, after keeping up the pursuit for a week, their boots and
clothing gave way, and the hounds were lamed and worn out without having
run down a single sheep, notwithstanding they ran night and day. On smooth
spots, level or ascending, the hounds gained on the sheep, but on
descending ground, and over rough masses of angular rocks they fell
hopelessly behind. Only half a dozen sheep were shot as they passed the
hunters stationed near their paths circling round the rugged summit. The
full-grown bucks weigh nearly three hundred and fifty pounds.</p>
<p>The mule deer are nearly as heavy. Their long, massive ears give them a
very striking appearance. One large buck that I measured stood three feet
and seven inches high at the shoulders, and when the ears were extended
horizontally the distance across from tip to tip was two feet and one
inch.</p>
<p>From the Van Bremer ranch the way to the Lava Beds leads down the Bremer
Meadows past many a smooth grassy knoll and jutting cliff, along the shore
of Lower Klamath Lake, and thence across a few miles of sage plain to the
brow of the wall-like bluff of lava four hundred and fifty feet above Tule
Lake. Here you are looking southeastward, and the Modoc landscape, which
at once takes possession of you, lies revealed in front. It is composed of
three principal parts; on your left lies the bright expanse of Tule Lake,
on your right an evergreen forest, and between the two are the black Lava
Beds.</p>
<p>When I first stood there, one bright day before sundown, the lake was
fairly blooming in purple light, and was so responsive to the sky in both
calmness and color it seemed itself a sky. No mountain shore hides its
loveliness. It lies wide open for many a mile, veiled in no mystery but
the mystery of light. The forest also was flooded with sun-purple, not a
spire moving, and Mount Shasta was seen towering above it rejoicing in the
ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. But neither the glorified woods on the
one hand, nor the lake on the other, could at first hold the eye. That
dark mysterious lava plain between them compelled attention. Here you
trace yawning fissures, there clusters of somber pits; now you mark where
the lava is bent and corrugated in swelling ridges and domes, again where
it breaks into a rough mass of loose blocks. Tufts of grass grow far apart
here and there and small bushes of hardy sage, but they have a singed
appearance and can do little to hide the blackness. Deserts are charming
to those who know how to see them—all kinds of bogs, barrens, and
heathy moors; but the Modoc Lava Beds have for me an uncanny look. As I
gazed the purple deepened over all the landscape. Then fell the gloaming,
making everything still more forbidding and mysterious. Then, darkness
like death.</p>
<p>Next morning the crisp, sunshiny air made even the Modoc landscape less
hopeless, and we ventured down the bluff to the edge of the Lava Beds.
Just at the foot of the bluff we came to a square enclosed by a stone
wall. This is a graveyard where lie buried thirty soldiers, most of whom
met their fate out in the Lava Beds, as we learn by the boards marking the
graves—a gloomy place to die in, and deadly-looking even without
Modocs. The poor fellows that lie here deserve far more pity than they
have ever received. Picking our way over the strange ridges and hollows of
the beds, we soon came to a circular flat about twenty yards in diameter,
on the shore of the lake, where the comparative smoothness of the lava and
a few handfuls of soil have caused the grass tufts to grow taller. This is
where General Canby was slain while seeking to make peace with the
treacherous Modocs.</p>
<p>Two or three miles farther on is the main stronghold of the Modocs, held
by them so long and defiantly against all the soldiers that could be
brought to the attack. Indians usually choose to hide in tall grass and
bush and behind trees, where they can crouch and glide like panthers,
without casting up defenses that would betray their positions; but the
Modoc castle is in the rock. When the Yosemite Indians made raids on the
settlers of the lower Merced, they withdrew with their spoils into
Yosemite Valley; and the Modocs boasted that in case of war they had a
stone house into which no white man could come as long as they cared to
defend it. Yosemite was not held for a single day against the pursuing
troops; but the Modocs held their fort for months, until, weary of being
hemmed in, they chose to withdraw.</p>
<p>It consists of numerous redoubts formed by the unequal subsidence of
portions of the lava flow, and a complicated network of redans abundantly
supplied with salient and re-entering angles, being united each to the
other and to the redoubts by a labyrinth of open and covered corridors,
some of which expand at intervals into spacious caverns, forming as a
whole the most complete natural Gibraltar I ever saw. Other castles
scarcely less strong are connected with this by subterranean passages
known only to the Indians, while the unnatural blackness of the rock out
of which Nature has constructed these defenses, and the weird, inhuman
physiognomy of the whole region are well calculated to inspire terror.</p>
<p>Deadly was the task of storming such a place. The breech-loading rifles of
the Indians thrust through chinks between the rocks were ready to pick off
every soldier who showed himself for a moment, while the Indians lay
utterly invisible. They were familiar with byways both over and under
ground, and could at any time sink suddenly out of sight like squirrels
among the loose boulders. Our bewildered soldiers heard them shooting, now
before, now behind them, as they glided from place to place through
fissures and subterranean passes, all the while as invisible as Gyges
wearing his magic ring. To judge from the few I have seen, Modocs are not
very amiable-looking people at best. When, therefore, they were crawling
stealthily in the gloomy caverns, unkempt and begrimed and with the glare
of war in their eyes, they must have seemed very demons of the volcanic
pit.</p>
<p>Captain Jack's cave is one of the many somber cells of the castle. It
measures twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter at the entrance, and
extends but a short distance in a horizontal direction. The floor is
littered with the bones of the animals slaughtered for food during the
war. Some eager archaeologist may hereafter discover this cabin and
startle his world by announcing another of the Stone Age caves. The sun
shines freely into its mouth, and graceful bunches of grass and eriogonums
and sage grow about it, doing what they can toward its redemption from
degrading associations and making it beautiful.</p>
<p>Where the lava meets the lake there are some fine curving bays,
beautifully embroidered with rushes and polygonums, a favorite resort of
waterfowl. On our return, keeping close along shore, we caused a noisy
plashing and beating of wings among cranes and geese. The ducks, less
wary, kept their places, merely swimming in and out through openings in
the rushes, rippling the glassy water, and raising spangles in their wake.
The countenance of the lava beds became less and less forbidding. Tufts of
pale grasses, relieved on the jet rocks, looked like ornaments on a
mantel, thick-furred mats of emerald mosses appeared in damp spots next
the shore, and I noticed one tuft of small ferns. From year to year in the
kindly weather the beds are thus gathering beauty—beauty for ashes.</p>
<p>Returning to Sheep Rock and following the old emigrant road, one is soon
back again beneath the snows and shadows of Shasta, and the Ash Creek and
McCloud Glaciers come into view on the east side of the mountain. They are
broad, rugged, crevassed cloudlike masses of down-grinding ice, pouring
forth streams of muddy water as measures of the work they are doing in
sculpturing the rocks beneath them; very unlike the long, majestic
glaciers of Alaska that riverlike go winding down the valleys through the
forests to the sea. These, with a few others as yet nameless, are
lingering remnants of once great glaciers that occupied the canyons now
taken by the rivers, and in a few centuries will, under present
conditions, vanish altogether.</p>
<p>The rivers of the granite south half of the Sierra are outspread on the
peaks in a shining network of small branches, that divide again and again
into small dribbling, purling, oozing threads drawing their sources from
the snow and ice of the surface. They seldom sink out of sight, save here
and there in the moraines or glaciers, or, early in the season, beneath
the banks and bridges of snow, soon to issue again. But in the north half,
laden with rent and porous lava, small tributary streams are rare, and the
rivers, flowing for a time beneath the sky of rock, at length burst forth
into the light in generous volume from seams and caverns, filtered, cool,
and sparkling, as if their bondage in darkness, safe from the vicissitudes
of the weather in their youth, were only a blessing.</p>
<p>Only a very small portion of the water derived from the melting ice and
snow of Shasta flows down its flanks on the surface. Probably ninety-nine
per cent of it is at once absorbed and drained away beneath the porous
lava-folds of the mountain to gush forth, filtered and pure, in the form
of immense springs, so large, some of them, that they give birth to rivers
that start on their journey beneath the sun, full-grown and perfect
without any childhood. Thus the Shasta River issues from a large lake-like
spring in Shasta Valley, and about two thirds of the volume of the McCloud
gushes forth in a grand spring on the east side of the mountain, a few
miles back from its immediate base.</p>
<p>To find the big spring of the McCloud, or "Mud Glacier," which you will
know by its size (it being the largest on the east side), you make your
way through sunny, parklike woods of yellow pine, and a shaggy growth of
chaparral, and come in a few hours to the river flowing in a gorge of
moderate depth, cut abruptly down into the lava plain. Should the volume
of the stream where you strike it seem small, then you will know that you
are above the spring; if large, nearly equal to its volume at its
confluence with the Pitt River, then you are below it; and in either case
have only to follow the river up or down until you come to it.</p>
<p>Under certain conditions you may hear the roar of the water rushing from
the rock at a distance of half a mile, or even more; or you may not hear
it until within a few rods. It comes in a grand, eager gush from a
horizontal seam in the face of the wall of the river gorge in the form of
a partially interrupted sheet nearly seventy-five yards in width, and at a
height above the riverbed of about forty feet, as nearly as I could make
out without the means of exact measurement. For about fifty yards this
flat current is in one unbroken sheet, and flows in a lacework of
plashing, upleaping spray over boulders that are clad in green silky algae
and water mosses to meet the smaller part of the river, which takes its
rise farther up. Joining the river at right angles to its course, it at
once swells its volume to three times its size above the spring.</p>
<p>The vivid green of the boulders beneath the water is very striking, and
colors the entire stream with the exception of the portions broken into
foam. The color is chiefly due to a species of algae which seems common in
springs of this sort. That any kind of plant can hold on and grow beneath
the wear of so boisterous a current seems truly wonderful, even after
taking into consideration the freedom of the water from cutting drift, and
the constance of its volume and temperature throughout the year. The
temperature is about 45 degrees, and the height of the river above the sea
is here about three thousand feet. Asplenium, epilobium, heuchera, hazel,
dogwood, and alder make a luxurious fringe and setting; and the forests of
Douglas spruce along the banks are the finest I have ever seen in the
Sierra.</p>
<p>From the spring you may go with the river—a fine traveling companion—down
to the sportsman's fishing station, where, if you are getting hungry, you
may replenish your stores; or, bearing off around the mountain by
Huckleberry Valley, complete your circuit without interruption, emerging
at length from beneath the outspread arms of the sugar pine at Strawberry
Valley, with all the new wealth and health gathered in your walk; not
tired in the least, and only eager to repeat the round.</p>
<p>Tracing rivers to their fountains makes the most charming of travels. As
the life-blood of the landscapes, the best of the wilderness comes to
their banks, and not one dull passage is found in all their eventful
histories. Tracing the McCloud to its highest springs, and over the divide
to the fountains of Fall River, near Fort Crook, thence down that river to
its confluence with the Pitt, on from there to the volcanic region about
Lassen's Butte, through the Big Meadows among the sources of the Feather
River, and down through forests of sugar pine to the fertile plains of
Chico—this is a glorious saunter and imposes no hardship. Food may
be had at moderate intervals, and the whole circuit forms one
ever-deepening, broadening stream of enjoyment.</p>
<p>Fall River is a very remarkable stream. It is only about ten miles long,
and is composed of springs, rapids, and falls—springs beautifully
shaded at one end of it, a showy fall one hundred and eighty feet high at
the other, and a rush of crystal rapids between. The banks are fringed
with rubus, rose, plum cherry, spiraea, azalea, honeysuckle, hawthorn,
ash, alder, elder, aster, goldenrod, beautiful grasses, sedges, rushes,
mosses, and ferns with fronds as large as the leaves of palms—all in
the midst of a richly forested landscape. Nowhere within the limits of
California are the forests of yellow pine so extensive and exclusive as on
the headwaters of the Pitt. They cover the mountains and all the lower
slopes that border the wide, open valleys which abound there, pressing
forward in imposing ranks, seemingly the hardiest and most firmly
established of all the northern coniferae.</p>
<p>The volcanic region about Lassen's Butte I have already in part described.
Miles of its flanks are dotted with hot springs, many of them so
sulphurous and boisterous and noisy in their boiling that they seem
inclined to become geysers like those of the Yellowstone.</p>
<p>The ascent of Lassen's Butte is an easy walk, and the views from the
summit are extremely telling. Innumerable lakes and craters surround the
base; forests of the charming Williamson spruce fringe lake and crater
alike; the sunbeaten plains to east and west make a striking show, and the
wilderness of peaks and ridges stretch indefinitely away on either hand.
The lofty, icy Shasta, towering high above all, seems but an hour's walk
from you, though the distance in an air-line is about sixty miles.</p>
<p>The "Big Meadows" lie near the foot of Lassen's Butte, a beautiful
spacious basin set in the heart of the richly forested mountains, scarcely
surpassed in the grandeur of its surroundings by Tahoe. During the Glacial
Period it was a mer de glace, then a lake, and now a level meadow shining
with bountiful springs and streams. In the number and size of its big
spring fountains it excels even Shasta. One of the largest that I measured
forms a lakelet nearly a hundred yards in diameter, and, in the generous
flood it sends forth offers one of the most telling symbols of Nature's
affluence to be found in the mountains.</p>
<p>The great wilds of our country, once held to be boundless and
inexhaustible, are being rapidly invaded and overrun in every direction,
and everything destructible in them is being destroyed. How far
destruction may go it is not easy to guess. Every landscape, low and high,
seems doomed to be trampled and harried. Even the sky is not safe from
scath—blurred and blackened whole summers together with the smoke of
fires that devour the woods.</p>
<p>The Shasta region is still a fresh unspoiled wilderness, accessible and
available for travelers of every kind and degree. Would it not then be a
fine thing to set it apart like the Yellowstone and Yosemite as a National
Park for the welfare and benefit of all mankind, preserving its fountains
and forests and all its glad life in primeval beauty? Very little of the
region can ever be more valuable for any other use—certainly not for
gold nor for grain. No private right or interest need suffer, and
thousands yet unborn would come from far and near and bless the country
for its wise and benevolent forethought.</p>
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<h2> VI. The City of the Saints <SPAN href="#linknote-8" name="linknoteref-8" id="linknoteref-8"><small>8</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>The mountains rise grandly round about this curious city, the Zion of the
new Saints, so grandly that the city itself is hardly visible. The
Wahsatch Range, snow-laden and adorned with glacier-sculpted peaks,
stretches continuously along the eastern horizon, forming the boundary of
the Great Salt Lake Basin; while across the valley of the Jordan
southwestward from here, you behold the Oquirrh Range, about as snowy and
lofty as the Wahsatch. To the northwest your eye skims the blue levels of
the great lake, out of the midst of which rise island mountains, and
beyond, at a distance of fifty miles, is seen the picturesque wall of the
lakeside mountains blending with the lake and the sky.</p>
<p>The glacial developments of these superb ranges are sharply sculptured
peaks and crests, with ample wombs between them where the ancient snows of
the glacial period were collected and transformed into ice, and ranks of
profound shadowy canyons, while moraines commensurate with the lofty
fountains extend into the valleys, forming far the grandest series of
glacial monuments I have yet seen this side of the Sierra.</p>
<p>In beginning this letter I meant to describe the city, but in the company
of these noble old mountains, it is not easy to bend one's attention upon
anything else. Salt Lake cannot be called a very beautiful town, neither
is there anything ugly or repulsive about it. From the slopes of the
Wahsatch foothills, or old lake benches, toward Fort Douglas it is seen to
occupy the sloping gravelly delta of City Creek, a fine, hearty stream
that comes pouring from the snows of the mountains through a majestic
glacial canyon; and it is just where this stream comes forth into the
light on the edge of the valley of the Jordan that the Mormons have built
their new Jerusalem.</p>
<p>At first sight there is nothing very marked in the external appearance of
the town excepting its leafiness. Most of the houses are veiled with
trees, as if set down in the midst of one grand orchard; and seen at a
little distance they appear like a field of glacier boulders overgrown
with aspens, such as one often meets in the upper valleys of the
California Sierra, for only the angular roofs are clearly visible.</p>
<p>Perhaps nineteen twentieths of the houses are built of bluish-gray adobe
bricks, and are only one or two stories high, forming fine cottage homes
which promise simple comfort within. They are set well back from the
street, leaving room for a flower garden, while almost every one has a
thrifty orchard at the sides and around the back. The gardens are laid out
with great simplicity, indicating love for flowers by people comparatively
poor, rather than deliberate efforts of the rich for showy artistic
effects. They are like the pet gardens of children, about as artless and
humble, and harmonize with the low dwellings to which they belong. In
almost every one you find daisies, and mint, and lilac bushes, and rows of
plain English tulips. Lilacs and tulips are the most characteristic
flowers, and nowhere have I seen them in greater perfection. As Oakland is
pre-eminently a city of roses, so is this Mormon Saints' Rest a city of
lilacs and tulips. The flowers, at least, are saintly, and they are surely
loved. Scarce a home, however obscure, is without them, and the simple,
unostentatious manner in which they are planted and gathered in pots and
boxes about the windows shows how truly they are prized.</p>
<p>The surrounding commons, the marshy levels of the Jordan, and dry,
gravelly lake benches on the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills are now gay
with wild flowers, chief among which are a species of phlox, with an
abundance of rich pink corollas, growing among sagebrush in showy tufts,
and a beautiful papilionaceous plant, with silky leaves and large clusters
of purple flowers, banner, wings, and keel exquisitely shaded, a
mertensia, hydrophyllum, white boragewort, orthocarpus, several species of
violets, and a tall scarlet gilia. It is delightful to see how eagerly all
these are sought after by the children, both boys and girls. Every day
that I have gone botanizing I have met groups of little Latter-Days with
their precious bouquets, and at such times it was hard to believe the
dark, bloody passages of Mormon history.</p>
<p>But to return to the city. As soon as City Creek approaches its upper
limit its waters are drawn off right and left, and distributed in brisk
rills, one on each side of every street, the regular slopes of the delta
upon which the city is built being admirably adapted to this system of
street irrigation. These streams are all pure and sparkling in the upper
streets, but, as they are used to some extent as sewers, they soon
manifest the consequence of contact with civilization, though the speed of
their flow prevents their becoming offensive, and little Saints not over
particular may be seen drinking from them everywhere.</p>
<p>The streets are remarkably wide and the buildings low, making them appear
yet wider than they really are. Trees are planted along the sidewalks—elms,
poplars, maples, and a few catalpas and hawthorns; yet they are mostly
small and irregular, and nowhere form avenues half so leafy and imposing
as one would be led to expect. Even in the business streets there is but
little regularity in the buildings—now a row of plain adobe
structures, half store, half dwelling, then a high mercantile block of red
brick or sandstone, and again a row of adobe cottages nestled back among
apple trees. There is one immense store with its sign upon the roof, in
letters big enough to be read miles away, "Z.C.M.I." (Zion's Co-operative
Mercantile Institution), while many a small, codfishy corner grocery bears
the legend "Holiness to the Lord, Z.C.M.I." But little evidence will you
find in this Zion, with its fifteen thousand souls, of great wealth,
though many a Saint is seeking it as keenly as any Yankee Gentile. But on
the other hand, searching throughout all the city, you will not find any
trace of squalor or extreme poverty.</p>
<p>Most of the women I have chanced to meet, especially those from the
country, have a weary, repressed look, as if for the sake of their
religion they were patiently carrying burdens heavier than they were well
able to bear. But, strange as it must seem to Gentiles, the many wives of
one man, instead of being repelled from one another by jealousy, appear to
be drawn all the closer together, as if the real marriage existed between
the wives only. Groups of half a dozen or so may frequently be seen on the
streets in close conversation, looking as innocent and unspeculative as a
lot of heifers, while the masculine Saints pass them by as if they
belonged to a distinct species. In the Tabernacle last Sunday, one of the
elders of the church, in discoursing upon the good things of life, the
possessions of Latter-Day Saints, enumerated fruitful fields, horses,
cows, wives, and implements, the wives being placed as above, between the
cows and implements, without receiving any superior emphasis.</p>
<p>Polygamy, as far as I have observed, exerts a more degrading influence
upon husbands that upon wives. The love of the latter finds expression in
flowers and children, while the former seem to be rendered incapable of
pure love of anything. The spirit of Mormonism is intensely exclusive and
un-American. A more withdrawn, compact, sealed-up body of people could
hardly be found on the face of the earth than is gathered here,
notwithstanding railroads, telegraphs, and the penetrating lights that go
sifting through society everywhere in this revolutionary, question-asking
century. Most of the Mormons I have met seem to be in a state of perpetual
apology, which can hardly be fully accounted for by Gentile attacks. At
any rate it is unspeakably offensive to any free man.</p>
<p>"We Saints," they are continually saying, "are not as bad as we are
called. We don't murder those who differ with us, but rather treat them
with all charity. You may go through our town night or day and no harm
shall befall you. Go into our houses and you will be well used. We are as
glad as you are that Lee was punished," etc. While taking a saunter the
other evening we were overtaken by a characteristic Mormon, "an umble
man," who made us a very deferential salute and then walked on with us
about half a mile. We discussed whatsoever of Mormon doctrines came to
mind with American freedom, which he defended as best he could, speaking
in an excited but deprecating tone. When hard pressed he would say: "I
don't understand these deep things, but the elders do. I'm only an umble
tradesman." In taking leave he thanked us for the pleasure of our
querulous conversation, removed his hat, and bowed lowly in a sort of
Uriah Heep manner, and then went to his humble home. How many humble wives
it contained, we did not learn.</p>
<p>Fine specimens of manhood are by no means wanting, but the number of
people one meets here who have some physical defect or who attract one's
attention by some mental peculiarity that manifests itself through the
eyes, is astonishingly great in so small a city. It would evidently be
unfair to attribute these defects to Mormonism, though Mormonism has
undoubtedly been the magnet that elected and drew these strange people
together from all parts of the world.</p>
<p>But however "the peculiar doctrines" and "peculiar practices" of Mormonism
have affected the bodies and the minds of the old Saints, the little
Latter-Day boys and girls are as happy and natural as possible, running
wild, with plenty of good hearty parental indulgence, playing, fighting,
gathering flowers in delightful innocence; and when we consider that most
of the parents have been drawn from the thickly settled portion of the Old
World, where they have long suffered the repression of hunger and hard
toil, the Mormon children, "Utah's best crop," seem remarkably bright and
promising.</p>
<p>From children one passes naturally into the blooming wilderness, to the
pure religion of sunshine and snow, where all the good and the evil of
this strange people lifts and vanishes from the mind like mist from the
mountains.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"></SPAN></p>
<h2> VII. A Great Storm in Utah <SPAN href="#linknote-9" name="linknoteref-9" id="linknoteref-9"><small>9</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>Utah has just been blessed with one of the grandest storms I have ever
beheld this side of the Sierra. The mountains are laden with fresh snow;
wild streams are swelling and booming adown the canyons, and out in the
valley of the Jordan a thousand rain-pools are gleaming in the sun.</p>
<p>With reference to the development of fertile storms bearing snow and rain,
the greater portion of the calendar springtime of Utah has been winter. In
all the upper canyons of the mountains the snow is now from five to ten
feet deep or more, and most of it has fallen since March. Almost every
other day during the last three weeks small local storms have been falling
on the Wahsatch and Oquirrh Mountains, while the Jordan Valley remained
dry and sun-filled. But on the afternoon of Thursday, the 17th ultimo,
wind, rain, and snow filled the whole basin, driving wildly over valley
and plain from range to range, bestowing their benefactions in most
cordial and harmonious storm-measures. The oldest Saints say they have
never witnessed a more violent storm of this kind since the first
settlement of Zion, and while the gale from the northwest, with which the
storm began, was rocking their adobe walls, uprooting trees and darkening
the streets with billows of dust and sand, some of them seemed inclined to
guess that the terrible phenomenon was one of the signs of the times of
which their preachers are so constantly reminding them, the beginning of
the outpouring of the treasured wrath of the Lord upon the Gentiles for
the killing of Joseph Smith. To me it seemed a cordial outpouring of
Nature's love; but it is easy to differ with salt Latter-Days in
everything—storms, wives, politics, and religion.</p>
<p>About an hour before the storm reached the city I was so fortunate as to
be out with a friend on the banks of the Jordan enjoying the scenery.
Clouds, with peculiarly restless and self-conscious gestures, were
marshaling themselves along the mountain-tops, and sending out long,
overlapping wings across the valley; and even where no cloud was visible,
an obscuring film absorbed the sunlight, giving rise to a cold, bluish
darkness. Nevertheless, distant objects along the boundaries of the
landscape were revealed with wonderful distinctness in this weird,
subdued, cloud-sifted light. The mountains, in particular, with the
forests on their flanks, their mazy lacelike canyons, the wombs of the
ancient glaciers, and their marvelous profusion of ornate sculpture, were
most impressively manifest. One would fancy that a man might be clearly
seen walking on the snow at a distance of twenty or thirty miles.</p>
<p>While we were reveling in this rare, ungarish grandeur, turning from range
to range, studying the darkening sky and listening to the still small
voices of the flowers at our feet, some of the denser clouds came down,
crowning and wreathing the highest peaks and dropping long gray fringes
whose smooth linear structure showed that snow was beginning to fall. Of
these partial storms there were soon ten or twelve, arranged in two rows,
while the main Jordan Valley between them lay as yet in profound calm. At
4:30 p.m. a dark brownish cloud appeared close down on the plain towards
the lake, extending from the northern extremity of the Oquirrh Range in a
northeasterly direction as far as the eye could reach. Its peculiar color
and structure excited our attention without enabling us to decide
certainly as to its character, but we were not left long in doubt, for in
a few minutes it came sweeping over the valley in a wild uproar, a torrent
of wind thick with sand and dust, advancing with a most majestic front,
rolling and overcombing like a gigantic sea-wave. Scarcely was it in plain
sight ere it was upon us, racing across the Jordan, over the city, and up
the slopes of the Wahsatch, eclipsing all the landscapes in its course—the
bending trees, the dust streamers, and the wild onrush of everything
movable giving it an appreciable visibility that rendered it grand and
inspiring.</p>
<p>This gale portion of the storm lasted over an hour, then down came the
blessed rain and the snow all through the night and the next day, the snow
and rain alternating and blending in the valley. It is long since I have
seen snow coming into a city. The crystal flakes falling in the foul
streets was a pitiful sight.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the vaunted refining influences of towns, purity of all
kinds—pure hearts, pure streams, pure snow—must here be
exposed to terrible trials. City Creek, coming from its high glacial
fountains, enters the streets of this Mormon Zion pure as an angel, but
how does it leave it? Even roses and lilies in gardens most loved are
tainted with a thousand impurities as soon as they unfold. I heard Brigham
Young in the Tabernacle the other day warning his people that if they did
not mend their manners angels would not come into their houses, though
perchance they might be sauntering by with little else to do than chat
with them. Possibly there may be Salt Lake families sufficiently pure for
angel society, but I was not pleased with the reception they gave the
small snow angels that God sent among them the other night. Only the
children hailed them with delight. The old Latter-Days seemed to shun
them. I should like to see how Mr. Young, the Lake Prophet, would meet
such messengers.</p>
<p>But to return to the storm. Toward the evening of the 18th it began to
wither. The snowy skirts of the Wahsatch Mountains appeared beneath the
lifting fringes of the clouds, and the sun shone out through colored
windows, producing one of the most glorious after-storm effects I ever
witnessed. Looking across the Jordan, the gray sagey slopes from the base
of the Oquirrh Mountains were covered with a thick, plushy cloth of gold,
soft and ethereal as a cloud, not merely tinted and gilded like a rock
with autumn sunshine, but deeply muffled beyond recognition. Surely
nothing in heaven, nor any mansion of the Lord in all his worlds, could be
more gloriously carpeted. Other portions of the plain were flushed with
red and purple, and all the mountains and the clouds above them were
painted in corresponding loveliness. Earth and sky, round and round the
entire landscape, was one ravishing revelation of color, infinitely varied
and interblended.</p>
<p>I have seen many a glorious sunset beneath lifting storm clouds on the
mountains, but nothing comparable with this. I felt as if new-arrived in
some other far-off world. The mountains, the plains, the sky, all seemed
new. Other experiences seemed but to have prepared me for this, as souls
are prepared for heaven. To describe the colors on a single mountain
would, if it were possible at all, require many a volume—purples,
and yellows, and delicious pearly grays divinely toned and interblended,
and so richly put on one seemed to be looking down through the ground as
through a sky. The disbanding clouds lingered lovingly about the
mountains, filling the canyons like tinted wool, rising and drooping
around the topmost peaks, fondling their rugged bases, or, sailing
alongside, trailed their lustrous fringes through the pines as if taking a
last view of their accomplished work. Then came darkness, and the glorious
day was done.</p>
<p>This afternoon the Utah mountains and valleys seem to belong to our own
very world again. They are covered with common sunshine. Down here on the
banks of the Jordan, larks and redwings are swinging on the rushes; the
balmy air is instinct with immortal life; the wild flowers, the grass, and
the farmers' grain are fresh as if, like the snow, they had come out of
heaven, and the last of the angel clouds are fleeing from the mountains.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"></SPAN></p>
<h2> VIII. Bathing in Salt Lake <SPAN href="#linknote-10" name="linknoteref-10" id="linknoteref-10"><small>10</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>When the north wind blows, bathing in Salt Lake is a glorious baptism, for
then it is all wildly awake with waves, blooming like a prairie in snowy
crystal foam. Plunging confidently into the midst of the grand uproar you
are hugged and welcomed, and swim without effort, rocking and heaving up
and down, in delightful rhythm, while the winds sing in chorus and the
cool, fragrant brine searches every fiber of your body; and at length you
are tossed ashore with a glad Godspeed, braced and salted and clean as a
saint.</p>
<p>The nearest point on the shoreline is distant about ten miles from Salt
Lake City, and is almost inaccessible on account of the boggy character of
the ground, but, by taking the Western Utah Railroad, at a distance of
twenty miles you reach what is called Lake Point, where the shore is
gravelly and wholesome and abounds in fine retreating bays that seem to
have been made on purpose for bathing. Here the northern peaks of the
Oquirrh Range plant their feet in the clear blue brine, with fine curbing
insteps, leaving no space for muddy levels. The crystal brightness of the
water, the wild flowers, and the lovely mountain scenery make this a
favorite summer resort for pleasure and health seekers. Numerous excursion
trains are run from the city, and parties, some of them numbering upwards
of a thousand, come to bathe, and dance, and roam the flowery hillsides
together.</p>
<p>But at the time of my first visit in May, I fortunately found myself
alone. The hotel and bathhouse, which form the chief improvements of the
place, were sleeping in winter silence, notwithstanding the year was in
full bloom. It was one of those genial sun-days when flowers and flies
come thronging to the light, and birds sing their best. The mountain
ranges, stretching majestically north and south, were piled with pearly
cumuli, the sky overhead was pure azure, and the wind-swept lake was all
aroll and aroar with whitecaps.</p>
<p>I sauntered along the shore until I came to a sequestered cove, where
buttercups and wild peas were blooming close down to the limit reached by
the waves. Here, I thought, is just the place for a bath; but the breakers
seemed terribly boisterous and forbidding as they came rolling up the
beach, or dashed white against the rocks that bounded the cove on the
east. The outer ranks, ever broken, ever builded, formed a magnificent
rampart, sculptured and corniced like the hanging wall of a bergschrund,
and appeared hopelessly insurmountable, however easily one might ride the
swelling waves beyond. I feasted awhile on their beauty, watching their
coming in from afar like faithful messengers, to tell their stories one by
one; then I turned reluctantly away, to botanize and wait a calm. But the
calm did not come that day, nor did I wait long. In an hour or two I was
back again to the same little cove. The waves still sang the old storm
song, and rose in high crystal walls, seemingly hard enough to be cut in
sections, like ice.</p>
<p>Without any definite determination I found myself undressed, as if some
one else had taken me in hand; and while one of the largest waves was
ringing out its message and spending itself on the beach, I ran out with
open arms to the next, ducked beneath its breaking top, and got myself
into right lusty relationship with the brave old lake. Away I sped in
free, glad motion, as if, like a fish, I had been afloat all my life, now
low out of sight in the smooth, glassy valleys, now bounding aloft on firm
combing crests, while the crystal foam beat against my breast with keen,
crisp clashing, as if composed of pure salt. I bowed to every wave, and
each lifted me right royally to its shoulders, almost setting me erect on
my feet, while they all went speeding by like living creatures, blooming
and rejoicing in the brightness of the day, and chanting the history of
their grand mountain home.</p>
<p>A good deal of nonsense has been written concerning the difficulty of
swimming in this heavy water. "One's head would go down, and heels come
up, and the acrid brine would burn like fire." I was conscious only of a
joyous exhilaration, my limbs seemingly heeding their own business,
without any discomfort or confusion; so much so, that without previous
knowledge my experience on this occasion would not have led me to detect
anything peculiar. In calm weather, however, the sustaining power of the
water might probably be more marked. This was by far the most exciting and
effective wave excursion I ever made this side of the Rocky Mountains; and
when at its close I was heaved ashore among the sunny grasses and flowers,
I found myself a new creature indeed, and went bounding along the beach
with blood all aglow, reinforced by the best salts of the mountains, and
ready for any race.</p>
<p>Since the completion of the transcontinental and Utah railways, this
magnificent lake in the heart of the continent has become as accessible as
any watering-place on either coast; and I am sure that thousands of
travelers, sick and well, would throng its shores every summer were its
merits but half known. Lake Point is only an hour or two from the city,
and has hotel accommodations and a steamboat for excursions; and then,
besides the bracing waters, the climate is delightful. The mountains rise
into the cool sky furrowed with canyons almost yosemitic in grandeur, and
filled with a glorious profusion of flowers and trees. Lovers of science,
lovers of wildness, lovers of pure rest will find here more than they may
hope for.</p>
<p>As for the Mormons one meets, however their doctrines be regarded, they
will be found as rich in human kindness as any people in all our broad
land, while the dark memories that cloud their earlier history will vanish
from the mind as completely as when we bathe in the fountain azure of the
Sierra.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"></SPAN></p>
<h2> IX. Mormon Lilies <SPAN href="#linknote-11" name="linknoteref-11" id="linknoteref-11"><small>11</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>Lilies are rare in Utah; so also are their companions the ferns and
orchids, chiefly on account of the fiery saltness of the soil and climate.
You may walk the deserts of the Great Basin in the bloom time of the year,
all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the snowy Wahsatch, and your
eyes will be filled with many a gay malva, and poppy, and abronia, and
cactus, but you may not see a single true lily, and only a very few
liliaceous plants of any kind. Not even in the cool, fresh glens of the
mountains will you find these favorite flowers, though some of these
desert ranges almost rival the Sierra in height. Nevertheless, in the
building and planting of this grand Territory the lilies were not
forgotten. Far back in the dim geologic ages, when the sediments of the
old seas were being gathered and outspread in smooth sheets like leaves of
a book, and when these sediments became dry land, and were baked and
crumbled into the sky as mountain ranges; when the lava-floods of the Fire
Period were being lavishly poured forth from innumerable rifts and
craters; when the ice of the Glacial Period was laid like a mantle over
every mountain and valley—throughout all these immensely protracted
periods, in the throng of these majestic operations, Nature kept her
flower children in mind. She considered the lilies, and, while planting
the plains with sage and the hills with cedar, she has covered at least
one mountain with golden erythroniums and fritillarias as its crowning
glory, as if willing to show what she could do in the lily line even here.</p>
<p>Looking southward from the south end of Salt Lake, the two northmost peaks
of the Oquirrh Range are seen swelling calmly into the cool sky without
any marked character, excepting only their snow crowns, and a few
weedy-looking patches of spruce and fir, the simplicity of their slopes
preventing their real loftiness from being appreciated. Gray, sagey plains
circle around their bases, and up to a height of a thousand feet or more
their sides are tinged with purple, which I afterwards found is produced
by a close growth of dwarf oak just coming into leaf. Higher you may
detect faint tintings of green on a gray ground, from young grasses and
sedges; then come the dark pine woods filling glacial hollows, and over
all the smooth crown of snow.</p>
<p>While standing at their feet, the other day, shortly after my memorable
excursion among the salt waves of the lake, I said: "Now I shall have
another baptism. I will bathe in the high sky, among cool wind-waves from
the snow." From the more southerly of the two peaks a long ridge comes
down, bent like a bow, one end in the hot plains, the other in the snow of
the summit. After carefully scanning the jagged towers and battlements
with which it is roughened, I determined to make it my way, though it
presented but a feeble advertisement of its floral wealth. This apparent
barrenness, however, made no great objection just then, for I was scarce
hoping for flowers, old or new, or even for fine scenery. I wanted in
particular to learn what the Oquirrh rocks were made of, what trees
composed the curious patches of forest; and, perhaps more than all, I was
animated by a mountaineer's eagerness to get my feet into the snow once
more, and my head into the clear sky, after lying dormant all winter at
the level of the sea.</p>
<p>But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. I had
not gone more than a mile from Lake Point ere I found the way profusely
decked with flowers, mostly compositae and purple leguminosae, a hundred
corollas or more to the square yard, with a corresponding abundance of
winged blossoms above them, moths and butterflies, the leguminosae of the
insect kingdom. This floweriness is maintained with delightful variety all
the way up through rocks and bushes to the snow—violets, lilies,
gilias, oenotheras, wallflowers, ivesias, saxifrages, smilax, and miles of
blooming bushes, chiefly azalea, honeysuckle, brier rose, buckthorn, and
eriogonum, all meeting and blending in divine accord.</p>
<p>Two liliaceous plants in particular, Erythronium grandiflorum and
Fritillaria pudica, are marvelously beautiful and abundant. Never before,
in all my walks, have I met so glorious a throng of these fine showy
liliaceous plants. The whole mountainside was aglow with them, from a
height of fifty-five hundred feet to the very edge of the snow. Although
remarkably fragile, both in form and in substance, they are endowed with
plenty of deep-seated vitality, enabling them to grow in all kinds of
places—down in leafy glens, in the lee of wind-beaten ledges, and
beneath the brushy tangles of azalea, and oak, and prickly roses—everywhere
forming the crowning glory of the flowers. If the neighboring mountains
are as rich in lilies, then this may well be called the Lily Range.</p>
<p>After climbing about a thousand feet above the plain I came to a
picturesque mass of rock, cropping up through the underbrush on one of the
steepest slopes of the mountain. After examining some tufts of grass and
saxifrage that were growing in its fissured surface, I was going to pass
it by on the upper side, where the bushes were more open, but a company
composed of the two lilies I have mentioned were blooming on the lower
side, and though they were as yet out of sight, I suddenly changed my mind
and went down to meet them, as if attracted by the ringing of their bells.
