Part 18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Burned-out craters healed with snow.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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