They were growing in a small, nestlike opening between the rock and the
bushes, and both the erythronium and the fritillaria were in full flower.
These were the first of the species I had seen, and I need not try to tell
the joy they made. They are both lowly plants,—lowly as violets,—the
tallest seldom exceeding six inches in height, so that the most searching
winds that sweep the mountains scarce reach low enough to shake their
bells.</p>
<p>The fritillaria has five or six linear, obtuse leaves, put on irregularly
near the bottom of the stem, which is usually terminated by one large
bell-shaped flower; but its more beautiful companion, the erythronium, has
two radical leaves only, which are large and oval, and shine like glass.
They extend horizontally in opposite directions, and form a beautiful
glossy ground, over which the one large down-looking flower is swung from
a simple stem, the petals being strongly recurved, like those of Lilium
superbum. Occasionally a specimen is met which has from two to five
flowers hung in a loose panicle. People oftentimes travel far to see
curious plants like the carnivorous darlingtonia, the fly-catcher, the
walking fern, etc. I hardly know how the little bells I have been
describing would be regarded by seekers of this class, but every true
flower-lover who comes to consider these Utah lilies will surely be well
rewarded, however long the way.</p>
<p>Pushing on up the rugged slopes, I found many delightful seclusions—moist
nooks at the foot of cliffs, and lilies in every one of them, not growing
close together like daisies, but well apart, with plenty of room for their
bells to swing free and ring. I found hundreds of them in full bloom
within two feet of the snow. In winter only the bulbs are alive, sleeping
deep beneath the ground, like field mice in their nests; then the
snow-flowers fall above them, lilies over lilies, until the spring winds
blow, and these winter lilies wither in turn; then the hiding erythroniums
and fritillarias rise again, responsive to the first touches of the sun.</p>
<p>I noticed the tracks of deer in many places among the lily gardens, and at
the height of about seven thousand feet I came upon the fresh trail of a
flock of wild sheep, showing that these fine mountaineers still flourish
here above the range of Mormon rifles. In the planting of her wild
gardens, Nature takes the feet and teeth of her flocks into account, and
makes use of them to trim and cultivate, and keep them in order, as the
bark and buds of the tree are tended by woodpeckers and linnets.</p>
<p>The evergreen woods consist, as far as I observed, of two species, a
spruce and a fir, standing close together, erect and arrowy in a thrifty,
compact growth; but they are quite small, say from six to twelve or
fourteen inches in diameter, and bout forty feet in height. Among their
giant relatives of the Sierra the very largest would seem mere saplings. A
considerable portion of the south side of the mountain is planted with a
species of aspen, called "quaking asp" by the wood-choppers. It seems to
be quite abundant on many of the eastern mountains of the basin, and forms
a marked feature of their upper forests.</p>
<p>Wading up the curves of the summit was rather toilsome, for the snow,
which was softened by the blazing sun, was from ten to twenty feet deep,
but the view was one of the most impressively sublime I ever beheld.
Snowy, ice-sculptured ranges bounded the horizon all around, while the
great lake, eighty miles long and fifty miles wide, lay fully revealed
beneath a lily sky. The shorelines, marked by a ribbon of white sand, were
seen sweeping around many a bay and promontory in elegant curves, and
picturesque islands rising to mountain heights, and some of them capped
with pearly cumuli. And the wide prairie of water glowing in the gold and
purple of evening presented all the colors that tint the lips of shells
and the petals of lilies—the most beautiful lake this side of the
Rocky Mountains. Utah Lake, lying thirty-five miles to the south, was in
full sight also, and the river Jordan, which links the two together, may
be traced in silvery gleams throughout its whole course.</p>
<p>Descending the mountain, I followed the windings of the main central glen
on the north, gathering specimens of the cones and sprays of the
evergreens, and most of the other new plants I had met; but the lilies
formed the crowning glory of my bouquet—the grandest I had carried
in many a day. I reached the hotel on the lake about dusk with all my
fresh riches, and my first mountain ramble in Utah was accomplished. On my
way back to the city, the next day, I met a grave old Mormon with whom I
had previously held some Latter-Day discussions. I shook my big handful of
lilies in his face and shouted, "Here are the true saints, ancient and
Latter-Day, enduring forever!" After he had recovered from his
astonishment he said, "They are nice."</p>
<p>The other liliaceous plants I have met in Utah are two species of
zigadenas, Fritillaria atropurpurea, Calochortus Nuttallii, and three or
four handsome alliums. One of these lilies, the calochortus, several
species of which are well known in California as the "Mariposa tulips,"
has received great consideration at the hands of the Mormons, for to it
hundreds of them owe their lives. During the famine years between 1853 and
1858, great destitution prevailed, especially in the southern settlements,
on account of drouth and grasshoppers, and throughout one hungry winter in
particular, thousands of the people subsisted chiefly on the bulbs of the
tulips, called "sego" by the Indians, who taught them its use.</p>
<p>Liliaceous women and girls are rare among the Mormons. They have seen too
much hard, repressive toil to admit of the development of lily beauty
either in form or color. In general they are thickset, with large feet and
hands, and with sun-browned faces, often curiously freckled like the
petals of Fritillaria atropurpurea. They are fruit rather than flower—good
brown bread. But down in the San Pitch Valley at Gunnison, I discovered a
genuine lily, happily named Lily Young. She is a granddaughter of Brigham
Young, slender and graceful, with lily-white cheeks tinted with clear
rose, She was brought up in the old Salt Lake Zion House, but by some
strange chance has been transplanted to this wilderness, where she blooms
alone, the "Lily of San Pitch." Pitch is an old Indian, who, I suppose,
pitched into the settlers and thus acquired fame enough to give name to
the valley. Here I feel uneasy about the name of this lily, for the
compositors have a perverse trick of making me say all kinds of absurd
things wholly unwarranted by plain copy, and I fear that the "Lily of San
Pitch" will appear in print as the widow of Sam Patch. But, however this
may be, among my memories of this strange land, that Oquirrh mountain,
with its golden lilies, will ever rise in clear relief, and associated
with them will always be the Mormon lily of San Pitch.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"></SPAN></p>
<h2> X. The San Gabriel Valley <SPAN href="#linknote-12" name="linknoteref-12" id="linknoteref-12"><small>12</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>The sun valley of San Gabriel is one of the brightest spots to be found in
all our bright land, and most of its brightness is wildness—wild
south sunshine in a basin rimmed about with mountains and hills.
Cultivation is not wholly wanting, for here are the choices of all the Los
Angeles orange groves, but its glorious abundance of ripe sun and soil is
only beginning to be coined into fruit. The drowsy bits of cultivation
accomplished by the old missionaries and the more recent efforts of
restless Americans are scarce as yet visible, and when comprehended in
general views form nothing more than mere freckles on the smooth brown
bosom of the Valley.</p>
<p>I entered the sunny south half a month ago, coming down along the cool
sea, and landing at Santa Monica. An hour's ride over stretches of bare,
brown plain, and through cornfields and orange groves, brought me to the
handsome, conceited little town of Los Angeles, where one finds Spanish
adobes and Yankee shingles meeting and overlapping in very curious
antagonism. I believe there are some fifteen thousand people here, and
some of their buildings are rather fine, but the gardens and the sky
interested me more. A palm is seen here and there poising its royal crown
in the rich light, and the banana, with its magnificent ribbon leaves,
producing a marked tropical effect—not semi-tropical, as they are so
fond of saying here, while speaking of their fruits. Nothing I have
noticed strikes me as semi, save the brusque little bits of civilization
with which the wilderness is checkered. These are semi-barbarous or less;
everything else in the region has a most exuberant pronounced wholeness.
The city held me but a short time, for the San Gabriel Mountains were in
sight, advertising themselves grandly along the northern sky, and I was
eager to make my way into their midst.</p>
<p>At Pasadena I had the rare good fortune to meet my old friend Doctor
Congar, with whom I had studied chemistry and mathematics fifteen years
ago. He exalted San Gabriel above all other inhabitable valleys, old and
new, on the face of the globe. "I have rambled," said he, "ever since we
left college, tasting innumerable climates, and trying the advantages
offered by nearly every new State and Territory. Here I have made my home,
and here I shall stay while I live. The geographical position is exactly
right, soil and climate perfect, and everything that heart can wish comes
to our efforts—flowers, fruits, milk and honey, and plenty of money.
And there," he continued, pointing just beyond his own precious
possessions, "is a block of land that is for sale; buy it and be my
neighbor; plant five acres with orange trees, and by the time your last
mountain is climbed their fruit will be your fortune." He then led my down
the valley, through the few famous old groves in full bearing, and on the
estate of Mr. Wilson showed me a ten-acre grove eighteen years old, the
last year's crop from which was sold for twenty thousand dollars. "There,"
said he, with triumphant enthusiasm, "what do you think of that? Two
thousand dollars per acre per annum for land worth only one hundred
dollars."</p>
<p>The number of orange trees planted to the acre is usually from forty-nine
to sixty-nine; they then stand from twenty-five to thirty feet apart each
way, and, thus planted, thrive and continue fruitful to a comparatively
great age. J. DeBarth Shorb, an enthusiastic believer in Los Angeles and
oranges, says, "We have trees on our property fully forty years old, and
eighteen inches in diameter, that are still vigorous and yielding immense
crops of fruit, although they are only twenty feet apart." Seedlings are
said to begin to bear remunerative crops in their tenth year, but by
superior cultivation this long unproductive period my be somewhat
lessened, while trees from three to five years old may be purchased from
the nurserymen, so that the newcomer who sets out an orchard may begin to
gather fruit by the fifth or sixth year. When first set out, and for some
years afterward, the trees are irrigated by making rings of earth around
them, which are connected with small ditches, through which the water is
distributed to each tree. Or, where the ground is nearly level, the whole
surface is flooded from time to time as required. From 309 trees, twelve
years old from the seed, DeBarth Shorb says that in the season of 1874 he
obtained an average of $20.50 per tree, or $1435 per acre, over and above
the cost of transportation to San Francisco, commission on sales, etc. He
considers $1000 per acre a fair average at present prices, after the trees
have reached the age of twelve years. The average price throughout the
county for the last five years has been about $20 or $25 per thousand;
and, inasmuch as the area adapted to orange culture is limited, it is
hoped that this price may not greatly fall for many years.</p>
<p>The lemon and lime are also cultivated here to some extent, and
considerable attention is now being given to the Florida banana, and the
olive, almond, and English walnut. But the orange interest heavily
overshadows every other, while vines have of late years been so
unremunerative they are seldom mentioned.</p>
<p>This is pre-eminently a fruit land, but the fame of its productions has in
some way far outrun the results that have as yet been attained.
Experiments have been tried, and good beginnings made, but the number of
really valuable, well-established groves is scarce as one to fifty,
compared with the newly planted. Many causes, however, have combined of
late to give the business a wonderful impetus, and new orchards are being
made every day, while the few old groves, aglow with golden fruit, are the
burning and shining lights that direct and energize the sanguine
newcomers.</p>
<p>After witnessing the bad effect of homelessness, developed to so
destructive an extent in California, it would reassure every lover of his
race to see the hearty home-building going on here and the blessed
contentment that naturally follows it. Travel-worn pioneers, who have been
tossed about like boulders in flood time, are thronging hither as to a
kind of a terrestrial heaven, resolved to rest. They build, and plant, and
settle, and so come under natural influences. When a man plants a tree he
plants himself. Every root is an anchor, over which he rests with grateful
interest, and becomes sufficiently calm to feel the joy of living. He
necessarily makes the acquaintance of the sun and the sky. Favorite trees
fill his mind, and, while tending them like children, and accepting the
benefits they bring, he becomes himself a benefactor. He sees down through
the brown common ground teeming with colored fruits, as if it were
transparent, and learns to bring them to the surface. What he wills he can
raise by true enchantment. With slips and rootlets, his magic wands, they
appear at his bidding. These, and the seeds he plants, are his prayers,
and by them brought into right relations with God, he works grander
miracles every day than ever were written.</p>
<p>The Pasadena Colony, located on the southwest corner of the well-known San
Pasqual Rancho, is scarce three years old, but it is growing rapidly, like
a pet tree, and already forms one of the best contributions to culture yet
accomplished in the county. It now numbers about sixty families, mostly
drawn from the better class of vagabond pioneers, who, during their
rolling-stone days have managed to gather sufficient gold moss to purchase
from ten to forty acres of land. They are perfectly hilarious in their
newly found life, work like ants in a sunny noonday, and, looking far into
the future, hopefully count their orange chicks ten years or more before
they are hatched; supporting themselves in the meantime on the produce of
a few acres of alfalfa, together with garden vegetables and the
quick-growing fruits, such as figs, grapes, apples, etc., the whole
reinforced by the remaining dollars of their land purchase money. There is
nothing more remarkable in the character of the colony than the literary
and scientific taste displayed. The conversation of most I have met here
is seasoned with a smack of mental ozone, Attic salt, which struck me as
being rare among the tillers of California soil. People of taste and money
in search of a home would do well to prospect the resources of this
aristocratic little colony.</p>
<p>If we look now at these southern valleys in general, it will appear at
once that with all their advantages they lie beyond the reach of poor
settlers, not only on account of the high price of irrigable land—one
hundred dollars per acre and upwards—but because of the scarcity of
labor. A settler with three or four thousand dollars would be penniless
after paying for twenty acres of orange land and building ever so plain a
house, while many years would go by ere his trees yielded an income
adequate to the maintenance of his family.</p>
<p>Nor is there anything sufficiently reviving in the fine climate to form a
reliable inducement for very sick people. Most of this class, from all I
can learn, come here only to die, and surely it is better to die
comfortably at home, avoiding the thousand discomforts of travel, at a
time when they are so heard to bear. It is indeed pitiful to see so many
invalids, already on the verge of the grave, making a painful way to quack
climates, hoping to change age to youth, and the darkening twilight of
their day to morning. No such health-fountain has been found, and this
climate, fine as it is, seems, like most others, to be adapted for well
people only. From all I could find out regarding its influence upon
patients suffering from pulmonary difficulties, it is seldom beneficial to
any great extent in advanced cases. The cold sea winds are less fatal to
this class of sufferers than the corresponding winds further north, but,
notwithstanding they are tempered on their passage inland over warm, dry
ground, they are still more or less injurious.</p>
<p>The summer climate of the fir and pine woods of the Sierra Nevada would, I
think, be found infinitely more reviving; but because these woods have not
been advertised like patent medicines, few seem to think of the spicy,
vivifying influences that pervade their fountain freshness and beauty.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XI. The San Gabriel Mountains <SPAN href="#linknote-13" name="linknoteref-13" id="linknoteref-13"><small>13</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>After saying so much for human culture in my last, perhaps I may now be
allowed a word for wildness—the wildness of this southland, pure and
untamable as the sea.</p>
<p>In the mountains of San Gabriel, overlooking the lowland vines and fruit
groves, Mother Nature is most ruggedly, thornily savage. Not even in the
Sierra have I ever made the acquaintance of mountains more rigidly
inaccessible. The slopes are exceptionally steep and insecure to the foot
of the explorer, however great his strength or skill may be, but thorny
chaparral constitutes their chief defense. With the exception of little
park and garden spots not visible in comprehensive views, the entire
surface is covered with it, from the highest peaks to the plain. It swoops
into every hollow and swells over every ridge, gracefully complying with
the varied topography, in shaggy, ungovernable exuberance, fairly dwarfing
the utmost efforts of human culture out of sight and mind.</p>
<p>But in the very heart of this thorny wilderness, down in the dells, you
may find gardens filled with the fairest flowers, that any child would
love, and unapproachable linns lined with lilies and ferns, where the
ousel builds its mossy hut and sings in chorus with the white falling
water. Bears, also, and panthers, wolves, wildcats; wood rats, squirrels,
foxes, snakes, and innumerable birds, all find grateful homes here, adding
wildness to wildness in glorious profusion and variety.</p>
<p>Where the coast ranges and the Sierra Nevada come together we find a very
complicated system of short ranges, the geology and topography of which is
yet hidden, and many years of laborious study must be given for anything
like a complete interpretation of them. The San Gabriel is one or more of
these ranges, forty or fifty miles long, and half as broad, extending from
the Cajon Pass on the east, to the Santa Monica and Santa Susanna ranges
on the west. San Antonio, the dominating peak, rises towards the eastern
extremity of the range to a height of about six thousand feet, forming a
sure landmark throughout the valley and all the way down to the coast,
without, however, possessing much striking individuality. The whole range,
seen from the plain, with the hot sun beating upon its southern slopes,
wears a terribly forbidding aspect. There is nothing of the grandeur of
snow, or glaciers, or deep forests, to excite curiosity or adventure; no
trace of gardens or waterfalls. From base to summit all seems gray,
barren, silent—dead, bleached bones of mountains, overgrown with
scrubby bushes, like gray moss. But all mountains are full of hidden
beauty, and the next day after my arrival at Pasadena I supplied myself
with bread and eagerly set out to give myself to their keeping.</p>
<p>On the first day of my excursion I went only as far as the mouth of Eaton
Canyon, because the heat was oppressive, and a pair of new shoes were
chafing my feet to such an extent that walking began to be painful. While
looking for a camping ground among the boulder beds of the canyon, I came
upon a strange, dark man of doubtful parentage. He kindly invited me to
camp with him, and led me to his little hut. All my conjectures as to his
nationality failed, and no wonder, since his father was Irish and mother
Spanish, a mixture not often met even in California. He happened to be out
of candles, so we sat in the dark while he gave me a sketch of his life,
which was exceedingly picturesque. Then he showed me his plans for the
future. He was going to settle among these canyon boulders, and make
money, and marry a Spanish woman. People mine for irrigating water along
the foothills as for gold. He is now driving a prospecting tunnel into a
spur of the mountains back of his cabin. "My prospect is good," he said,
"and if I strike a strong flow, I shall soon be worth five or ten thousand
dollars. That flat out there," he continued, referring to a small,
irregular patch of gravelly detritus that had been sorted out and
deposited by Eaton Creek during some flood season, "is large enough for a
nice orange grove, and, after watering my own trees, I can sell water down
the valley; and then the hillside back of the cabin will do for vines, and
I can keep bees, for the white sage and black sage up the mountains is
full of honey. You see, I've got a good thing." All this prospective
affluence in the sunken, boulder-choked flood-bed of Eaton Creek! Most
home-seekers would as soon think of settling on the summit of San Antonio.</p>
<p>Half an hour's easy rambling up the canyon brought me to the foot of "The
Fall," famous throughout the valley settlements as the finest yet
discovered in the range. It is a charming little thing, with a voice sweet
as a songbird's, leaping some thirty-five or forty feet into a round,
mirror pool. The cliff back of it and on both sides is completely covered
with thick, furry mosses, and the white fall shines against the green like
a silver instrument in a velvet case. Here come the Gabriel lads and
lassies from the commonplace orange groves, to make love and gather ferns
and dabble away their hot holidays in the cool pool. They are fortunate in
finding so fresh a retreat so near their homes. It is the Yosemite of San
Gabriel. The walls, though not of the true Yosemite type either in form or
sculpture, rise to a height of nearly two thousand feet. Ferns are
abundant on all the rocks within reach of the spray, and picturesque
maples and sycamores spread a grateful shade over a rich profusion of wild
flowers that grow among the boulders, from the edge of the pool a mile or
more down the dell-like bottom of the valley, the whole forming a charming
little poem of wildness—the vestibule of these shaggy mountain
temples.</p>
<p>The foot of the fall is about a thousand feet above the level of the sea,
and here climbing begins. I made my way out of the valley on the west
side, followed the ridge that forms the western rim of the Eaton Basin to
the summit of one of the principal peaks, thence crossed the middle of the
basin, forcing a way over its many subordinate ridges, and out over the
eastern rim, and from first to last during three days spent in this
excursion, I had to contend with the richest, most self-possessed and
uncompromising chaparral I have ever enjoyed since first my mountaineering
began.</p>
<p>For a hundred feet or so the ascent was practicable only by means of
bosses of the club moss that clings to the rock. Above this the ridge is
weathered away to a slender knife-edge for a distance of two or three
hundred yards, and thence to the summit it is a bristly mane of chaparral.
Here and there small openings occur, commanding grand views of the valley
and beyond to the ocean. These are favorite outlooks and resting places
for bears, wolves, and wildcats. In the densest places I came upon woodrat
villages whose huts were from four to eight feet high, built in the same
style of architecture as those of the muskrats.</p>
<p>The day was nearly done. I reached the summit and I had time to make only
a hasty survey of the topography of the wild basin now outspread maplike
beneath, and to drink in the rare loveliness of the sunlight before
hastening down in search of water. Pushing through another mile of
chaparral, I emerged into one of the most beautiful parklike groves of
live oak I ever saw. The ground beneath was planted only with aspidiums
and brier roses. At the foot of the grove I came to the dry channel of one
of the tributary streams, but, following it down a short distance, I
descried a few specimens of the scarlet mimulus; and I was assured that
water was near. I found about a bucketful in a granite bowl, but it was
full of leaves and beetles, making a sort of brown coffee that could be
rendered available only by filtering it through sand and charcoal. This I
resolved to do in case the night came on before I found better. Following
the channel a mile farther down to its confluence with another, larger
tributary, I found a lot of boulder pools, clear as crystal, and brimming
full, linked together by little glistening currents just strong enough to
sing. Flowers in full bloom adorned the banks, lilies ten feet high, and
luxuriant ferns arching over one another in lavish abundance, while a
noble old live oak spread its rugged boughs over all, forming one of the
most perfect and most secluded of Nature's gardens. Here I camped, making
my bed on smooth cobblestones.</p>
<p>Next morning, pushing up the channel of a tributary that takes its rise on
Mount San Antonio, I passed many lovely gardens watered by oozing
currentlets, every one of which had lilies in them in the full pomp of
bloom, and a rich growth of ferns, chiefly woodwardias and aspidiums and
maidenhairs; but toward the base of the mountain the channel was dry, and
the chaparral closed over from bank to bank, so that I was compelled to
creep more than a mile on hands and knees.</p>
<p>In one spot I found an opening in the thorny sky where I could stand
erect, and on the further side of the opening discovered a small pool.
"Now, HERE," I said, "I must be careful in creeping, for the birds of the
neighborhood come here to drink, and the rattlesnakes come here to catch
them." I then began to cast my eye along the channel, perhaps
instinctively feeling a snaky atmosphere, and finally discovered one
rattler between my feet. But there was a bashful look in his eye, and a
withdrawing, deprecating kink in his neck that showed plainly as words
could tell that he would not strike, and only wished to be let alone. I
therefore passed on, lifting my foot a little higher than usual, and left
him to enjoy his life in this his own home.</p>
<p>My next camp was near the heart of the basin, at the head of a grand
system of cascades from ten to two hundred feet high, one following the
other in close succession and making a total descent of nearly seventeen
hundred feet. The rocks above me leaned over in a threatening way and were
full of seams, making the camp a very unsafe one during an earthquake.</p>
<p>Next day the chaparral, in ascending the eastern rim of the basin, was, if
possible, denser and more stubbornly bayoneted than ever. I followed bear
trails, where in some places I found tufts of their hair that had been
pulled out in squeezing a way through; but there was much of a very
interesting character that far overpaid all my pains. Most of the plants
are identical with those of the Sierra, but there are quite a number of
Mexican species. One coniferous tree was all I found. This is a spruce of
a species new to me, Douglasii macrocarpa. <SPAN href="#linknote-14"
name="linknoteref-14" id="linknoteref-14"><small>14</small></SPAN></p>
<p>My last camp was down at the narrow, notched bottom of a dry channel, the
only open way for the life in the neighborhood. I therefore lay between
two fires, built to fence out snakes and wolves.</p>
<p>From the summit of the eastern rim I had a glorious view of the valley out
to the ocean, which would require a whole book for its description. My
bread gave out a day before reaching the settlements, but I felt all the
fresher and clearer for the fast.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XII. Nevada Farms <SPAN href="#linknote-15" name="linknoteref-15" id="linknoteref-15"><small>15</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>To the farmer who comes to this thirsty land from beneath rainy skies,
Nevada seems one vast desert, all sage and sand, hopelessly irredeemable
now and forever. And this, under present conditions, is severely true. For
notwithstanding it has gardens, grainfields, and hayfields generously
productive, these compared with the arid stretches of valley and plain, as
beheld in general views from the mountain tops, are mere specks lying
inconspicuously here and there, in out-of-the-way places, often thirty or
forty miles apart.</p>
<p>In leafy regions, blessed with copious rains, we learn to measure the
productive capacity of the soil by its natural vegetation. But this rule
is almost wholly inapplicable here, for, notwithstanding its savage
nakedness, scarce at all veiled by a sparse growth of sage and linosyris
<SPAN href="#linknote-16" name="linknoteref-16" id="linknoteref-16"><small>16</small></SPAN>,
the desert soil of the Great Basin is as rich in the elements that in
rainy regions rise and ripen into food as that of any other State in the
Union. The rocks of its numerous mountain ranges have been thoroughly
crushed and ground by glaciers, thrashed and vitalized by the sun, and
sifted and outspread in lake basins by powerful torrents that attended the
breaking-up of the glacial period, as if in every way Nature had been
making haste to prepare the land for the husbandman. Soil, climate,
topographical conditions, all that the most exacting could demand, are
present, but one thing, water, is wanting. The present rainfall would be
wholly inadequate for agriculture, even if it were advantageously
distributed over the lowlands, while in fact the greater portion is poured
out on the heights in sudden and violent thundershowers called
"cloud-bursts," the waters of which are fruitlessly swallowed up in sandy
gulches and deltas a few minutes after their first boisterous appearance.
The principal mountain chains, trending nearly north and south, parallel
with the Sierra and the Wahsatch, receive a good deal of snow during
winter, but no great masses are stored up as fountains for large perennial
streams capable of irrigating considerable areas. Most of it is melted
before the end of May and absorbed by moraines and gravelly taluses, which
send forth small rills that slip quietly down the upper canyons through
narrow strips of flowery verdure, most of them sinking and vanishing
before they reach the base of their fountain ranges. Perhaps not one in
ten of the whole number flow out into the open plains, not a single drop
reaches the sea, and only a few are large enough to irrigate more than one
farm of moderate size.</p>
<p>It is upon these small outflowing rills that most of the Nevada ranches
are located, lying countersunk beneath the general level, just where the
mountains meet the plains, at an average elevation of five thousand feet
above sea level. All the cereals and garden vegetables thrive here, and
yield bountiful crops. Fruit, however, has been, as yet, grown
successfully in only a few specially favored spots.</p>
<p>Another distinct class of ranches are found sparsely distributed along the
lowest portions of the plains, where the ground is kept moist by springs,
or by narrow threads of moving water called rivers, fed by some one or
more of the most vigorous of the mountain rills that have succeeded in
making their escape from the mountains. These are mostly devoted to the
growth of wild hay, though in some the natural meadow grasses and sedges
have been supplemented by timothy and alfalfa; and where the soil is not
too strongly impregnated with salts, some grain is raised. Reese River
Valley, Big Smoky Valley, and White River Valley offer fair illustrations
of this class. As compared with the foothill ranches, they are larger and
less inconspicuous, as they lie in the wide, unshadowed levels of the
plains—wavy-edged flecks of green in a wilderness of gray.</p>
<p>Still another class equally well defined, both as to distribution and as
to products, is restricted to that portion of western Nevada and the
eastern border of California which lies within the redeeming influences of
California waters. Three of the Sierra rivers descend from their icy
fountains into the desert like angels of mercy to bless Nevada. These are
the Walker, Carson, and Truckee; and in the valleys through which they
flow are found by far the most extensive hay and grain fields within the
bounds of the State. Irrigating streams are led off right and left through
innumerable channels, and the sleeping ground, starting at once into
action, pours forth its wealth without stint.</p>
<p>But notwithstanding the many porous fields thus fertilized, considerable
portions of the waters of all these rivers continue to reach their old
deathbeds in the desert, indicating that in these salt valleys there still
is room for coming farmers. In middle and eastern Nevada, however, every
rill that I have seen in a ride of three thousand miles, at all available
for irrigation, has been claimed and put to use.</p>
<p>It appears, therefore, that under present conditions the limit of
agricultural development in the dry basin between the Sierra and the
Wahsatch has been already approached, a result caused not alone by natural
restrictions as to the area capable of development, but by the
extraordinary stimulus furnished by the mines to agricultural effort. The
gathering of gold and silver, hay and barley, have gone on together. Most
of the mid-valley bogs and meadows, and foothill rills capable of
irrigating from ten to fifty acres, were claimed more than twenty years
ago.</p>
<p>A majority of these pioneer settlers are plodding Dutchmen, living content
in the back lanes and valleys of Nature; but the high price of all kinds
of farm products tempted many of even the keen Yankee prospectors, made
wise in California, to bind themselves down to this sure kind of mining.
The wildest of wild hay, made chiefly of carices and rushes, was sold at
from two to three hundred dollars per ton on ranches. The same kind of hay
is still worth from fifteen to forty dollars per ton, according to the
distance from mines and comparative security from competition. Barley and
oats are from forty to one hundred dollars a ton, while all sorts of
garden products find ready sale at high prices.</p>
<p>With rich mine markets and salubrious climate, the Nevada farmer can make
more money by loose, ragged methods than the same class of farmers in any
other State I have yet seen, while the almost savage isolation in which
they live seems grateful to them. Even in those cases where the advent of
neighbors brings no disputes concerning water rights and ranges, they seem
to prefer solitude, most of them having been elected from adventurers from
California—the pioneers of pioneers. The passing stranger, however,
is always welcomed and supplied with the best the home affords, and around
the fireside, while he smokes his pipe, very little encouragement is
required to bring forth the story of the farmer's life—hunting,
mining, fighting, in the early Indian times, etc. Only the few who are
married hope to return to California to educate their children, and the
ease with which money is made renders the fulfillment of these hopes
comparatively sure.</p>
<p>After dwelling thus long on the farms of this dry wonderland, my readers
may be led to fancy them of more importance as compared with the unbroken
fields of Nature than they really are. Making your way along any of the
wide gray valleys that stretch from north to south, seldom will your eye
be interrupted by a single mark of cultivation. The smooth lake-like
ground sweeps on indefinitely, growing more and more dim in the glowing
sunshine, while a mountain range from eight to ten thousand feet high
bounds the view on either hand. No singing water, no green sod, no moist
nook to rest in—mountain and valley alike naked and shadowless in
the sun-glare; and though, perhaps, traveling a well-worn road to a gold
or silver mine, and supplied with repeated instructions, you can scarce
hope to find any human habitation from day to day, so vast and impressive
is the hot, dusty, alkaline wildness.</p>
<p>But after riding some thirty or forty miles, and while the sun may be
sinking behind the mountains, you come suddenly upon signs of cultivation.
Clumps of willows indicate water, and water indicates a farm. Approaching
more nearly, you discover what may be a patch of barley spread out
unevenly along the bottom of a flood bed, broken perhaps, and rendered
less distinct by boulder piles and the fringing willows of a stream.
Speedily you can confidently say that the grain patch is surely such; its
ragged bounds become clear; a sand-roofed cabin comes to view littered
with sun-cracked implements and with an outer girdle of potato, cabbage,
and alfalfa patches.</p>
<p>The immense expanse of mountain-girt valleys, on the edges of which these
hidden ranches lie, make even the largest fields seem comic in size. The
smallest, however, are by no means insignificant in a pecuniary view. On
the east side of the Toyabe Range I discovered a jolly Irishman who
informed me that his income from fifty acres, reinforced by a sheep range
on the adjacent hills, was from seven to nine thousand dollars per annum.
His irrigating brook is about four feet wide and eight inches deep,
flowing about two miles per hour.</p>
<p>On Duckwater Creek, Nye County, Mr. Irwin has reclaimed a tule swamp
several hundred acres in extent, which is now chiefly devoted to alfalfa.
On twenty-five acres he claims to have raised this year thirty-seven tons
of barley. Indeed, I have not yet noticed a meager crop of any kind in the
State. Fruit alone is conspicuously absent.</p>
<p>On the California side of the Sierra grain will not ripen at much greater
elevation than four thousand feet above sea level. The valleys of Nevada
lie at a height of from four to six thousand feet, and both wheat and
barley ripen, wherever water may be had, up to seven thousand feet. The
harvest, of course, is later as the elevation increases. In the valleys of
the Carson and Walker Rivers, four thousand feet above the sea, the grain
harvest is about a month later than in California. In Reese River Valley,
six thousand feet, it begins near the end of August. Winter grain ripens
somewhat earlier, while occasionally one meets a patch of barley in some
cool, high-lying canyon that will not mature before the middle of
September.</p>
<p>Unlike California, Nevada will probably be always richer in gold and
silver than in grain. Utah farmers hope to change the climate of the east
side of the basin by prayer, and point to the recent rise in the waters of
the Great Salt Lake as a beginning of moister times. But Nevada's only
hope, in the way of any considerable increase in agriculture, is from
artesian wells. The experiment has been tried on a small scale with
encouraging success. But what is now wanted seems to be the boring of a
few specimen wells of a large size out in the main valleys. The
encouragement that successful experiments of this kind would give to
emigration seeking farms forms an object well worthy the attention of the
Government. But all that California farmers in the grand central valley
require is the preservation of the forests and the wise distribution of
the glorious abundance of water from the snow stored on the west flank of
the Sierra.</p>
<p>Whether any considerable area of these sage plains will ever thus be made
to blossom in grass and wheat, experience will show. But in the mean time
Nevada is beautiful in her wildness, and if tillers of the soil can thus
be brought to see that possibly Nature may have other uses even for RICH
soils besides the feeding of human beings, then will these foodless
"deserts" have taught a fine lesson.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XIII. Nevada Forests <SPAN href="#linknote-17" name="linknoteref-17" id="linknoteref-17"><small>17</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>When the traveler from California has crossed the Sierra and gone a little
way down the eastern flank, the woods come to an end about as suddenly and
completely as if, going westward, he had reached the ocean. From the very
noblest forests in the world he emerges into free sunshine and dead
alkaline lake-levels. Mountains are seen beyond, rising in bewildering
abundance, range beyond range. But however closely we have been accustomed
to associate forests and mountains, these always present a singularly
barren aspect, appearing gray and forbidding and shadeless, like heaps of
ashes dumped from the blazing sky.</p>
<p>But wheresoever we may venture to go in all this good world, nature is
ever found richer and more beautiful than she seems, and nowhere may you
meet with more varied and delightful surprises than in the byways and
recesses of this sublime wilderness—lovely asters and abronias on
the dusty plains, rose-gardens around the mountain wells, and resiny
woods, where all seemed so desolate, adorning the hot foothills as well as
the cool summits, fed by cordial and benevolent storms of rain and hail
and snow; all of these scant and rare as compared with the immeasurable
exuberance of California, but still amply sufficient throughout the barest
deserts for a clear manifestation of God's love.</p>
<p>Though Nevada is situated in what is called the "Great Basin," no less
than sixty-five groups and chains of mountains rise within the bounds of
the State to a height of about from eight thousand to thirteen thousand
feet above the level of the sea, and as far as I have observed, every one
of these is planted, to some extent, with coniferous trees, though it is
only upon the highest that we find anything that may fairly be called a
forest. The lower ranges and the foothills and slopes of the higher are
roughened with small scrubby junipers and nut pines, while the dominating
peaks, together with the ridges that swing in grand curves between them,
are covered with a closer and more erect growth of pine, spruce, and fir,
resembling the forests of the Eastern States both as to size and general
botanical characteristics. Here is found what is called the heavy timber,
but the tallest and most fully developed sections of the forests, growing
down in sheltered hollows on moist moraines, would be regarded in
California only as groves of saplings, and so, relatively, they are, for
by careful calculation we find that more than a thousand of these trees
would be required to furnish as much timber as may be obtained from a
single specimen of our Sierra giants.</p>
<p>The height of the timberline in eastern Nevada, near the middle of the
Great Basin, is about eleven thousand feet above sea level; consequently
the forests, in a dwarfed, storm-beaten condition, pass over the summits
of nearly every range in the State, broken here and there only by
mechanical conditions of the surface rocks. Only three mountains in the
State have as yet come under my observation whose summits rise distinctly
above the treeline. These are Wheeler's Peak, twelve thousand three
hundred feet high, Mount Moriah, about twelve thousand feet, and Granite
Mountain, about the same height, all of which are situated near the
boundary line between Nevada and Utah Territory.</p>
<p>In a rambling mountaineering journey of eighteen hundred miles across the
state, I have met nine species of coniferous trees,—four pines, two
spruces, two junipers, and one fir,—about one third the number found
in California. By far the most abundant and interesting of these is the
Pinus Fremontiana, <SPAN href="#linknote-18" name="linknoteref-18" id="linknoteref-18"><small>18</small></SPAN> or nut pine. In the number of
individual trees and extent of range this curious little conifer surpasses
all the others combined. Nearly every mountain in the State is planted
with it from near the base to a height of from eight thousand to nine
thousand feet above the sea. Some are covered from base to summit by this
one species, with only a sparse growth of juniper on the lower slopes to
break the continuity of these curious woods, which, though dark-looking at
a little distance, are yet almost shadeless, and without any hint of the
dark glens and hollows so characteristic of other pine woods. Tens of
thousands of acres occur in one continuous belt. Indeed, viewed
comprehensively, the entire State seems to be pretty evenly divided into
mountain ranges covered with nut pines and plains covered with sage—now
a swath of pines stretching from north to south, now a swath of sage; the
one black, the other gray; one severely level, the other sweeping on
complacently over ridge and valley and lofty crowning dome.</p>
<p>The real character of a forest of this sort would never be guessed by the
inexperienced observer. Traveling across the sage levels in the dazzling
sunlight, you gaze with shaded eyes at the mountains rising along their
edges, perhaps twenty miles away, but no invitation that is at all likely
to be understood is discernible. Every mountain, however high it swells
into the sky, seems utterly barren. Approaching nearer, a low brushy
growth is seen, strangely black in aspect, as though it had been burned.
This is a nut pine forest, the bountiful orchard of the red man. When you
ascend into its midst you find the ground beneath the trees, and in the
openings also, nearly naked, and mostly rough on the surface—a
succession of crumbling ledges of lava, limestones, slate, and quartzite,
coarsely strewn with soil weathered from them. Here and there occurs a
bunch of sage or linosyris, or a purple aster, or a tuft of dry
bunch-grass.</p>
<p>The harshest mountainsides, hot and waterless, seem best adapted to the
nut pine's development. No slope is too steep, none too dry; every
situation seems to be gratefully chosen, if only it be sufficiently rocky
and firm to afford secure anchorage for the tough, grasping roots. It is a
sturdy, thickset little tree, usually about fifteen feet high when full
grown, and about as broad as high, holding its knotty branches well out in
every direction in stiff zigzags, but turning them gracefully upward at
the ends in rounded bosses. Though making so dark a mass in the distance,
the foliage is a pale grayish green, in stiff, awl-shaped fascicles. When
examined closely these round needles seem inclined to be two-leaved, but
they are mostly held firmly together, as if to guard against evaporation.
The bark on the older sections is nearly black, so that the boles and
branches are clearly traced against the prevailing gray of the mountains
on which they delight to dwell.</p>
<p>The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It
furnishes fuel, charcoal, and timber for the mines, and, together with the
enduring juniper, so generally associated with it, supplies the ranches
with abundance of firewood and rough fencing. Many a square mile has
already been denuded in supplying these demands, but, so great is the area
covered by it, no appreciable loss has as yet been sustained. It is pretty
generally known that this tree yields edible nuts, but their importance
and excellence as human food is infinitely greater than is supposed. In
fruitful seasons like this one, the pine nut crop of Nevada is, perhaps,
greater than the entire wheat crop of California, concerning which so much
is said and felt throughout the food markets of the world.</p>
<p>The Indians alone appreciate this portion of Nature's bounty and celebrate
the harvest home with dancing and feasting. The cones, which are a bright
grass-green in color and about two inches long by one and a half in
diameter, are beaten off with poles just before the scales open, gathered
in heaps of several bushels, and lightly scorched by burning a thin
covering of brushwood over them. The resin, with which the cones are
bedraggled, is thus burned off, the nuts slightly roasted, and the scales
made to open. Then they are allowed to dry in the sun, after which the
nuts are easily thrashed out and are ready to be stored away. They are
about half an inch long by a quarter of an inch in diameter, pointed at
the upper end, rounded at the base, light brown in general color, and
handsomely dotted with purple, like birds' eggs. The shells are thin, and
may be crushed between the thumb and finger. The kernels are white and
waxy-looking, becoming brown by roasting, sweet and delicious to every
palate, and are eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs, horses, and man. When the
crop is abundant the Indians bring in large quantities for sale; they are
eaten around every fireside in the State, and oftentimes fed to horses
instead of barley.</p>
<p>Looking over the whole continent, none of Nature's bounties seems to me so
great as this in the way of food, none so little appreciated. Fortunately
for the Indians and wild animals that gather around Nature's board, this
crop is not easily harvested in a monopolizing way. If it could be
gathered like wheat the whole would be carried away and dissipated in
towns, leaving the brave inhabitants of these wilds to starve.</p>
<p>Long before the harvest time, which is in September and October, the
Indians examine the trees with keen discernment, and inasmuch as the cones
require two years to mature from the first appearance of the little red
rosettes of the fertile flowers, the scarcity or abundance of the crop may
be predicted more than a year in advance. Squirrels, and worms, and Clarke
crows, make haste to begin the harvest. When the crop is ripe the Indians
make ready their long beating-poles; baskets, bags, rags, mats, are gotten
together. The squaws out among the settlers at service, washing and
drudging, assemble at the family huts; the men leave their ranch work;
all, old and young, are mounted on ponies, and set off in great glee to
the nut lands, forming cavalcades curiously picturesque. Flaming scarfs
and calico skirts stream loosely over the knotty ponies, usually two
squaws astride of each, with the small baby midgets bandaged in baskets
slung on their backs, or balanced upon the saddle-bow, while the nut
baskets and water jars project from either side, and the long
beating-poles, like old-fashioned lances, angle out in every direction.</p>
<p>Arrived at some central point already fixed upon, where water and grass is
found, the squaws with baskets, the men with poles, ascend the ridges to
the laden trees, followed by the children; beating begins with loud noise
and chatter; the burs fly right and left, lodging against stones and
sagebrush; the squaws and children gather them with fine natural gladness;
smoke columns speedily mark the joyful scene of their labors as the
roasting fires are kindled; and, at night, assembled in circles, garrulous
as jays, the first grand nut feast begins. Sufficient quantities are thus
obtained in a few weeks to last all winter.</p>
<p>The Indians also gather several species of berries and dry them to vary
their stores, and a few deer and grouse are killed on the mountains,
besides immense numbers of rabbits and hares; but the pine-nuts are their
main dependence—their staff of life, their bread.</p>
<p>Insects also, scarce noticed by man, come in for their share of this fine
bounty. Eggs are deposited, and the baby grubs, happy fellows, find
themselves in a sweet world of plenty, feeding their way through the heart
of the cone from one nut chamber to another, secure from rain and wind and
heat, until their wings are grown and they are ready to launch out into
the free ocean of air and light.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XIV. Nevada's Timber Belt <SPAN href="#linknote-19" name="linknoteref-19" id="linknoteref-19"><small>19</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>The pine woods on the tops of the Nevada mountains are already shining and
blooming in winter snow, making a most blessedly refreshing appearance to
the weary traveler down on the gray plains. During the fiery days of
summer the whole of this vast region seems so perfectly possessed by the
sun that the very memories of pine trees and snow are in danger of being
burned away, leaving one but little more than dust and metal. But since
these first winter blessings have come, the wealth and beauty of the
landscapes have come fairly into view, and one is rendered capable of
looking and seeing.</p>
<p>The grand nut harvest is over, as far as the Indians are concerned, though
perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the whole crop has been
gathered. But the squirrels and birds are still busily engaged, and by the
time that Nature's ends are accomplished, every nut will doubtless have
been put to use.</p>
<p>All of the nine Nevada conifers mentioned in my last letter are also found
in California, excepting only the Rocky Mountain spruce, which I have not
observed westward of the Snake Range. So greatly, however, have they been
made to vary by differences of soil and climate, that most of them appear
as distinct species. Without seeming in any way dwarfed or repressed in
habit, they nowhere develop to anything like California dimensions. A
height of fifty feet and diameter of twelve or fourteen inches would
probably be found to be above the average size of those cut for lumber. On
the margin of the Carson and Humboldt Sink the larger sage bushes are
called "heavy timber"; and to the settlers here any tree seems large
enough for saw-logs.</p>
<p>Mills have been built in the most accessible canyons of the higher ranges,
and sufficient lumber of an inferior kind is made to supply most of the
local demand. The principal lumber trees of Nevada are the white pine
(Pinus flexilis), foxtail pine, and Douglas spruce, or "red pine," as it
is called here. Of these the first named is most generally distributed,
being found on all the higher ranges throughout the State. In botanical
characters it is nearly allied to the Weymouth, or white, pine of the
Eastern States, and to the sugar and mountain pines of the Sierra. In open
situations it branches near the ground and tosses out long down-curving
limbs all around, often gaining in this way a very strikingly picturesque
habit. It is seldom found lower than nine thousand feet above the level of
the sea, but from this height it pushes upward over the roughest ledges to
the extreme limit of tree growth—about eleven thousand feet.</p>
<p>On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and Golden Gate ranges we find a still
hardier and more picturesque species, called the foxtail pine, from its
long dense leaf-tassels. About a foot or eighteen inches of the ends of
the branches are densely packed with stiff outstanding needles, which
radiate all around like an electric fox- or squirrel-tail. The needles are
about an inch and a half long, slightly curved, elastic, and glossily
polished, so that the sunshine sifting through them makes them burn with a
fine silvery luster, while their number and elastic temper tell
delightfully in the singing winds.</p>
<p>This tree is pre-eminently picturesque, far surpassing not only its
companion species of the mountains in this respect, but also the most
noted of the lowland oaks and elms. Some stand firmly erect, feathered
with radiant tail tassels down to the ground, forming slender, tapering
towers of shining verdure; others with two or three specialized branches
pushed out at right angles to the trunk and densely clad with the tasseled
sprays, take the form of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again, in the same
woods you find trees that are made up of several boles united near the
ground, and spreading in easy curves at the sides in a plane parallel to
the axis of the mountain, with the elegant tassels hung in charming order
between them the whole making a perfect harp, ranged across the main
wind-lines just where they may be most effective in the grand storm
harmonies. And then there is an infinite variety of arching forms,
standing free or in groups, leaning away from or toward each other in
curious architectural structures,—innumerable tassels drooping under
the arches and radiating above them, the outside glowing in the light,
masses of deep shade beneath, giving rise to effects marvelously
beautiful,—while on the roughest ledges of crumbling limestone are
lowly old giants, five or six feet in diameter, that have braved the
storms of more than a thousand years. But, whether old or young, sheltered
or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever found to be
irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, offering a richer and more
varied series of forms to the artist than any other species I have yet
seen.</p>
<p>One of the most interesting mountain excursions I have made in the State
was up through a thick spicy forest of these trees to the top of the
highest summit of the Troy Range, about ninety miles to the south of
Hamilton. The day was full of perfect Indian-summer sunshine, calm and
bracing. Jays and Clarke crows made a pleasant stir in the foothill pines
and junipers; grasshoppers danced in the hazy light, and rattled on the
wing in pure glee, reviving suddenly from the torpor of a frosty October
night to exuberant summer joy. The squirrels were working industriously
among the falling nuts; ripe willows and aspens made gorgeous masses of
color on the russet hillsides and along the edges of the small streams
that threaded the higher ravines; and on the smooth sloping uplands,
beneath the foxtail pines and firs, the ground was covered with brown
grasses, enriched with sunflowers, columbines, and larkspurs and patches
of linosyris, mostly frost-nipped and gone to seed, yet making fine bits
of yellow and purple in the general brown.</p>
<p>At a height of about ninety-five hundred feet we passed through a
magnificent grove of aspens, about a hundred acres in extent, through
which the mellow sunshine sifted in ravishing splendor, showing every leaf
to be as beautiful in color as the wing of a butterfly, and making them
tell gloriously against the evergreens. These extensive groves of aspen
are a marked feature of the Nevada woods. Some of the lower mountains are
covered with them, giving rise to remarkably beautiful masses of pale,
translucent green in spring and summer, yellow and orange in autumn, while
in winter, after every leaf has fallen, the white bark of the boles and
branches seen in mass seems like a cloud of mist that has settled close
down on the mountain, conforming to all its hollows and ridges like a
mantle, yet roughened on the surface with innumerable ascending spires.</p>
<p>Just above the aspens we entered a fine, close growth of foxtail pine, the
tallest and most evenly planted I had yet seen. It extended along a waving
ridge tending north and south and down both sides with but little
interruption for a distance of about five miles. The trees were mostly
straight in the bole, and their shade covered the ground in the densest
places, leaving only small openings to the sun. A few of the tallest
specimens measured over eighty feet, with a diameter of eighteen inches;
but many of the younger trees, growing in tufts, were nearly fifty feet
high, with a diameter of only five or six inches, while their slender
shafts were hidden from top to bottom by a close, fringy growth of
tasseled branchlets. A few white pines and balsam firs occur here and
there, mostly around the edges of sunny openings, where they enrich the
air with their rosiny fragrance, and bring out the peculiar beauties of
the predominating foxtails by contrast.</p>
<p>Birds find grateful homes here—grouse, chickadees, and linnets, of
which we saw large flocks that had a delightfully enlivening effect. But
the woodpeckers are remarkably rare. Thus far I have noticed only one
species, the golden-winged; and but few of the streams are large enough or
long enough to attract the blessed ousel, so common in the Sierra.</p>
<p>On Wheeler's Peak, the dominating summit of the Snake Mountains, I found
all the conifers I had seen on the other ranges of the State, excepting
the foxtail pine, which I have not observed further east than the White
Pine range, but in its stead the beautiful Rocky Mountain spruce. First,
as in the other ranges, we find the juniper and nut pine; then, higher,
the white pine and balsam fir; then the Douglas spruce and this new Rocky
Mountain spruce, which is common eastward from here, though this range is,
as far as I have observed, its western limit. It is one of the largest and
most important of Nevada conifers, attaining a height of from sixty to
eighty feet and a diameter of nearly two feet, while now and then an
exceptional specimen may be found in shady dells a hundred feet high or
more.</p>
<p>The foliage is bright yellowish and bluish green, according to exposure
and age, growing all around the branchlets, though inclined to turn upward
from the undersides, like that of the plushy firs of California, making
remarkably handsome fernlike plumes. While yet only mere saplings five or
six inches thick at the ground, they measure fifty or sixty feet in height
and are beautifully clothed with broad, level, fronded plumes down to the
base, preserving a strict arrowy outline, though a few of the larger
branches shoot out in free exuberance, relieving the spire from any
unpicturesque stiffness of aspect, while the conical summit is crowded
with thousands of rich brown cones to complete its beauty.</p>
<p>We made the ascent of the peak just after the first storm had whitened its
summit and brightened the atmosphere. The foot-slopes are like those of
the Troy range, only more evenly clad with grasses. After tracing a long,
rugged ridge of exceedingly hard quartzite, said to be veined here and
there with gold, we came to the North Dome, a noble summit rising about a
thousand feet above the timberline, its slopes heavily tree-clad all
around, but most perfectly on the north. Here the Rocky Mountain spruce
forms the bulk of the forest. The cones were ripe; most of them had shed
their winged seeds, and the shell-like scales were conspicuously spread,
making rich masses of brown from the tops of the fertile trees down
halfway to the ground, cone touching cone in lavish clusters. A single
branch that might be carried in the hand would be found to bear a hundred
or more.</p>
<p>Some portions of the wood were almost impenetrable, but in general we
found no difficulty in mazing comfortably on over fallen logs and under
the spreading boughs, while here and there we came to an opening
sufficiently spacious for standpoints, where the trees around their
margins might be seen from top to bottom. The winter sunshine streamed
through the clustered spires, glinting and breaking into a fine dust of
spangles on the spiky leaves and beads of amber gum, and bringing out the
reds and grays and yellows of the lichened boles which had been freshened
by the late storm; while the tip of every spire looking up through the
shadows was dipped in deepest blue.</p>
<p>The ground was strewn with burs and needles and fallen trees; and, down in
the dells, on the north side of the dome, where strips of aspen are
imbedded in the spruces, every breeze sent the ripe leaves flying, some
lodging in the spruce boughs, making them bloom again, while the fresh
snow beneath looked like a fine painting.</p>
<p>Around the dome and well up toward the summit of the main peak, the
snow-shed was well marked with tracks of the mule deer and the pretty
stitching and embroidery of field mice, squirrels, and grouse; and on the
way back to camp I came across a strange track, somewhat like that of a
small bear, but more spreading at the toes. It proved to be that of a
wolverine. In my conversations with hunters, both Indians and white men
assure me that there are no bears in Nevada, notwithstanding the abundance
of pine-nuts, of which they are so fond, and the accessibility of these
basin ranges from their favorite haunts in the Sierra Nevada and Wahsatch
Mountains. The mule deer, antelope, wild sheep, wolverine, and two species
of wolves are all of the larger animals that I have seen or heard of in
the State.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XV. Glacial Phenomena in Nevada <SPAN href="#linknote-20" name="linknoteref-20" id="linknoteref-20"><small>20</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>The monuments of the Ice Age in the Great Basin have been greatly obscured
and broken, many of the more ancient of them having perished altogether,
leaving scarce a mark, however faint, of their existence—a condition
of things due not alone to the long-continued action of post-glacial
agents, but also in great part to the perishable character of the rocks of
which they were made. The bottoms of the main valleys, once grooved and
planished like the glacier pavements of the Sierra, lie buried beneath
sediments and detritus derived from the adjacent mountains, and now form
the arid sage plains; characteristic U-shaped canyons have become V-shaped
by the deepening of their bottoms and straightening of their sides, and
decaying glacier headlands have been undermined and thrown down in loose
taluses, while most of the moraines and striae and scratches have been
blurred or weathered away. Nevertheless, enough remains of the more recent
and the more enduring phenomena to cast a good light well back upon the
conditions of the ancient ice sheet that covered this interesting region,
and upon the system of distinct glaciers that loaded the tops of the
mountains and filled the canyons long after the ice sheet had been broken
up.</p>
<p>The first glacial traces that I noticed in the basin are on the Wassuck,
Augusta, and Toyabe ranges, consisting of ridges and canyons, whose
trends, contours, and general sculpture are in great part specifically
glacial, though deeply blurred by subsequent denudation. These discoveries
were made during the summer of 1876-77. And again, on the 17th of last
August, while making the ascent of Mount Jefferson, the dominating
mountain of the Toquima range, I discovered an exceedingly interesting
group of moraines, canyons with V-shaped cross sections, wide neve
amphitheatres, moutoneed rocks, glacier meadows, and one glacier lake, all
as fresh and telling as if the glaciers to which they belonged had
scarcely vanished.</p>
<p>The best preserved and most regular of the moraines are two laterals about
two hundred feet in height and two miles long, extending from the foot of
a magnificent canyon valley on the north side of the mountain and trending
first in a northerly direction, then curving around to the west, while a
well-characterized terminal moraine, formed by the glacier towards the
close of its existence, unites them near their lower extremities at a
height of eighty-five hundred feet. Another pair of older lateral
moraines, belonging to a glacier of which the one just mentioned was a
tributary, extend in a general northwesterly direction nearly to the level
of Big Smoky Valley, about fifty-five hundred feet above sea level.</p>
<p>Four other canyons, extending down the eastern slopes of this grand old
mountain into Monito Valley, are hardly less rich in glacial records,
while the effects of the mountain shadows in controlling and directing the
movements of the residual glaciers to which all these phenomena belonged
are everywhere delightfully apparent in the trends of the canyons and
ridges, and in the massive sculpture of the neve wombs at their heads.
This is a very marked and imposing mountain, attracting the eye from a
great distance. It presents a smooth and gently curved outline against the
sky, as observed from the plains, and is whitened with patches of enduring
snow. The summit is made up of irregular volcanic tables, the most
extensive of which is about two and a half miles long, and like the
smaller ones is broken abruptly down on the edges by the action of the
ice. Its height is approximately eleven thousand three hundred feet above
the sea.</p>
<p>A few days after making these interesting discoveries, I found other
well-preserved glacial traces on Arc Dome, the culminating summit of the
Toyabe Range. On its northeastern slopes there are two small glacier
lakes, and the basins of two others which have recently been filled with
down-washed detritus. One small residual glacier lingered until quite
recently beneath the coolest shadows of the dome, the moraines and
neve-fountains of which are still as fresh and unwasted as many of those
lying at the same elevation on the Sierra—ten thousand feet—while
older and more wasted specimens may be traced on all the adjacent
mountains. The sculpture, too, of all the ridges and summits of this
section of the range is recognized at once as glacial, some of the larger
characters being still easily readable from the plains at a distance of
fifteen or twenty miles.</p>
<p>The Hot Creek Mountains, lying to the east of the Toquima and Monito
ranges, reach the culminating point on a deeply serrate ridge at a height
of ten thousand feet above the sea. This ridge is found to be made up of a
series of imposing towers and pinnacles which have been eroded from the
solid mass of the mountain by a group of small residual glaciers that
lingered in their shadows long after the larger ice rivers had vanished.
On its western declivities are found a group of well-characterized
moraines, canyons, and roches moutonnees, all of which are unmistakably
fresh and telling. The moraines in particular could hardly fail to attract
the eye of any observer. Some of the short laterals of the glaciers that
drew their fountain snows from the jagged recesses of the summit are from
one to two hundred feet in height, and scarce at all wasted as yet,
notwithstanding the countless storms that have fallen upon them, while
cool rills flow between them, watering charming gardens of arctic plants—saxifrages,
larkspurs, dwarf birch, ribes, and parnassia, etc.—beautiful
memories of the Ice Age, representing a once greatly extended flora.</p>
<p>In the course of explorations made to the eastward of here, between the
38th and 40th parallels, I observed glacial phenomena equally fresh and
demonstrative on all the higher mountains of the White Pine, Golden Gate,
and Snake ranges, varying from those already described only as determined
by differences of elevation, relations to the snow-bearing winds, and the
physical characteristics of the rock formations.</p>
<p>On the Jeff Davis group of the Snake Range, the dominating summit of which
is nearly thirteen thousand feet in elevation, and the highest ground in
the basin, every marked feature is a glacier monument—peaks,
valleys, ridges, meadows, and lakes. And because here the snow-fountains
lay at a greater height, while the rock, an exceedingly hard quartzite,
offered superior resistance to post-glacial agents, the ice-characters are
on a larger scale, and are more sharply defined than any we have noticed
elsewhere, and it is probably here that the last lingering glacier of the
basin was located. The summits and connecting ridges are mere blades and
points, ground sharp by the glaciers that descended on both sides to the
main valleys. From one standpoint I counted nine of these glacial channels
with their moraines sweeping grandly out to the plains to deep
sheer-walled neve-fountains at their heads, making a most vivid picture of
the last days of the Ice Period.</p>
<p>I have thus far directed attention only to the most recent and appreciable
of the phenomena; but it must be borne in mind that less recent and less
obvious traces of glacial action abound on ALL the ranges throughout the
entire basin, where the fine striae and grooves have been obliterated, and
most of the moraines have been washed away, or so modified as to be no
longer recognizable, and even the lakes and meadows, so characteristic of
glacial regions, have almost entirely vanished. For there are other
monuments, far more enduring than these, remaining tens of thousands of
years after the more perishable records are lost. Such are the canyons,
ridges, and peaks themselves, the glacial peculiarities of whose trends
and contours cannot be hid from the eye of the skilled observer until
changes have been wrought upon them far more destructive than those to
which these basin ranges have yet been subjected.</p>
<p>It appears, therefore, that the last of the basin glaciers have but
recently vanished, and that the almost innumerable ranges trending north
and south between the Sierra and the Wahsatch Mountains were loaded with
glaciers that descended to the adjacent valleys during the last glacial
period, and that it is to this mighty host of ice streams that all the
more characteristic of the present features of these mountain ranges are
due.</p>
<p>But grand as is this vision delineated in these old records, this is not
all; for there is not wanting evidence of a still grander glaciation
extending over all the valleys now forming the sage plains as well as the
mountains. The basins of the main valleys alternating with the mountain
ranges, and which contained lakes during at least the closing portion of
the Ice Period, were eroded wholly, or in part, from a general elevated
tableland, by immense glaciers that flowed north and south to the ocean.
The mountains as well as the valleys present abundant evidence of this
grand origin.</p>
<p>The flanks of all the interior ranges are seen to have been heavily
abraded and ground away by the ice acting in a direction parallel with
their axes. This action is most strikingly shown upon projecting portions
where the pressure has been greatest. These are shorn off in smooth planes
and bossy outswelling curves, like the outstanding portions of canyon
walls. Moreover, the extremities of the ranges taper out like those of
dividing ridges which have been ground away by dividing and confluent
glaciers. Furthermore, the horizontal sections of separate mountains,
standing isolated in the great valleys, are lens-shaped like those of mere
rocks that rise in the channels of ordinary canyon glaciers, and which
have been overflowed or pastflowed, while in many of the smaller valleys
roches moutonnees occur in great abundance.</p>
<p>Again, the mineralogical and physical characters of the two ranges
bounding the sides of many of the valleys indicate that the valleys were
formed simply by the removal of the material between the ranges. And
again, the rim of the general basin, where it is elevated, as for example
on the southwestern portion, instead of being a ridge sculptured on the
sides like a mountain range, is found to be composed of many short ranges,
parallel to one another, and to the interior ranges, and so modeled as to
resemble a row of convex lenses set on edge and half buried beneath a
general surface, without manifesting any dependence upon synclinal or
anticlinal axes—a series of forms and relations that could have
resulted only from the outflow of vast basin glaciers on their courses to
the ocean.</p>
<p>I cannot, however, present all the evidence here bearing upon these
interesting questions, much less discuss it in all its relations. I will,
therefore, close this letter with a few of the more important
generalizations that have grown up out of the facts that I have observed.
First, at the beginning of the glacial period the region now known as the
Great Basin was an elevated tableland, not furrowed as at present with
mountains and valleys, but comparatively bald and featureless.</p>
<p>Second, this tableland, bounded on the east and west by lofty mountain
ranges, but comparatively open on the north and south, was loaded with
ice, which was discharged to the ocean northward and southward, and in its
flow brought most, if not all, the present interior ranges and valleys
into relief by erosion.</p>
<p>Third, as the glacial winter drew near its close the ice vanished from the
lower portions of the basin, which then became lakes, into which separate
glaciers descended from the mountains. Then these mountain glaciers
vanished in turn, after sculpturing the ranges into their present
condition.</p>
<p>Fourth, the few immense lakes extending over the lowlands, in the midst of
which many of the interior ranges stood as islands, became shallow as the
ice vanished from the mountains, and separated into many distinct lakes,
whose waters no longer reached the ocean. Most of these have disappeared
by the filling of their basins with detritus from the mountains, and now
form sage plains and "alkali flats."</p>
<p>The transition from one to the other of these various conditions was
gradual and orderly: first, a nearly simple tableland; then a grand mer de
glace shedding its crawling silver currents to the sea, and becoming
gradually more wrinkled as unequal erosion roughened its bed, and brought
the highest peaks and ridges above the surface; then a land of lakes, an
almost continuous sheet of water stretching from the Sierra to the
Wahsatch, adorned with innumerable island mountains; then a slow
desiccation and decay to present conditions of sage and sand.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XVI. Nevada's Dead Towns <SPAN href="#linknote-21" name="linknoteref-21" id="linknoteref-21"><small>21</small></SPAN> </h2>
<p>Nevada is one of the very youngest and wildest of the States; nevertheless
it is already strewn with ruins that seem as gray and silent and time-worn
as if the civilization to which they belonged had perished centuries ago.
Yet, strange to say, all these ruins are results of mining efforts made
within the last few years. Wander where you may throughout the length and
breadth of this mountain-barred wilderness, you everywhere come upon these
dead mining towns, with their tall chimney stacks, standing forlorn amid
broken walls and furnaces, and machinery half buried in sand, the very
names of many of them already forgotten amid the excitements of later
discoveries, and now known only through tradition—tradition ten
years old.</p>
<p>While exploring the mountain ranges of the State during a considerable
portion of three summers, I think that I have seen at least five of these
deserted towns and villages for every one in ordinary life. Some of them
were probably only camps built by bands of prospectors, and inhabited for
a few months or years, while some specially interesting canyon was being
explored, and then carelessly abandoned for more promising fields. But
many were real towns, regularly laid out and incorporated, containing
well-built hotels, churches, schoolhouses, post offices, and jails, as
well as the mills on which they all depended; and whose well-graded
streets were filled with lawyers, doctors, brokers, hangmen, real estate
agents, etc., the whole population numbering several thousand.</p>
<p>A few years ago the population of Hamilton is said to have been nearly
eight thousand; that of Treasure Hill, six thousand; of Shermantown, seven
thousand; of Swansea, three thousand. All of these were incorporated towns
with mayors, councils, fire departments, and daily newspapers. Hamilton
has now about one hundred inhabitants, most of whom are merely waiting in
dreary inaction for something to turn up. Treasure Hill has about half as
many, Shermantown one family, and Swansea none, while on the other hand
the graveyards are far too full.</p>
<p>In one canyon of the Toyabe range, near Austin, I found no less than five
dead towns without a single inhabitant. The streets and blocks of "real
estate" graded on the hillsides are rapidly falling back into the
wilderness. Sagebrushes are growing up around the forges of the blacksmith
shops, and lizards bask on the crumbling walls.</p>
<p>While traveling southward from Austin down Big Smoky Valley, I noticed a
remarkably tall and imposing column, rising like a lone pine out of the
sagebrush on the edge of a dry gulch. This proved to be a smokestack of
solid masonry. It seemed strangely out of place in the desert, as if it
had been transported entire from the heart of some noisy manufacturing
town and left here by mistake. I learned afterwards that it belonged to a
set of furnaces that were built by a New York company to smelt ore that
never was found. The tools of the workmen are still lying in place beside
the furnaces, as if dropped in some sudden Indian or earthquake panic and
never afterwards handled. These imposing ruins, together with the desolate
town, lying a quarter of a mile to the northward, present a most vivid
picture of wasted effort. Coyotes now wander unmolested through the brushy
streets, and of all the busy throng that so lavishly spent their time and
money here only one man remains—a lone bachelor with one suspender.</p>
<p>Mining discoveries and progress, retrogression and decay, seem to have
been crowded more closely against each other here than on any other
portion of the globe. Some one of the band of adventurous prospectors who
came from the exhausted placers of California would discover some rich ore—how
much or little mattered not at first. These specimens fell among excited
seekers after wealth like sparks in gunpowder, and in a few days the
wilderness was disturbed with the noisy clang of miners and builders. A
little town would then spring up, and before anything like a careful
survey of any particular lode would be made, a company would be formed,
and expensive mills built. Then, after all the machinery was ready for the
ore, perhaps little, or none at all, was to be found. Meanwhile another
discovery was reported, and the young town was abandoned as completely as
a camp made for a single night; and so on, until some really valuable lode
was found, such as those of Eureka, Austin, Virginia, etc., which formed
the substantial groundwork for a thousand other excitements.</p>
<p>Passing through the dead town of Schellbourne last month, I asked one of
the few lingering inhabitants why the town was built. "For the mines," he
replied. "And where are the mines?" "On the mountains back here." "And why
were they abandoned?" I asked. "Are they exhausted?" "Oh, no," he replied,
"they are not exhausted; on the contrary, they have never been worked at
all, for unfortunately, just as we were about ready to open them, the
Cherry Creek mines were discovered across the valley in the Egan range,
and everybody rushed off there, taking what they could with them—houses
machinery, and all. But we are hoping that somebody with money and
speculation will come and revive us yet."</p>
<p>The dead mining excitements of Nevada were far more intense and
destructive in their action than those of California, because the prizes
at stake were greater, while more skill was required to gain them. The
long trains of gold-seekers making their way to California had ample time
and means to recover from their first attacks of mining fever while
crawling laboriously across the plains, and on their arrival on any
portion of the Sierra gold belt, they at once began to make money. No
matter in what gulch or canyon they worked, some measure of success was
sure, however unskillful they might be. And though while making ten
dollars a day they might be agitated by hopes of making twenty, or of
striking their picks against hundred- or thousand-dollar nuggets, men of
ordinary nerve could still work on with comparative steadiness, and remain
rational.</p>
<p>But in the case of the Nevada miner, he too often spent himself in years
of weary search without gaining a dollar, traveling hundreds of miles from
mountain to mountain, burdened with wasting hopes of discovering some
hidden vein worth millions, enduring hardships of the most destructive
kind, driving innumerable tunnels into the hillsides, while his assayed
specimens again and again proved worthless. Perhaps one in a hundred of
these brave prospectors would "strike it rich," while ninety-nine died
alone in the mountains or sank out of sight in the corners of saloons, in
a haze of whiskey and tobacco smoke.</p>
<p>The healthful ministry of wealth is blessed; and surely it is a fine thing
that so many are eager to find the gold and silver that lie hid in the
veins of the mountains. But in the search the seekers too often become
insane, and strike about blindly in the dark like raving madmen. Seven
hundred and fifty tons of ore from the original Eberhardt mine on Treasure
Hill yielded a million and a half dollars, the whole of this immense sum
having been obtained within two hundred and fifty feet of the surface, the
greater portion within one hundred and forty feet. Other ore masses were
scarcely less marvelously rich, giving rise to one of the most violent
excitements that ever occurred in the history of mining. All kinds of
people—shoemakers, tailors, farmers, etc., as well as miners—left
their own right work and fell in a perfect storm of energy upon the White
Pine Hills, covering the ground like grasshoppers, and seeming determined
by the very violence of their efforts to turn every stone to silver. But
with few exceptions, these mining storms pass away about as suddenly as
they rise, leaving only ruins to tell of the tremendous energy expended,
as heaps of giant boulders in the valley tell of the spent power of the
mountain floods.</p>
<p>In marked contrast with this destructive unrest is the orderly
deliberation into which miners settle in developing a truly valuable mine.
At Eureka we were kindly led through the treasure chambers of the Richmond
and Eureka Consolidated, our guides leisurely leading the way from level
to level, calling attention to the precious ore masses which the workmen
were slowly breaking to pieces with their picks, like navvies wearing away
the day in a railroad cutting; while down at the smelting works the bars
of bullion were handled with less eager haste than the farmer shows in
gathering his sheaves.</p>
<p>The wealth Nevada has already given to the world is indeed wonderful, but
the only grand marvel is the energy expended in its development. The
amount of prospecting done in the face of so many dangers and sacrifices,
the innumerable tunnels and shafts bored into the mountains, the mills
that have been built—these would seem to require a race of giants.
But, in full view of the substantial results achieved, the pure waste
manifest in the ruins one meets never fails to produce a saddening effect.</p>
<p>The dim old ruins of Europe, so eagerly sought after by travelers, have
something pleasing about them, whatever their historical associations; for
they at least lend some beauty to the landscape. Their picturesque towers
and arches seem to be kindly adopted by nature, and planted with wild
flowers and wreathed with ivy; while their rugged angles are soothed and
freshened and embossed with green mosses, fresh life and decay mingling in
pleasing measures, and the whole vanishing softly like a ripe, tranquil
day fading into night. So, also, among the older ruins of the East there
is a fitness felt. They have served their time, and like the
weather-beaten mountains are wasting harmoniously. The same is in some
degree true of the dead mining towns of California.</p>
<p>But those lying to the eastward of the Sierra throughout the ranges of the
Great Basin waste in the dry wilderness like the bones of cattle that have
died of thirst. Many of them do not represent any good accomplishment, and
have no right to be. They are monuments of fraud and ignorance—sins
against science. The drifts and tunnels in the rocks may perhaps be
regarded as the prayers of the prospector, offered for the wealth he so
earnestly craves; but, like prayers of any kind not in harmony with
nature, they are unanswered. But, after all, effort, however misapplied,
is better than stagnation. Better toil blindly, beating every stone in
turn for grains of gold, whether they contain any or not, than lie down in
apathetic decay.</p>
<p>The fever period is fortunately passing away. The prospector is no longer
the raving, wandering ghoul of ten years ago, rushing in random
lawlessness among the hills, hungry and footsore; but cool and skillful,
well supplied with every necessary, and clad in his right mind.
Capitalists, too, and the public in general, have become wiser, and do not
take fire so readily from mining sparks; while at the same time a vast
amount of real work is being done, and the ratio between growth and decay
is constantly becoming better.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XVII. Puget Sound </h2>
<p>Washington Territory, recently admitted <SPAN href="#linknote-22"
name="linknoteref-22" id="linknoteref-22"><small>22</small></SPAN> into the
Union as a State, lies between latitude 46 degrees and 49 degrees and
longitude 117 degrees and 125 degrees, forming the northwest shoulder of
the United States. The majestic range of the Cascade Mountains naturally
divides the State into two distinct parts, called Eastern and Western
Washington, differing greatly from each other in almost every way, the
western section being less than half as large as the eastern, and, with
its copious rains and deep fertile soil, being clothed with forests of
evergreens, while the eastern section is dry and mostly treeless, though
fertile in many parts, and producing immense quantities of wheat and hay.
Few States are more fertile and productive in one way or another than
Washington, or more strikingly varied in natural features or resources.</p>
<p>Within her borders every kind of soil and climate may be found—the
densest woods and dryest plains, the smoothest levels and roughest
mountains. She is rich in square miles (some seventy thousand of them), in
coal, timber, and iron, and in sheltered inland waters that render these
resources advantageously accessible. She also is already rich in busy
workers, who work hard, though not always wisely, hacking, burning,
blasting their way deeper into the wilderness, beneath the sky, and
beneath the ground. The wedges of development are being driven hard, and
none of the obstacles or defenses of nature can long withstand the onset
of this immeasurable industry.</p>
<p>Puget Sound, so justly famous the world over for the surpassing size and
excellence and abundance of its timber, is a long, many-fingered arm of
the sea reaching southward from the head of the Strait of Juan de Fuca
into the heart of the grand forests of the western portion of Washington,
between the Cascade Range and the mountains of the coast. It is less than
a hundred miles in length, but so numerous are the branches into which it
divides, and so many its bays, harbors, and islands, that its entire
shoreline is said to measure more than eighteen hundred miles. Throughout
its whole vast extent ships move in safety, and find shelter from every
wind that blows, the entire mountain-girt sea forming one grand unrivaled
harbor and center for commerce.</p>
<p>The forest trees press forward to the water around all the windings of the
shores in most imposing array, as if they were courting their fate, coming
down from the mountains far and near to offer themselves to the axe, thus
making the place a perfect paradise for the lumberman. To the lover of
nature the scene is enchanting. Water and sky, mountain and forest, clad
in sunshine and clouds, are composed in landscapes sublime in magnitude,
yet exquisitely fine and fresh, and full of glad, rejoicing life. The
shining waters stretch away into the leafy wilderness, now like the
reaches of some majestic river and again expanding into broad roomy spaces
like mountain lakes, their farther edges fading gradually and blending
with the pale blue of the sky. The wooded shores with an outer fringe of
flowering bushes sweep onward in beautiful curves around bays, and capes,
and jutting promontories innumerable; while the islands, with soft, waving
outlines, lavishly adorned with spruces and cedars, thicken and enrich the
beauty of the waters; and the white spirit mountains looking down from the
sky keep watch and ward over all, faithful and changeless as the stars.</p>
<p>All the way from the Strait of Juan de Fuca up to Olympia, a hopeful town
situated at the head of one of the farthest-reaching of the fingers of the
Sound, we are so completely inland and surrounded by mountains that it is
hard to realize that we are sailing on a branch of the salt sea. We are
constantly reminded of Lake Tahoe. There is the same clearness of the
water in calm weather without any trace of the ocean swell, the same
picturesque winding and sculpture of the shoreline and flowery, leafy
luxuriance; only here the trees are taller and stand much closer together,
and the backgrounds are higher and far more extensive. Here, too, we find
greater variety amid the marvelous wealth of islands and inlets, and also
in the changing views dependent on the weather. As we double cape after
cape and round the uncounted islands, new combinations come to view in
endless variety, sufficient to fill and satisfy the lover of wild beauty
through a whole life.</p>
<p>Oftentimes in the stillest weather, when all the winds sleep and no sign
of storms is felt or seen, silky clouds form and settle over all the land,
leaving in sight only a circle of water with indefinite bounds like views
in mid-ocean; then, the clouds lifting, some islet will be presented
standing alone, with the tops of its trees dipping out of sight in pearly
gray fringes; or, lifting higher, and perhaps letting in a ray of sunshine
through some rift overhead, the whole island will be set free and brought
forward in vivid relief amid the gloom, a girdle of silver light of
dazzling brightness on the water about its shores, then darkening again
and vanishing back into the general gloom. Thus island after island may be
seen, singly or in groups, coming and going from darkness to light like a
scene of enchantment, until at length the entire cloud ceiling is rolled
away, and the colossal cone of Mount Rainier is seen in spotless white
looking down over the forests from a distance of sixty miles, but so lofty
and so massive and clearly outlined as to impress itself upon us as being
just back of a strip of woods only a mile or two in breadth.</p>
<p>For the tourist sailing to Puget Sound from San Francisco there is but
little that is at all striking in the scenery within reach by the way
until the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca is reached. The voyage is
about four days in length and the steamers keep within sight of the coast,
but the hills fronting the sea up to Oregon are mostly bare and
uninviting, the magnificent redwood forests stretching along this portion
of the California coast seeming to keep well back, away from the heavy
winds, so that very little is seen of them; while there are no deep inlets
or lofty mountains visible to break the regular monotony. Along the coast
of Oregon the woods of spruce and fir come down to the shore, kept fresh
and vigorous by copious rains, and become denser and taller to the
northward until, rounding Cape Flattery, we enter the Strait of Fuca,
where, sheltered from the ocean gales, the forests begin to hint the
grandeur they attain in Puget Sound. Here the scenery in general becomes
exceedingly interesting; for now we have arrived at the grand
mountain-walled channel that forms the entrance to that marvelous network
of inland waters that extends along the margin of the continent to the
northward for a thousand miles.</p>
<p>This magnificent inlet was named for Juan de Fuca, who discovered it in
1592 while seeking a mythical strait, supposed to exist somewhere in the
north, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific. It is about seventy miles
long, ten or twelve miles wide, and extends to the eastward in a nearly
straight line between the south end of Vancouver Island and the Olympic
Range of mountains on the mainland.</p>
<p>Cape Flattery, the western termination of the Olympic Range, is terribly
rugged and jagged, and in stormy weather is utterly inaccessible from the
sea. Then the ponderous rollers of the deep Pacific thunder amid its
caverns and cliffs with the foam and uproar of a thousand Yosemite
waterfalls. The bones of many a noble ship lie there, and many a sailor.
It would seem unlikely that any living thing should seek rest in such a
place, or find it. Nevertheless, frail and delicate flowers bloom there,
flowers of both the land and the sea; heavy, ungainly seals disport in the
swelling waves, and find grateful retreats back in the inmost bores of its
storm-lashed caverns; while in many a chink and hollow of the highest
crags, not visible from beneath, a great variety of waterfowl make homes
and rear their young.</p>
<p>But not always are the inhabitants safe, even in such wave-defended
castles as these, for the Indians of the neighboring shores venture forth
in the calmest summer weather in their frail canoes to spear the seals in
the narrow gorges amid the grinding, gurgling din of the restless waters.
At such times also the hunters make out to scale many of the apparently
inaccessible cliffs for the eggs and young of the gulls and other water
birds, occasionally losing their lives in these perilous adventures, which
give rise to many an exciting story told around the campfires at night
when the storms roar loudest.</p>
<p>Passing through the strait, we have the Olympic Mountains close at hand on
the right, Vancouver Island on the left, and the snowy peak of Mount Baker
straight ahead in the distance. During calm weather, or when the clouds
are lifting and rolling off the mountains after a storm, all these views
are truly magnificent. Mount Baker is one of that wonderful series of old
volcanoes that once flamed along the summits of the Sierras and Cascades
from Lassen to Mount St. Elias. Its fires are sleeping now, and it is
loaded with glaciers, streams of ice having taken the place of streams of
glowing lava. Vancouver Island presents a charming variety of hill and
dale, open sunny spaces and sweeps of dark forest rising in swell beyond
swell to the high land in the distance.</p>
<p>But the Olympic Mountains most of all command attention, seen tellingly
near and clear in all their glory, rising from the water's edge into the
sky to a height of six or eight thousand feet. They bound the strait on
the south side throughout its whole extent, forming a massive sustained
wall, flowery and bushy at the base, a zigzag of snowy peaks along the
top, which have ragged-edged fields of ice and snow beneath them, enclosed
in wide amphitheaters opening to the waters of the strait through spacious
forest-filled valleys enlivened with fine, dashing streams. These valleys
mark the courses of the Olympic glaciers at the period of their greatest
extension, when they poured their tribute into that portion of the great
northern ice sheet that overswept the south end of Vancouver Island and
filled the strait with flowing ice as it is now filled with ocean water.</p>
<p>The steamers of the Sound usually stop at Esquimalt on their way up, thus
affording tourists an opportunity to visit the interesting town of
Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. The Victoria harbor is too
narrow and difficult of access for the larger class of ships; therefore a
landing has to be made at Esquimalt. The distance, however, is only about
three miles, and the way is delightful, winding on through a charming
forest of Douglas spruce, with here and there groves of oak and madrone,
and a rich undergrowth of hazel, dogwood, willow, alder, spiraea, rubus,
huckleberry, and wild rose. Pretty cottages occur at intervals along the
road, covered with honeysuckle, and many an upswelling rock, freshly
glaciated and furred with yellow mosses and lichen, telling interesting
stories of the icy past.</p>
<p>Victoria is a quiet, handsome, breezy town, beautifully located on finely
modulated ground at the mouth of the Canal de Haro, with charming views in
front, of islands and mountains and far-reaching waters, ever changing in
the shifting lights and shades of the clouds and sunshine. In the
background there are a mile or two of field and forest and sunny oak
openings; then comes the forest primeval, dense and shaggy and well-nigh
impenetrable.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the importance claimed for Victoria as a commercial center
and the capital of British Columbia, it has a rather young, loose-jointed
appearance. The government buildings and some of the business blocks on
the main streets are well built and imposing in bulk and architecture.
These are far less interesting and characteristic, however, than the
mansions set in the midst of spacious pleasure grounds and the lovely home
cottages embowered in honeysuckle and climbing roses. One soon discovers
that this is no Yankee town. The English faces and the way that English is
spoken alone would tell that; while in business quarters there is a staid
dignity and moderation that is very noticeable, and a want of American
push and hurrah. Love of land and of privacy in homes is made manifest in
the residences, many of which are built in the middle of fields and
orchards or large city blocks, and in the loving care with which these
home grounds are planted. They are very beautiful. The fineness of the
climate, with its copious measure of warm moisture distilling in dew and
fog, and gentle, bathing, laving rain, give them a freshness and
floweriness that is worth going far to see.</p>
<p>Victoria is noted for its fine drives, and every one who can should either
walk or drive around the outskirts of the town, not only for the fine
views out over the water but to see the cascades of bloom pouring over the
gables of the cottages, and the fresh wild woods with their flowery,
fragrant underbrush. Wild roses abound almost everywhere. One species,
blooming freely along the woodland paths, is from two to three inches in
diameter, and more fragrant than any other wild rose I ever saw excepting
the sweetbriar. This rose and three species of spiraea fairly fill the air
with fragrance after a shower. And how brightly then do the red berries of
the dogwood shine out from the warm yellow-green of leaves and mosses!</p>
<p>But still more interesting and significant are the glacial phenomena
displayed hereabouts. All this exuberant tree, bush, and herbaceous
vegetation, cultivated or wild, is growing upon moraine beds outspread by
waters that issued from the ancient glaciers at the time of their
recession, and scarcely at all moved or in any way modified by
post-glacial agencies. The town streets and the roads are graded in
moraine material, among scratched and grooved rock bosses that are as
unweathered and telling as any to be found in the glacier channels of
Alaska. The harbor also is clearly of glacial origin. The rock islets that
rise here and there, forming so marked a feature of the harbor, are
unchanged roches moutonnees, and the shores are grooved, scratched, and
rounded, and in every way as glacial in all their characteristics as those
of a newborn glacial lake.</p>
<p>Most visitors to Victoria go to the stores of the Hudson's Bay Company,
presumably on account of the romantic associations, or to purchase a bit
of fur or some other wild-Indianish trinket as a memento. At certain
seasons of the year, when the hairy harvests are gathered in, immense
bales of skins may be seen in these unsavory warehouses, the spoils of
many thousand hunts over mountain and plain, by lonely river and shore.
The skins of bears, wolves, beavers, otters, fishers, martens, lynxes,
panthers, wolverine, reindeer, moose, elk, wild goats, sheep, foxes,
squirrels, and many others of our "poor earth-born companions and fellow
mortals" may here be found.</p>
<p>Vancouver is the southmost and the largest of the countless islands
forming the great archipelago that stretches a thousand miles to the
northward. Its shores have been known a long time, but little is known of
the lofty mountainous interior on account of the difficulties in the way
of explorations—lake, bogs, and shaggy tangled forests. It is mostly
a pure, savage wilderness, without roads or clearings, and silent so far
as man is concerned. Even the Indians keep close to the shore, getting a
living by fishing, dwelling together in villages, and traveling almost
wholly by canoes. White settlements are few and far between. Good
agricultural lands occur here and there on the edge of the wilderness, but
they are hard to clear, and have received but little attention thus far.
Gold, the grand attraction that lights the way into all kinds of
wildernesses and makes rough places smooth, has been found, but only in
small quantities, too small to make much motion. Almost all the industry
of the island is employed upon lumber and coal, in which, so far as known,
its chief wealth lies.</p>
<p>Leaving Victoria for Port Townsend, after we are fairly out on the free
open water, Mount Baker is seen rising solitary over a dark breadth of
forest, making a glorious show in its pure white raiment. It is said to be
about eleven thousand feet high, is loaded with glaciers, some of which
come well down into the woods, and never, so far as I have heard, has been
climbed, though in all probability it is not inaccessible. The task of
reaching its base through the dense woods will be likely to prove of
greater difficulty than the climb to the summit.</p>
<p>In a direction a little to the left of Mount Baker and much nearer, may be
seen the island of San Juan, famous in the young history of the country
for the quarrels concerning its rightful ownership between the Hudson's
Bay Company and Washington Territory, quarrels which nearly brought on war
with Great Britain. Neither party showed any lack of either pluck or
gunpowder. General Scott was sent out by President Buchanan to negotiate,
which resulted in a joint occupancy of the island. Small quarrels,
however, continued to arise until the year 1874, when the peppery question
was submitted to the Emperor of Germany for arbitration. Then the whole
island was given to the United States.</p>
<p>San Juan is one of a thickset cluster of islands that fills the waters
between Vancouver and the mainland, a little to the north of Victoria. In
some of the intricate channels between these islands the tides run at
times like impetuous rushing rivers, rendering navigation rather uncertain
and dangerous for the small sailing vessels that ply between Victoria and
the settlements on the coast of British Columbia and the larger islands.
The water is generally deep enough everywhere, too deep in most places for
anchorage, and, the winds shifting hither and thither or dying away
altogether, the ships, getting no direction from their helms, are carried
back and forth or are caught in some eddy where two currents meet and
whirled round and round to the dismay of the sailors, like a chip in a
river whirlpool.</p>
<p>All the way over to Port Townsend the Olympic Mountains well maintain
their massive, imposing grandeur, and present their elaborately carved
summits in clear relief, many of which are out of sight in coming up the
strait on account of our being too near the base of the range. Turn to
them as often as we may, our admiration only grows the warmer the longer
we dwell upon them. The highest peaks are Mount Constance and Mount
Olympus, said to be about eight thousand feet high.</p>
<p>In two or three hours after leaving Victoria, we arrive at the handsome
little town of Port Townsend, situated at the mouth of Puget Sound, on the
west side. The residential portion of the town is set on the level top of
the bluff that bounds Port Townsend Bay, while another nearly level space
of moderate extent, reaching from the base of the bluff to the shoreline,
is occupied by the business portion, thus making a town of two separate
and distinct stories, which are connected by long, ladder-like flights of
stairs. In the streets of the lower story, while there is no lack of
animation, there is but little business noise as compared with the amount
of business transacted. This in great part is due to the scarcity of
horses and wagons. Farms and roads back in the woods are few and far
between. Nearly all the tributary settlements are on the coast, and
communication is almost wholly by boats, canoes, and schooners. Hence
country stages and farmers' wagons and buggies, with the whir and din that
belong to them, are wanting.</p>
<p>This being the port of entry, all vessels have to stop here, and they make
a lively show about the wharves and in the bay. The winds stir the flags
of every civilized nation, while the Indians in their long-beaked canoes
glide about from ship to ship, satisfying their curiosity or trading with
the crews. Keen traders these Indians are, and few indeed of the sailors
or merchants from any country ever get the better of them in bargains.
Curious groups of people may often be seen in the streets and stores, made
up of English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Scandinavians, Germans,
Greeks, Moors, Japanese, and Chinese, of every rank and station and style
of dress and behavior; settlers from many a nook and bay and island up and
down the coast; hunters from the wilderness; tourists on their way home by
the Sound and the Columbia River or to Alaska or California.</p>
<p>The upper story of Port Townsend is charmingly located, wide bright waters
on one side, flowing evergreen woods on the other. The streets are well
laid out and well tended, and the houses, with their luxuriant gardens
about them, have an air of taste and refinement seldom found in towns set
on the edge of a wild forest. The people seem to have come here to make
true homes, attracted by the beauty and fresh breezy healthfulness of the
place as well as by business advantages, trusting to natural growth and
advancement instead of restless "booming" methods. They perhaps have
caught some of the spirit of calm moderation and enjoyment from their
English neighbors across the water. Of late, however, this sober
tranquillity has begun to give way, some whiffs from the whirlwind of real
estate speculation up the Sound having at length touched the town and
ruffled the surface of its calmness.</p>
<p>A few miles up the bay is Fort Townsend, which makes a pretty picture with
the green woods rising back of it and the calm water in front. Across the
mouth of the Sound lies the long, narrow Whidbey Island, named by
Vancouver for one of his lieutenants. It is about thirty miles in length,
and is remarkable in this region of crowded forests and mountains as being
comparatively open and low. The soil is good and easily worked, and a
considerable portion of the island has been under cultivation for many
years. Fertile fields, open, parklike groves of oak, and thick masses of
evergreens succeed one another in charming combinations to make this "the
garden spot of the Territory."</p>
<p>Leaving Port Townsend for Seattle and Tacoma, we enter the Sound and sail
down into the heart of the green, aspiring forests, and find, look where
we may, beauty ever changing, in lavish profusion. Puget Sound, "the
Mediterranean of America" as it is sometimes called, is in many respects
one of the most remarkable bodies of water in the world. Vancouver, who
came here nearly a hundred years ago and made a careful survey of it,
named the larger northern portion of it "Admiralty Inlet" and one of the
long, narrow branches "Hood's Canal'" applying the name "Puget Sound" only
to the comparatively small southern portion. The latter name, however, is
now applied generally to the entire inlet, and is commonly shortened by
the people hereabouts to "The Sound." The natural wealth and commercial
advantages of the Sound region were quickly recognized, and the cause of
the activity prevailing here is not far to seek. Vancouver, long before
civilization touched these shores, spoke of it in terms of unstinted
praise. He was sent out by the British government with the principal
object in view of "acquiring accurate knowledge as to the nature and
extent of any water communication which may tend in any considerable
degree to facilitate an intercourse for the purposes of commerce between
the northwest coast and the country on the opposite side of the
continent," vague traditions having long been current concerning a strait
supposed to unite the two oceans. Vancouver reported that he found the
coast from San Francisco to Oregon and beyond to present a nearly straight
solid barrier to the sea, without openings, and we may well guess the joy
of the old navigator on the discovery of these waters after so long and
barren a search to the southward.</p>
<p>His descriptions of the scenery—Mounts Baker, Rainier, St. Helen's,
etc.—were as enthusiastic as those of the most eager landscape lover
of the present day, when scenery is in fashion. He says in one place: "To
describe the beauties of this region will, on some future occasion, be a
very grateful task for the pen of a skillful panegyrist. The serenity of
the climate, the immeasurable pleasing landscapes, and the abundant
fertility that unassisted nature puts forth, require only to be enriched
by the industry of man with villages, mansions, cottages, and other
buildings, to render it the most lovely country that can be imagined. The
labor of the inhabitants would be amply rewarded in the bounties which
nature seems ready to bestow on cultivation." "A picture so pleasing could
not fail to call to our remembrance certain delightful and beloved
situations in old England." So warm, indeed, were the praises he sung that
his statements were received in England with a good deal of hesitation.
But they were amply corroborated by Wilkes and others who followed many
years later. "Nothing," says Wilkes, "can exceed the beauty of these
waters and their safety. Not a shoal exists in the Straits of Juan de
Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound or Hood's Canal, that can in any way
interrupt their navigation by a 74-gun ship. I venture nothing in saying
there is no country in the world that possesses waters like these." And
again, quoting from the United States Coast Survey, "For depth of water,
boldness of approaches, freedom from hidden dangers, and the immeasurable
sea of gigantic timber coming down to the very shores, these waters are
unsurpassed, unapproachable."</p>
<p>The Sound region has a fine, fresh, clean climate, well washed both winter
and summer with copious rains and swept with winds and clouds that come
from the mountains and the sea. Every hidden nook in the depths of the
woods is searched and refreshed, leaving no stagnant air; beaver meadows
and lake basin and low and willowy bogs, all are kept wholesome and sweet
the year round. Cloud and sunshine alternate in bracing, cheering
succession, and health and abundance follow the storms. The outer sea
margin is sublimely dashed and drenched with ocean brine, the spicy scud
sweeping at times far inland over the bending woods, the giant trees
waving and chanting in hearty accord as if surely enjoying it all.</p>
<p>Heavy, long-continued rains occur in the winter months. Then every leaf,
bathed and brightened, rejoices. Filtering drops and currents through all
the shaggy undergrowth of the woods go with tribute to the small streams,
and these again to the larger. The rivers swell, but there are no
devastating floods; for the thick felt of roots and mosses holds the
abounding waters in check, stored in a thousand thousand fountains.
Neither are there any violent hurricanes here, At least, I never have
heard of any, nor have I come upon their tracks. Most of the streams are
clear and cool always, for their waters are filtered through deep beds of
mosses, and flow beneath shadows all the way to the sea. Only the streams
from the glaciers are turbid and muddy. On the slopes of the mountains
where they rush from their crystal caves, they carry not only small
particles of rock-mud, worn off the sides and bottoms of the channels of
the glaciers, but grains of sand and pebbles and large boulders tons in
weight, rolling them forward on their way rumbling and bumping to their
appointed places at the foot of steep slopes, to be built into rough bars
and beds, while the smaller material is carried farther and outspread in
flats, perhaps for coming wheat fields and gardens, the finest of it going
out to sea, floating on the tides for weeks and months ere it finds rest
on the bottom.</p>
<p>Snow seldom falls to any great depth on the lowlands, though it comes in
glorious abundance on the mountains. And only on the mountains does the
temperature fall much below the freezing point. In the warmest summer
weather a temperature of eighty-five degrees or even more occasionally is
reached, but not for long at a time, as such heat is speedily followed by
a breeze from the sea. The most charming days here are days of perfect
calm, when all the winds are holding their breath and not a leaf stirs.
The surface of the Sound shines like a silver mirror over all its vast
extent, reflecting its lovely islands and shores; and long sheets of
spangles flash and dance in the wake of every swimming seabird and boat.
The sun, looking down on the tranquil landscape, seems conscious of the
presence of every living thing on which he is pouring his blessings, while
they in turn, with perhaps the exception of man, seem conscious of the sun
as a benevolent father and stand hushed and waiting.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XVIII. The Forests of Washington </h2>
<p>When we force our way into the depths of the forests, following any of the
rivers back to their fountains, we find that the bulk of the woods is made
up of the Douglas spruce (Pseudotsuga Douglasii), named in honor of David
Douglas, an enthusiastic botanical explorer of early Hudson's Bay times.
It is not only a very large tree but a very beautiful one, with lively
bright-green drooping foliage, handsome pendent cones, and a shaft
exquisitely straight and regular. For so large a tree it is astonishing
how many find nourishment and space to grow on any given area. The
magnificent shafts push their spires into the sky close together with as
regular a growth as that of a well-tilled field of grain. And no ground
has been better tilled for the growth of trees than that on which these
forests are growing. For it has been thoroughly ploughed and rolled by the
mighty glaciers from the mountains, and sifted and mellowed and outspread
in beds hundreds of feet in depth by the broad streams that issued from
their fronts at the time of their recession, after they had long covered
all the land.</p>
<p>The largest tree of this species that I have myself measured was nearly
twelve feet in diameter at a height of five feet from the ground, and, as
near as I could make out under the circumstances, about three hundred feet
in length. It stood near the head of the Sound not far from Olympia. I
have seen a few others, both near the coast and thirty or forty miles back
in the interior, that were from eight to ten feet in diameter, measured
above their bulging insteps; and many from six to seven feet. I have heard
of some that were said to be three hundred and twenty-five feet in height
and fifteen feet in diameter, but none that I measured were so large,
though it is not at all unlikely that such colossal giants do exist where
conditions of soil and exposure are surpassingly favorable. The average
size of all the trees of this species found up to an elevation on the
mountain slopes of, say, two thousand feet above sea level, taking into
account only what may be called mature trees two hundred and fifty to five
hundred years of age, is perhaps, at a vague guess, not more than a height
of one hundred and seventy-five or two hundred feet and a diameter of
three feet; though, of course, throughout the richest sections the size is
much greater.</p>
<p>In proportion to its weight when dry, the timber from this tree is perhaps
stronger than that of any other conifer in the country. It is tough and
durable and admirably adapted in every way for shipbuilding, piles, and
heavy timbers in general. But its hardness and liability to warp render it
much inferior to white or sugar pine for fine work. In the lumber markets
of California it is known as "Oregon pine" and is used almost exclusively
for spars, bridge timbers, heavy planking, and the framework of houses.</p>
<p>The same species extends northward in abundance through British Columbia
and southward through the coast and middle regions of Oregon and
California. It is also a common tree in the canyons and hollows of the
Wahsatch Mountains in Utah, where it is called "red pine" and on portions
of the Rocky Mountains and some of the short ranges of the Great Basin.
Along the coast of California it keeps company with the redwood wherever
it can find a favorable opening. On the western slope of the Sierra, with
the yellow pine and incense cedar, it forms a pretty well-defined belt at
a height of from three thousand to six thousand feet above the sea, and
extends into the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains in Southern
California. But, though widely distributed, it is only in these cool,
moist northlands that it reaches its finest development, tall, straight,
elastic, and free from limbs to an immense height, growing down to tide
water, where ships of the largest size may lie close alongside and load at
the least possible cost.</p>
<p>Growing with the Douglas we find the white spruce, or "Sitka pine," as it
is sometimes called. This also is a very beautiful and majestic tree,
frequently attaining a height of two hundred feet or more and a diameter
of five or six feet. It is very abundant in southeastern Alaska, forming
the greater part of the best forests there. Here it is found mostly around
the sides of beaver-dam and other meadows and on the borders of the
streams, especially where the ground is low. One tree that I saw felled at
the head of the Hop-Ranch meadows on the upper Snoqualmie River, though
far from being the largest I have seen, measured a hundred and eighty feet
in length and four and a half in diameter, and was two hundred and
fifty-seven years of age.</p>
<p>In habit and general appearance it resembles the Douglas spruce, but it is
somewhat less slender and the needles grow close together all around the
branchlets and are so stiff and sharp-pointed on the younger branches that
they cannot well be handled without gloves. The timber is tough,
close-grained, white, and looks more like pine than any other of the
spruces. It splits freely, makes excellent shingles and in general use in
house-building takes the place of pine. I have seen logs of this species a
hundred feet long and two feet in diameter at the upper end. It was named
in honor of the old Scotch botanist Archibald Menzies, who came to this
coast with Vancouver in 1792 <SPAN href="#linknote-23" name="linknoteref-23" id="linknoteref-23"><small>23</small></SPAN>.</p>
<p>The beautiful hemlock spruce with its warm yellow-green foliage is also
common in some portions of these woods. It is tall and slender and
exceedingly graceful in habit before old age comes on, but the timber is
inferior and is seldom used for any other than the roughest work, such as
wharf-building.</p>
<p>The Western arbor-vitae <SPAN href="#linknote-24" name="linknoteref-24" id="linknoteref-24"><small>24</small></SPAN> (Thuja gigantea) grows to a size
truly gigantic on low rich ground. Specimens ten feet in diameter and a
hundred and forty feet high are not at all rare. Some that I have heard of
are said to be fifteen and even eighteen feet thick. Clad in rich, glossy
plumes, with gray lichens covering their smooth, tapering boles, perfect
trees of this species are truly noble objects and well worthy the place
they hold in these glorious forests. It is of this tree that the Indians
make their fine canoes.</p>
<p>Of the other conifers that are so happy as to have place here, there are
three firs, three or four pines, two cypresses, a yew, and another spruce,
the Abies Pattoniana <SPAN href="#linknote-25" name="linknoteref-25" id="linknoteref-25"><small>25</small></SPAN>. This last is perhaps the most
beautiful of all the spruces, but, being comparatively small and growing
only far back on the mountains, it receives but little attention from most
people. Nor is there room in a work like this for anything like a complete
description of it, or of the others I have just mentioned. Of the three
firs, one (Picea grandis) <SPAN href="#linknote-26" name="linknoteref-26" id="linknoteref-26"><small>26</small></SPAN>, grows near the coast and is one
of the largest trees in the forest, sometimes attaining a height of two
hundred and fifty feet. The timber, however, is inferior in quality and
not much sought after while so much that is better is within reach. One of
the others (P. amabilis, var. nobilis) forms magnificent forests by itself
at a height of about three thousand to four thousand feet above the sea.
The rich plushy, plumelike branches grow in regular whorls around the
trunk, and on the topmost whorls, standing erect, are the large, beautiful
cones. This is far the most beautiful of all the firs. In the Sierra
Nevada it forms a considerable portion of the main forest belt on the
western slope, and it is there that it reaches its greatest size and
greatest beauty. The third species (P. subalpina) forms, together with
Abies Pattoniana, the upper edge of the timberline on the portion of the
Cascades opposite the Sound. A thousand feet below the extreme limit of
tree growth it occurs in beautiful groups amid parklike openings where
flowers grow in extravagant profusion.</p>
<p>The pines are nowhere abundant in the State. The largest, the yellow pine
(Pinus ponderosa), occurs here and there on margins of dry gravelly
prairies, and only in such situations have I yet seen it in this State.
The others (P. monticola and P. contorta) are mostly restricted to the
upper slopes of the mountains, and though the former of these two attains
a good size and makes excellent lumber, it is mostly beyond reach at
present and is not abundant. One of the cypresses (Cupressus Lawsoniana)
<SPAN href="#linknote-27" name="linknoteref-27" id="linknoteref-27"><small>27</small></SPAN>
grows near the coast and is a fine large tree, clothed like the
arbor-vitae in a glorious wealth of flat, feathery branches. The other is
found here and there well up toward the edge of the timberline. This is
the fine Alaska cedar (C. Nootkatensis), the lumber from which is noted
for its durability, fineness of grain, and beautiful yellow color, and for
its fragrance, which resembles that of sandalwood. The Alaska Indians make
their canoe paddles of it and weave matting and coarse cloth from the
fibrous brown bark.</p>
<p>Among the different kinds of hardwood trees are the oak, maple, madrona,
birch, alder, and wild apple, while large cottonwoods are common along the
rivers and shores of the numerous lakes.</p>
<p>The most striking of these to the traveler is the Menzies arbutus, or
madrona, as it is popularly called in California. Its curious red and
yellow bark, large thick glossy leaves, and panicles of waxy-looking
greenish-white urn-shaped flowers render it very conspicuous. On the boles
of the younger trees and on all the branches, the bark is so smooth and
seamless that it does not appear as bark at all, but rather the naked
wood. The whole tree, with the exception of the larger part of the trunk,
looks as though it had been thoroughly peeled. It is found sparsely
scattered along the shores of the Sound and back in the forests also on
open margins, where the soil is not too wet, and extends up the coast on
Vancouver Island beyond Nanaimo. But in no part of the State does it reach
anything like the size and beauty of proportions that it attains in
California, few trees here being more than ten or twelve inches in
diameter and thirty feet high. It is, however, a very remarkable-looking
object, standing there like some lost or runaway native of the tropics,
naked and painted, beside that dark mossy ocean of northland conifers. Not
even a palm tree would seem more out of place here.</p>
<p>The oaks, so far as my observation has reached, seem to be most abundant
and to grow largest on the islands of the San Juan and Whidbey
Archipelago. One of the three species of maples that I have seen is only a
bush that makes tangles on the banks of the rivers. Of the other two one
is a small tree, crooked and moss-grown, holding out its leaves to catch
the light that filters down through the close-set spires of the great
spruces. It grows almost everywhere throughout the entire extent of the
forest until the higher slopes of the mountains are reached, and produces
a very picturesque and delightful effect; relieving the bareness of the
great shafts of the evergreens, without being close enough in its growth
to hide them wholly, or to cover the bright mossy carpet that is spread
beneath all the dense parts of the woods.</p>
<p>The other species is also very picturesque and at the same time very
large, the largest tree of its kind that I have ever seen anywhere. Not
even in the great maple woods of Canada have I seen trees either as large
or with so much striking, picturesque character. It is widely distributed
throughout western Washington, but is never found scattered among the
conifers in the dense woods. It keeps together mostly in magnificent
groves by itself on the damp levels along the banks of streams or lakes
where the ground is subject to overflow. In such situations it attains a
height of seventy-five to a hundred feet and a diameter of four to eight
feet. The trunk sends out large limbs toward its neighbors, laden with
long drooping mosses beneath and rows of ferns on their upper surfaces,
thus making a grand series of richly ornamented interlacing arches, with
the leaves laid thick overhead, rendering the underwood spaces
delightfully cool and open. Never have I seen a finer forest ceiling or a
more picturesque one, while the floor, covered with tall ferns and rubus
and thrown into hillocks by the bulging roots, matches it well. The
largest of these maple groves that I have yet found is on the right bank
of the Snoqualmie River, about a mile above the falls. The whole country
hereabouts is picturesque, and interesting in many ways, and well worthy a
visit by tourists passing through the Sound region, since it is now
accessible by rail from Seattle.</p>
<p>Looking now at the forests in a comprehensive way, we find in passing
through them again and again from the shores of the Sound to their upper
limits, that some portions are much older than others, the trees much
larger, and the ground beneath them strewn with immense trunks in every
stage of decay, representing several generations of growth, everything
about them giving the impression that these are indeed the "forests
primeval," while in the younger portions, where the elevation of the
ground is the same as to the sea level and the species of trees are the
same as well as the quality of the soil, apart from the moisture which it
holds, the trees seem to be and are mostly of the same age, perhaps from
one hundred to two or three hundred years, with no gray-bearded, venerable
patriarchs—forming tall, majestic woods without any grandfathers.</p>
<p>When we examine the ground we find that it is as free from those mounds of
brown crumbling wood and mossy ancient fragments as are the growing trees
from very old ones. Then perchance, we come upon a section farther up the
slopes towards the mountains that has no trees more than fifty years old,
or even fifteen or twenty years old. These last show plainly enough that
they have been devastated by fire, as the black, melancholy monuments
rising here and there above the young growth bear witness. Then, with this
fiery, suggestive testimony, on examining those sections whose trees are a
hundred years old or two hundred, we find the same fire records, though
heavily veiled with mosses and lichens, showing that a century or two ago
the forests that stood there had been swept away in some tremendous fire
at a time when rare conditions of drouth made their burning possible.
Then, the bare ground sprinkled with the winged seed from the edges of the
burned district, a new forest sprang up, nearly every tree starting at the
same time or within a few years, thus producing the uniformity of size we
find in such places; while, on the other hand, in those sections of
ancient aspect containing very old trees both standing and fallen, we find
no traces of fire, nor from the extreme dampness of the ground can we see
any possibility of fire ever running there.</p>
<p>Fire, then, is the great governing agent in forest distribution and to a
great extent also in the conditions of forest growth. Where fertile lands
are very wet one half the year and very dry the other, there can be no
forests at all. Where the ground is damp, with drouth occurring only at
intervals of centuries, fine forests may be found, other conditions being
favorable. But it is only where fires never run that truly ancient forests
of pitchy coniferous trees may exist. When the Washington forests are seen
from the deck of a ship out in the middle of the sound, or even from the
top of some high, commanding mountain, the woods seem everywhere perfectly
solid. And so in fact they are in general found to be. The largest
openings are those of the lakes and prairies, the smaller of beaver
meadows, bogs, and the rivers; none of them large enough to make a
distinct mark in comprehensive views.</p>
<p>Of the lakes there are said to be some thirty in King's County alone; the
largest, Lake Washington, being twenty-six miles long and four miles wide.
Another, which enjoys the duckish name of Lake Squak, is about ten miles
long. Both are pure and beautiful, lying imbedded in the green wilderness.
The rivers are numerous and are but little affected by the weather,
flowing with deep, steady currents the year round. They are short,
however, none of them drawing their sources from beyond the Cascade Range.
Some are navigable for small steamers on their lower courses, but the
openings they make in the woods are very narrow, the tall trees on their
banks leaning over in some places, making fine shady tunnels.</p>
<p>The largest of the prairies that I have seen lies to the south of Tacoma
on the line of the Portland and Tacoma Railroad. The ground is dry and
gravelly, a deposit of water-washed cobbles and pebbles derived from
moraines—conditions which readily explain the absence of trees here
and on other prairies adjacent to Yelm. Berries grow in lavish abundance,
enough for man and beast with thousands of tons to spare. The woods are
full of them, especially about the borders of the waters and meadows where
the sunshine may enter. Nowhere in the north does Nature set a more
bountiful table. There are huckleberries of many species, red, blue, and
black, some of them growing close to the ground, others on bushes eight to
ten feet high; also salal berries, growing on a low, weak-stemmed bush, a
species of gaultheria, seldom more than a foot or two high. This has pale
pea-green glossy leaves two or three inches long and half an inch wide and
beautiful pink flowers, urn-shaped, that make a fine, rich show. The
berries are black when ripe, are extremely abundant, and, with the
huckleberries, form an important part of the food of the Indians, who beat
them into paste, dry them, and store them away for winter use, to be eaten
with their oily fish. The salmon-berry also is very plentiful, growing in
dense prickly tangles. The flowers are as large as wild roses and of the
same color, and the berries measure nearly an inch in diameter. Besides
these there are gooseberries, currants, raspberries, blackberries, and, in
some favored spots, strawberries. The mass of the underbrush of the woods
is made up in great part of these berry-bearing bushes. Together with
white-flowered spiraea twenty feet high, hazel, dogwood, wild rose,
honeysuckle, symphoricarpus, etc. But in the depths of the woods, where
little sunshine can reach the ground, there is but little underbrush of
any kind, only a very light growth of huckleberry and rubus and young
maples in most places. The difficulties encountered by the explorer in
penetrating the wilderness are presented mostly by the streams and bogs,
with their tangled margins, and the fallen timber and thick carpet of moss
covering all the ground.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the tremendous energy displayed in lumbering and the grand
scale on which it is being carried on, and the number of settlers pushing
into every opening in search of farmlands, the woods of Washington are
still almost entirely virgin and wild, without trace of human touch,
savage or civilized. Indians, no doubt, have ascended most of the rivers
on their way to the mountains to hunt the wild sheep and goat to obtain
wool for their clothing, but with food in abundance on the coast they had
little to tempt them into the wilderness, and the monuments they have left
in it are scarcely more conspicuous than those of squirrels and bears; far
less so than those of the beavers, which in damming the streams have made
clearings and meadows which will continue to mark the landscape for
centuries. Nor is there much in these woods to tempt the farmer or cattle
raiser. A few settlers established homes on the prairies or open borders
of the woods and in the valleys of the Chehalis and Cowlitz before the
gold days of California. Most of the early immigrants from the Eastern
States, however, settled in the fertile and open Willamette Valley or
Oregon. Even now, when the search for land is so keen, with the exception
of the bottom lands around the Sound and on the lower reaches of the
rivers, there are comparatively few spots of cultivation in western
Washington. On every meadow or opening of any kind some one will be found
keeping cattle, planting hop vines, or raising hay, vegetables, and
patches of grain. All the large spaces available, even back near the
summits of the Cascade Mountains, were occupied long ago. The newcomers,
building their cabins where the beavers once built theirs, keep a few cows
and industriously seek to enlarge their small meadow patches by chopping,
girdling, and burning the edge of the encircling forest, gnawing like
beavers, and scratching for a living among the blackened stumps and logs,
regarding the trees as their greatest enemies—a sort of larger
pernicious weed immensely difficult to get rid of.</p>
<p>But all these are as yet mere spots, making no visible scar in the
distance and leaving the grand stretches of the forest as wild as they
were before the discovery of the continent. For many years the axe has
been busy around the shores of the Sound and ships have been falling in
perpetual storm like flakes of snow. The best of the timber has been cut
for a distance of eight or ten miles from the water and to a much greater
distance along the streams deep enough to float the logs. Railroads, too,
have been built to fetch in the logs from the best bodies of timber
otherwise inaccessible except at great cost. None of the ground, however,
has been completely denuded. Most of the young trees have been left,
together with the hemlocks and other trees undesirable in kind or in some
way defective, so that the neighboring trees appear to have closed over
the gaps make by the removal of the larger and better ones, maintaining
the general continuity of the forest and leaving no sign on the sylvan
sea, at least as seen from a distance.</p>
<p>In felling the trees they cut them off usually at a height of six to
twelve feet above the ground, so as to avoid cutting through the swollen
base, where the diameter is so much greater. In order to reach this height
the chopper cuts a notch about two inches wide and three or four deep and
drives a board into it, on which he stands while at work. In case the
first notch, cut as high as he can reach, is not high enough, he stands on
the board that has been driven into the first notch and cuts another. Thus
the axeman may often be seen at work standing eight or ten feet above the
ground. If the tree is so large that with his long-handled axe the chopper
is unable to reach to the farther side of it, then a second chopper is set
to work, each cutting halfway across. And when the tree is about to fall,
warned by the faint crackling of the strained fibers, they jump to the
ground, and stand back out of danger from flying limbs, while the noble
giant that had stood erect in glorious strength and beauty century after
century, bows low at last and with gasp and groan and booming throb falls
to earth.</p>
<p>Then with long saws the trees are cut into logs of the required length,
peeled, loaded upon wagons capable of carrying a weight of eight or ten
tons, hauled by a long string of oxen to the nearest available stream or
railroad, and floated or carried to the Sound. There the logs are gathered
into booms and towed by steamers to the mills, where workmen with steel
spikes in their boots leap lightly with easy poise from one to another and
by means of long pike poles push them apart and, selecting such as are at
the time required, push them to the foot of a chute and drive dogs into
the ends, when they are speedily hauled in by the mill machinery alongside
the saw carriage and placed and fixed in position. Then with sounds of
greedy hissing and growling they are rushed back and forth like enormous
shuttles, and in an incredibly short time they are lumber and are aboard
the ships lying at the mill wharves.</p>
<p>Many of the long, slender boles so abundant in these woods are saved for
spars, and so excellent is their quality that they are in demand in almost
every shipyard of the world. Thus these trees, felled and stripped of
their leaves and branches, are raised again, transplanted and set firmly
erect, given roots of iron and a new foliage of flapping canvas, and sent
to sea. On they speed in glad, free motion, cheerily waving over the blue,
heaving water, responsive to the same winds that rocked them when they
stood at home in the woods. After standing in one place all their lives
they now, like sight-seeing tourists, go round the world, meeting many a
relative from the old home forest, some like themselves, wandering free,
clad in broad canvas foliage, others planted head downward in mud, holding
wharf platforms aloft to receive the wares of all nations.</p>
<p>The mills of Puget sound and those of the redwood region of California are
said to be the largest and most effective lumber-makers in the world.
Tacoma alone claims to have eleven sawmills, and Seattle about as many;
while at many other points on the Sound, where the conditions are
particularly favorable, there are immense lumbering establishments, as at
Ports Blakely, Madison, Discovery, Gamble, Ludlow, etc., with a capacity
all together of over three million feet a day. Nevertheless, the observer
coming up the Sound sees not nor hears anything of this fierce storm of
steel that is devouring the forests, save perhaps the shriek of some
whistle or the columns of smoke that mark the position of the mills. All
else seems as serene and unscathed as the silent watching mountains.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XIX. People and Towns of Puget Sound </h2>
<p>As one strolls in the woods about the logging camps, most of the lumbermen
are found to be interesting people to meet, kind and obliging and sincere,
full of knowledge concerning the bark and sapwood and heartwood of the
trees they cut, and how to fell them without unnecessary breakage, on
ground where they may be most advantageously sawed into logs and loaded
for removal. The work is hard, and all of the older men have a tired,
somewhat haggard appearance. Their faces are doubtful in color, neither
sickly nor quite healthy-looking, and seamed with deep wrinkles like the
bark of the spruces, but with no trace of anxiety. Their clothing is full
of rosin and never wears out. A little of everything in the woods is stuck
fast to these loggers, and their trousers grow constantly thicker with
age. In all their movements and gestures they are heavy and deliberate
like the trees above them, and they walk with a swaying, rocking gait
altogether free from quick, jerky fussiness, for chopping and log rolling
have quenched all that. They are also slow of speech, as if partly out of
breath, and when one tries to draw them out on some subject away from
logs, all the fresh, leafy, outreaching branches of the mind seem to have
been withered and killed with fatigue, leaving their lives little more
than dry lumber. Many a tree have these old axemen felled, but,
round-shouldered and stooping, they too are beginning to lean over. Many
of their companions are already beneath the moss, and among those that we
see at work some are now dead at the top (bald), leafless, so to speak,
and tottering to their fall.</p>
<p>A very different man, seen now and then at long intervals but usually
invisible, is the free roamer of the wilderness—hunter, prospector,
explorer, seeking he knows not what. Lithe and sinewy, he walks erect,
making his way with the skill of wild animals, all his senses in action,
watchful and alert, looking keenly at everything in sight, his imagination
well nourished in the wealth of the wilderness, coming into contact with
free nature in a thousand forms, drinking at the fountains of things,
responsive to wild influences, as trees to the winds. Well he knows the
wild animals his neighbors, what fishes are in the streams, what birds in
the forests, and where food may be found. Hungry at times and weary, he
has corresponding enjoyment in eating and resting, and all the wilderness
is home. Some of these rare, happy rovers die alone among the leaves.
Others half settle down and change in part into farmers; each, making
choice of some fertile spot where the landscape attracts him, builds a
small cabin, where, with few wants to supply from garden or field, he
hunts and farms in turn, going perhaps once a year to the settlements,
until night begins to draw near, and, like forest shadows, thickens into
darkness and his day is done. In these Washington wilds, living alone, all
sorts of men may perchance be found—poets, philosophers, and even
full-blown transcendentalists, though you may go far to find them.</p>
<p>Indians are seldom to be met with away from the Sound, excepting about the
few outlying hop ranches, to which they resort in great numbers during the
picking season. Nor in your walks in the woods will you be likely to see
many of the wild animals, however far you may go, with the exception of
the Douglas squirrel and the mountain goat. The squirrel is everywhere,
and the goat you can hardly fail to find if you climb any of the high
mountains. The deer, once very abundant, may still be found on the islands
and along the shores of the Sound, but the large gray wolves render their
existence next to impossible at any considerable distance back in the
woods of the mainland, as they can easily run them down unless they are
near enough to the coast to make their escape by plunging into the water
and swimming to the islands off shore. The elk and perhaps also the moose
still exist in the most remote and inaccessible solitudes of the forest,
but their numbers have been greatly reduced of late, and even the most
experienced hunters have difficulty in finding them. Of bears there are
two species, the black and the large brown, the former by far the more
common of the two. On the shaggy bottom-lands where berries are plentiful,
and along the rivers while salmon are going up to spawn, the black bear
may be found, fat and at home. Many are killed every year, both for their
flesh and skins. The large brown species likes higher and opener ground.
He is a dangerous animal, a near relative of the famous grizzly, and wise
hunters are very fond of letting him alone.</p>
<p>The towns of Puget Sound are of a very lively, progressive, and aspiring
kind, fortunately with abundance of substance about them to warrant their
ambition and make them grow. Like young sapling sequoias, they are sending
out their roots far and near for nourishment, counting confidently on
longevity and grandeur of stature. Seattle and Tacoma are at present far
in the lead of all others in the race for supremacy, and these two are
keen, active rivals, to all appearances well matched. Tacoma occupies near
the head of the Sound a site of great natural beauty. It is the terminus
of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and calls itself the "City of Destiny."
Seattle is also charmingly located about twenty miles down the Sound from
Tacoma, on Elliott Bay. It is the terminus of the Seattle, Lake Shore, and
Eastern Railroad, now in process of construction, and calls itself the
"Queen City of the Sound" and the "Metropolis of Washington." What the
populations of these towns number I am not able to say with anything like
exactness. They are probably about the same size and they each claim to
have about twenty thousand people; but their figures are so rapidly
changing, and so often mixed up with counts that refer to the future that
exact measurements of either of these places are about as hard to obtain
as measurements of the clouds of a growing storm. Their edges run back for
miles into the woods among the trees and stumps and brush which hide a
good many of the houses and the stakes which mark the lots; so that,
without being as yet very large towns, they seem to fade away into the
distance.</p>
<p>But, though young and loose-jointed, they are fast taking on the forms and
manners of old cities, putting on airs, as some would say, like boys in
haste to be men. They are already towns "with all modern improvements,
first-class in every particular," as is said of hotels. They have electric
motors and lights, paved broadways and boulevards, substantial business
blocks, schools, churches, factories, and foundries. The lusty, titanic
clang of boiler making may be heard there, and plenty of the languid music
of pianos mingling with the babel noises of commerce carried on in a
hundred tongues. The main streets are crowded with bright, wide-awake
lawyers, ministers, merchants, agents for everything under the sun; ox
drivers and loggers in stiff, gummy overalls; back-slanting dudes,
well-tailored and shiny; and fashions and bonnets of every feather and
color bloom gayly in the noisy throng and advertise London and Paris.
Vigorous life and strife are to be seen everywhere. The spirit of progress
is in the air. Still it is hard to realize how much good work is being
done here of a kind that makes for civilization—the enthusiastic,
exulting energy displayed in the building of new towns, railroads, and
mills, in the opening of mines of coal and iron and the development of
natural resources in general. To many, especially in the Atlantic States,
Washington is hardly known at all. It is regarded as being yet a far wild
west—a dim, nebulous expanse of woods—by those who do not know
that railroads and steamers have brought the country out of the wilderness
and abolished the old distances. It is now near to all the world and is in
possession of a share of the best of all that civilization has to offer,
while on some of the lines of advancement it is at the front.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the sharp rivalry between different sections and towns,
the leading men mostly pull together for the general good and glory,—building,
buying, borrowing, to push the country to its place; keeping arithmetic
busy in counting population present and to come, ships, towns, factories,
tons of coal and iron, feet of lumber, miles of railroad,—Americans,
Scandinavians, Irish, Scotch, and Germans being joined together in the
white heat of work like religious crowds in time of revival who have
forgotten sectarianism. It is a fine thing to see people in hot earnest
about anything; therefore, however extravagant and high the brag ascending
from Puget Sound, in most cases it is likely to appear pardonable and
more.</p>
<p>Seattle was named after an old Indian chief who lived in this part of the
Sound. He was very proud of the honor and lived long enough to lead his
grandchildren about the streets. The greater part of the lower business
portion of the town, including a long stretch of wharves and warehouses
built on piles, was destroyed by fire a few months ago <SPAN href="#linknote-28" name="linknoteref-28" id="linknoteref-28"><small>28</small></SPAN>,
with immense loss. The people, however, are in no wise discouraged, and
ere long the loss will be gain, inasmuch as a better class of buildings,
chiefly of brick, are being erected in place of the inflammable wooden
ones, which, with comparatively few exceptions, were built of pitchy
spruce.</p>
<p>With their own scenery so glorious ever on show, one would at first
thought suppose that these happy Puget Sound people would never go
sightseeing from home like less favored mortals. But they do all the same.
Some go boating on the Sound or on the lakes and rivers, or with their
families make excursions at small cost on the steamers. Others will take
the train to the Franklin and Newcastle or Carbon River coal mines for the
sake of the thirty- or forty-mile rides through the woods, and a look into
the black depths of the underworld. Others again take the steamers for
Victoria, Fraser River, or Vancouver, the new ambitious town at the
terminus of the Canadian Railroad, thus getting views of the outer world
in a near foreign country. One of the regular summer resorts of this
region where people go for fishing, hunting, and the healing of diseases,
is the Green River Hot Springs, in the Cascade Mountains, sixty-one miles
east of Tacoma, on the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Green River
is a small rocky stream with picturesque banks, and derives its name from
the beautiful pale-green hue of its waters.</p>
<p>Among the most interesting of all the summer rest and pleasure places is
the famous "Hop Ranch" on the upper Snoqualmie River, thirty or forty
miles eastward from Seattle. Here the dense forest opens, allowing fine
free views of the adjacent mountains from a long stretch of ground which
is half meadow, half prairie, level and fertile, and beautifully
diversified with outstanding groves of spruces and alders and rich flowery
fringes of spiraea and wild roses, the river meandering deep and tranquil
through the midst of it. On the portions most easily cleared some three
hundred acres of hop vines have been planted and are now in full bearing,
yielding, it is said, at the rate of about a ton of hops to the acre. They
are a beautiful crop, these vines of the north, pillars of verdure in
regular rows, seven feet apart and eight or ten feet in height; the long,
vigorous shoots sweeping round in fine, wild freedom, and the light, leafy
cones hanging in loose, handsome clusters.</p>
<p>Perhaps enough of hops might be raised in Washington for the wants of all
the world, but it would be impossible to find pickers to handle the crop.
Most of the picking is done by Indians, and to this fine, clean,
profitable work they come in great numbers in their canoes, old and young,
of many different tribes, bringing wives and children and household goods,
in some cases from a distance of five or six hundred miles, even from far
Alaska. Then they too grow rich and spend their money on red cloth and
trinkets. About a thousand Indians are required as pickers at the
Snoqualmie ranch alone, and a lively and merry picture they make in the
field, arrayed in bright, showy calicoes, lowering the rustling vine
pillars with incessant song-singing and fun. Still more striking are their
queer camps on the edges of the fields or over on the river bank, with the
firelight shining on their wild jolly faces. But woe to the ranch should
fire-water get there!</p>
<p>But the chief attractions here are not found in the hops, but in
trout-fishing and bear-hunting, and in the two fine falls on the river.
Formerly the trip from Seattle was a hard one, over corduroy roads; now it
is reached in a few hours by rail along the shores of Lake Washington and
Lake Squak, through a fine sample section of the forest and past the brow
of the main Snoqualmie Fall. From the hotel at the ranch village the road
to the fall leads down the right bank of the river through the magnificent
maple woods I have mentioned elsewhere, and fine views of the fall may be
had on that side, both from above and below. It is situated on the main
river, where it plunges over a sheer precipice, about two hundred and
forty feet high, in leaving the level meadows of the ancient lake basin.
In a general way it resembles the well-known Nevada Fall in Yosemite,
having the same twisted appearance at the top and the free plunge in
numberless comet-shaped masses into a deep pool seventy-five or eighty
yards in diameter. The pool is of considerable depth, as is shown by the
radiating well-beaten foam and mist, which is of a beautiful rose color at
times, of exquisite fineness of tone, and by the heavy waves that lash the
rocks in front of it.</p>
<p>Though to a Californian the height of this fall would not seem great, the
volume of water is heavy, and all the surroundings are delightful. The
maple forest, of itself worth a long journey, the beauty of the
river-reaches above and below, and the views down the valley afar over the
mighty forests, with all its lovely trimmings of ferns and flowers, make
this one of the most interesting falls I have ever seen. The upper fall is
about seventy-five feet high, with bouncing rapids at head and foot, set
in a romantic dell thatched with dripping mosses and ferns and embowered
in dense evergreens and blooming bushes, the distance to it from the upper
end of the meadows being about eight miles. The road leads through
majestic woods with ferns ten feet high beneath some of the thickets, and
across a gravelly plain deforested by fire many years ago. Orange lilies
are plentiful, and handsome shining mats of the kinnikinic, sprinkled with
bright scarlet berries.</p>
<p>From a place called "Hunt's," at the end of the wagon road, a trail leads
through lush, dripping woods (never dry) to Thuja and Mertens, Menzies,
and Douglas spruces. The ground is covered with the best moss-work of the
moist lands of the north, made up mostly of the various species of hypnum,
with some liverworts, marchantia, jungermannia, etc., in broad sheets and
bosses, where never a dust particle floated, and where all the flowers,
fresh with mist and spray, are wetter than water lilies. The pool at the
foot of the fall is a place surpassingly lovely to look at, with the
enthusiastic rush and song of the falls, the majestic trees overhead
leaning over the brink like listeners eager to catch every word of the
white refreshing waters, the delicate maidenhairs and aspleniums with
fronds outspread gathering the rainbow sprays, and the myriads of hooded
mosses, every cup fresh and shining.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XX. An Ascent of Mount Rainier </h2>
<p>Ambitious climbers, seeking adventures and opportunities to test their
strength and skill, occasionally attempt to penetrate the wilderness on
the west side of the Sound, and push on to the summit of Mount Olympus.
But the grandest excursion of all to be make hereabouts is to Mount
Rainier, to climb to the top of its icy crown. The mountain is very high
<SPAN href="#linknote-29" name="linknoteref-29" id="linknoteref-29"><small>29</small></SPAN>,
fourteen thousand four hundred feet, and laden with glaciers that are
terribly roughened and interrupted by crevasses and ice cliffs. Only good
climbers should attempt to gain the summit, led by a guide of proved nerve
and endurance. A good trail has been cut through the woods to the base of
the mountain on the north; but the summit of the mountain never has been
reached from this side, though many brave attempts have been made upon it.</p>
<p>Last summer I gained the summit from the south side, in a day and a half
from the timberline, without encountering any desperate obstacles that
could not in some way be passed in good weather. I was accompanied by
Keith, the artist, Professor Ingraham, and five ambitious young climbers
from Seattle. We were led by the veteran mountaineer and guide Van Trump,
of Yelm, who many years before guided General Stevens in his memorable
ascent, and later Mr. Bailey, of Oakland. With a cumbersome abundance of
campstools and blankets we set out from Seattle, traveling by rail as far
as Yelm Prairie, on the Tacoma and Oregon road. Here we made our first
camp and arranged with Mr. Longmire, a farmer in the neighborhood, for
pack and saddle animals. The noble King Mountain was in full view from
here, glorifying the bright, sunny day with his presence, rising in
godlike majesty over the woods, with the magnificent prairie as a
foreground. The distance to the mountain from Yelm in a straight line is
perhaps fifty miles; but by the mule and yellowjacket trail we had to
follow it is a hundred miles. For, notwithstanding a portion of this trail
runs in the air, where the wasps work hardest, it is far from being an air
line as commonly understood.</p>
<p>By night of the third day we reached the Soda Springs on the right bank of
the Nisqually, which goes roaring by, gray with mud, gravel, and boulders
from the caves of the glaciers of Rainier, now close at hand. The distance
from the Soda Springs to the Camp of the Clouds is about ten miles. The
first part of the way lies up the Nisqually Canyon, the bottom of which is
flat in some places and the walls very high and precipitous, like those of
the Yosemite Valley. The upper part of the canyon is still occupied by one
of the Nisqually glaciers, from which this branch of the river draws its
source, issuing from a cave in the gray, rock-strewn snout. About a mile
below the glacier we had to ford the river, which caused some anxiety, for
the current is very rapid and carried forward large boulders as well as
lighter material, while its savage roar is bewildering.</p>
<p>At this point we left the canyon, climbing out of it by a steep zigzag up
the old lateral moraine of the glacier, which was deposited when the
present glacier flowed past at this height, and is about eight hundred
feet high. It is now covered with a superb growth of Picea amabilis <SPAN href="#linknote-30" name="linknoteref-30" id="linknoteref-30"><small>30</small></SPAN>;
so also is the corresponding portion of the right lateral. From the top of
the moraine, still ascending, we passed for a mile or two through a forest
of mixed growth, mainly silver fir, Patton spruce, and mountain pine, and
then came to the charming park region, at an elevation of about five
thousand feet above sea level. Here the vast continuous woods at length
begin to give way under the dominion of climate, though still at this
height retaining their beauty and giving no sign of stress of storm,
sweeping upward in belts of varying width, composed mainly of one species
of fir, sharp and spiry in form, leaving smooth, spacious parks, with here
and there separate groups of trees standing out in the midst of the
openings like islands in a lake. Every one of these parks, great and
small, is a garden filled knee-deep with fresh, lovely flowers of every
hue, the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the
alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings.</p>
<p>We arrived at the Cloud Camp at noon, but no clouds were in sight, save a
few gauzy ornamental wreaths adrift in the sunshine. Out of the forest at
last there stood the mountain, wholly unveiled, awful in bulk and majesty,
filling all the view like a separate, new-born world, yet withal so fine
and so beautiful it might well fire the dullest observer to desperate
enthusiasm. Long we gazed in silent admiration, buried in tall daisies and
anemones by the side of a snowbank. Higher we could not go with the
animals and find food for them and wood for our own campfires, for just
beyond this lies the region of ice, with only here and there an open spot
on the ridges in the midst of the ice, with dwarf alpine plants, such as
saxifrages and drabas, which reach far up between the glaciers, and low
mats of the beautiful bryanthus, while back of us were the gardens and
abundance of everything that heart could wish. Here we lay all the
afternoon, considering the lilies and the lines of the mountains with
reference to a way to the summit.</p>
<p>At noon next day we left camp and began our long climb. We were in light
marching order, save one who pluckily determined to carry his camera to
the summit. At night, after a long easy climb over wide and smooth fields
of ice, we reached a narrow ridge, at an elevation of about ten thousand
feet above the sea, on the divide between the glaciers of the Nisqually
and the Cowlitz. Here we lay as best we could, waiting for another day,
without fire of course, as we were now many miles beyond the timberline
and without much to cover us. After eating a little hardtack, each of us
leveled a spot to lie on among lava-blocks and cinders. The night was
cold, and the wind coming down upon us in stormy surges drove gritty ashes
and fragments of pumice about our ears while chilling to the bone. Very
short and shallow was our sleep that night; but day dawned at last, early
rising was easy, and there was nothing about breakfast to cause any delay.
About four o'clock we were off, and climbing began in earnest. We followed
up the ridge on which we had spent the night, now along its crest, now on
either side, or on the ice leaning against it, until we came to where it
becomes massive and precipitous. Then we were compelled to crawl along a
seam or narrow shelf, on its face, which we traced to its termination in
the base of the great ice cap. From this point all the climbing was over
ice, which was here desperately steep but fortunately was at the same time
carved into innumerable spikes and pillars which afforded good footholds,
and we crawled cautiously on, warm with ambition and exercise.</p>
<p>At length, after gaining the upper extreme of our guiding ridge, we found
a good place to rest and prepare ourselves to scale the dangerous upper
curves of the dome. The surface almost everywhere was bare, hard, snowless
ice, extremely slippery; and, though smooth in general, it was interrupted
by a network of yawning crevasses, outspread like lines of defense against
any attempt to win the summit. Here every one of the party took off his
shoes and drove stout steel caulks about half an inch long into them,
having brought tools along for the purpose, and not having made use of
them until now so that the points might not get dulled on the rocks ere
the smooth, dangerous ice was reached. Besides being well shod each
carried an alpenstock, and for special difficulties we had a hundred feet
of rope and an axe.</p>
<p>Thus prepared, we stepped forth afresh, slowly groping our way through
tangled lines of crevasses, crossing on snow bridges here and there after
cautiously testing them, jumping at narrow places, or crawling around the
ends of the largest, bracing well at every point with our alpenstocks and
setting our spiked shoes squarely down on the dangerous slopes. It was
nerve-trying work, most of it, but we made good speed nevertheless, and by
noon all stood together on the utmost summit, save one who, his strength
failing for a time, came up later.</p>
<p>We remained on the summit nearly two hours, looking about us at the vast
maplike views, comprehending hundreds of miles of the Cascade Range, with
their black interminable forests and white volcanic cones in glorious
array reaching far into Oregon; the Sound region also, and the great
plains of eastern Washington, hazy and vague in the distance. Clouds began
to gather. Soon of all the land only the summits of the mountains, St.
Helen's, Adams, and Hood, were left in sight, forming islands in the sky.
We found two well-formed and well-preserved craters on the summit, lying
close together like two plates on a table with their rims touching. The
highest point of the mountain is located between the craters, where their
edges come in contact. Sulphurous fumes and steam issue from several
vents, giving out a sickening smell that can be detected at a considerable
distance. The unwasted condition of these craters, and, indeed, to a great
extent, of the entire mountain, would tend to show that Rainier is still a
comparatively young mountain. With the exception of the projecting lips of
the craters and the top of a subordinate summit a short distance to the
northward, the mountains is solidly capped with ice all around; and it is
this ice cap which forms the grand central fountain whence all the twenty
glaciers of Rainier flow, radiating in every direction.</p>
<p>The descent was accomplished without disaster, though several of the party
had narrow escapes. One slipped and fell, and as he shot past me seemed to
be going to certain death. So steep was the ice slope no one could move to
help him, but fortunately, keeping his presence of mind, he threw himself
on his face and digging his alpenstock into the ice, gradually retarded
his motion until he came to rest. Another broke through a slim bridge over
a crevasse, but his momentum at the time carried him against the lower
edge and only his alpenstock was lost in the abyss. Thus crippled by the
loss of his staff, we had to lower him the rest of the way down the dome
by means of the rope we carried. Falling rocks from the upper precipitous
part of the ridge were also a source of danger, as they came whizzing past
in successive volleys; but none told on us, and when we at length gained
the gentle slopes of the lower ice fields, we ran and slid at our ease,
making fast, glad time, all care and danger past, and arrived at our
beloved Cloud Camp before sundown.</p>
<p>We were rather weak from want of nourishment, and some suffered from
sunburn, notwithstanding the partial protection of glasses and veils;
otherwise, all were unscathed and well. The view we enjoyed from the
summit could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and grandeur; but one feels
far from home so high in the sky, so much so that one is inclined to guess
that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and the exhilaration of
climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot of the mountains than
on their tops. Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain
tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that
lies below.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XXI. The Physical and Climatic Characteristics of Oregon </h2>
<p>Oregon is a large, rich, compact section of the west side of the
continent, containing nearly a hundred thousand square miles of deep, wet
evergreen woods, fertile valleys, icy mountains, and high, rolling
wind-swept plains, watered by the majestic Columbia River and its
countless branches. It is bounded on the north by Washington, on the east
by Idaho, on the south by California and Nevada, and on the west by the
Pacific Ocean. It is a grand, hearty, wholesome, foodful wilderness and,
like Washington, once a part of the Oregon Territory, abounds in bold,
far-reaching contrasts as to scenery, climate, soil, and productions. Side
by side there is drouth on a grand scale and overflowing moisture; flinty,
sharply cut lava beds, gloomy and forbidding, and smooth, flowery lawns;
cool bogs, exquisitely plushy and soft, overshadowed by jagged crags
barren as icebergs; forests seemingly boundless and plains with no tree in
sight; presenting a wide range of conditions, but as a whole favorable to
industry. Natural wealth of an available kind abounds nearly everywhere,
inviting the farmer, the stock-raiser, the lumberman, the fisherman, the
manufacturer, and the miner, as well as the free walker in search of
knowledge and wildness. The scenery is mostly of a comfortable, assuring
kind, grand and inspiring without too much of that dreadful overpowering
sublimity and exuberance which tend to discourage effort and cast people
into inaction and superstition.</p>
<p>Ever since Oregon was first heard of in the romantic, adventurous,
hunting, trapping Wild West days, it seems to have been regarded as the
most attractive and promising of all the Pacific countries for farmers.
While yet the whole region as well as the way to it was wild, ere a single
road or bridge was built, undaunted by the trackless thousand-mile
distances and scalping, cattle-stealing Indians, long trains of covered
wagons began to crawl wearily westward, crossing how many plains, rivers,
ridges, and mountains, fighting the painted savages and weariness and
famine. Setting out from the frontier of the old West in the spring as
soon as the grass would support their cattle, they pushed on up the
Platte, making haste slowly, however, that they might not be caught in the
storms of winter ere they reached the promised land. They crossed the
Rocky Mountains to Fort Hall; thence followed down the Snake River for
three or four hundred miles, their cattle limping and failing on the rough
lava plains; swimming the streams too deep to be forded, making boats out
of wagon-boxes for the women and children and goods, or where trees could
be had, lashing together logs for rafts. Thence, crossing the Blue
Mountains and the plains of the Columbia, they followed the river to the
Dalles. Here winter would be upon them, and before a wagon road was built
across the Cascade Mountains the toil-worn emigrants would be compelled to
leave their cattle and wagons until the following summer, and, in the mean
time, with the assistance of the Hudson's Bay Company, make their way to
the Willamette Valley on the river with rafts and boats.</p>
<p>How strange and remote these trying times have already become! They are
now dim as if a thousand years had passed over them. Steamships and
locomotives with magical influence have well-nigh abolished the old
distances and dangers, and brought forward the New West into near and
familiar companionship with the rest of the world.</p>
<p>Purely wild for unnumbered centuries, a paradise of oily, salmon-fed
Indians, Oregon is now roughly settled in part and surveyed, its rivers
and mountain ranges, lakes, valleys, and plains have been traced and
mapped in a general way, civilization is beginning to take root, towns are
springing up and flourishing vigorously like a crop adapted to the soil,
and the whole kindly wilderness lies invitingly near with all its wealth
open and ripe for use.</p>
<p>In sailing along the Oregon coast one sees but few more signs of human
occupation than did Juan de Fuca three centuries ago. The shore bluffs
rise abruptly from the waves, forming a wall apparently unbroken, though
many short rivers from the coast range of mountains and two from the
interior have made narrow openings on their way to the sea. At the mouths
of these rivers good harbors have been discovered for coasting vessels,
which are of great importance to the lumbermen, dairymen, and farmers of
the coast region. But little or nothing of these appear in general views,
only a simple gray wall nearly straight, green along the top, and the
forest stretching back into the mountains as far as the eye can reach.</p>
<p>Going ashore, we find few long reaches of sand where one may saunter, or
meadows, save the brown and purple meadows of the sea, overgrown with
slippery kelp, swashed and swirled in the restless breakers. The
abruptness of the shore allows the massive waves that have come from far
over the broad Pacific to get close to the bluffs ere they break, and the
thundering shock shakes the rocks to their foundations. No calm comes to
these shores. Even in the finest weather, when the ships off shore are
becalmed and their sails hang loose against the mast, there is always a
wreath of foam at the base of these bluffs. The breakers are ever in bloom
and crystal brine is ever in the air.</p>
<p>A scramble along the Oregon sea bluffs proves as richly exciting to lovers
of wild beauty as heart could wish. Here are three hundred miles of
pictures of rock and water in black and white, or gray and white, with
more or less of green and yellow, purple and blue. The rocks, glistening
in sunshine and foam, are never wholly dry—many of them marvels of
wave-sculpture and most imposing in bulk and bearing, standing boldly
forward, monuments of a thousand storms, types of permanence, holding the
homes and places of refuge of multitudes of seafaring animals in their
keeping, yet ever wasting away. How grand the songs of the waves about
them, every wave a fine, hearty storm in itself, taking its rise on the
breezy plains of the sea, perhaps thousands of miles away, traveling with
majestic, slow-heaving deliberation, reaching the end of its journey,
striking its blow, bursting into a mass of white and pink bloom, then
falling spent and withered to give place to the next in the endless
procession, thus keeping up the glorious show and glorious song through
all times and seasons forever!</p>
<p>Terribly impressive as is this cliff and wave scenery when the skies are
bright and kindly sunshine makes rainbows in the spray, it is doubly so in
dark, stormy nights, when, crouching in some hollow on the top of some
jutting headland, we may gaze and listen undisturbed in the heart of it.
Perhaps now and then we may dimly see the tops of the highest breakers,
looking ghostly in the gloom; but when the water happens to be
phosphorescent, as it oftentimes is, then both the sea and the rocks are
visible, and the wild, exulting, up-dashing spray burns, every particle of
it, and is combined into one glowing mass of white fire; while back in the
woods and along the bluffs and crags of the shore the storm wind roars,
and the rain-floods, gathering strength and coming from far and near, rush
wildly down every gulch to the sea, as if eager to join the waves in their
grand, savage harmony; deep calling unto deep in the heart of the great,
dark night, making a sight and a song unspeakably sublime and glorious.</p>
<p>In the pleasant weather of summer, after the rainy season is past and only
occasional refreshing showers fall, washing the sky and bringing out the
fragrance of the flowers and the evergreens, then one may enjoy a fine,
free walk all the way across the State from the sea to the eastern
boundary on the Snake River. Many a beautiful stream we should cross in
such a walk, singing through forest and meadow and deep rocky gorge, and
many a broad prairie and plain, mountain and valley, wild garden and
desert, presenting landscape beauty on a grand scale and in a thousand
forms, and new lessons without number, delightful to learn. Oregon has
three mountain ranges which run nearly parallel with the coast, the most
influential of which, in every way, is the Cascade Range. It is about six
thousand to seven thousand feet in average height, and divides the State
into two main sections called Eastern and Western Oregon, corresponding
with the main divisions of Washington; while these are again divided, but
less perfectly, by the Blue Mountains and the Coast Range. The eastern
section is about two hundred and thirty miles wide, and is made up in
great part of the treeless plains of the Columbia, which are green and
flowery in spring, but gray, dusty, hot, and forbidding in summer.
Considerable areas, however, on these plains, as well as some of the
valleys countersunk below the general surface along the banks of the
streams, have proved fertile and produce large crops of wheat, barley,
hay, and other products.</p>
<p>In general views the western section seems to be covered with one vast,
evenly planted forest, with the exception of the few snow-clad peaks of
the Cascade Range, these peaks being the only points in the landscape that
rise above the timberline. Nevertheless, embosomed in this forest and
lying in the great trough between the Cascades and coast mountains, there
are some of the best bread-bearing valleys to be found in the world. The
largest of these are the Willamette, Umpqua, and Rogue River Valleys.
Inasmuch as a considerable portion of these main valleys was treeless, or
nearly so, as well as surpassingly fertile, they were the first to attract
settlers; and the Willamette, being at once the largest and nearest to
tide water, was settled first of all, and now contains the greater portion
of the population and wealth of the State.</p>
<p>The climate of this section, like the corresponding portion of Washington,
is rather damp and sloppy throughout the winter months, but the summers
are bright, ripening the wheat and allowing it to be garnered in good
condition. Taken as a whole, the weather is bland and kindly, and like the
forest trees the crops and cattle grow plump and sound in it. So also do
the people; children ripen well and grow up with limbs of good size and
fiber and, unless overworked in the woods, live to a good old age, hale
and hearty.</p>
<p>But, like every other happy valley in the world, the sunshine of this one
is not without its shadows. Malarial fevers are not unknown in some
places, and untimely frosts and rains may at long intervals in some
measure disappoint the hopes of the husbandman. Many a tale, good-natured
or otherwise, is told concerning the overflowing abundance of the Oregon
rains. Once an English traveler, as the story goes, went to a store to
make some purchases and on leaving found that rain was falling; therefore,
not liking to get wet, he stepped back to wait till the shower was over.
Seeing no signs of clearing, he soon became impatient and inquired of the
storekeeper how long he thought the shower would be likely to last. Going
to the door and looking wisely into the gray sky and noting the direction
of the wind, the latter replied that he thought the shower would probably
last about six months, an opinion that of course disgusted the
fault-finding Briton with the "blawsted country," though in fact it is but
little if at all wetter or cloudier than his own.</p>
<p>No climate seems the best for everybody. Many there be who waste their
lives in a vain search for weather with which no fault may be found,
keeping themselves and their families in constant motion, like floating
seaweeds that never strike root, yielding compliance to every current of
news concerning countries yet untried, believing that everywhere,
anywhere, the sky is fairer and the grass grows greener than where they
happen to be. Before the Oregon and California railroad was built, the
overland journey between these States across the Siskiyou Mountains in the
old-fashioned emigrant wagon was a long and tedious one. Nevertheless,
every season dissatisfied climate-seekers, too wet and too dry, might be
seen plodding along through the dust in the old "49style," making their
way one half of them from California to Oregon, the other half from Oregon
to California. The beautiful Sisson meadows at the base of Mount Shasta
were a favorite halfway resting place, where the weary cattle were turned
out for a few days to gather strength for better climates, and it was
curious to hear those perpetual pioneers comparing notes and seeking
information around the campfires.</p>
<p>"Where are you from?" some Oregonian would ask.</p>
<p>"The Joaquin."</p>
<p>"It's dry there, ain't it?"</p>
<p>"Well, I should say so. No rain at all in summer and none to speak of in
winter, and I'm dried out. I just told my wife I was on the move again,
and I'm going to keep moving till I come to a country where it rains once
in a while, like it does in every reg'lar white man's country; and that, I
guess, will be Oregon, if the news be true."</p>
<p>"Yes, neighbor, you's heading in the right direction for rain," the
Oregonian would say. "Keep right on to Yamhill and you'll soon be damp
enough. It rains there more than twelve months in the year; at least, no
saying but it will. I've just come from there, plumb drownded out, and I
told my wife to jump into the wagon and we should start out and see if we
couldn't find a dry day somewhere. Last fall the hay was out and the wood
was out, and the cabin leaked, and I made up my mind to try California the
first chance."</p>
<p>"Well, if you be a horned toad or coyote," the seeker of moisture would
reply, "then maybe you can stand it. Just keep right on by the Alabama
Settlement to Tulare and you can have my place on Big Dry Creek and
welcome. You'll be drowned there mighty seldom. The wagon spokes and tires
will rattle and tell you when you come to it."</p>
<p>"All right, partner, we'll swap square, you can have mine in Yamhill<br/>
and the rain thrown in. Last August a painter sharp came along one day<br/>
wanting to know the way to Willamette Falls, and I told him: Young ma<br/>
going to Oregon City after them. The whole dog-gone Noah's flood of a<br/>
country will be a fall and melt and float away some day.'" And more to<br/>
the same effect.<br/></p>
<p>But no one need leave Oregon in search of fair weather. The wheat and
cattle region of eastern Oregon and Washington on the upper Columbia
plains is dry enough and dusty enough more than half the year. The truth
is, most of these wanderers enjoy the freedom of gypsy life and seek not
homes but camps. Having crossed the plains and reached the ocean, they can
find no farther west within reach of wagons, and are therefore compelled
now to go north and south between Mexico and Alaska, always glad to find
an excuse for moving, stopping a few months or weeks here and there, the
time being measured by the size of the camp-meadow, conditions of the
grass, game, and other indications. Even their so-called settlements of a
year or two, when they take up land and build cabins, are only another
kind of camp, in no common sense homes. Never a tree is planted, nor do
they plant themselves, but like good soldiers in time of war are ever
ready to march. Their journey of life is indeed a journey with very
matter-of-fact thorns in the way, though not wholly wanting in
compensation.</p>
<p>One of the most influential of the motives that brought the early settlers
to these shores, apart from that natural instinct to scatter and multiply
which urges even sober salmon to climb the Rocky Mountains, was their
desire to find a country at once fertile and winterless, where their
flocks and herds could find pasture all the year, thus doing away with the
long and tiresome period of haying and feeding necessary in the eastern
and old western States and Territories. Cheap land and good land there was
in abundance in Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa; but there the labor
of providing for animals of the farm was very great, and much of that
labor was crowded together into a few summer months, while to keep cool in
summers and warm in the icy winters was well-nigh impossible to poor
farmers.</p>
<p>Along the coast and throughout the greater part of western Oregon in
general, snow seldom falls on the lowlands to a greater depth than a few
inches, and never lies long. Grass is green all winter. The average
temperature for the year in the Willamette Valley is about 52 degrees, the
highest and lowest being about 100 degrees and 20 degrees, though
occasionally a much lower temperature is reached.</p>
<p>The average rainfall is about fifty or fifty-five inches in the Willamette
Valley, and along the coast seventy-five inches, or even more at some
points—figures that bring many a dreary night and day to mind,
however fine the effect on the great evergreen woods and the fields of the
farmers. The rainy season begins in September or October and lasts until
April or May. Then the whole country is solemnly soaked and poulticed with
the gray, streaming clouds and fogs, night and day, with marvelous
constancy. Towards the beginning and end of the season a good many bright
days occur to break the pouring gloom, but whole months of rain,
continuous, or nearly so, are not at all rare. Astronomers beneath these
Oregon skies would have a dull time of it. Of all the year only about one
fourth of the days are clear, while three fourths have more or less of
fogs, clouds, or rain.</p>
<p>The fogs occur mostly in the fall and spring. They are grand, far-reaching
affairs of two kinds, the black and the white, some of the latter being
very beautiful, and the infinite delicacy and tenderness of their touch as
they linger to caress the tall evergreens is most exquisite. On farms and
highways and in the streets of towns, where work has to be done, there is
nothing picturesque or attractive in any obvious way about the gray,
serious-faced rainstorms. Mud abounds. The rain seems dismal and heedless
and gets in everybody's way. Every face is turned from it, and it has but
few friends who recognize its boundless beneficence. But back in the
untrodden woods where no axe has been lifted, where a deep, rich carpet of
brown and golden mosses covers all the ground like a garment, pressing
warmly about the feet of the trees and rising in thick folds softly and
kindly over every fallen trunk, leaving no spot naked or uncared-for,
there the rain is welcomed, and every drop that falls finds a place and
use as sweet and pure as itself. An excursion into the woods when the rain
harvest is at its height is a noble pleasure, and may be safely enjoyed at
small expense, though very few care to seek it. Shelter is easily found
beneath the great trees in some hollow out of the wind, and one need carry
but little provision, none at all of a kind that a wetting would spoil.
The colors of the woods are then at their best, and the mighty hosts of
the forest, every needle tingling in the blast, wave and sing in glorious
harmony.</p>
<p>"'T were worth ten years of peaceful life,<br/>
one glance at this array."<br/></p>
<p>The snow that falls in the lowland woods is usually soft, and makes a fine
show coming through the trees in large, feathery tufts, loading the
branches of the firs and spruces and cedars and weighing them down against
the trunks until they look slender and sharp as arrows, while a strange,
muffled silence prevails, giving a peculiar solemnity to everything. But
these lowland snowstorms and their effects quickly vanish; every crystal
melts in a day or two, the bent branches rise again, and the rain resumes
its sway.</p>
<p>While these gracious rains are searching the roots of the lowlands,
corresponding snows are busy along the heights of the Cascade Mountains.
Month after month, day and night the heavens shed their icy bloom in
stormy, measureless abundance, filling the grand upper fountains of the
rivers to last through the summer. Awful then is the silence that presses
down over the mountain forests. All the smaller streams vanish from sight,
hushed and obliterated. Young groves of spruce and pine are bowed down as
by a gentle hand and put to rest, not again to see the light or move leaf
or limb until the grand awakening of the springtime, while the larger
animals and most of the birds seek food and shelter in the foothills on
the borders of the valleys and plains.</p>
<p>The lofty volcanic peaks are yet more heavily snow-laden. To their upper
zones no summer comes. They are white always. From the steep slopes of the
summit the new-fallen snow, while yet dry and loose, descends in
magnificent avalanches to feed the glaciers, making meanwhile the most
glorious manifestations of power. Happy is the man who may get near them
to see and hear. In some sheltered camp nest on the edge of the timberline
one may lie snug and warm, but after the long shuffle on snowshoes we may
have to wait more than a month ere the heavens open and the grand show is
unveiled. In the mean time, bread may be scarce, unless with careful
forecast a sufficient supply has been provided and securely placed during
the summer. Nevertheless, to be thus deeply snowbound high in the sky is
not without generous compensation for all the cost. And when we at length
go down the long white slopes to the levels of civilization, the pains
vanish like snow in sunshine, while the noble and exalting pleasures we
have gained remain with us to enrich our lives forever.</p>
<p>The fate of the high-flying mountain snow-flowers is a fascinating study,
though little may we see of their works and ways while their storms go on.
The glinting, swirling swarms fairly thicken the blast, and all the air,
as well as the rocks and trees, is as one smothering mass of bloom,
through the midst of which at close intervals come the low, intense
thunder-tones of the avalanches as they speed on their way to fill the
vast fountain hollows. Here they seem at last to have found rest. But this
rest is only apparent. Gradually the loose crystals by the pressure of
their own weight are welded together into clear ice, and, as glaciers,
march steadily, silently on, with invisible motion, in broad, deep
currents, grinding their way with irresistible energy to the warmer
lowlands, where they vanish in glad, rejoicing streams.</p>
<p>In the sober weather of Oregon lightning makes but little show. Those
magnificent thunderstorms that so frequently adorn and glorify the sky of
the Mississippi Valley are wanting here. Dull thunder and lightning may
occasionally be seen and heard, but the imposing grandeur of great storms
marching over the landscape with streaming banners and a network of fire
is almost wholly unknown.</p>
<p>Crossing the Cascade Range, we pass from a green to a gray country, from a
wilderness of trees to a wilderness of open plains, level or rolling or
rising here and there into hills and short mountain spurs. Though well
supplied with rivers in most of its main sections, it is generally dry.
The annual rainfall is only from about five to fifteen inches, and the
thin winter garment of snow seldom lasts more than a month or two, though
the temperature in many places falls from five to twenty-five degrees
below zero for a short time. That the snow is light over eastern Oregon,
and the average temperature not intolerably severe, is shown by the fact
that large droves of sheep, cattle, and horses live there through the
winter without other food or shelter than they find for themselves on the
open plains or down in the sunken valleys and gorges along the streams.</p>
<p>When we read of the mountain ranges of Oregon and Washington with detailed
descriptions of their old volcanoes towering snow-laden and glacier-laden
above the clouds, one may be led to imagine that the country is far icier
and whiter and more mountainous than it is. Only in winter are the Coast
and Cascade Mountains covered with snow. Then as seen from the main
interior valleys they appear as comparatively low, bossy walls stretching
along the horizon and making a magnificent display of their white wealth.
The Coast Range in Oregon does not perhaps average more than three
thousand feet in height. Its snow does not last long, most of its soil is
fertile all the way to the summits, and the greater part of the range may
at some time be brought under cultivation. The immense deposits on the
great central uplift of the Cascade Range are mostly melted off before the
middle of summer by the comparatively warm winds and rains from the coast,
leaving only a few white spots on the highest ridges, where the depth from
drifting has been greatest, or where the rate of waste has been diminished
by specially favorable conditions as to exposure. Only the great volcanic
cones are truly snow-clad all the year, and these are not numerous and
make but a small portion of the general landscape.</p>
<p>As we approach Oregon from the coast in summer, no hint of snowy mountains
can be seen, and it is only after we have sailed into the country by the
Columbia, or climbed some one of the commanding summits, that the great
white peaks send us greeting and make telling advertisements of themselves
and of the country over which they rule. So, also, in coming to Oregon
from the east the country by no means impresses one as being surpassingly
mountainous, the abode of peaks and glaciers. Descending the spurs of the
Rocky Mountains into the basin of the Columbia, we see hot, hundred-mile
plains, roughened here the there by hills and ridges that look hazy and
blue in the distance, until we have pushed well to the westward. Then one
white point after another comes into sight to refresh the eye and the
imagination; but they are yet a long way off, and have much to say only to
those who know them or others of their kind. How grand they are, though
insignificant-looking on the edge of the vast landscape! What noble woods
they nourish, and emerald meadows and gardens! What springs and streams
and waterfalls sing about them and to what a multitude of happy creatures
they give homes and food!</p>
<p>The principal mountains of the range are Mounts Pitt, Scott, and Thielson,
Diamond Peak, the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St. Helen's,
Adams, Rainier, Aix, and Baker. Of these the seven first named belong to
Oregon, the others to Washington. They rise singly at irregular distances
from one another along the main axis of the range or near it, with an
elevation of from about eight thousand to fourteen thousand four hundred
feet above the level of the sea. From few points in the valleys may more
than three or four of them be seen, and of the more distant ones of these
only the tops appear. Therefore, speaking generally, each of the lowland
landscapes of the State contains only one grand snowy mountain.</p>
<p>The heights back of Portland command one of the best general views of the
forests and also of the most famous of the great mountains both of Oregon
and Washington. Mount Hood is in full view, with the summits of Mounts
Jefferson, St. Helen's, Adams, and Rainier in the distance. The city of
Portland is at our feet, covering a large area along both banks of the
Willamette, and, with its fine streets, schools, churches, mills,
shipping, parks, and gardens, makes a telling picture of busy, aspiring
civilization in the midst of the green wilderness in which it is planted.
The river is displayed to fine advantage in the foreground of our main
view, sweeping in beautiful curves around rich, leafy islands, its banks
fringed with willows.</p>
<p>A few miles beyond the Willamette flows the renowned Columbia, and the
confluence of these two great rivers is at a point only about ten miles
below the city. Beyond the Columbia extends the immense breadth of the
forest, one dim, black, monotonous field with only the sky, which one is
glad to see is not forested, and the tops of the majestic old volcanoes to
give diversity to the view. That sharp, white, broad-based pyramid on the
south side of the Columbia, a few degrees to the south of east from where
you stand, is the famous Mount Hood. The distance to it in a straight line
is about fifty miles. Its upper slopes form the only bare ground, bare as
to forests, in the landscape in that direction. It is the pride of
Oregonians, and when it is visible is always pointed out to strangers as
the glory of the country, the mountain of mountains. It is one of the
grand series of extinct volcanoes extending from Lassen's Butte <SPAN href="#linknote-31" name="linknoteref-31" id="linknoteref-31"><small>31</small></SPAN>
to Mount Baker, a distance of about six hundred miles, which once flamed
like gigantic watch-fires along the coast. Some of them have been active
in recent times, but no considerable addition to the bulk of Mount Hood
has been made for several centuries, as is shown by the amount of glacial
denudation it has suffered. Its summit has been ground to a point, which
gives it a rather thin, pinched appearance. It has a wide-flowing base,
however, and is fairly well proportioned. Though it is eleven thousand
feet high, it is too far off to make much show under ordinary conditions
in so extensive a landscape. Through a great part of the summer it is
invisible on account of smoke poured into the sky from burning woods,
logging camps, mills, etc., and in winter for weeks at a time, or even
months, it is in the clouds. Only in spring and early summer and in what
there may chance to be of bright weather in winter is it or any of its
companions at all clear or telling. From the Cascades on the Columbia it
may be seen at a distance of twenty miles or thereabouts, or from other
points up and down the river, and with the magnificent foreground it is
very impressive. It gives the supreme touch of grandeur to all the main
Columbia views, rising at every turn, solitary, majestic, awe-inspiring,
the ruling spirit of the landscape. But, like mountains everywhere, it
varies greatly in impressiveness and apparent height at different times
and seasons, not alone from differences as to the dimness or transparency
of the air. Clear, or arrayed in clouds, it changes both in size and
general expression. Now it looms up to an immense height and seems to draw
near in tremendous grandeur and beauty, holding the eyes of every beholder
in devout and awful interest. Next year or next day, or even in the same
day, you return to the same point of view, perhaps to find that the glory
has departed, as if the mountain had died and the poor dull, shrunken mass
of rocks and ice had lost all power to charm.</p>
<p>Never shall I forget my first glorious view of Mount Hood one calm evening
in July, though I had seen it many times before this. I was then
sauntering with a friend across the new Willamette bridge between Portland
and East Portland for the sake of the river views, which are here very
fine in the tranquil summer weather. The scene on the water was a lively
one. Boats of every description were gliding, glinting, drifting about at
work or play, and we leaned over the rail from time to time, contemplating
the gay throng. Several lines of ferry boats were making regular trips at
intervals of a few minutes, and river steamers were coming and going from
the wharves, laden with all sorts of merchandise, raising long diverging
swells that make all the light pleasure craft bow and nod in hearty
salutation as they passed. The crowd was being constantly increased by new
arrivals from both shores, sailboats, rowboats, racing shells, rafts, were
loaded with gayly dressed people, and here and there some adventurous man
or boy might be seen as a merry sailor on a single plank or spar,
apparently as deep in enjoyment as were any on the water. It seemed as if
all the town were coming to the river, renouncing the cares and toils of
the day, determined to take the evening breeze into their pulses, and be
cool and tranquil ere going to bed.</p>
<p>Absorbed in the happy scene, given up to dreamy, random observation of
what lay immediately before me, I was not conscious of anything occurring
on the outer rim of the landscape. Forest, mountain, and sky were
forgotten, when my companion suddenly directed my attention to the
eastward, shouting, "Oh, look! look!" in so loud and excited a tone of
voice that passers-by, saunterers like ourselves, were startled and looked
over the bridge as if expecting to see some boat upset. Looking across the
forest, over which the mellow light of the sunset was streaming, I soon
discovered the source of my friend's excitement. There stood Mount Hood in
all the glory of the alpenglow, looming immensely high, beaming with
intelligence, and so impressive that one was overawed as if suddenly
brought before some superior being newly arrived from the sky.</p>
<p>The atmosphere was somewhat hazy, but the mountain seemed neither near nor
far. Its glaciers flashed in the divine light. The rugged, storm-worn
ridges between them and the snowfields of the summit, these perhaps might
have been traced as far as they were in sight, and the blending zones of
color about the base. But so profound was the general impression, partial
analysis did not come into play. The whole mountain appeared as one
glorious manifestation of divine power, enthusiastic and benevolent,
glowing like a countenance with ineffable repose and beauty, before which
we could only gaze in devout and lowly admiration.</p>
<p>The far-famed Oregon forests cover all the western section of the State,
the mountains as well as the lowlands, with the exception of a few
gravelly spots and open spaces in the central portions of the great
cultivated valleys. Beginning on the coast, where their outer ranks are
drenched and buffeted by wind-driven scud from the sea, they press on in
close, majestic ranks over the coast mountains, across the broad central
valleys, and over the Cascade Range, broken and halted only by the few
great peaks that rise like islands above the sea of evergreens.</p>
<p>In descending the eastern slopes of the Cascades the rich, abounding,
triumphant exuberance of the trees is quickly subdued; they become
smaller, grow wide apart, leaving dry spaces without moss covering or
underbrush, and before the foot of the range is reached, fail altogether,
stayed by the drouth of the interior almost as suddenly as on the western
margin they are stayed by the sea. Here and there at wide intervals on the
eastern plains patches of a small pine (Pinus contorta) are found, and a
scattering growth of juniper, used by the settlers mostly for fence posts
and firewood. Along the stream bottoms there is usually more or less of
cottonwood and willow, which, though yielding inferior timber, is yet
highly prized in this bare region. On the Blue Mountains there is pine,
spruce, fir, and larch in abundance for every use, but beyond this range
there is nothing that may be called a forest in the Columbia River basin,
until we reach the spurs of the Rocky Mountains; and these Rocky Mountain
forests are made up of trees which, compared with the giants of the
Pacific Slope, are mere saplings.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XXII. The Forests of Oregon and their Inhabitants </h2>
<p>Like the forests of Washington, already described, those of Oregon are in
great part made up of the Douglas spruce <SPAN href="#linknote-32"
name="linknoteref-32" id="linknoteref-32"><small>32</small></SPAN>, or Oregon
pine (Abies Douglasii). A large number of mills are at work upon this
species, especially along the Columbia, but these as yet have made but
little impression upon its dense masses, the mills here being small as
compared with those of the Puget Sound region. The white cedar, or Port
Orford cedar (Cupressus Lawsoniana, or Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana), is one
of the most beautiful of the evergreens, and produces excellent lumber,
considerable quantities of which are shipped to the San Francisco market.
It is found mostly about Coos Bay, along the Coquille River, and on the
northern slopes of the Siskiyou Mountains, and extends down the coast into
California. The silver firs, the spruces, and the colossal arbor-vitae, or
white cedar <SPAN href="#linknote-33" name="linknoteref-33" id="linknoteref-33"><small>33</small></SPAN>(Thuja gigantea), described in
the chapter on Washington, are also found here in great beauty and
perfection, the largest of these (Picea grandis, Loud.; Abies grandis,
Lindl.) being confined mostly to the coast region, where it attains a
height of three hundred feet, and a diameter of ten or twelve feet. Five
or six species of pines are found in the State, the most important of
which, both as to lumber and as to the part they play in the general
wealth and beauty of the forests, are the yellow and sugar pines (Pinus
ponderosa and P. Lambertiana). The yellow pine is most abundant on the
eastern slopes of the Cascades, forming there the main bulk of the forest
in many places. It is also common along the borders of the open spaces in
Willamette Valley. In the southern portion of the State the sugar pine,
which is the king of all the pines and the glory of the Sierra forests,
occurs in considerable abundance in the basins of the Umpqua and Rogue
Rivers, and it was in the Umpqua Hills that this noble tree was first
discovered by the enthusiastic botanical explorer David Douglas, in the
year 1826.</p>
<p>This is the Douglas for whom the noble Douglas spruce is named, and many a
fair blooming plant also, which will serve to keep his memory fresh and
sweet as long as beautiful trees and flowers are loved. The Indians of the
lower Columbia River watched him with lively curiosity as he wandered
about in the woods day after day, gazing intently on the ground or at the
great trees, collecting specimens of everything he saw, but, unlike all
the eager fur-gathering strangers they had hitherto seen, caring nothing
about trade. And when at length they came to know him better, and saw that
from year to year the growing things of the woods and prairies, meadows
and plains, were his only object of pursuit, they called him the "Man of
Grass," a title of which he was proud.</p>
<p>He was a Scotchman and first came to this coast in the spring of 1825
under the auspices of the London Horticultural Society, landing at the
mouth of the Columbia after a long dismal voyage of eight months and
fourteen days. During this first season he chose Fort Vancouver, belonging
to the Hudson's Bay Company, as his headquarters, and from there made
excursions into the glorious wilderness in every direction, discovering
many new species among the trees as well as among the rich underbrush and
smaller herbaceous vegetation. It was while making a trip to Mount Hood
this year that he discovered the two largest and most beautiful firs in
the world (Picea amabilis and P. nobilis—now called Abies), and from
the seeds which he then collected and sent home tall trees are now growing
in Scotland.</p>
<p>In one of his trips that summer, in the lower Willamette Valley, he saw in
an Indian's tobacco pouch some of the seeds and scales of a new species of
pine, which he learned were gathered from a large tree that grew far to
the southward. Most of the following season was spent on the upper waters
of the Columbia, and it was not until September that he returned to Fort
Vancouver, about the time of the setting-in of the winter rains.
Nevertheless, bearing in mind the great pine he had heard of, and the
seeds of which he had seen, he made haste to set out on an excursion to
the headwaters of the Willamette in search of it; and how he fared on this
excursion and what dangers and hardships he endured is best told in his
own journal, part of which I quote as follows:—</p>
<p>October 26th, 1826. Weather dull. Cold and cloudy. When my<br/>
friends in England are made acquainted with my travels I fear<br/>
they will think that I have told them nothing but my miseries....<br/>
I quitted my camp early in the morning to survey the neighboring<br/>
country, leaving my guide to take charge of the horses until my<br/>
return in the evening. About an hour's walk from the camp I met<br/>
an Indian, who on perceiving me instantly strung his bow, placed<br/>
on his left arm a sleeve of raccoon skin and stood on the<br/>
defensive. Being quite sure that conduct was prompted by fear and<br/>
not by hostile intentions, the poor fellow having probably never<br/>
seen such a being as myself before, I laid my gun at my feet on the<br/>
ground and waved my hand for him to come to me, which he did slowly<br/>
and with great caution. I then made him place his bow and quiver<br/>
of arrows beside my gun, and striking a light gave him a smoke out<br/>
of my own pipe and a present of a few beads. With my pencil I made<br/>
a rough sketch of the cone and pine tree which I wanted to obtain<br/>
and drew his attention to it, when he instantly pointed with his<br/>
hand to the hills fifteen or twenty miles distant towards the<br/>
south; and when I expressed my intention of going thither,<br/>
cheerfully set about accompanying me. At midday I reached my long-<br/>
wished-for pines and lost no time in examining them and endeavoring<br/>
to collect specimens and seeds. New and strange things seldom fail<br/>
to make strong impressions and are therefore frequently overrated;<br/>
so that, lest I should never see my friends in England to inform<br/>
them verbally of this most beautiful and immensely grand tree, I<br/>
shall here state the dimensions of the largest I could find among<br/>
several that had been blown down by the wind. At three feet from<br/>
the ground its circumference is fifty-seven feet, nine inches; at<br/>
one hundred and thirty-four feet, seventeen feet five inches; the<br/>
extreme length two hundred and forty-five feet.... As it was<br/>
impossible either to climb the tree or hew it down, I endeavored to<br/>
knock off the cones by firing at them with ball, when the report of<br/>
my gun brought eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth,<br/>
armed with bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint knives.<br/>
They appeared anything but friendly. I explained to them what I<br/>
wanted and they seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke; but<br/>
presently I saw one of them string his bow and another sharpen his<br/>
flint knife with a pair of wooden pincers and suspend it on the<br/>
wrist of his right hand. Further testimony of their intentions was<br/>
unnecessary. To save myself by flight was impossible, so without<br/>
hesitation I stepped back about five paces, cocked my gun, drew one<br/>
of the pistols out of my belt, and holding it in my left hand, the<br/>
gun in my right, showed myself determined to fight for my life. As<br/>
much as possible I endeavored to preserve my coolness, and thus we<br/>
stood looking at one another without making any movement or<br/>
uttering a word for perhaps ten minutes, when one at last, who<br/>
seemed to be the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some<br/>
tobacco; this I signified they should have if they fetched a<br/>
quantity of cones. They went off immediately in search of them,<br/>
and no sooner were they all out of sight than I picked up my three<br/>
cones and some twigs of the trees and made the quickest possible<br/>
retreat, hurrying back to my camp, which I reached before dusk.<br/>
The Indian who last undertook to be my guide to the trees I sent<br/>
off before gaining my encampment, lest he should betray me. How<br/>
irksome is the darkness of night to one under such circumstances.<br/>
I cannot speak a word to my guide, nor have I a book to divert my<br/>
thoughts, which are continually occupied with the dread lest the<br/>
hostile Indians should trace me hither and make an attack. I now<br/>
write lying on the grass with my gun cocked beside me, and penning<br/>
these lines by the light of my Columbian candle, namely, an ignited<br/>
piece of rosin-wood.<br/></p>
<p>Douglas named this magnificent species Pinus Lambertiana, in honor of his
friend Dr. Lambert, of London. This is the noblest pine thus far
discovered in the forests of the world, surpassing all others not only in
size but in beauty and majesty. Oregon may well be proud that its
discovery was made within her borders, and that, though it is far more
abundant in California, she has the largest known specimens. In the Sierra
the finest sugar pine forests lie at an elevation of about five thousand
feet. In Oregon they occupy much lower ground, some of the trees being
found but little above tide-water.</p>
<p>No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the sugar pine.
In most coniferous trees there is a sameness of form and expression which
at length becomes wearisome to most people who travel far in the woods.
But the sugar pines are as free from conventional forms as any of the
oaks. No two are so much alike as to hide their individuality from any
observer. Every tree is appreciated as a study in itself and proclaims in
no uncertain terms the surpassing grandeur of the species. The branches,
mostly near the summit, are sometimes nearly forty feet long, feathered
richly all around with short, leafy branchlets, and tasseled with cones a
foot and a half long. And when these superb arms are outspread, radiating
in every direction, an immense crownlike mass is formed which, poised on
the noble shaft and filled with sunshine, is one of the grandest forest
objects conceivable. But though so wild and unconventional when
full-grown, the sugar pine is a remarkably regular tree in youth, a strict
follower of coniferous fashions, slim, erect, tapering, symmetrical, every
branch in place. At the age of fifty or sixty years this shy, fashionable
form begins to give way. Special branches are thrust out away from the
general outlines of the trees and bent down with cones. Henceforth it
becomes more and more original and independent in style, pushes boldly
aloft into the winds and sunshine, growing ever more stately and
beautiful, a joy and inspiration to every beholder.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the sugar pine makes excellent lumber. It is too good to
live, and is already passing rapidly away before the woodman's axe. Surely
out of all of the abounding forest wealth of Oregon a few specimens might
be spared to the world, not as dead lumber, but as living trees. A park of
moderate extent might be set apart and protected for public use forever,
containing at least a few hundreds of each of these noble pines, spruces,
and firs. Happy will be the men who, having the power and the love and
benevolent forecast to do this, will do it. They will not be forgotten.
The trees and their lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet
unborn will rise up and call them blessed.</p>
<p>Dotting the prairies and fringing the edges of the great evergreen forests
we find a considerable number of hardwood trees, such as the oak, maple,
ash, alder, laurel, madrone, flowering dogwood, wild cherry, and wild
apple. The white oak (Quercus Garryana) is the most important of the
Oregon oaks as a timber tree, but not nearly so beautiful as Kellogg's oak
(Q. Kelloggii). The former is found mostly along the Columbia River,
particularly about the Dalles, and a considerable quantity of useful
lumber is made from it and sold, sometimes for eastern white oak, to wagon
makers. Kellogg's oak is a magnificent tree and does much for the
picturesque beauty of the Umpqua and Rogue River Valleys where it abounds.
It is also found in all the Yosemite valleys of the Sierra, and its acorns
form an important part of the food of the Digger Indians. In the Siskiyou
Mountains there is a live oak (Q. chrysolepis), wide-spreading and very
picturesque in form, but not very common. It extends southward along the
western flank of the Sierra and is there more abundant and much larger
than in Oregon, oftentimes five to eight feet in diameter.</p>
<p>The maples are the same as those in Washington, already described, but I
have not seen any maple groves here equal in extent or in the size of the
trees to those on the Snoqualmie River.</p>
<p>The Oregon ash is now rare along the stream banks of western Oregon, and
it grows to a good size and furnishes lumber that is for some purposes
equal to the white ash of the Western States.</p>
<p>Nuttall's flowering dogwood makes a brave display with its wealth of show
involucres in the spring along cool streams. Specimens of the flowers may
be found measuring eight inches in diameter.</p>
<p>The wild cherry (Prunus emarginata, var. mollis) is a small, handsome tree
seldom more than a foot in diameter at the base. It makes valuable lumber
and its black, astringent fruit furnishes a rich resource as food for the
birds. A smaller form is common in the Sierra, the fruit of which is
eagerly eaten by the Indians and hunters in time of need.</p>
<p>The wild apple (Pyrus rivularis) is a fine, hearty, handsome little tree
that grows well in rich, cool soil along streams and on the edges of
beaver meadows from California through Oregon and Washington to
southeastern Alaska. In Oregon it forms dense, tangled thickets, some of
them almost impenetrable. The largest trunks are nearly a foot in
diameter. When in bloom it makes a fine show with its abundant clusters of
flowers, which are white and fragrant. The fruit is very small and
savagely acid. It is wholesome, however, and is eaten by birds, bears,
Indians, and many other adventurers, great and small.</p>
<p>Passing from beneath the shadows of the woods where the trees grow close
and high, we step into charming wild gardens full of lilies, orchids,
heathworts, roses, etc., with colors so gay and forming such sumptuous
masses of bloom, they make the gardens of civilization, however lovingly
cared for, seem pathetic and silly. Around the great fire-mountains, above
the forests and beneath the snow, there is a flowery zone of marvelous
beauty planted with anemones, erythroniums, daisies, bryanthus, kalmia,
vaccinium, cassiope, saxifrages, etc., forming one continuous garden fifty
or sixty miles in circumference, and so deep and luxuriant and closely
woven it seems as if Nature, glad to find an opening, were economizing
space and trying to see how may of her bright-eyed darlings she can get
together in one mountain wreath.</p>
<p>Along the slopes of the Cascades, where the woods are less dense,
especially about the headwaters of the Willamette, there are miles of
rhododendron, making glorious outbursts of purple bloom, and down on the
prairies in rich, damp hollows the blue-flowered camassia grows in such
profusion that at a little distance its dense masses appear as beautiful
blue lakes imbedded in the green, flowery plains; while all about the
streams and the lakes and the beaver meadows and the margins of the deep
woods there is a magnificent tangle of gaultheria and huckleberry bushes
with their myriads of pink bells, reinforced with hazel, cornel, rubus of
many species, wild plum, cherry, and crab apple; besides thousands of
charming bloomers to be found in all sorts of places throughout the
wilderness whose mere names are refreshing, such as linnaea, menziesia,
pyrola, chimaphila, brodiaea, smilacina, fritillaria, calochortus,
trillium, clintonia, veratrum, cypripedium, goodyera, spiranthes,
habenaria, and the rare and lovely "Hider of the North," Calypso borealis,
to find which is alone a sufficient object for a journey into the
wilderness. And besides these there is a charming underworld of ferns and
mosses flourishing gloriously beneath all the woods.</p>
<p>Everybody loves wild woods and flowers more or less. Seeds of all these
Oregon evergreens and of many of the flowering shrubs and plants have been
sent to almost every country under the sun, and they are now growing in
carefully tended parks and gardens. And now that the ways of approach are
open one would expect to find these woods and gardens full of admiring
visitors reveling in their beauty like bees in a clover field. Yet few
care to visit them. A portion of the bark of one of the California trees,
the mere dead skin, excited the wondering attention of thousands when it
was set up in the Crystal Palace in London, as did also a few peeled
spars, the shafts of mere saplings from Oregon or Washington. Could one of
these great silver firs or sugar pines three hundred feet high have been
transplanted entire to that exhibition, how enthusiastic would have been
the praises accorded to it!</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the countless hosts waving at home beneath their own sky,
beside their own noble rivers and mountains, and standing on a
flower-enameled carpet of mosses thousands of square miles in extent,
attract but little attention. Most travelers content themselves with what
they may chance to see from car windows, hotel verandas, or the deck of a
steamer on the lower Columbia—clinging to the battered highways like
drowning sailors to a life raft. When an excursion into the woods is
proposed, all sorts of exaggerated or imaginary dangers are conjured up,
filling the kindly, soothing wilderness with colds, fevers, Indians,
bears, snakes, bugs, impassable rivers, and jungles of brush, to which is
always added quick and sure starvation.</p>
<p>As to starvation, the woods are full of food, and a supply of bread may
easily be carried for habit's sake, and replenished now and then at
outlying farms and camps. The Indians are seldom found in the woods, being
confined mainly to the banks of the rivers, where the greater part of
their food is obtained. Moreover, the most of them have been either buried
since the settlement of the country or civilized into comparative
innocence, industry, or harmless laziness. There are bears in the woods,
but not in such numbers nor of such unspeakable ferocity as town-dwellers
imagine, nor do bears spend their lives in going about the country like
the devil, seeking whom they may devour. Oregon bears, like most others,
have no liking for man either as meat or as society; and while some may be
curious at times to see what manner of creature he is, most of them have
learned to shun people as deadly enemies. They have been poisoned,
trapped, and shot at until they have become shy, and it is no longer easy
to make their acquaintance. Indeed, since the settlement of the country,
notwithstanding far the greater portion is yet wild, it is difficult to
find any of the larger animals that once were numerous and comparatively
familiar, such as the bear, wolf, panther, lynx, deer, elk, and antelope.</p>
<p>As early as 1843, while the settlers numbered only a few thousands, and
before any sort of government had been organized, they came together and
held what they called "a wolf meeting," at which a committee was appointed
to devise means for the destruction of wild animals destructive to tame
ones, which committee in due time begged to report as follows:—</p>
<p>It being admitted by all that bears, wolves, panthers, etc., are<br/>
destructive to the useful animals owned by the settlers of this<br/>
colony, your committee would submit the following resolutions as<br/>
the sense of this meeting, by which the community may be governed<br/>
in carrying on a defensive and destructive war on all such<br/>
animals:—<br/>
<br/>
Resolved, 1st.—That we deem it expedient for the community to take<br/>
immediate measures for the destruction of all wolves, panthers, and<br/>
bears, and such other animals as are known to be destructive to<br/>
cattle, horses, sheep and hogs.<br/>
<br/>
2d.—That a bounty of fifty cents be paid for the destruction of a<br/>
small wolf, $3.00 for a large wolf, $1.50 for a lynx, $2.00 for a<br/>
bear and $5.00 for a panther.<br/></p>
<p>This center of destruction was in the Willamette Valley. But for many
years prior to the beginning of the operations of the "Wolf Organization"
the Hudson's Bay Company had established forts and trading stations over
all the country, wherever fur-gathering Indians could be found, and vast
numbers of these animals were killed. Their destruction has since gone on
at an accelerated rate from year to year as the settlements have been
extended, so that in some cases it is difficult to obtain specimens enough
for the use of naturalists. But even before any of these settlements were
made, and before the coming of the Hudson's Bay Company, there was very
little danger to be met in passing through this wilderness as far as
animals were concerned, and but little of any kind as compared with the
dangers encountered in crowded houses and streets.</p>
<p>When Lewis and Clark made their famous trip across the continent in
1804-05, when all the Rocky Mountain region was wild, as well as the
Pacific Slope, they did not lose a single man by wild animals, nor, though
frequently attacked, especially by the grizzlies of the Rocky Mountains,
were any of them wounded seriously. Captain Clark was bitten on the hand
by a wolf as he lay asleep; that was one bite among more than a hundred
men while traveling through eight to nine thousand miles of savage
wilderness. They could hardly have been so fortunate had they stayed at
home. They wintered on the edge of the Clatsop plains, on the south side
of the Columbia River near its mouth. In the woods on that side they found
game abundant, especially elk, and with the aid of the friendly Indians
who furnished salmon and "wapatoo" (the tubers of Sagittaria variabilis),
they were in no danger of starving.</p>
<p>But on the return trip in the spring they reached the base of the Rocky
Mountains when the range was yet too heavily snow-laden to be crossed with
horses. Therefore they had to wait some weeks. This was at the head of one
of the northern branches of the Snake River, and, their scanty stock of
provisions being nearly exhausted, the whole party was compelled to live
mostly on bears and dogs; deer, antelope, and elk, usually abundant, were
now scarce because the region had been closely hunted over by the Indians
before their arrival.</p>
<p>Lewis and Clark had killed a number of bears and saved the skins of the
more interesting specimens, and the variations they found in size, color
of the hair, etc., made great difficulty in classification. Wishing to get
the opinion of the Chopumish Indians, near one of whose villages they were
encamped, concerning the various species, the explorers unpacked their
bundles and spread out for examination all the skins they had taken. The
Indian hunters immediately classed the white, the deep and the pale
grizzly red, the grizzly dark-brown—in short, all those with the
extremities of the hair of a white or frosty color without regard to the
color of the ground or foil—under the name of hoh-host. The Indians
assured them that these were all of the same species as the white bear,
that they associated together, had longer nails than the others, and never
climbed trees. On the other hand, the black skins, those that were black
with white hairs intermixed or with a white breast, the uniform bay, the
brown, and the light reddish-brown, were classed under the name yack-ah,
and were said to resemble each other in being smaller and having shorter
nails, in climbing trees, and being so little vicious that they could be
pursued with safety.</p>
<p>Lewis and Clark came to the conclusion that all those with white-tipped
hair found by them in the basin of the Columbia belonged to the same
species as the grizzlies of the upper Missouri; and that the black and
reddish-brown, etc., of the Rocky Mountains belong to a second species
equally distinct from the grizzly and the black bear of the Pacific Coast
and the East, which never vary in color.</p>
<p>As much as possible should be made by the ordinary traveler of these
descriptions, for he will be likely to see very little of any species for
himself; not that bears no longer exist here, but because, being shy, they
keep out of the way. In order to see them and learn their habits one must
go softly and alone, lingering long in the fringing woods on the banks of
the salmon streams, and in the small openings in the midst of thickets
where berries are most abundant.</p>
<p>As for rattlesnakes, the other grand dread of town dwellers when they
leave beaten roads, there are two, or perhaps three, species of them in
Oregon. But they are nowhere to be found in great numbers. In western
Oregon they are hardly known at all. In all my walks in the Oregon forest
I have never met a single specimen, though a few have been seen at long
intervals.</p>
<p>When the country was first settled by the whites, fifty years ago, the elk
roamed through the woods and over the plains to the east of the Cascades
in immense numbers; now they are rarely seen except by experienced hunters
who know their haunts in the deepest and most inaccessible solitudes to
which they have been driven. So majestic an animal forms a tempting mark
for the sportsman's rifle. Countless thousands have been killed for mere
amusement and they already seem to be nearing extinction as rapidly as the
buffalo. The antelope also is vanishing from the Columbia plains before
the farmers and cattlemen. Whether the moose still lingers in Oregon or
Washington I am unable to say.</p>
<p>On the highest mountains of the Cascade Range the wild goat roams in
comparative security, few of his enemies caring to go so far in pursuit
and to hunt on ground so high and dangerous. He is a brave, sturdy shaggy
mountaineer of an animal, enjoying the freedom and security of crumbling
ridges and overhanging cliffs above the glaciers, oftentimes beyond the
reach of the most daring hunter. They seem to be as much at home on the
ice and snowfields as on the crags, making their way in flocks from ridge
to ridge on the great volcanic mountains by crossing the glaciers that lie
between them, traveling in single file guided by an old experienced
leader, like a party of climbers on the Alps. On these ice-journeys they
pick their way through networks of crevasses and over bridges of snow with
admirable skill, and the mountaineer may seldom do better in such places
than to follow their trail, if he can. In the rich alpine gardens and
meadows they find abundance of food, venturing sometimes well down in the
prairie openings on the edge of the timberline, but holding themselves
ever alert and watchful, ready to flee to their highland castles at the
faintest alarm. When their summer pastures are buried beneath the winter
snows, they make haste to the lower ridges, seeking the wind-beaten crags
and slopes where the snow cannot lie at any great depth, feeding at times
on the leaves and twigs of bushes when grass is beyond reach.</p>
<p>The wild sheep is another admirable alpine rover, but comparatively rare
in the Oregon mountains, choosing rather the drier ridges to the southward
on the Cascades and to the eastward among the spurs of the Rocky Mountain
chain.</p>
<p>Deer give beautiful animation to the forests, harmonizing finely in their
color and movements with the gray and brown shafts of the trees and the
swaying of the branches as they stand in groups at rest, or move
gracefully and noiselessly over the mossy ground about the edges of beaver
meadows and flowery glades, daintily culling the leaves and tips of the
mints and aromatic bushes on which they feed. There are three species, the
black-tailed, white-tailed, and mule deer; the last being restricted in
its range to the open woods and plains to the eastward of the Cascades.
They are nowhere very numerous now, killing for food, for hides, or for
mere wanton sport, having well-nigh exterminated them in the more
accessible regions, while elsewhere they are too often at the mercy of the
wolves.</p>
<p>Gliding about in their shady forest homes, keeping well out of sight,
there is a multitude of sleek fur-clad animals living and enjoying their
clean, beautiful lives. How beautiful and interesting they are is about as
difficult for busy mortals to find out as if their homes were beyond sight
in the sky. Hence the stories of every wild hunter and trapper are eagerly
listened to as being possibly true, or partly so, however thickly clothed
in successive folds of exaggeration and fancy. Unsatisfying as these
accounts must be, a tourist's frightened rush and scramble through the
woods yields far less than the hunter's wildest stories, while in writing
we can do but little more than to give a few names, as they come to mind,—beaver,
squirrel, coon, fox, marten, fisher, otter, ermine, wildcat,—only
this instead of full descriptions of the bright-eyed furry throng, their
snug home nests, their fears and fights and loves, how they get their
food, rear their young, escape their enemies, and keep themselves warm and
well and exquisitely clean through all the pitiless weather.</p>
<p>For many years before the settlement of the country the fur of the beaver
brought a high price, and therefore it was pursued with weariless ardor.
Not even in the quest for gold has a more ruthless, desperate energy been
developed. It was in those early beaver-days that the striking class of
adventurers called "free trappers" made their appearance. Bold,
enterprising men, eager to make money, and inclined at the same time to
relish the license of a savage life, would set forth with a few traps and
a gun and a hunting knife, content at first to venture only a short
distance up the beaver streams nearest to the settlements, and where the
Indians were not likely to molest them. There they would set their traps,
while the buffalo, antelope, deer, etc., furnished a royal supply of food.
In a few months their pack animals would be laden with thousands of
dollars' worth of fur.</p>
<p>Next season they would venture farther, and again farther, meanwhile
growing rapidly wilder, getting acquainted with the Indian tribes, and
usually marrying among them. Thenceforward no danger could stay them in
their exciting pursuit. Wherever there were beaver they would go, however
far or wild,—the wilder the better, provided their scalps could be
saved. Oftentimes they were compelled to set their traps and visit them by
night and lie hid during the day, when operating in the neighborhood of
hostile Indians. Not then venturing to make a fire or shoot game, they
lived on the raw flesh of the beaver, perhaps seasoned with wild cresses
or berries. Then, returning to the trading stations, they would spend
their hard earnings in a few weeks of dissipation and "good time," and go
again to the bears and beavers, until at length a bullet or arrow would
end all. One after another would be missed by some friend or trader at the
autumn rendezvous, reported killed by the Indians, and—forgotten.
Some men of this class have, from superior skill or fortune, escaped every
danger, lived to a good old age, and earned fame, and, by their knowledge
of the topography of the vast West then unexplored, have been able to
render important service to the country; but most of them laid their bones
in the wilderness after a few short, keen seasons. So great were the
perils that beset them, the average length of the life of a "free trapper"
has been estimated at less than five years. From the Columbia waters
beaver and beaver men have almost wholly passed away, and the men once so
striking a part of the view have left scarcely the faintest sign of their
existence. On the other hand, a thousand meadows on the mountains tell the
story of the beavers, to remain fresh and green for many a century,
monuments of their happy, industrious lives.</p>
<p>But there is a little airy, elfin animal in these woods, and in all the
evergreen woods of the Pacific Coast, that is more influential and
interesting than even the beaver. This is the Douglas squirrel (Sciurus
Douglasi). Go where you will throughout all these noble forests, you
everywhere find this little squirrel the master-existence. Though only a
few inches long, so intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness, he stirs
every grove with wild life, and makes himself more important than the
great bears that shuffle through the berry tangles beneath him. Every tree
feels the sting of his sharp feet. Nature has made him master-forester,
and committed the greater part of the coniferous crops to his management.
Probably over half of all the ripe cones of the spruces, firs, and pines
are cut off and handled by this busy harvester. Most of them are stored
away for food through the winter and spring, but a part are pushed into
shallow pits and covered loosely, where some of the seeds are no doubt
left to germinate and grow up. All the tree squirrels are more or less
birdlike in voice and movements, but the Douglas is pre-eminently so,
possessing every squirrelish attribute, fully developed and concentrated.
He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his
favorite evergreens, crisp and glossy and sound as a sunbeam. He stirs the
leaves like a rustling breeze, darting across openings in arrowy lines,
launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden zigzags,
and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the trunks, now on his
haunches, now on his head, yet ever graceful and performing all his feats
of strength and skill without apparent effort. One never tires of this
bright spark of life, the brave little voice crying in the wilderness. His
varied, piney gossip is as savory to the air as balsam to the palate. Some
of his notes are almost flutelike in softness, while others prick and
tingle like thistles. He is the mockingbird of squirrels, barking like a
dog, screaming like a hawk, whistling like a blackbird or linnet, while in
bluff, audacious noisiness he is a jay. A small thing, but filling and
animating all the woods.</p>
<p>Nor is there any lack of wings, notwithstanding few are to be seen on
short, noisy rambles. The ousel sweetens the shady glens and canyons where
waterfalls abound, and every grove or forest, however silent it may seem
when we chance to pay it a hasty visit, has its singers,—thrushes,
linnets, warblers,—while hummingbirds glint and hover about the
fringing masses of bloom around stream and meadow openings. But few of
these will show themselves or sing their songs to those who are ever in
haste and getting lost, going in gangs formidable in color and
accoutrements, laughing, hallooing, breaking limbs off the trees as they
pass, awkwardly struggling through briery thickets, entangled like
blue-bottles in spider webs, and stopping from time to time to fire off
their guns and pistols for the sake of the echoes, thus frightening all
the life about them for miles. It is this class of hunters and travelers
who report that there are "no birds in the woods or game animals of any
kind larger than mosquitoes."</p>
<p>Besides the singing birds mentioned above, the handsome Oregon grouse may
be found in the thick woods, also the dusky grouse and Franklin's grouse,
and in some places the beautiful mountain partridge, or quail. The
white-tailed ptarmigan lives on the lofty snow peaks above the timber, and
the prairie chicken and sage cock on the broad Columbia plains from the
Cascade Range back to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The bald eagle
is very common along the Columbia River, or wherever fish, especially
salmon, are plentiful, while swans, herons, cranes, pelicans, geese, ducks
of many species, and water birds in general abound in the lake region, on
the main streams, and along the coast, stirring the waters and sky into
fine, lively pictures, greatly to the delight of wandering lovers of
wildness.</p>
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<h2> XXIII. The Rivers of Oregon </h2>
<p>Turning from the woods and their inhabitants to the rivers, we find that
while the former are rarely seen by travelers beyond the immediate borders
of the settlements, the great river of Oregon draws crowds of enthusiastic
admirers to sound its praises. Every summer since the completion of the
first overland railroad, tourists have been coming to it in ever
increasing numbers, showing that in general estimation the Columbia is one
of the chief attractions of the Pacific Coast. And well it deserves the
admiration so heartily bestowed upon it. The beauty and majesty of its
waters, and the variety and grandeur of the scenery through which it
flows, lead many to regard it as the most interesting of all the great
rivers of the continent, notwithstanding the claims of the other members
of the family to which it belongs and which nobody can measure—the
Fraser, McKenzie, Saskatchewan, the Missouri, Yellowstone, Platte, and the
Colorado, with their glacier and geyser fountains, their famous canyons,
lakes, forests, and vast flowery prairies and plains. These great rivers
and the Columbia are intimately related. All draw their upper waters from
the same high fountains on the broad, rugged uplift of the Rocky
Mountains, their branches interlacing like the branches of trees. They
sing their first songs together on the heights; then, collecting their
tributaries, they set out on their grand journey to the Atlantic, Pacific,
or Arctic Ocean.</p>
<p>The Columbia, viewed as one from the sea to the mountains, is like a
rugged, broad-topped, picturesque old oak about six hundred miles long and
nearly a thousand miles wide measured across the spread of its upper
branches, the main limbs gnarled and swollen with lakes and lakelike
expansions, while innumerable smaller lakes shine like fruit among the
smaller branches. The main trunk extends back through the Coast and
Cascade Mountains in a general easterly direction for three hundred miles,
when it divides abruptly into two grand branches which bend off to the
northeastward and southeastward.</p>
<p>The south branch, the longer of the two, called the Snake, or Lewis,
River, extends into the Rocky Mountains as far as the Yellowstone National
Park, where its head tributaries interlace with those of the Colorado,
Missouri, and Yellowstone. The north branch, still called the Columbia,
extends through Washington far into British territory, its highest
tributaries reaching back through long parallel spurs of the Rockies
between and beyond the headwaters of the Fraser, Athabasca, and
Saskatchewan. Each of these main branches, dividing again and again,
spreads a network of channels over the vast complicated mass of the great
range throughout a section nearly a thousand miles in length, searching
every fountain, however small or great, and gathering a glorious harvest
of crystal water to be rolled through forest and plain in one majestic
flood to the sea, reinforced on the way by tributaries that drain the Blue
Mountains and more than two hundred miles of the Cascade and Coast Ranges.
Though less than half as long as the Mississippi, it is said to carry as
much water. The amount of its discharge at different seasons, however, has
never been exactly measured, but in time of flood its current is
sufficiently massive and powerful to penetrate the sea to a distance of
fifty or sixty miles from shore, its waters being easily recognized by the
difference in color and by the drift of leaves, berries, pine cones,
branches, and trunks of trees that they carry.</p>
<p>That so large a river as the Columbia, making a telling current so far
from shore, should remain undiscovered while one exploring expedition
after another sailed past seems remarkable, even after due allowance is
made for the cloudy weather that prevails hereabouts and the broad fence
of breakers drawn across the bar. During the last few centuries, when the
maps of the world were in great part blank, the search for new worlds was
fashionable business, and when such large game was no longer to be found,
islands lying unclaimed in the great oceans, inhabited by useful and
profitable people to be converted or enslaved, became attractive objects;
also new ways to India, seas, straits, El Dorados, fountains of youth, and
rivers that flowed over golden sands.</p>
<p>Those early explorers and adventurers were mostly brave, enterprising,
and, after their fashion, pious men. In their clumsy sailing vessels they
dared to go where no chart or lighthouse showed the way, where the set of
the currents, the location of sunken outlying rocks and shoals, were all
unknown, facing fate and weather, undaunted however dark the signs,
heaving the lead and thrashing the men to their duty and trusting to
Providence. When a new shore was found on which they could land, they said
their prayers with superb audacity, fought the natives if they cared to
fight, erected crosses, and took possession in the names of their
sovereigns, establishing claims, such as they were, to everything in sight
and beyond, to be quarreled for and battled for, and passed from hand to
hand in treaties and settlements made during the intermissions of war.</p>
<p>The branch of the river that bears the name of Columbia all the way to its
head takes its rise in two lakes about ten miles in length that lie
between the Selkirk and main ranges of the Rocky Mountains in British
Columbia, about eighty miles beyond the boundary line. They are called the
Upper and Lower Columbia Lakes. Issuing from these, the young river holds
a nearly straight course for a hundred and seventy miles in a
northwesterly direction to a plain called "Boat Encampment," receiving
many beautiful affluents by the way from the Selkirk and main ranges,
among which are the Beaver-Foot, Blackberry, Spill-e-Mee-Chene, and Gold
Rivers. At Boat Encampment it receives two large tributaries, the Canoe
River from the northwest, a stream about a hundred and twenty miles long;
and the Whirlpool River from the north, about a hundred and forty miles in
length.</p>
<p>The Whirlpool River takes its rise near the summit of the main axis of the
range on the fifty-fourth parallel, and is the northmost of all the
Columbia waters. About thirty miles above its confluence with the Columbia
it flows through a lake called the Punch-Bowl, and thence it passes
between Mounts Hooker and Brown, said to be fifteen thousand and sixteen
thousand feet high, making magnificent scenery; though the height of the
mountains thereabouts has been considerably overestimated. From Boat
Encampment the river, now a large, clear stream, said to be nearly a third
of a mile in width, doubles back on its original course and flows
southward as far as its confluence with the Spokane in Washington, a
distance of nearly three hundred miles in a direct line, most of the way
through a wild, rocky, picturesque mass of mountains, charmingly forested
with pine and spruce—though the trees seem strangely small, like
second growth saplings, to one familiar with the western forests of
Washington, Oregon, and California.</p>
<p>About forty-five miles below Boat Encampment are the Upper Dalles, or
Dalles de Mort, and thirty miles farther the Lower Dalles, where the river
makes a magnificent uproar and interrupts navigation. About thirty miles
below the Lower Dalles the river expands into Upper Arrow Lake, a
beautiful sheet of water forty miles long and five miles wide, straight as
an arrow and with the beautiful forests of the Selkirk range rising from
its east shore, and those of the Gold range from the west. At the foot of
the lake are the Narrows, a few miles in length, and after these rapids
are passed, the river enters Lower Arrow Lake, which is like the Upper
Arrow, but is even longer and not so straight.</p>
<p>A short distance below the Lower Arrow the Columbia receives the Kootenay
River, the largest affluent thus far on its course and said to be
navigable for small steamers for a hundred and fifty miles. It is an
exceedingly crooked stream, heading beyond the upper Columbia lakes, and,
in its mazy course, flowing to all points of the compass, it seems lost
and baffled in the tangle of mountain spurs and ridges it drains. Measured
around its loops and bends, it is probably more than five hundred miles in
length. It is also rich in lakes, the largest, Kootenay Lake, being
upwards of seventy miles in length with an average width of five miles. A
short distance below the confluence of the Kootenay, near the boundary
line between Washington and British Columbia, another large stream comes
in from the east, Clarke's Fork, or the Flathead River. Its upper sources
are near those of the Missouri and South Saskatchewan, and in its course
it flows through two large and beautiful lakes, the Flathead and the Pend
d'Oreille. All the lakes we have noticed thus far would make charming
places of summer resort; but Pend d'Oreille, besides being surpassingly
beautiful, has the advantage of being easily accessible, since it is on
the main line of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the Territory of Idaho.
In the purity of its waters it reminds one of Tahoe, while its many
picturesque islands crowned with evergreens, and its winding shores
forming an endless variety of bays and promontories lavishly crowded with
spiry spruce and cedar, recall some of the best of the island scenery of
Alaska.</p>
<p>About thirty-five miles below the mouth of Clark's Fork the Columbia is
joined by the Ne-whoi-al-pit-ku River from the northwest. Here too are the
great Chaudiere, or Kettle, Falls on the main river, with a total descent
of about fifty feet. Fifty miles farther down, the Spokane River, a clear,
dashing stream, comes in from the east. It is about one hundred and twenty
miles long, and takes its rise in the beautiful Lake Coeur d'Alene, in
Idaho, which receives the drainage of nearly a hundred miles of the
western slopes of the Bitter Root Mountains, through the St. Joseph and
Coeur d'Alene Rivers. The lake is about twenty miles long, set in the
midst of charming scenery, and, like Pend d'Oreille, is easy of access and
is already attracting attention as a summer place for enjoyment, rest, and
health.</p>
<p>The famous Spokane Falls are in Washington, about thirty miles below the
lake, where the river is outspread and divided and makes a grand descent
from a level basaltic plateau, giving rise to one of the most beautiful as
well as one of the greatest and most available of water-powers in the
State. The city of the same name is built on the plateau along both sides
of the series of cascades and falls, which, rushing and sounding through
the midst, give singular beauty and animation. The young city is also
rushing and booming. It is founded on a rock, leveled and prepared for it,
and its streets require no grading or paving. As a power to whirl the
machinery of a great city and at the same time to train the people to a
love of the sublime and beautiful as displayed in living water, the
Spokane Falls are unrivaled, at least as far as my observation has
reached. Nowhere else have I seen such lessons given by a river in the
streets of a city, such a glad, exulting, abounding outgush, crisp and
clear from the mountains, dividing, falling, displaying its wealth,
calling aloud in the midst of the busy throng, and making glorious
offerings for every use of utility or adornment.</p>
<p>From the mouth of the Spokane the Columbia, now out of the woods, flows to
the westward with a broad, stately current for a hundred and twenty miles
to receive the Okinagan, a large, generous tributary a hundred and sixty
miles long, coming from the north and drawing some of its waters from the
Cascade Range. More than half its course is through a chain of lakes, the
largest of which at the head of the river is over sixty miles in length.
From its confluence with the Okinagan the river pursues a southerly course
for a hundred and fifty miles, most of the way through a dreary, treeless,
parched plain to meet the great south fork. The Lewis, or Snake, River is
nearly a thousand miles long and drains nearly the whole of Idaho, a
territory rich in scenery, gold mines, flowery, grassy valleys, and
deserts, while some of the highest tributaries reach into Wyoming, Utah,
and Nevada. Throughout a great part of its course it is countersunk in a
black lava plain and shut in by mural precipices a thousand feet high,
gloomy, forbidding, and unapproachable, although the gloominess of its
canyon is relieved in some manner by its many falls and springs, some of
the springs being large enough to appear as the outlets of subterranean
rivers. They gush out from the faces of the sheer black walls and descend
foaming with brave roar and beauty to swell the flood below.</p>
<p>From where the river skirts the base of the Blue Mountains its
surroundings are less forbidding. Much of the country is fertile, but its
canyon is everywhere deep and almost inaccessible. Steamers make their way
up as far as Lewiston, a hundred and fifty miles, and receive cargoes of
wheat at different points through chutes that extend down from the tops of
the bluffs. But though the Hudson's Bay Company navigated the north fork
to its sources, they depended altogether on pack animals for the
transportation of supplies and furs between the Columbia and Fort Hall on
the head of the south fork, which shows how desperately unmanageable a
river it must be.</p>
<p>A few miles above the mouth of the Snake the Yakima, which drains a
considerable portion of the Cascade Range, enters from the northwest. It
is about a hundred and fifty miles long, but carries comparatively little
water, a great part of what it sets out with from the base of the
mountains being consumed in irrigated fields and meadows in passing
through the settlements along its course, and by evaporation on the
parched desert plains. The grand flood of the Columbia, now from half a
mile to a mile wide, sweeps on to the westward, holding a nearly direct
course until it reaches the mouth of the Willamette, where it turns to the
northward and flows fifty miles along the main valley between the Coast
and Cascade Ranges ere it again resumes its westward course to the sea. In
all its course from the mouth of the Yakima to the sea, a distance of
three hundred miles, the only considerable affluent from the northward is
the Cowlitz, which heads in the glaciers of Mount Rainier.</p>
<p>From the south and east it receives the Walla-Walla and Umatilla, rather
short and dreary-looking streams, though the plains they pass through have
proved fertile, and their upper tributaries in the Blue Mountains, shaded
with tall pines, firs, spruces, and the beautiful Oregon larch (Larix
brevifolia), lead into a delightful region. The John Day River also heads
in the Blue Mountains, and flows into the Columbia sixty miles below the
mouth of the Umatilla. Its valley is in great part fertile, and is noted
for the interesting fossils discovered in it by Professor Condon in
sections cut by the river through the overlying lava beds.</p>
<p>The Deschutes River comes in from the south about twenty miles below the
John Day. It is a large, boisterous stream, draining the eastern slope of
the Cascade Range for nearly two hundred miles, and from the great number
of falls on the main trunk, as well as on its many mountain tributaries,
well deserves its name. It enters the Columbia with a grand roar of falls
and rapids, and at times seems almost to rival the main stream in the
volume of water it carries. Near the mouth of the Deschutes are the Falls
of the Columbia, where the river passes a rough bar of lava. The descent
is not great, but the immense volume of water makes a grand display.
During the flood season the falls are obliterated and skillful boatmen
pass over them in safety; while the Dalles, some six or eight miles below,
may be passed during low water but are utterly impassable in flood time.
At the Dalles the vast river is jammed together into a long, narrow slot
of unknown depth cut sheer down in the basalt.</p>
<p>This slot, or trough, is about a mile and a half long and about sixty
yards wide at the narrowest place. At ordinary times the river seems to be
set on edge and runs swiftly but without much noisy surging with a descent
of about twenty feet to the mile. But when the snow is melting on the
mountains the river rises here sixty feet, or even more during
extraordinary freshets, and spreads out over a great breadth of massive
rocks through which have been cut several other gorges running parallel
with the one usually occupied. All these inferior gorges now come into
use, and the huge, roaring torrent, still rising and spreading, at length
overwhelms the high jagged rock walls between them, making a tremendous
display of chafing, surging, shattered currents, counter-currents, and
hollow whirls that no words can be made to describe. A few miles below the
Dalles the storm-tossed river gets itself together again, looks like
water, becomes silent, and with stately, tranquil deliberation goes on its
way, out of the gray region of sage and sand into the Oregon woods.
Thirty-five or forty miles below the Dalles are the Cascades of the
Columbia, where the river in passing through the mountains makes another
magnificent display of foaming, surging rapids, which form the first
obstruction to navigation from the ocean, a hundred and twenty miles
distant. This obstruction is to be overcome by locks, which are now being
made.</p>
<p>Between the Dalles and the Cascades the river is like a lake a mile or two
wide, lying in a valley, or canyon, about three thousand feet deep. The
walls of the canyon lean well back in most places, and leave here and
there small strips, or bays, of level ground along the water's edge. But
towards the Cascades, and for some distance below them, the immediate
banks are guarded by walls of columnar basalt, which are worn in many
places into a great variety of bold and picturesque forms, such as the
Castle Rock, the Rooster Rock, the Pillars of Hercules, Cape Horn, etc.,
while back of these rise the sublime mountain walls, forest-crowned and
fringed more or less from top to base with pine, spruce, and shaggy
underbrush, especially in the narrow gorges and ravines, where innumerable
small streams come dancing and drifting down, misty and white, to join the
mighty river. Many of these falls on both sides of the canyon of the
Columbia are far larger and more interesting in every way than would be
guessed from the slight glimpses one gets of them while sailing past on
the river, or from the car windows. The Multnomah Falls are particularly
interesting, and occupy fern-lined gorges of marvelous beauty in the
basalt. They are said to be about eight hundred feet in height and, at
times of high water when the mountain snows are melting, are well worthy
of a place beside the famous falls of Yosemite Valley.</p>
<p>According to an Indian tradition, the river of the Cascades once flowed
through the basalt beneath a natural bridge that was broken down during a
mountain war, when the old volcanoes, Hood and St. Helen's, on opposite
sides of the river, hurled rocks at each other, thus forming a dam. That
the river has been dammed here to some extent, and within a comparatively
short period, seems probable, to say the least, since great numbers of
submerged trees standing erect may be found along both shores, while, as
we have seen, the whole river for thirty miles above the Cascades looks
like a lake or mill-pond. On the other hand, it is held by some that the
submerged groves were carried into their places by immense landslides.</p>
<p>Much of interest in the connection must necessarily be omitted for want of
space. About forty miles below the Cascades the river receives the
Willamette, the last of its great tributaries. It is navigable for ocean
vessels as far as Portland, ten miles above its mouth, and for river
steamers a hundred miles farther. The Falls of the Willamette are fifteen
miles above Portland, where the river, coming out of dense woods, breaks
its way across a bar of black basalt and falls forty feet in a passion of
snowy foam, showing to fine advantage against its background of
evergreens.</p>
<p>Of the fertility and beauty of the Willamette all the world has heard. It
lies between the Cascade and Coast Ranges, and is bounded on the south by
the Calapooya Mountains, a cross-spur that separates it from the valley of
the Umpqua.</p>
<p>It was here the first settlements for agriculture were made and a
provisional government organized, while the settlers, isolated in the far
wilderness, numbered only a few thousand and were laboring under the
opposition of the British Government and the Hudson's Bay Company. Eager
desire in the acquisition of territory on the part of these pioneer
state-builders was more truly boundless than the wilderness they were in,
and their unconscionable patriotism was equaled only by their
belligerence. For here, while negotiations were pending for the location
of the northern boundary, originated the celebrated "Fifty-four forty or
fight," about as reasonable a war-cry as the "North Pole or fight." Yet
sad was the day that brought the news of the signing of the treaty fixing
their boundary along the forty-ninth parallel, thus leaving the little
land-hungry settlement only a mere quarter-million of miles!</p>
<p>As the Willamette is one of the most foodful of valleys, so is the
Columbia one of the most foodful of rivers. During the fisher's harvest
time salmon from the sea come in countless millions, urging their way
against falls, rapids, and shallows, up into the very heart of the Rocky
Mountains, supplying everybody by the way with most bountiful masses of
delicious food, weighing from twenty to eighty pounds each, plump and
smooth like loaves of bread ready for the oven. The supply seems
inexhaustible, as well it might. Large quantities were used by the Indians
as fuel, and by the Hudson's Bay people as manure for their gardens at the
forts. Used, wasted, canned and sent in shiploads to all the world, a
grand harvest was reaped every year while nobody sowed. Of late, however,
the salmon crop has begun to fail, and millions of young fry are now sown
like wheat in the river every year, from hatching establishments belonging
to the Government.</p>
<p>All of the Oregon waters that win their way to the sea are a tributary to
the Columbia, save the short streams of the immediate coast, and the
Umpqua and Rogue Rivers in southern Oregon. These both head in the Cascade
Mountains and find their way to the sea through gaps in the Coast Range,
and both drain large and fertile and beautiful valleys. Rogue River Valley
is peculiarly attractive. With a fine climate, and kindly, productive
soil, the scenery is delightful. About the main, central open portion of
the basin, dotted with picturesque groves of oak, there are many smaller
valleys charmingly environed, the whole surrounded in the distance by the
Siskiyou, Coast, Umpqua, and Cascade Mountains. Besides the cereals nearly
every sort of fruit flourishes here, and large areas are being devoted to
peach, apricot, nectarine, and vine culture. To me it seems above all
others the garden valley of Oregon and the most delightful place for a
home. On the eastern rim of the valley, in the Cascade Mountains, about
sixty miles from Medford in a direct line, is the remarkable Crater Lake,
usually regarded as the one grand wonder of the region. It lies in a deep,
sheer-walled basin about seven thousand feet above the level of the sea,
supposed to be the crater of an extinct volcano.</p>
<p>Oregon as it is today is a very young country, though most of it seems
old. Contemplating the Columbia sweeping from forest to forest, across
plain and desert, one is led to say of it, as did Byron of the ocean,—</p>
<p>"Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."<br/></p>
<p>How ancient appear the crumbling basaltic monuments along its banks, and
the gray plains to the east of the Cascades! Nevertheless, the river as
well as its basin in anything like their present condition are
comparatively but of yesterday. Looming no further back in the geological
records than the Tertiary Period, the Oregon of that time looks altogether
strange in the few suggestive glimpses we may get of it—forests in
which palm trees wave their royal crowns, and strange animals roaming
beneath them or about the reedy margins of lakes, the oreodon, the
lophiodon, and several extinct species of the horse, the camel, and other
animals.</p>
<p>Then came the fire period with its darkening showers of ashes and cinders
and its vast floods of molten lava, making quite another Oregon from the
fair and fertile land of the preceding era. And again, while yet the
volcanic fires show signs of action in the smoke and flame of the higher
mountains, the whole region passes under the dominion of ice, and from the
frost and darkness and death of the Glacial Period, Oregon has but
recently emerged to the kindly warmth and life of today.</p>
<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"></SPAN></p>
<h2> XXIV. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado </h2>
<p>Happy nowadays is the tourist, with earth's wonders, new and old, spread
invitingly open before him, and a host of able workers as his slaves
making everything easy, padding plush about him, grading roads for him,
boring tunnels, moving hills out of his way, eager, like the Devil, to
show him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and foolishness,
spiritualizing travel for him with lightning and steam, abolishing space
and time and almost everything else. Little children and tender, pulpy
people, as well as storm-seasoned explorers, may now go almost everywhere
in smooth comfort, cross oceans and deserts scarce accessible to fishes
and birds, and, dragged by steel horses, go up high mountains, riding
gloriously beneath starry showers of sparks, ascending like Elijah in a
whirlwind and chariot of fire.</p>
<p>First of the wonders of the great West to be brought within reach of the
tourist were the Yosemite and the Big Trees, on the completion of the
first transcontinental railway; next came the Yellowstone and icy Alaska,
by the northern roads; and last the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, which,
naturally the hardest to reach, has now become, by a branch of the Santa
Fe, the most accessible of all.</p>
<p>Of course, with this wonderful extension of steel ways through our
wildness there is loss as well as gain. Nearly all railroads are bordered
by belts of desolation. The finest wilderness perishes as if stricken with
pestilence. Bird and beast people, if not the dryads, are frightened from
the groves. Too often the groves also vanish, leaving nothing but ashes.
Fortunately, nature has a few big places beyond man's power to spoil—the
ocean, the two icy ends of the globe, and the Grand Canyon.</p>
<p>When I first heard of the Santa Fe trains running to the edge of the Grand
Canyon of Arizona, I was troubled with thoughts of the disenchantment
likely to follow. But last winter, when I saw those trains crawling along
through the pines of the Coconino Forest and close up to the brink of the
chasm at Bright Angel, I was glad to discover that in the presence of such
stupendous scenery they are nothing. The locomotives and trains are mere
beetles and caterpillars, and the noise they make is as little disturbing
as the hooting of an owl in the lonely woods.</p>
<p>In a dry, hot, monotonous forested plateau, seemingly boundless, you come
suddenly and without warning upon the abrupt edge of a gigantic sunken
landscape of the wildest, most multitudinous features, and those features,
sharp and angular, are made out of flat beds of limestone and sandstone
forming a spiry, jagged, gloriously colored mountain range countersunk in
a level gray plain. It is a hard job to sketch it even in scrawniest
outline; and, try as I may, not in the least sparing myself, I cannot tell
the hundredth part of the wonders of its features—the side canyons,
gorges, alcoves, cloisters, and amphitheaters of vast sweep and depth,
carved in its magnificent walls; the throng of great architectural rocks
it contains resembling castles, cathedrals, temples, and palaces, towered
and spired and painted, some of them nearly a mile high, yet beneath one's
feet. All this, however, is less difficult than to give any idea of the
impression of wild, primeval beauty and power one receives in merely
gazing from its brink. The view down the gulf of color and over the rim of
its wonderful wall, more than any other view I know, leads us to think of
our earth as a star with stars swimming in light, every radiant spire
pointing the way to the heavens.</p>
<p>But it is impossible to conceive what the canyon is, or what impression it
makes, from descriptions or pictures, however good. Naturally it is
untellable even to those who have seen something perhaps a little like it
on a small scale in this same plateau region. One's most extravagant
expectations are indefinitely surpassed, though one expects much from what
is said of it as "the biggest chasm on earth"—"so big is it that all
other big things—Yosemite, the Yellowstone, the Pyramids, Chicago—all
would be lost if tumbled into it." Naturally enough, illustrations as to
size are sought for among other canyons like or unlike it, with the common
result of worse confounding confusion. The prudent keep silence. It was
once said that the "Grand Canyon could put a dozen Yosemites in its vest
pocket."</p>
<p>The justly famous Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is, like the Colorado,
gorgeously colored and abruptly countersunk in a plateau, and both are
mainly the work of water. But the Colorado's canyon is more than a
thousand times larger, and as a score or two of new buildings of ordinary
size would not appreciably change the general view of a great city, so
hundreds of Yellowstones might be eroded in the sides of the Colorado
Canyon without noticeably augmenting its size or the richness of its
sculpture.</p>
<p>But it is not true that the great Yosemite rocks would be thus lost or
hidden. Nothing of their kind in the world, so far as I know, rivals El
Capitan and Tissiack, much less dwarfs or in any way belittles them. None
of the sandstone or limestone precipices of the canyon that I have seen or
heard of approaches in smooth, flawless strength and grandeur the granite
face of El Capitan or the Tenaya side of Cloud's Rest. These colossal
cliffs, types of permanence, are about three thousand and six thousand
feet high; those of the canyon that are sheer are about half as high, and
are types of fleeting change; while glorious-domed Tissiack, noblest of
mountain buildings, far from being overshadowed or lost in this rosy,
spiry canyon company, would draw every eye, and, in serene majesty, "aboon
them a'" she would take her place—castle, temple, palace, or tower.
Nevertheless a noted writer, comparing the Grand Canyon in a general way
with the glacial Yosemite, says: "And the Yosemite—ah, the lovely
Yosemite! Dumped down into the wilderness of gorges and mountains, it
would take a guide who knew of its existence a long time to find it." This
is striking, and shows up well above the levels of commonplace
description, but it is confusing, and has the fatal fault of not being
true. As well try to describe an eagle by putting a lark in it. "And the
lark—ah, the lovely lark! Dumped down the red, royal gorge of the
eagle, it would be hard to find." Each in its own place is better, singing
at heaven's gate, and sailing the sky with the clouds.</p>
<p>Every feature of Nature's big face is beautiful,—height and hollow,
wrinkle, furrow, and line,—and this is the main master-furrow of its
kind on our continent, incomparably greater and more impressive than any
other yet discovered, or likely to be discovered, now that all the great
rivers have been traced to their heads.</p>
<p>The Colorado River rises in the heart of the continent on the dividing
ranges and ridges between the two oceans, drains thousands of snowy
mountains through narrow or spacious valleys, and thence through canyons
of every color, sheer-walled and deep, all of which seem to be represented
in this one grand canyon of canyons.</p>
<p>It is very hard to give anything like an adequate conception of its size;
much more of its color, its vast wall-sculpture, the wealth of ornate
architectural buildings that fill it, or, most of all, the tremendous
impression it makes. According to Major Powell, it is about two hundred
and seventeen miles long, from five to fifteen miles wide from rim to rim,
and from about five thousand to six thousand feet deep. So tremendous a
chasm would be one of the world's greatest wonders even if, like ordinary
canyons cut in sedimentary rocks, it were empty and its walls were simple.
But instead of being plain, the walls are so deeply and elaborately carved
into all sorts of recesses—alcoves, cirques, amphitheaters, and side
canyons—that, were you to trace the rim closely around on both
sides, your journey would be nearly a thousand miles long. Into all these
recesses the level, continuous beds of rock in ledges and benches, with
their various colors, run like broad ribbons, marvelously beautiful and
effective even at a distance of ten or twelve miles. And the vast space
these glorious walls enclose, instead of being empty, is crowded with
gigantic architectural rock forms gorgeously colored and adorned with
towers and spires like works of art.</p>
<p>Looking down from this level plateau, we are more impressed with a feeling
of being on the top of everything than when looking from the summit of a
mountain. From side to side of the vast gulf, temples, palaces, towers,
and spires come soaring up in thick array half a mile or nearly a mile
above their sunken, hidden bases, some to a level with our standpoint, but
none higher. And in the inspiring morning light all are so fresh and
rosy-looking that they seem new-born; as if, like the quick-growing
crimson snowplants of the California woods, they had just sprung up,
hatched by the warm, brooding, motherly weather.</p>
<p>In trying to describe the great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I have
often thought that if one of these trees could be set by itself in some
city park, its grandeur might there be impressively realized; while in its
home forests, where all magnitudes are great, the weary, satiated traveler
sees none of them truly. It is so with these majestic rock structures.</p>
<p>Though mere residual masses of the plateau, they are dowered with the
grandeur and repose of mountains, together with the finely chiseled
carving and modeling of man's temples and palaces, and often, to a
considerable extent, with their symmetry. Some, closely observed, look
like ruins; but even these stand plumb and true, and show architectural
forms loaded with lines strictly regular and decorative, and all are
arrayed in colors that storms and time seem only to brighten. They are not
placed in regular rows in line with the river, but "a' through ither," as
the Scotch say, in lavish, exuberant crowds, as if nature in wildest
extravagance held her bravest structures as common as gravel-piles. Yonder
stands a spiry cathedral nearly five thousand feet in height, nobly
symmetrical, with sheer buttressed walls and arched doors and windows, as
richly finished and decorated with sculptures as the great rock temples of
India or Egypt. Beside it rises a huge castle with arched gateway,
turrets, watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left palaces,
obelisks, and pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all lavishly
painted and carved. Here and there a flat-topped structure may be seen, or
one imperfectly domed; but the prevailing style is ornate Gothic, with
many hints of Egyptian and Indian.</p>
<p>Throughout this vast extent of wild architecture—nature's own
capital city—there seem to be no ordinary dwellings. All look like
grand and important public structures, except perhaps some of the lower
pyramids, broad-based and sharp-pointed, covered with down-flowing talus
like loosely set tents with hollow, sagging sides. The roofs often have
disintegrated rocks heaped and draggled over them, but in the main the
masonry is firm and laid in regular courses, as if done by square and
rule.</p>
<p>Nevertheless they are ever changing; their tops are now a dome, now a flat
table or a spire, as harder or softer strata are reached in their slow
degradation, while the sides, with all their fine moldings, are being
steadily undermined and eaten away. But no essential change in style or
color is thus effected. From century to century they stand the same. What
seems confusion among the rough earthquake-shaken crags nearest one comes
to order as soon as the main plan of the various structures appears. Every
building, however complicated and laden with ornamental lines, is at one
with itself and every one of its neighbors, for the same characteristic
controlling belts of color and solid strata extend with wonderful
constancy for very great distances, and pass through and give style to
thousands of separate structures, however their smaller characters may
vary.</p>
<p>Of all the various kinds of ornamental work displayed—carving,
tracery on cliff faces, moldings, arches, pinnacles—none is more
admirably effective or charms more than the webs of rain-channeled
taluses. Marvelously extensive, without the slightest appearance of waste
or excess, they cover roofs and dome tops and the base of every cliff,
belt each spire and pyramid and massy, towering temple, and in beautiful
continuous lines go sweeping along the great walls in and out around all
the intricate system of side canyons, amphitheaters, cirques, and scallops
into which they are sculptured. From one point hundreds of miles of the
fairy embroidery may be traced. It is all so fine and orderly that it
would seem that not only had the clouds and streams been kept harmoniously
busy in the making of it, but that every raindrop sent like a bullet to a
mark had been the subject of a separate thought, so sure is the outcome of
beauty through the stormy centuries. Surely nowhere else are there
illustrations so striking of the natural beauty of desolation and death,
so many of nature's own mountain buildings wasting in glory of high desert
air—going to dust. See how steadfast in beauty they all are in their
going. Look again and again how the rough, dusty boulders and sand of
disintegration from the upper ledges wreathe in beauty for ashes—as
in the flowers of a prairie after fires—but here the very dust and
ashes are beautiful.</p>
<p>Gazing across the mighty chasm, we at last discover that it is not its
great depth nor length, nor yet these wonderful buildings, that most
impresses us. It is its immense width, sharply defined by precipitous
walls plunging suddenly down from a flat plain, declaring in terms
instantly apprehended that the vast gulf is a gash in the once unbroken
plateau, made by slow, orderly erosion and removal of huge beds of rocks.
Other valleys of erosion are as great—in all their dimensions some
are greater—but none of these produces an effect on the imagination
at once so quick and profound, coming without study, given at a glance.
Therefore by far the greatest and most influential feature of this view
from Bright Angel or any other of the canyon views is the opposite wall.
Of the one beneath our feet we see only fragmentary sections in cirques
and amphitheaters and on the sides of the out-jutting promontories between
them, while the other, though far distant, is beheld in all its glory of
color and noble proportions—the one supreme beauty and wonder to
which the eye is ever turning. For while charming with its beauty it tells
the story of the stupendous erosion of the canyon—the foundation of
the unspeakable impression made on everybody. It seems a gigantic
statement for even nature to make, all in one mighty stone word,
apprehended at once like a burst of light, celestial color its natural
vesture, coming in glory to mind and heart as to a home prepared for it
from the very beginning. Wildness so godful, cosmic, primeval, bestows a
new sense of earth's beauty and size. Not even from high mountains does
the world seem so wide, so like a star in glory of light on its way
through the heavens.</p>
<p>I have observed scenery-hunters of all sorts getting first views of
yosemites, glaciers, White Mountain ranges, etc. Mixed with the enthusiasm
which such scenery naturally excites, there is often weak gushing, and
many splutter aloud like little waterfalls. Here, for a few moments at
least, there is silence, and all are in dead earnest, as if awed and
hushed by an earthquake—perhaps until the cook cries "Breakfast!" or
the stable-boy "Horses are ready!" Then the poor unfortunates, slaves of
regular habits, turn quickly away, gasping and muttering as if wondering
where they had been and what had enchanted them.</p>
<p>Roads have been made from Bright Angel Hotel through the Coconino Forest
to the ends of outstanding promontories, commanding extensive views up and
down the canyon. The nearest of them, three or four miles east and west,
are O'Neill's Point and Rowe's Point; the latter, besides commanding the
eternally interesting canyon, gives wide-sweeping views southeast and west
over the dark forest roof to the San Francisco and Mount Trumbull
volcanoes—the bluest of mountains over the blackest of level woods.</p>
<p>Instead of thus riding in dust with the crowd, more will be gained by
going quietly afoot along the rim at different times of day and night,
free to observe the vegetation, the fossils in the rocks, the seams
beneath overhanging ledges once inhabited by Indians, and to watch the
stupendous scenery in the changing lights and shadows, clouds, showers,
and storms. One need not go hunting the so-called "points of interest."
The verge anywhere, everywhere, is a point of interest beyond one's
wildest dreams.</p>
<p>As yet, few of the promontories or throng of mountain buildings in the
canyon are named. Nor among such exuberance of forms are names thought of
by the bewildered, hurried tourist. He would be as likely to think of
names for waves in a storm. The Eastern and Western Cloisters, Hindu
Amphitheater, Cape Royal, Powell's Plateau, Grand View Point, Point
Sublime, Bissell and Moran Points, the Temple of Set, Vishnu's Temple,
Shiva's Temple, Twin Temples, Tower of Babel, Hance's Column—these
fairly good names given by Dutton, Holmes, Moran, and others are scattered
over a large stretch of the canyon wilderness.</p>
<p>All the canyon rock-beds are lavishly painted, except a few neutral bars
and the granite notch at the bottom occupied by the river, which makes but
little sign. It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light, colored
and glowing like oak and maple woods in autumn, when the sun-gold is
richest. I have just said that it is impossible to learn what the canyon
is like from descriptions and pictures. Powell's and Dutton's descriptions
present magnificent views not only of the canyon but of all the grand
region round about it; and Holmes's drawings, accompanying Dutton's
report, are wonderfully good. Surely faithful and loving skill can go no
farther in putting the multitudinous decorated forms on paper. But the
COLORS, the living rejoicing COLORS, chanting morning and evening in
chorus to heaven! Whose brush or pencil, however lovingly inspired, can
give us these? And if paint is of no effect, what hope lies in pen-work?
Only this: some may be incited by it to go and see for themselves.</p>
<p>No other range of mountainous rock-work of anything like the same extent
have I seen that is so strangely, boldly, lavishly colored. The famous
Yellowstone Canyon below the falls comes to mind; but, wonderful as it is,
and well deserved as is its fame, compared with this it is only a bright
rainbow ribbon at the roots of the pines. Each of the series of level,
continuous beds of carboniferous rocks of the canyon has, as we have seen,
its own characteristic color. The summit limestone beds are pale yellow;
next below these are the beautiful rose-colored cross-bedded sandstones;
next there are a thousand feet of brilliant red sandstones; and below
these the red wall limestones, over two thousand feet thick, rich massy
red, the greatest and most influential of the series, and forming the main
color-fountain. Between these are many neutral-tinted beds. The prevailing
colors are wonderfully deep and clear, changing and blending with varying
intensity from hour to hour, day to day, season to season; throbbing,
wavering, glowing, responding to every passing cloud or storm, a world of
color in itself, now burning in separate rainbow bars streaked and
blotched with shade, now glowing in one smooth, all-pervading ethereal
radiance like the alpenglow, uniting the rocky world with the heavens.</p>
<p>The dawn, as in all the pure, dry desert country is ineffably beautiful;
and when the first level sunbeams sting the domes and spires, with what a
burst of power the big, wild days begin! The dead and the living, rocks
and hearts alike, awake and sing the new-old song of creation. All the
massy headlands and salient angles of the walls, and the multitudinous
temples and palaces, seem to catch the light at once, and cast thick black
shadows athwart hollow and gorge, bringing out details as well as the main
massive features of the architecture; while all the rocks, as if wild with
life, throb and quiver and glow in the glorious sunburst, rejoicing. Every
rock temple then becomes a temple of music; every spire and pinnacle an
angel of light and song, shouting color hallelujahs.</p>
<p>As the day draws to a close, shadows, wondrous, black, and thick, like
those of the morning, fill up the wall hollows, while the glowing rocks,
their rough angles burned off, seem soft and hot to the heart as they
stand submerged in purple haze, which now fills the canyon like a sea.
Still deeper, richer, more divine grow the great walls and temples, until
in the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole canyon is transfigured,
as if all the life and light of centuries of sunshine stored up and
condensed in the rocks was now being poured forth as from one glorious
fountain, flooding both earth and sky.</p>
<p>Strange to say, in the full white effulgence of the midday hours the
bright colors grow dim and terrestrial in common gray haze; and the rocks,
after the manner of mountains, seem to crouch and drowse and shrink to
less than half their real stature, and have nothing to say to one, as if
not at home. But it is fine to see how quickly they come to life and grow
radiant and communicative as soon as a band of white clouds come floating
by. As if shouting for joy, they seem to spring up to meet them in hearty
salutation, eager to touch them and beg their blessings. It is just in the
midst of these dull midday hours that the canyon clouds are born.</p>
<p>A good storm cloud full of lightning and rain on its way to its work on a
sunny desert day is a glorious object. Across the canyon, opposite the
hotel, is a little tributary of the Colorado called Bright Angel Creek. A
fountain-cloud still better deserves the name "Angel of the Desert Wells"—clad
in bright plumage, carrying cool shade and living water to countless
animals and plants ready to perish, noble in form and gesture, seeming
able for anything, pouring life-giving, wonder-working floods from its
alabaster fountains, as if some sky-lake had broken. To every gulch and
gorge on its favorite ground is given a passionate torrent, roaring,
replying to the rejoicing lightning—stones, tons in weight, hurrying
away as if frightened, showing something of the way Grand Canyon work is
done. Most of the fertile summer clouds of the canyon are of this sort,
massive, swelling cumuli, growing rapidly, displaying delicious tones of
purple and gray in the hollows of their sun-beaten houses, showering
favored areas of the heated landscape, and vanishing in an hour or two.
Some, busy and thoughtful-looking, glide with beautiful motion along the
middle of the canyon in flocks, turning aside here and there, lingering as
if studying the needs of particular spots, exploring side canyons, peering
into hollows like birds seeding nest-places, or hovering aloft on
outspread wings. They scan all the red wilderness, dispensing their
blessings of cool shadows and rain where the need is the greatest,
refreshing the rocks, their offspring as well as the vegetation,
continuing their sculpture, deepening gorges and sharpening peaks.
Sometimes, blending all together, they weave a ceiling from rim to rim,
perhaps opening a window here and there for sunshine to stream through,
suddenly lighting some palace or temple and making it flare in the rain as
if on fire.</p>
<p>Sometimes, as one sits gazing from a high, jutting promontory, the sky all
clear, showing not the slightest wisp or penciling, a bright band of
cumuli will appear suddenly, coming up the canyon in single file, as if
tracing a well-known trail, passing in review, each in turn darting its
lances and dropping its shower, making a row of little vertical rivers in
the air above the big brown one. Others seem to grow from mere points, and
fly high above the canyon, yet following its course for a long time,
noiseless, as if hunting, then suddenly darting lightning at unseen marks,
and hurrying on. Or they loiter here and there as if idle, like laborers
out of work, waiting to be hired.</p>
<p>Half a dozen or more showers may oftentimes be seen falling at once, while
far the greater part of the sky is in sunshine, and not a raindrop comes
nigh one. These thundershowers from as many separate clouds, looking like
wisps of long hair, may vary greatly in effects. The pale, faint streaks
are showers that fail to reach the ground, being evaporated on the way
down through the dry, thirsty air, like streams in deserts. Many, on the
other hand, which in the distance seem insignificant, are really heavy
rain, however local; these are the gray wisps well zigzagged with
lightning. The darker ones are torrent rain, which on broad, steep slopes
of favorable conformation give rise to so-called "cloudbursts"; and
wonderful is the commotion they cause. The gorges and gulches below them,
usually dry, break out in loud uproar, with a sudden downrush of muddy,
boulder-laden floods. Down they all go in one simultaneous gush, roaring
like lions rudely awakened, each of the tawny brood actually kicking up a
dust at the first onset.</p>
<p>During the winter months snow falls over all the high plateau, usually to
a considerable depth, whitening the rim and the roofs of the canyon
buildings. But last winter, when I arrived at Bright Angel in the middle
of January, there was no snow in sight, and the ground was dry, greatly to
my disappointment, for I had made the trip mainly to see the canyon in its
winter garb. Soothingly I was informed that this was an exceptional
season, and that the good snow might arrive at any time. After waiting a
few days, I gladly hailed a broad-browed cloud coming grandly on from the
west in big promising blackness, very unlike the white sailors of the
summer skies. Under the lee of a rim-ledge, with another snow-lover, I
watched its movements as it took possession of the canyon and all the
adjacent region in sight. Trailing its gray fringes over the spiry tops of
the great temples and towers, it gradually settled lower, embracing them
all with ineffable kindness and gentleness of touch, and fondled the
little cedars and pines as they quivered eagerly in the wind like young
birds begging their mothers to feed them. The first flakes and crystals
began to fly about noon, sweeping straight up the middle of the canyon,
and swirling in magnificent eddies along the sides. Gradually the hearty
swarms closed their ranks, and all the canyon was lost in gray bloom
except a short section of the wall and a few trees beside us, which looked
glad with snow in their needles and about their feet as they leaned out
over the gulf. Suddenly the storm opened with magical effect to the north
over the canyon of Bright Angel Creek, inclosing a sunlit mass of the
canyon architecture, spanned by great white concentric arches of cloud
like the bows of a silvery aurora. Above these and a little back of them
was a series of upboiling purple clouds, and high above all, in the
background, a range of noble cumuli towered aloft like snow-laden
mountains, their pure pearl bosses flooded with sunshine. The whole noble
picture, calmly glowing, was framed in thick gray gloom, which soon closed
over it; and the storm went on, opening and closing until night covered
all.</p>
<p>Two days later, when we were on a jutting point about eighteen miles east
of Bright Angel and one thousand feet higher, we enjoyed another storm of
equal glory as to cloud effects, though only a few inches of snow fell.
Before the storm began we had a magnificent view of this grander upper
part of the canyon and also of the Coconino Forest and the Painted Desert.
The march of the clouds with their storm banners flying over this sublime
landscape was unspeakably glorious, and so also was the breaking up of the
storm next morning—the mingling of silver-capped rock, sunshine, and
cloud.</p>
<p>Most tourists make out to be in a hurry even here; therefore their days or
hours would be best spent on the promontories nearest the hotel. Yet a
surprising number go down the Bright Angel Trail to the brink of the inner
gloomy granite gorge overlooking the river. Deep canyons attract like high
mountains; the deeper they are, the more surely are we drawn into them. On
foot, of course, there is no danger whatever, and, with ordinary
precautions, but little on animals. In comfortable tourist faith,
unthinking, unfearing, down go men, women, and children on whatever is
offered, horse, mule, or burro, as if saying with Jean Paul, "fear nothing
but fear"—not without reason, for these canyon trails down the
stairways of the gods are less dangerous than they seem, less dangerous
than home stairs. The guides are cautious, and so are the experienced,
much-enduring beasts. The scrawniest Rosinantes and wizened-rat mules
cling hard to the rocks endwise or sidewise, like lizards or ants. From
terrace to terrace, climate to climate, down one creeps in sun and shade,
through gorge and gully and grassy ravine, and, after a long scramble on
foot, at last beneath the mighty cliffs one comes to the grand, roaring
river.</p>
<p>To the mountaineer the depth of the canyon, from five thousand to six
thousand feet, will not seem so very wonderful, for he has often explored
others that are about as deep. But the most experienced will be awestruck
by the vast extent of huge rock monuments of pointed masonry built up in
regular courses towering above, beneath, and round about him. By the
Bright Angel Trail the last fifteen hundred feet of the descent to the
river has to be made afoot down the gorge of Indian Garden Creek. Most of
the visitors do not like this part, and are content to stop at the end of
the horse trail and look down on the dull-brown flood from the edge of the
Indian Garden Plateau. By the new Hance Trail, excepting a few daringly
steep spots, you can ride all the way to the river, where there is a good
spacious camp-ground in a mesquite grove. This trail, built by brave
Hance, begins on the highest part of the rim, eight thousand feet above
the sea, a thousand feet higher than the head of Bright Angel Trail, and
the descent is a little over six thousand feet, through a wonderful
variety of climate and life. Often late in the fall, when frosty winds are
blowing and snow is flying at one end of the trail, tender plants are
blooming in balmy summer weather at the other. The trip down and up can be
made afoot easily in a day. In this way one is free to observe the scenery
and vegetation, instead of merely clinging to his animal and watching its
steps. But all who have time should go prepared to camp awhile on the
riverbank, to rest and learn something about the plants and animals and
the mighty flood roaring past. In cool, shady amphitheaters at the head of
the trail there are groves of white silver fir and Douglas spruce, with
ferns and saxifrages that recall snowy mountains; below these, yellow
pine, nut pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam, ash, maple, holly-leaved berberis,
cowania, spiraea, dwarf oak, and other small shrubs and trees. In dry
gulches and on taluses and sun-beaten crags are sparsely scattered yuccas,
cactuses, agave, etc. Where springs gush from the rocks there are willow
thickets, grassy flats, and bright, flowery gardens, and in the hottest
recesses the delicate abronia, mesquite, woody compositae, and arborescent
cactuses.</p>
<p>The most striking and characteristic part of this widely varied vegetation
are the cactaceae—strange, leafless, old-fashioned plants with
beautiful flowers and fruit, in every way able and admirable. While grimly
defending themselves with innumerable barbed spears, they offer both food
and drink to man and beast. Their juicy globes and disks and fluted
cylindrical columns are almost the only desert wells that never go dry,
and they always seem to rejoice the more and grow plumper and juicier the
hotter the sunshine and sand. Some are spherical, like rolled-up
porcupines, crouching in rock-hollows beneath a mist of gray lances,
unmoved by the wildest winds. Others, standing as erect as bushes and
trees or tall branchless pillars crowned with magnificent flowers, their
prickly armor sparkling, look boldly abroad over the glaring desert,
making the strangest forests ever seen or dreamed of. Cereus giganteus,
the grim chief of the desert tribe, is often thirty or forty feet high in
southern Arizona. Several species of tree yuccas in the same desert, laden
in early spring with superb white lilies, form forests hardly less
wonderful, though here they grow singly or in small lonely groves. The
low, almost stemless Yucca baccata, with beautiful lily flowers and sweet
banana-like fruit, prized by the Indians, is common along the canyon rim,
growing on lean, rocky soil beneath mountain mahogany, nut pines, and
junipers, beside dense flowery mats of Spiraea caespitosa and the
beautiful pinnate-leaved Spiraea millefolia. The nut pine (Pinus edulis)
scattered along the upper slopes and roofs of the canyon buildings, is the
principal tree of the strange dwarf Coconino Forest. It is a picturesque
stub of a pine about twenty-five feet high, usually with dead, lichened
limbs thrust through its rounded head, and grows on crags and fissured
rock tables, braving heat and frost, snow and drought, and continuing
patiently, faithfully fruitful for centuries. Indians and insects and
almost every desert bird and beast come to it to be fed.</p>
<p>To civilized people from corn and cattle and wheat-field countries the
canyon at first sight seems as uninhabitable as a glacier crevasse,
utterly silent and barren. Nevertheless it is the home of the multitude of
our fellow-mortals, men as well as animals and plants. Centuries ago it
was inhabited by tribes of Indians, who, long before Columbus saw America,
built thousands of stone houses in its crags, and large ones, some of them
several stories high, with hundreds of rooms, on the mesas of the adjacent
regions. Their cliff-dwellings, almost numberless, are still to be seen in
the canyon, scattered along both sides from top to bottom and throughout
its entire length, built of stone and mortar in seams and fissures like
swallows' nests, or on isolated ridges and peaks. The ruins of larger
buildings are found on open spots by the river, but most of them aloft on
the brink of the wildest, giddiest precipices, sites evidently chosen for
safety from enemies, and seemingly accessible only to the birds of the
air. Many caves were also used as dwelling-places, as were mere seams on
cliff-fronts formed by unequal weathering and with or without outer or
side walls; and some of them were covered with colored pictures of
animals. The most interesting of these cliff-dwellings had pathetic little
ribbon-like strips of garden on narrow terraces, where irrigating water
could be carried to them—most romantic of sky-gardens, but eloquent
of hard times.</p>
<p>In recesses along the river and on the first plateau flats above its gorge
were fields and gardens of considerable size, where irrigating ditches may
still be traced. Some of these ancient gardens are still cultivated by
Indians, descendants of cliff-dwellers, who raise corn, squashes, melons,
potatoes, etc., to reinforce the produce of the many wild food-furnishing
plants—nuts, beans, berries, yucca and cactus fruits, grass and
sunflower seeds, etc.—and the flesh of animals—deer, rabbits,
lizards, etc. The canyon Indians I have met here seem to be living much as
did their ancestors, though not now driven into rock-dens. They are able,
erect men, with commanding eyes, which nothing that they wish to see can
escape. They are never in a hurry, have a strikingly measured, deliberate,
bearish manner of moving the limbs and turning the head, are capable of
enduring weather, thirst, hunger, and over-abundance, and are blessed with
stomachs which triumph over everything the wilderness may offer. Evidently
their lives are not bitter.</p>
<p>The largest of the canyon animals one is likely to see is the wild sheep,
or Rocky Mountain bighorn, a most admirable beast, with limbs that never
fail, at home on the most nerve-trying precipices, acquainted with all the
springs and passes and broken-down jumpable places in the sheer ribbon
cliffs, bounding from crag to crag in easy grace and confidence of
strength, his great horns held high above his shoulders, wild red blood
beating and hissing through every fiber of him like the wind through a
quivering mountain pine.</p>
<p>Deer also are occasionally met in the canyon, making their way to the
river when the wells of the plateau are dry. Along the short spring
streams beavers are still busy, as is shown by the cottonwood and willow
timber they have cut and peeled, found in all the river drift-heaps. In
the most barren cliffs and gulches there dwell a multitude of lesser
animals, well-dressed, clear-eyed, happy little beasts—wood rats,
kangaroo rats, gophers, wood mice, skunks, rabbits, bobcats, and many
others, gathering food, or dozing in their sun-warmed dens. Lizards, too,
of every kind and color are here enjoying life on the hot cliffs, and
making the brightest of them brighter.</p>
<p>Nor is there any lack of feathered people. The golden eagle may be seen,
and the osprey, hawks, jays, hummingbirds, the mourning dove, and cheery
familiar singers—the black-headed grosbeak, robin, bluebird,
Townsend's thrush, and many warblers, sailing the sky and enlivening the
rocks and bushes through all the canyon wilderness.</p>
<p>Here at Hance's river camp or a few miles above it brave Powell and his
brave men passed their first night in the canyon on the adventurous voyage
of discovery thirty-three <SPAN href="#linknote-34" name="linknoteref-34" id="linknoteref-34"><small>34</small></SPAN> years ago. They faced a thousand
dangers, open or hidden, now in their boats gladly sliding down swift,
smooth reaches, now rolled over and over in back-combing surges of rough,
roaring cataracts, sucked under in eddies, swimming like beavers, tossed
and beaten like castaway drift—stout-hearted, undaunted, doing their
work through it all. After a month of this they floated smoothly out of
the dark, gloomy, roaring abyss into light and safety two hundred miles
below. As the flood rushes past us, heavy-laden with desert mud, we
naturally think of its sources, its countless silvery branches outspread
on thousands of snowy mountains along the crest of the continent, and the
life of them, the beauty of them, their history and romance. Its topmost
springs are far north and east in Wyoming and Colorado, on the snowy Wind
River, Front, Park, and Sawatch Ranges, dividing the two ocean waters, and
the Elk, Wahsatch, Uinta, and innumerable spurs streaked with streams,
made famous by early explorers and hunters. It is a river of rivers—the
Du Chesne, San Rafael, Yampa, Dolores, Gunnison, Cochetopa, Uncompahgre,
Eagle, and Roaring Rivers, the Green and the Grand, and scores of others
with branches innumerable, as mad and glad a band as ever sang on
mountains, descending in glory of foam and spray from snow-banks and
glaciers through their rocky moraine-dammed, beaver-dammed channels. Then,
all emerging from dark balsam and pine woods and coming together, they
meander through wide, sunny park valleys, and at length enter the great
plateau and flow in deep canyons, the beginning of the system culminating
in this grand canyon of canyons.</p>
<p>Our warm canyon camp is also a good place to give a thought to the
glaciers which still exist at the heads of the highest tributaries. Some
of them are of considerable size, especially those on the Wind River and
Sawatch ranges in Wyoming and Colorado. They are remnants of a vast system
of glaciers which recently covered the upper part of the Colorado basin,
sculptured its peaks, ridges, and valleys to their present forms, and
extended far out over the plateau region—how far I cannot now say.
It appears, therefore, that, however old the main trunk of the Colorado
may be, all its widespread upper branches and the landscapes they flow
through are new-born, scarce at all changed as yet in any important
feature since they first came to light at the close of the Glacial Period.</p>
<p>The so-called Grand Colorado Plateau, of which the Grand Canyon is only
one of the well-proportioned features, extends with a breadth of hundreds
of miles from the flanks of the Wahsatch and Park Mountains to the south
of the San Francisco Peaks. Immediately to the north of the deepest part
of the canyon it rises in a series of subordinate plateaus, diversified
with green meadows, marshes, bogs, ponds, forests, and grovy park valleys,
a favorite Indian hunting ground, inhabited by elk, deer, beaver, etc. But
far the greater part of the plateau is good sound desert, rocky, sandy, or
fluffy with loose ashes and dust, dissected in some places into a
labyrinth of stream-channel chasms like cracks in a dry clay-bed, or the
narrow slit crevasses of glaciers—blackened with lava flows, dotted
with volcanoes and beautiful buttes, and lined with long continuous
escarpments—a vast bed of sediments of an ancient sea-bottom, still
nearly as level as when first laid down after being heaved into the sky a
mile or two high.</p>
<p>Walking quietly about in the alleys and byways of the Grand Canyon city,
we learn something of the way it was made; and all must admire effects so
great from means apparently so simple; rain striking light hammer blows or
heavier in streams, with many rest Sundays; soft air and light, gentle
sappers and miners, toiling forever; the big river sawing the plateau
asunder, carrying away the eroded and ground waste, and exposing the edges
of the strata to the weather; rain torrents sawing cross-streets and
alleys, exposing the strata in the same way in hundreds of sections, the
softer, less resisting beds weathering and receding faster, thus
undermining the harder beds, which fall, not only in small weathered
particles, but in heavy sheer-cleaving masses, assisted down from time to
time by kindly earthquakes, rain torrents rushing the fallen material to
the river, keeping the wall rocks constantly exposed. Thus the canyon
grows wider and deeper. So also do the side canyons and amphitheaters,
while secondary gorges and cirques gradually isolate masses of the
promontories, forming new buildings, all of which are being weathered and
pulled and shaken down while being built, showing destruction and creation
as one. We see the proudest temples and palaces in stateliest attitudes,
wearing their sheets of detritus as royal robes, shedding off showers of
red and yellow stones like trees in autumn shedding their leaves, going to
dust like beautiful days to night, proclaiming as with the tongues of
angels the natural beauty of death.</p>
<p>Every building is seen to be a remnant of once continuous beds of
sediments,—sand and slime on the floor of an ancient sea, and filled
with the remains of animals,—and every particle of the sandstones
and limestones of these wonderful structures to be derived from other
landscapes, weathered and rolled and ground in the storms and streams of
other ages. And when we examine the escarpments, hills, buttes, and other
monumental masses of the plateau on either side of the canyon, we discover
that an amount of material has been carried off in the general denudation
of the region compared with which even that carried away in the making of
the Grand Canyon is as nothing. Thus each wonder in sight becomes a window
through which other wonders come to view. In no other part of this
continent are the wonders of geology, the records of the world's auld lang
syne, more widely opened, or displayed in higher piles. The whole canyon
is a mine of fossils, in which five thousand feet of horizontal strata are
exposed in regular succession over more than a thousand square miles of
wall-space, and on the adjacent plateau region there is another series of
beds twice as thick, forming a grand geological library—a collection
of stone books covering thousands of miles of shelving, tier on tier,
conveniently arranged for the student. And with what wonderful scriptures
are their pages filled—myriad forms of successive floras and faunas,
lavishly illustrated with colored drawings, carrying us back into the
midst of the life of a past infinitely remote. And as we go on and on,
studying this old, old life in the light of the life beating warmly about
us, we enrich and lengthen our own.</p>
<p>THE END <SPAN name="link2H_FOOT" id="link2H_FOOT"></SPAN></p>
<h2> Footnotes: </h2>
<h3> [by the editor of the 1918 original of this text]: </h3>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-1" id="linknote-1">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
1 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-1">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ This essay was written
early in 1875.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-2" id="linknote-2">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
2 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-2">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ The wild sheep of
California are now classified as Ovis nelsoni. Whether those of the Shasta
region belonged to the latter species, or to the bighorn species of
Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, is still an unsettled question.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-3" id="linknote-3">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
3 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-3">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ An excerpt from a letter to
a friend, written in 1872.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-4" id="linknote-4">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
4 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-4">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Muir at this time was
making Yosemite Valley his home.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-5" id="linknote-5">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
5 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-5">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ An obsolete genus of plants
now replaced in the main by Chrysothamnus and Ericameria.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-6" id="linknote-6">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
6 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-6">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ An early local name for
what is now known as Lassen Peak, or Mt. Lassen. In 1914 its volcanic
activity was resumed with spectacular eruptions of ashes, steam, and gas.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-7" id="linknote-7">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
7 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-7">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Pronounced Too'-lay.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-8" id="linknote-8">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
8 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-8">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Letter dated "Salt Lake
City, Utah, May 15, 1877."]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-9" id="linknote-9">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
9 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-9">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Letter dated "Salt Lake
City, Utah, May 19, 1877."]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-10" id="linknote-10">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
10 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-10">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Letter dated "Lake Point,
Utah, May 20, 1877."]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-11" id="linknote-11">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
11 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-11">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Letter dated "Salt Lake,
July, 1877."]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-12" id="linknote-12">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
12 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-12">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Letter dated "September
1, 1877."]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-13" id="linknote-13">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
13 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-13">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Letter written during the
first week of September, 1877. ]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-14" id="linknote-14">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
14 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-14">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ The spruce, or hemlock,
then known as Abies Douglasii var. macrocarpa is now called Pseudotsuga
macrocarpa.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-15" id="linknote-15">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
15 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-15">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Written at Ward, Nevada,
in September, 1878.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-16" id="linknote-16">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
16 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-16">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ See footnote 5.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-17" id="linknote-17">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
17 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-17">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Written at Eureka,
Nevada, in October, 1878.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-18" id="linknote-18">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
18 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-18">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Now called Pinus
monophylla, or one-leaf pinyon.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-19" id="linknote-19">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
19 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-19">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Written at Pioche,
Nevada, in October, 1878.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-20" id="linknote-20">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
20 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-20">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Written at Eureka,
Nevada, in November, 1878.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-21" id="linknote-21">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
21 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-21">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Date and place of writing
not given. Published in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin, January 15,
1879.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-22" id="linknote-22">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
22 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-22">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ November 11, 1889; Muir's
description probably was written toward the end of the same year.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-23" id="linknote-23">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
23 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-23">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ This tree, now known to
botanists as Picea sitchensis, was named Abies Menziesii by Lindley in
1833.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-24" id="linknote-24">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
24 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-24">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Also known as "canoe
cedar," and described in Jepson's Silva of California under the more
recent specific name Thuja plicata. ]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-25" id="linknote-25">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
25 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-25">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Now classified as Tsuga
mertensiana Sarg.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-26" id="linknote-26">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
26 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-26">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Now Abies grandis
Lindley.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-27" id="linknote-27">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
27 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-27">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Chamaecyparis lawsoniana
Parl. (Port Orford cedar) in Jepson's Silva.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-28" id="linknote-28">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
28 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-28">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ 1889.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-29" id="linknote-29">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
29 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-29">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ A careful
re-determination of the height of Rainier, made by Professor A. G. McAdie
in 1905, gave an altitude of 14,394 feet. The Standard Dictionary wrongly
describes it is "the highest peak (14,363 feet) within the United States."
The United States Baedeker and railroad literature overstate its altitude
by more than a hundred feet.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-30" id="linknote-30">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
30 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-30">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Doubtless the red silver
fir, now classified as Abies amabilis. ]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-31" id="linknote-31">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
31 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-31">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Lassen Peak on recent
maps.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-32" id="linknote-32">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
32 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-32">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Pseudotsuga taxifolia
Brit.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-33" id="linknote-33">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
33 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-33">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Thuja plicata Don.]</p>
<p><SPAN name="linknote-34" id="linknote-34">
<!-- Note --></SPAN></p>
<p class="foot">
34 (<SPAN href="#linknoteref-34">return</SPAN>)<br/> [ Muir wrote this
description in 1902; Major J. W. Powell made his descent through the
canyon, with small boats, in 1869.]</p>
<p><br/></p>
<hr />
<p><br/></p>
<p>Note from the transcriber:</p>
<p>A phrase Muir uses that readers might doubt: "fountain range," by which he
means a mountainous area where rain or snow fall that is the source of
water for a river or stream downslope. So it is not a typographical error
for "mountain range"! Another odd phrase is "(something) is well worthy
(something else)" rather than "well worth" or "well worthy of." He uses
this at least twice in this work.—jg</p>
<p><br/><br/></p>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />