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Yale University Library

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ByJOHNMUlR

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The Yale Collection
of Mountaineering Literature
Given in memory of
MICHAEL ELLINWOOD CURTIS, '52
1930 - 1957

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

STEEP TRAILS

t^.^r-^y^.

MOUNTAIN SHEEP
(Ovis nelsoni)
From a drawing by Allan Brooks

STEEP TRAILS
BT
JOHN MULR
r> I
EDITED BY
"WILLIAM EEEDEEIO BADE
With Illustrations

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, I918, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANT
ALL BIGHTS RESERVED
JPuilished September igtS

EDITOR'S NOTE
The papers brought together in this volume
have, in a general way, been arranged in chron
ological sequence. They span a period of
twenty-nine years of Muir's Ufe, 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 con
tributed, in the form of letters, to the San
Francisco Evening Bulletin toward the end of
the seventies. Written in the field, they pre
serve the freshness of the author's first impres
sions 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 de
scription of Washington and Oregon. The
charming httle essay "Wild Wool" was writ
ten for the Overland Monthly in 1875. "A
Geologist's Winter Walk" is an extract from
a letter to a friend, who, appreciating its fine
Uterary quality, took the responsibiUty of send-

EDITOR'S NOTE
ing it to the Overland Monthly without the
author's knowledge. The concluding chapter
on "The Grand Canon of the Colorado" was
published in the Century Magazine in 1902, and
exhibits Muir's powers of description at their
maturity. Some of these papers were revised by the
author during the later years of his life, and
these revisions are a part of the form in which
they now appear. The chapters on Mount
Shasta, Oregon, and Washington will be found
to contain occasional sentences and a few
paragraphs that were included, more or less
verbatim, in The Mountains of California and
Our National Parks. Being an important part
of their present context, these paragraphs
could not be omitted without impairing the
unity of the author's descriptions.
The editor feels confident that this volrnne
will meet, in every way, the high expectations
of Muir's readers. The recital of his experi
ences during a storm 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

EDITOR'S NOTE
author's glowing description of what was one
time called the New Northwest. Almost in
conceivably great have been the changes
wrought in that region during the past gener
ation. Henceforth the landscapes that Muir
saw there will five in good part only in his
writings, for fire, axe, plough, and gunpowder
have made away with the supposedly bound
less forest wildernesses and their teeming life.
William Frederic BadJ:
Berkeley, Califoenia
May, 1918

CONTENTS
I. Wild Wool  3
II. A Geologist's Winter Walk . . 19
III. Summer Days at Mount Shasta . 29
IV. A Perilous Night on Shasta's Sum
mit  57
V. Shasta Rambles and Modoc Memo
ries  82
VI. The Citt of the Saints . . . 105
VII. A Great Storm in Utah . . .114
VIII. Bathing in Salt Lake .... 121
IX. Mormon Lilies  126
X. The San Gabriel Valley . . .136
XL The San Gabriel Mountains . . 145
XII. Nevada Farms  154
XIII. Nevada Forests  164
XIV. Nevada's Timber Belt . . . .174
XV. Glacial Phenomena in Nevada . 184
XVI. Nevada's Dead Towns . . . .195
XVII. PuGBT Sound  204
XVIII. The Forests of WAsmNGTON . . 227
ix

CONTENTS
XIX. People and Towns of Puget Sound 248
XX. An Ascent of Mount Rainier . 261
XXI. The Physical and Climatic Char
acteristics of Oregon . . . 271
XXII. The Forests of Oregon and Their
Inhabitants  299
XXIII. The Rivers of Oregon . . . .327
XXIV. The Grand Canon op the Colorado 347
Index  383

ILLUSTRATIONS
Mountain Sheep {Ovis nelsoni) . . . Frontispiece
From a drawing hy Allan Brooks, reproduced hy per
mission of the State Fish and Game Commission of
Califomia.
Tissiack fbom Glacier Point: Tenata Canon . 20
Mount Shasta after a Snowstorm .... 30
Photograph hy PiUsbury's Pictures, Inc., of San
Francisco
At Shasta Soda Springs  48
In the Wahsatch Mountains  106
Sego Lilies (Calochortut NuUalKi) .... 134
San Gabkiel Valley  138
The Sage Levels of the Nevada Desert . .168
Mount Rainier from the Soda Springs , . . 262
The Oregon Sea-Bluffs  274
Cape Horn, Columbia River  340
The Grand Canon at O'Neill's Point . . .348
AU but the first three iUustrationt are from photo
graphs by Herbert W. Gleason

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I
WILD WOOL
Moral improvers have calls to preach. I
have a friend who has a call to plough, and
woe to the daisy sod or azalea thicket that
falls under the savage redemption of his keen
steel shares. Not content with the so-called
subjugation of every terrestrial bog, rock, and
moorland, he would fain discover some method
of reclamation appUcable 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
3

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only a chaos of agricultural possibilities calling
for grubbing-hoes and manures.
Sometimes I venture to approach him with
a plea for wildness, when he good-naturedly
shakes a big mellow apple in my face, reiterat
ing his favorite aphorism, "Culture is an
orchard apple; Nature is a crab." Not all cul
ture, however, is equally destructive and inap-
preciative. 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. Never
theless, the barbarous notion is almost univer
sally entertained by civilized man, that there
is in all the manufactures of Nature some
thing 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 aver
age grades of cultivated wool. This fine dis
covery was made some three months ago,^ 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 »
^ This essay was written early in 1875. [Editor.]
4

WILD WOOL
yearling lamb. After parting their beautiful
wool on the side and many places along the
back, shoulders, and hips, and examining it
closely with my lens, I shouted: "Well done
for wildness! Wild wool is finer than tame!"
My companions stooped down and examined
the fleeces for themselves, pulling out tufts
and ringlets, spinning them between their
fingers, and measuring the length of the staple,
each in turn paying tribute to wildness. It
was finer, and no mistake; finer than Spanish
Merino. Wild wool is finer than tame.
"Here," said I, "is an argument for fine
wildness that needs no explanation. Not that
such arguments are by any means rare, for all
wildness is finer than tameness, but because
fine wool is appreciable by everybody alike —
from the most speculative president of na
tional wool-growers' associations aU the way
down to the gude-wife spinning by her ingle-
side," 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 sua 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
5

STEEP TRAILS
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 beauti
ful wildlings is preparing. No matter what the
circumstances of their lives may be, she never
allows them to go dirty or ragged. The mole,
living always in the dark and in the dirt, is
yet as clean as the otter or the wave-washed
seal; and our wild sheep, wading in snow,
roaming through bushes, and leaping among
jagged storm-beaten cliffs, wears a dress so
exquisitely adapted to its mountain life that
it is always found as unruffled and stainless
as a bird.
On leaving the Shasta hunting-grounds I
selected a few specimen tufts, and brought
them away with a view to making more lei
surely examinations; but, owing to the ioaper-
6

WILD WOOL
fectness of the instruments at my command,
the results thus far obtained must be regarded
only as rough approximations.
As already stated, the clothing of our wild
sheep is composed of fine wool and coarse hair.
The hairs are from about two to four inches
long, mostly of a dull bluish-gray color, though
varying somewhat with the seasons. In gen
eral 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 spi-
raled, like wool, they do not manifest the
slightest tendency to felt or become taggy. A
hair two and a half inches long, which is per
haps 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 black
ness is not sufficient to affect greatly the gen
eral color. The number of hairs growing upon a
squareinchisabout ten thousand; the number
of wool fibers is about twenty-five thousand,
or two and a half times that of the hairs. The
7

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wool fibers are white and glossy, and beauti
fully 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 curiiness may easily
be inferred. I regret exceedingly that my in
struments do not enable me to measure the
diameter of the fibers, in order that their
degrees of fineness might be definitely com
pared 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, un
questionable. When the fleece is parted and looked into
with a good lens, the skin appears of a beauti
ful 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 spe
cially and effectively as if inclosed in a sepa
rate husk. Wild wool is too fine to stand by
itself, the fibers being about as frail and invisi
ble 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
8

WILD 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 acci
dents and caprices of culture; the former being
inventions of God for the attainment of defi
nite ends. Like the modifications of limbs —
the fin for swimming, the wing for flying, the
foot for walking — so the fine wool for warmth,
the hair for additional warmth and to protect
the wool, and both together for a fabric to
wear well in mountain roughness and wash
well in mountain storms.
The effects of human culture upon wild wool
are analogous to those produced upon wild
roses. In the one case there is an abnormal
development of petals at the expense of the
stamens, in the other an abnormal develop
ment 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
9

STEEP TRAILS
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 an exact balance between the wool
and the hair is attained.
I have been offering samples of mountain
wool to my friends, demanding in return that
the fineness of wildness be fairly recognized
and confessed, but the returns are deplorably
tame. The first question asked is, "Now truly,
wild sheep, wild sheep, have you any wool?"
while they peer curiously down among the
hairs through lenses and spectacles. "Yes,
wild sheep, you have wool; but Mary's lamb
had more. In the name of use, how many wild
sheep, think you, would be required to furnish
wool sufficient for a pair of socks? " I endeavor
to point out the irrelevancy of the latter ques
tion, arguing that wild wool was not made for
10

WILD WOOL
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 quan
tity question rises again and again in all its
commonplace tameness. For in my experience
it seems well-nigh impossible to obtain a hear
ing on behalf of Nature from any other stand
point than that of human use. Domestic flocks
yield more flannel per sheep than the wild,
therefore it is claimed that culture has im
proved 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 sur
vive the dangers of a single season. With their
fine limbs muffled and buried beneath a tangle
of hairless wool, they would become short-
winded, and fall an easy prey to the strong
mountain wolves. In descending precipices
they would be thrown out of balance and
killed, by their taggy wool catching upon
sharp points of rocks. Disease would also be
brought on by the dirt which always finds a
lodgment in tame wool, and by the draggled
and water-soaked condition into which it falls
during stormy weather.
No dogma taught by the present civilization
11

STEEP TRAILS
seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in
the way of a right understanding of the rela
tions which culture sustains to wildness as
that which regards the world as made especially
for the uses of man. Every animal, plant, and
crystal controverts it in the plainest terms.
Yet it is taught from century to century as
something ever new and precious, and in the
resulting darkness the enormous conceit is
allowed to go unchallenged.
I have never yet happened upon a trace of
evidence that seemed to show that any one
animal was ever made for another as much as
it was made for itself. Not that Nature mani
fests 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 ac
quainted with and married to every other, but
with imiversal union there is a division suffi
cient in degree for the purposes of the most
intense individuality; no matter, therefore,
what may be the note which any creature forms
in the song of existence, it is made first for
itself, then more and more remotely for all the
world and worlds.
Were it not for the exercise of individualizing
cares on the part of Nature, the universe would
be felted together like a fleece of tame wool.
12

WILD 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 abiUties and desires.
Stars attract one another as they are able, and
harmony results. Wild lambs eat as many wild
flowers as they can find or desire, and men
and wolves eat the lambs to just the same
extent. This consumption of one another in its vari
ous 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-ouzel plucks moss from the river-bank
to build its nest, but it 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 improAdng the wool for the sheep,
or the feathers for the bird that wore them.
When a hawk poimces upon a Unnet and pro-
13

STEEP TRAILS
ceeds to pull out its feathers, preparatory to
making a meal, the hawk may be said to be
cultivating the linnet, and he certainly does
effect an improvement as far as hawk-food is
concerned; but what of the songster? He ceases
to be a linnet as soon as he is snatched from
the woodland choir; and when, hawklike, we
snatch the wild sheep from its native rock, and,
instead of eating and wearing it at once, carry-
it home, and breed the hair out of its wool
and the bones out of its body, it ceases to be a
sheep. These breeding and plucking processes are
similarly improving as regards the secondary
uses aimed at; and, although the one requires
but a few minutes for its accompUshment, the
other many years or centuries, they are essen
tially alike. We eat wild oysters aUve 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 con
cerned. 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 con-
14

WILD WOOL
sidered as bearing any antagonism toward
each other; they are different things, planned
and accomplished for wholly different pur
poses. Illustrative examples bearing upon this inter
esting 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 pro
duced, like nut-galls in response to the irritat
ing punctures of insects. Orchard apples are
to me the most eloquent words that culture
has ever spoken, but they reflect no imperfec
tion upon Nature's spicy crab. Every culti
vated apple is a crab, not improved, but cooked,
variously softened and swelled out in the
process, mellowed, sweetened, spiced, and ren
dered pulpy and foodful, but as utterly unfit
15

STEEP TRAILS
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, wrin
kled Merinos — and she would throw the one
to her caterpillars, the other to her wolves.
It is now some thirty-six hundred years
since Jacob kissed his mother and set out
across the plains of Padan-aram to begin his ex
periments upon the flocks of his uncle, Laban;
and, notwithstanding the high degree of excel
lence he attained as a wool-grower, and the
innumerable painstaking efforts subsequently
made by individuals and associations in all
kinds of pastures and clunates, we still seem
to be as far from definite and satisfactory re
sults 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 Uke the lush tangled grass of
a manured meadow. In one the staple is defi
cient in length, in another in fineness ; while in
all there is a constant tendency toward disease,
rendering various washings and dippings indis
pensable to prevent its falling out. The prob
lem 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.
16

WLLD 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 manufac
turers. Would it not be well, therefore, for
some one to go back as far as possible and take
a fresh start?
The source or sources whence the various
breeds were derived is not positively known,
but there can be hardly any doubt of their
being descendants of the four or five wild
species so generally distributed throughout the
mountainous portions of the globe, the marked
differences between the wild and domestic spe
cies being readily accounted for by the known
variability of the animal, and by the long series
of painstaking selection to which all its char
acteristics 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 pos
sibly Merinos may have caught their wrinkles
from the perplexed brows of their breeders.
The California species {Ovis montanaY is a
^ 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. [Editor.]
17

STEEP TRAILS
noble animal, weighing when full-grown some
three hundred and fifty pounds, and is well
worthy the attention of wool-growers as a
point from which to make a new departure,
for pure wildness is the one great want, both
of men and of sheep.

II
A geologist's winter walk!
After reaching Turlock, I sped afoot over
the stubble fields and through miles of brown
bemizonia and purple erigeron, to Hopeton,
conscious of little more than that the town
was behind and beneath me, and the moun
tains above and before me; on through the
oaks and chaparral of the foothills to Coulter-
ville; and then ascended the first great moun
tain step upon which grows the sugar pine.
Here I slackened pace, for I drank the spicy,
resiny wind, and beneath the arms of this noble
tree I felt that I was safely home. Never did
pine trees seem so dear. How sweet was their
breath and their song, and how grandly they
winnowed the sky! I tingled my fingers among
their tassels, and rustled my feet among their
brown needles and burrs, and was exhilarated
and joyful beyond all I can write.
When I reached Yosemite, all the rocks
seemed talkative, and more telUng and lovable
than ever. They are dear friends, and seemed
to have warm blood gushing through their
^ An excerpt from a letter to a friend, written in 1873.
[Editor.] 19

STEEP TRAILS
granite flesh ; and I love them with a love inten
sified 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 sun-
ful," I said, "and, though now winter, no
great danger need be encountered, and no
sudden storm will block my return, if I am
watchful." The morning after this decision, I started
up the canon of Tenaya, caring Uttle about
the quantity of bread I carried; for, I thought,
a fast and a storm and a difficult canon 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
20

TISSIACK FROM GLACIER POINT: TENAYA CANON ON THE LEFT

A GEOLOGIST'S WLN^TER WALK
were falling; yet never did her soul reveal itself
more impressively than now, I hung about
her skirts, Ungering timidly, until the higher
mountains and glaciers compeUed me to push
up the canon.
This canon is accessible only to mountain
eers, and I was anxious to carry my barometer
and clinometer through it, to obtain sections
and altitudes, so I chose it as the most attrac
tive highway. After I had passed the taU 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 sUghtest.
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-cUmbing would have been fin-
21

STEEP TRAILS
ished, for just beyond the bushes the canon
wall steepened and I might have faUen 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 dif
ficult portion of the canon, but I determined to
guide my humbled body over the most nerve-
trjdng places I could find; for I was now awake,
and felt confident that the last of the town fog
had been shaken from both head and feet.
I camped at the mouth of a narrow gorge
which is cut into the bottom of the main canon,
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 trembUng was gone.
The gorged portion of the canon, 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
pecuUar bottom gorge, which is an abrupt,
ragged-waUed, narrow-throated canon, formed
in the bottom of the wide-mouthed, smooth,
and beveled main canon. I will not stop now
22

A GEOLOGIST'S WINTER WALK
to tell you more; some day you may see it,
like a shadowy line, from Cloud's Rest. In
high water, the stream occupies all the bottom
of the gorge, surging and chafing in glorious
power from wall to wall. But the sound of the
grinding was low as I entered the gorge, scarcely
hoping to be able to pass through its entire
length. By cool efforts, along glassy, ice-worn
slopes, I reached the upper end in a little over a
day, but was compelled to pass the second night
in the gorge, and in the moonlight I wrote you
this short pencil-letter in my notebook: —
The moon is looking down into the canon, and
how marvelously the great roclis Idndle to her light!
Every dome, and brow, and swelling boss touched
by her white rays, glows as if lighted with snow.
I am now only a mile from last night's camp; and
have been climbing and sketching all day in this
difficult but instructive gorge. It is formed in the
bottom of the main canon, among the roots of
Cloud's Rest. It begins at the filled-up lake-basin
where I camped last night, and ends a few hundred
yards above, in another basin of the same kind.
The walls everywhere are craggy and vertical, and
in some places they overlean. It is only from twenty
to sixty feet wide, and not, though black and
broken enough, the thin, crooked mouth of some
mysterious abyss; but it was eroded, for in many
places I saw its solid, seamless floor.
I am sitting on a big stone, against which the
stream divides, and goes brawling by in rapids on
23

STEEP TRAILS
both sides; half of my rock is white in the light, half
in shadow. As I look from the opening jaws of this
shadowy gorge, South Dome is immediately in
front — high in the stars, her face turned from the
moon, with the rest of her body gloriously muffled
in waved folds of granite. On the left, sculptured
from the main Cloud's Rest ridge, are three mag
nificent roclss, sisters of the great South Dome,
On the right is the massive, moonlit front of Mount
Watldns, and between, low down in the furthest
distance, is Sentinel Dome, girdled and darkened
with forest. In the near foreground Tenaya Creek
is singing against boulders that are white with
snow and moonbeams. Now look back twenty
yards, and you will see a waterfall fair as a spirit;
the moonlight just touches it, bringing it into relief
against a dark background of shadow. A little to
the left, and a dozen steps this side of the fall, a
flickering light marks my camp — and a precious
camp it is. A huge, glacier-polished slab, falUng
from the smooth, glossy flank of Cloud's Rest, hap
pened to settle on edge against the wall of the gorge.
I did not know that this slab was glacier-polished
until I lighted my fire. Judge of my delight. I
think it was sent here by an earthquake. It is about
twelve feet square. I wish I could take it home^ for
a hearthstone. Beneath this slab is the only place
in this torrent-swept gorge where I could find sand
sufficient for a bed.
I expected to sleep on the boulders, for I spent
most of the afternoon on the slippery wall of the
canon, endeavoring to get around this difficult part
1 Muir at this time was making Yosemite Valley his home.
tEditor.] 24

A GEOLOGIST'S WINTER WALK
of the gorge, and was compelled to hasten down
here for water before dark. I shall sleep soundly on
this sand; half of it is mica. Here, wonderful to
behold, are a few green stems of prickly rubus, and
a tiny grass. They are here to meet us. Ay, even
here in this darksome gorge, "frightened and tor
mented" with raging torrents and choking ava
lanches of snow. Can it be? As if rubus and the
grass leaf were not enough of God's tender prattle
words of love, which we so much need in these
mighty temples of power, yonder in the "benmost
bore" are two blessed adiantums. Listen to them!
How wholly infused with God is this one big word
of love that we call the world! Good-night. Do
you see the fire-glow on my ice-smoothed slab, and
on my two ferns and the rubus and grass panicles?
And do you hear how sweet a sleep-song the fall
and cascades are singing?
The water-ground chips and knots that I
found fastened between the rocks kept my
fire aUve 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 canon is all broadly open again — the floor
luxuriantly forested with pine, and spruce,
and silver fir, and brown-trunked Ubrocedrus.
The waUs rise in Yosemite forms, and Tenaya
Creek comes down seven hundred feet in a
25

STEEP TRAILS
white brush of foam. This is a little Yosemite
valley. It is about two thousand feet above the
level of the main Yosemite, and about twenty-
four hundred below Lake Tenaya.
I found the lake frozen, and the ice was so
clear and unruffled that the surrounding moun
tains 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 Uttle 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 ade
quate 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 sqales of mica glinting back the down-
pouring light. When I knelt down with my
face close to the ice, through which the sun
beams were pouring, I was deUghted to dis
cover myriads of TyndaU's six-rayed water
flowers, magnificently colored,
A grand old mountain mansion is this Tenaya
region! In the glacier period it was a mer de
glace, far grander than the mer de glace of
Switzerland, which is only about half a mile
broad. The Tenaya mer de glace was not less
than two miles broad, late in the glacier epoch,
26

A GEOLOGIST'S WINTER WALK
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 Tenaya Lake basin, and all the
splendidly sculptured rocks and mountains
that surround and adorn it, and the great
Tenaya Canon, with its wealth of all that
makes mountains sublime, they were welded
with the vast South, Lyell, and lUilouette
glaciers on one side, and with those of Hoffman
on the other — thus forming a portion of a yet
grander mer de glace in Yosemite Valley.
I reached the Tenaya Canon, on my way
home, by coming in from the northeast, ram
bling down over the shoulders of Mount Wat-
kins, touching bottom a mile above Mirror
Lake. From thence home was but a saunter
in the moonlight.
After resting one day, and the weather con
tinuing calm, I ran up over the left shoulder of
South Dome and down in front of its grand
split face to make some measurements, com
pleted 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.
27

STEEP TRAILS
Cloud's Rest is a thousand feet higher than
Tissiack. It is a waveUke 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 impres
sively their faces shone with responsive love!
I ran home in the moonUght with firm
strides; for the sun-love made me strong.
Down through the junipers; down through
the fixs; now in jet shadows, now in white Ught;
over sandy moraines and bare, clanking rocks;
past the huge ghost of South Dome risiog
weird through the firs; past the glorious fall of
Nevada, the groves of lUilouette; through the
pines of the vaUey; beneath the bright crystal
sky blazing with stars. All of this moimtain
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.

Ill
SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
Mount Shasta rises in solitary grandeur
from the edge of a comparatively low and
Ughtly sculptured lava plain near the northern
extremity of the Sierra, and maintains a far
more impressive and commanding individual
ity than any other mountain within the limits
of CaUfomia, 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 aUke 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 Whit-
29

STEEP TRAILS
ney, computed from fewer observations, is
about 14,900 feet. But inasmuch as the aver
age elevation of the plain out of which Shasta
rises is only about four thousand feet above
the sea, while the actual base of the peak of
Mount Whitney lies at an elevation of eleven
thousand feet, the individual height of the
former is about two and a half times as great
as that of the latter.
Approaching Shasta from the south, one
obtains glimpses of its snowy cone here and
there through the trees from the tops of hills
and ridges; but it is not until Strawberry
Valley is reached, where there is a grand out-
opening of the forests, that Shasta is seen in
all its glory, from base to crown clearly re
vealed 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 imme
diate 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 swelUng base of the mountain in glorious
array; and, over all, the great white cone
sweeping far into the thin, keen sky — meadow,
30

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
forest, and grand icy summit harmoniously
blending and making one subUme picture
evenly balanced.
The main fines of the landscape are im
mensely 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 moun
tain three distinct zones may be readily de
fined. 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, chin-
capin, and several species of ceanothus, called
deerbrush by the hunters, forming, when in
full bloom, one of the most glorious flower-beds
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 yeUow 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, giUas,
UUes, and lupines, with many other less con-
si

STEEP TRAILS
spicuous plants, occur in warm sheltered open
ings in these lower woods, making charming
gardens of wildness where bees and butterflies
are at home and many a shy bird and squirrel.
The next higher is the Fir Zone, made up
almost exclusively of two species of silver fir.
It is from two to three miles wide, has an
average elevation above the sea of some six
thousand feet on its lower edge and eight thou
sand on its upper, and is the most regular and
best defined of the three.
The Alpine Zone has a rugged, straggling
growth of storm-beaten dwarf pines {Pinus
albicaulis), which forms the upper edge of the
timber-line. 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 beauti
ful 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
WiUiamson spruce. Bryanthus, a beautiful
flowering heathwort, flourishes a few hundred
feet above the timber-line, accompanied with
kahnia and spiraea. Lichens enliven the faces
32

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
of the cUffs 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, wall-flowers, and
penstemons; but, notwithstanding these bloom
freely, they make no appreciable show at a dis
tance, and the stretches of rough brown lava
beyond the storm-beaten trees seem as bare of
vegetation as the great snow-fields and glaciers
of the summit,
Shasta is a fire-mountain, an old volcano
graduaUy 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 flow
ing 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
mole-hills in a night — quick contributions to
the wealth of the landscapes, and most em
phatic 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, dis
playing some of the internal framework of
Shasta, show that comparatively long periods
33

STEEP TRAILS
of quiescence intervened between many dis
tinct eruptions, during which the cooUng lavas
ceased to flow, and took their places as perma
nent additions to the bulk of the growing
mountain. Thus with alternate haste and
deliberation eruption succeeded eruption, until
Mount Shasta surpassed even its present sub
Ume height.
Then followed a strange contrast. The gla
cial 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, ffinty lavas, and thus degrading and
remodeling the entire mountain from summit
to base. How much denudation and degrada
tion has been effected we have no means of
determining, the porous, crumbUng rocks
being ill adapted for the reception and preser
vation of glacial inscriptions.
The summit is now a mass of ruins, and all
the finer striations have been effaced from the
flanks by post-glacial weathering, whUe the
irregularity of its lavas as regards susceptibility
34

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
to erosion, and the disturbance caused by
inter- and post-glacial eruptions, have ob
scured or obUterated those heavier characters
of the glacial record found so clearly in
scribed upon the granite pages of the high
Sierra between latitude 36° 30' and 39°. 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 con
dition 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 im
mense quantities of this Ughter 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 dur
ing an eruption, giving rise to the deposition
of conspicuous delta-Uke beds around the base.
35

STEEP TRAILS
And it is upon these flood-beds of moraine soil,
thus suddenly and simultaneously laid down
and joined edge to edge, that the flowery chap
arral is growing.
Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and
destructive. Nature accompUshes her benefi
cent 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 aU their wealth of fruit
and flowers, the air stirred into one universal
hum with rejoicing insects, a milky way of
wings and petals, girdUng the new-born moun
tain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams
beating against its sides had broken into a
foam of plant-bloom and bees.
But with such grand displays as Nature is
making here, how grand are her reservations,
bestowed only upon those who devotedly seek
them! Beneath the smooth and snowy surface
the fountain fixes are still aglow, to blaze forth
afresh at their appointed times. The glaciers,
looking so still and small at a distance, repre
sented by the artist with a patch of white paint
laid on by a single stroke of his brush, are stiU
flowing onward, unhalting, with deep crys
tal currents, sculpturing the mountain with
stern, resistless energy. How many caves and
fountains that no eye has yet seen lie with all
36

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
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 fuUness of perfect life!
Standing on the edge of the Strawberry
Meadows in the sun-days of summer, not a
foot or feather or leaf seems to stir; and the
grand, towering mountain with all its inhab
itants 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 chrysididse dancing and swirl
ing in joyous rhythm, golden-barred vespidse,
butterflies, grating cicadas and jolly rattUng
grasshoppers — fairly enameling the light, and
shaking all the air into music. Happy fellows
they are, every one of them, blowing tiny pipe
and trumpet, plodding and prancing, at work
or at play.
Though winter holds the summit, Shasta in
summer is mostly a massy, bossy mound of
37

STEEP TRAILS
flowers colored Uke 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 Unnsea; phlox, calycanthus, plum,
cherry, Crataegus, spiraea, mints, and clovers in
endless variety; ivesia, larkspur, and colum
bine; golden aplopappus, linosyris,^ bahia,
wyethia, arnica, brodiaea, etc., — making sheets
and beds of light edgings of bloom in lavish
abundance for the myriads of the air dependent
on their bounty.
The common honey-bees, 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 poUeny
willows and firs, now down on the ashy ground
among small giUas and buttercups, and anon
plunging into banks of snowy cherry and buck
thorn. They consider the UUes and roll into
them, pushing their blunt poUeny faces against
them Uke babies on their mother's bosom; and
fondly, too, with eternal love does Mother
' An obsolete genus of plants now replaced in the main
by Chrysothamnvs and Ericameria. [Editor.]
38

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
Nature clasp her smaU bee-babies and suckle
them, multitudes at once, on her warm Shasta
breast. Besides the common honey-bee there
are many others here, fine, burly, mossy fel'*
lows, such as were nourished on the mountains
many a flowery century before the advent of
the domestic species — bumble-bees, mason-
bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters, Butter-
ffies, too, and moths of every size and pattern;
some wide-winged Uke bats, flapping slowly
and saiUng in easy curves ; others Uke small fly
ing violets shaking about loosely in short zigzag
flights close to the flowers, feasting in plenty
night and day.
Deer in great abundance come to Shasta
from the warmer foothills every spring to feed
in the rich, cool pastures, and bring forth then-
young in the ceanothus tangles of the chapar
ral zone, retiring again before the snowstorms
of winter, mostly to the southward and west
ward of the moimtain. 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 spitrs
and ridges where there is but Uttle snow, to the
north and east of Shasta,
Bears, too, roam this foodful wilderness,
feeding on grass, clover, berries, nuts, ant-eggs,
fish, flesh, or fowl, — whatever comes in their
39

STEEP TRAILS
way, — with but Uttle troublesome discrimina
tion. Sugar and honey they seem to Uke 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 rot
ten logs, and might almost Uve on clean lava
alone. Notwithstanding the CaUfornia bears have
had as yet but Uttle experience with honey
bees, they sometimes succeed in reaching the
bountiful stores of these industrious gatherers
and enjoy the feast with majestic relish. But
most honey-bees in search of a home are wise
enough to make choice of a hollow in a Uving
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 unfor
tunates who dwell in some prostrate trunk,
and to the black bumble-bees discovered in
their mossy, mouselike nests in the ground.
With powerful teeth and claws these are speed
ily laid bare, and almost before time is given
for a general buzz the bees, old and yoimg,
40

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
larvae, honey, stings, nest, and all, are devoured
in one ravishing revel.
The antelope may stiU be found in consider
able numbers to the northeastward of Shasta,
but the elk, once abimdant, have almost en
tirely gone from the region. The smaUer ani
mals, such as the wolf, the various foxes, wild
cats, 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 moun
tain, while innumerable smaller birds enliven
and sweeten every thicket and grove.
There are at least five classes of human in
habitants about the Shasta region: the Indi
ans, now scattered, few in numbers and miser
ably demoraUzed, though stiU offering some
rare specimens of savage manhood; miners and
prospectors, foimd mostly to the north and
west of the moimtain, 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 VaUey on the
41

STEEP TRAILS
north side of the mountain, wheat, apples, mel
ons, 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 dur
ing changing storms ready to fall upon them —
the most sublime farm scenery imaginable.
The Indians of the McCloud River that
have come under my observation differ con
siderably in habits and features from the Dig
gers and other tribes of the foothills and plains,
and also from the Pah Utes and Modocs, They
live chiefly on sahnon. 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 bet
ter features than the Indians of the plains, and
are rather wide awake, speculative and ambi
tious in their way, and garrulous, Uke the
natives of the northern coast.
Before the Modoc War they Uved in dread
of the Modocs, a tribe living about the Kla
math Lake and the Lava Beds, who were in the
habit of crossing the low Sierra divide past the
base of Shasta on freebooting excursions, steal
ing wives, fish, and weapons from the Pitts and
McClouds. Mothers would hush their children
by telUng them that the Modocs would catch
them. 42

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
During my stay at the Government fish-
hatching station on the McCloud I was accom
panied in my walks along the river-bank 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 caUed "Sus-
sinny." 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 abun
dantly along the river-margin. Once I rushed
suddenly upon him to see if he would be fright
ened; but he unffinchingly held his ground,
struck a grand heroic attitude, and shouted,
"Me no 'fraid; me Modoc!"
Mount Shasta, so far as I have seen, has
never been the home of Indians, not even their
hunting-ground to any great extent, above the
lower slopes of the base. They are said to be
afraid of fire-mountains and geyser-basins as
being the dwelUng-places of dangerously power
ful 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 wUd sheep to tempt
43

STEEP TRAILS
them higher. Even these were brought within
reach without excessive climbing during the
storms of winter.
On the north side of Shasta, near Sheep
Rock, there is a long cavern, sloping to the
northward, nearly a mile in length, thirty or
forty feet wide, and fifty feet or more in height,
regular in form and direction Uke a railroad
tunnel, and probably formed by the flowing
away of a current of lava after the harden
ing 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 wUd sheep,
and the remains of campfires, no doubt those
of Indian hunters who in stormy weather had
camped there and feasted after the fatigues of
the chase. A wild picture that must have
formed on a dark night — the glow of the fire,
the circle of crouching savages around it seen
through the smoke, the dead game, and the
weird darkness and half-darkness of the walls
of the cavern, a picture of cave-dwellers at
home in the stone age!
Interest in hunting is almost universal, so
deeply is it rooted as an inherited instinct ever
ready to rise and make itself known. Fine
scenery may not stir a fiber of mind or body,
but how quick and how true is the excitement
of the pursuit of game! Then up flames the
44

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
slumbering volcano of ancient wildness, all
that has been done by church and school
through centuries of cultivation is for the mo
ment destroyed, and the decent gentleman or
devout saint becomes a howUng, bloodthirsty,
demented savage. It is not long since we all
were cave-men and foUowed game for food as
truly as wildcat or wolf, and the long repression
of civiUzation seems to make the rebound to
savage love of blood aU 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 Uving.
Dwelling apart in the depths of the woods
are the various kinds of mountaineers, — hunt
ers, prospectors, and the Uke, — rare men,
"queer characters," and well worth knowing.
Their cabins are located with reference to game
and the ledges to be examined, and are con
structed almost as simply as those of the wood
rats made of sticks laid across each other with
out 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 Uke the bark
of trees. On entering their cabins you will
45

STEEP TRAILS
promptly be placed on your good behavior,
and, your wants being perceived with quick
insight, complete hospitality will be offered
for body and mind to the extent of the larder.
These men know the mountains far and near,
and their thousand voices, Uke the leaves of a
book. They can teU 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 Uves compared with too
many in crowded towns mildewed and dwarfed
in disease and crime! How fine a chance is here
to begia Ufe anew in the free fountains and sky-
lands of Shasta, where it is so easy to Uve and
to die! The future of the hunter is Ukely to be
a good one; no abrupt change about it, only
a passing from wilderness to wilderness, from
one high place to another.
Now that the railroad has been built up the
Sacramento, everybody with money may go
to Mount Shasta, the weak as well as the
strong, fine-grained, succulent people, whose
legs have never ripened, as well as sinewy
mountaineers seasoned long in the weather.
This, surely, is not the best way of going ta
46

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
the mountains, yet it is better than staying
below. Many stiU smaU voices wiU not be
heard in the noisy rush and din, suggestive of
going to the sky in a chariot of fire or a whirl
wind, as one is shot to the Shasta mark in a
booming palace-car cartridge; up the rocky
canon, skimming the foaming river, above the
level reaches, above the dashing spray — fine
exhilarating translation, yet a pity to go so
fast in a blur, where so much might be seen
and enjoyed.
The mountains are fountains not only of
rivers and fertile soil, but of men. Therefore
we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and
going to the mountains is going home. Yet
how many are doomed to toil in town shadows
while the white mountains beckon all along
the horizon! Up the canon 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
Uke blind mice to their mothers. Many are
sick and have been dragged to the heaUng
wilderness imwillingly for body-good alone.
Were the parts of the human machine detach
able like Yankee inventions, how strange would
47

STEEP TRAILS
be the gatherings on the mountains of pieces
of people out of repair!
How sadly unlike the whole-hearted ongoing
of the seeker after gold is this partial, compul
sory 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 morti
fications 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 joUy troubadours to whom all
Shasta is romance; poets singing their prayers;
the weak and the strong, unable or unwilUng
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 impar
tiality 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
Uke the fires of a sinking ship.
Possibly a branch railroad may some time be
built to the summit of Mount Shasta like the
48

AT SHASTA SOD^ SPRINGS

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
road on Mount Washington. In the mean time
tourists are dropped at Sisson's, about twelve
nailes from the summit, whence as head
quarters they radiate in every direction to the
so-called "points of interest"; sauntering
about the flowery fringes of the Strawberry
Meadows, bathing in the bahn of the woods,
scrambUng, fishing, hunting; riding about
Castle Lake, the McCloud River, Soda Springs,
Big Spring, deer pastures, and elsewhere. Some
demand bears, and make excited inquiries con
cerning 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 con
tent with comparatively level ground and mod
erate 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 Uchens, and
possibly a fish or two, or quail, or grouse.
But the heads of deer, antelope, wild sheep,
and bears are conspicuously rare or altogether
wanting in tourist coUections in the "paradise
of hunters." There is a grand comparing of
notes and adventures. Most are exhilarated
and happy, though complaints may occasion
ally be heard — "The mountain does not look
49

STEEP TRAILS
so very high after aU, nor so very white; th&
snow is in patches Uke 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 influ
ence of hoUday enjoyment and mountain air.
Fresh roses come to cheeks that long have been
pale, and sentiment often begins to blossom
under the new inspiration.
The Shasta region may be reserved as a
national park, with special reference to the
preservation of its fine forests and game. This
should by all means be done; but, as far as
game is concerned, it is in Uttle 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 Doug
las 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 be
numbed beetles in a snowdrift. Such hunters
are themselves hunted by the animals, which
in perfect safety follow them out of curiosity.
During the bright days of midsummer the
so

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
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 provisions,
blankets, and other necessaries, you follow a
trail that leads up to the edge of the timber-
line, 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 scen
ery 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 crea
tures that bloom and breathe.
The woods differ but Uttle from those that
clothe the mountains to the southward, the
trees being sUghtly closer together and gener
ally not quite so large, marking the incipient
change from the open sunny forests of the
Sierra to the dense damp forests of the north
ern coast, where a squirrel may travel in the
branches of the thick-set trees hundreds of
51

STEEP TRAILS
miles without touching the ground. Around
the upper belt of the forest you may see gaps
where the ground has been cleared by ava
lanches of snow, thousands of tons in weight,
which, descending with grand rush and roar,
brush the trees from their paths Uke so many
fragile shrubs or grasses.
At first the ascent is very gradual. The
mountain begins to leave the plain in slopes
scarcely perceptible, measuring from two to
three degrees. These are continued by easy
gradations mile after mile all the way to the
truncated, crumbUng summit, where they
attain a steepness of twenty to twenty-five
degrees. The grand simpUcity of these Unes is
partially interrupted on the north subordinate
cone that rises from the side of the main cone
about three thousand feet from the summit.
This side cone, past which your way to the
summit lies, was active after the breaking-up
of the main ice-cap of the glacial period, as
shown by the comparatively unwasted crater
in which it terminates and by streams of fresh-
looking, unglaciated lava that radiate from it
as a center.
The main summit is about a mile and a half
m diameter from southwest to northeast, and
is nearly covered with snow and neve, bounded
by crumbling peaks and ridges, among which
52

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
we look in vain for any sure plan of an ancient
crater. The extreme summit is situated on the
southern end of a narrow ridge that bounds
the general summit on the east. Viewed from
the north, it appears as an irregular blunt point
about ten feet high, and is fast disappearing
before the stormy atmospheric action to which
it is subjected.
At the base of the eastern ridge, just be
low the extreme summit, hot sulphurous gases
and vapor escape with a hissing, bubbUng
noise from a fissure in the lava. Some of the
many smaU vents cast up a spray of clear hot
water, which faUs 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 moimtain, and may be regarded as the
last feeble expression of the mighty power that
Ufted the entire mass of the mountain from the
volcanic depths far below the surface of the
plain. The view from the summit in clear weather
extends to an immense distance in every direc
tion. Southeastward, the low volcanic portion
of the Sierra is seen Uke a map, both flanks as
well as the crater-dotted axis, as far as Lassen's^
• An early local name for what is now known as Lassen
53

STEEP TRAILS
Butte, a prominent landmark and an old vol
cano like Shasta, between ten and eleven thou
sand feet high, and distant about sixty miles.
Some of the higher summit peaks near Inde
pendence 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 Sis
ters rise in clear relief, like majestic monu
ments, 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 Moun
tains rise in long, compact waves to the west
and southwest, and the valley of the Sacra
mento and the coast mountains, with their
marvelous wealth of woods and waters, are
seen; while close around the base of the moun
tain Ue the beautiful Shasta Valley, Strawberry
Valley, Huckleberry Valley, and many others,
with the headwaters of the Shasta, Sacramento,
and McCloud Rivers. Some observers claim
to have seen the ocean from the summit of
Shasta, but I have not yet been so fortunate.
The Cinder Cone near Lassen's Butte is
Peak, or Mt. Lassen. In 1914 its volcanic activity was re
sumed with spectacular eruptions of ashes, steam, and gas,
[Editor.] 64

SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA
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 smaU 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 yeUow pine.
This lava-flow seems to have been poured
out during the same eruption that gave birth
to the cone, cutting the lake in two, flowing a
Uttle 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 for
est for miles around is so thickly strewn with
loose cinders that walking is very fatiguing.
The Pitt River Indians teU 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 Uving
creature with destruction, and say that when
at length the sun appeared through the gloom
it was red Uke blood. 55

STEEP TRAILS
Less recent craters in great numbers dot the
adjacent region, some with lakes in their
throats, some overgrown with trees, others
nearly bare — telUng 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 pro
found calm have been known to intervene
between two violent eruptions. Seventeen cen
turies intervened between two consecutive
eruptions on the island of Ischia. Few volca
noes continue permanently in eruption. Like
gigantic geysers, spouting hot stone instead of
hot water, they work and sleep, and we have
no sure means of knowing whether they are
only sleeping or dead.

IV
A PERILOUS NIGHT ON SHASTA's SUMMIT
Toward the end of summer, after a light,
open winter, one may reach the summit of
Moimt 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 timber-line. But on my
first excursion to the summit the whole moun
tain, down to its low sweUing base, was
smoothly laden with loose fresh snow, present
ing a most glorious mass of winter mountain
scenery, in the midst of which I scrambled and
reveled or lay snugly snowbound, enjoying
the fertile clouds and the snow-bloom in all
their growing, drifting grandeur.
I had walked from Redding, sauntering lei
surely from station to station along the old
Oregon stage-road, the better to see the rocks
and plants, birds and people, by the way, trac
ing 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 sun
shine filled all the noonday hours. It was the
57

STEEP TRAILS
calm afterglow that usually succeeds the first
storm of the winter, I met many of the bird":*
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 yoimg 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
deUs of the smaller streams.
At the salmon-hatching establishment on
the McCloud River I halted a week to examine
the limestone belt, grandly developed there,
to learn what I could of the inhabitants of the
river and its banks, and to give time for the
fresh snow that I knew had fallen on the
mountain to settle somewhat, with a view to
making the ascent.' A pedestrian on these
mountain roads, especiaUy 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
58

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
admonished that I had come on a dangerous
quest. The time was far too late, the snow was
too loose and deep to cUmb, and I should be
lost in drifts and sUdes. 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 de
clared the ascent of "Shasta Butte" through
loose snow impossible. Nevertheless, before
noon of the second of November I was in the
frosty azure of the utmost summit.
When I arrived at Sisson's everything was
quiet. The last of the summer visitors had
flitted long before, and the deer and bears also
were beiginning to seek their winter homes. My
barometer and the sighing winds and filmy,
half-transparent clouds that dimmed the sun
shine gave notice of the approach of another
storm, and I was in haste to be off and get
myself estabUshed 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 cahn 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 snow
bound. WeU I knew the weariness of snow-
cUmbing, and the frosts, and the dangers of
59

STEEP TRAILS
mountaineering so late in the year; therefore I
could not ask a guide to go with me, even had
one been willing. AU I wanted was to have
blankets and provisions deposited as far up in
the timber as the snow would permit a pack-
animal to go. There I could build a storm
nest and lie warm, and make raids up and
around the mountain in accordance with the
weather. Setting out on the afternoon of November
first, with Jerome Fay, mountaineer and guide,
in charge of the animals, I was soon plodding
wearily upward through the muffled winter
woods, the snow of course growing steadily
deeper and looser, so that we had to break a
trail. The ammals began to get discouraged,
and after night and darkness came on they be
came 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 sad
dles and assisted their efforts with ropes, they
all escaped to the side of a ridge about a thou
sand feet below the timber-line.
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 tempera
ture and shed a blaze of light on the wild lava-
60

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
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 myseU 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 reas
sured that I was at home and required no care,
he bade me good-bye and returned to camp,
ready to lead his animals down the mountain
at daybreak.
After I was above the dwarf pines, it was
fine practice pushing up the broad unbroken
slopes of snow, alone in the solemn silence of
the night. Half the sky was clouded; in the
other half the stars sparkled icily in the keen,
frosty air; while everywhere the glorious wealth
of snow fell away from the summit of the cone
in flowing folds, more extensive and continuous
than any I had ever seen before. When day
dawned the clouds were crawling slowly and
becoming more massive, but gave no intima
tion of immediate danger, and I pushed on
faithfully, though holding myself well in hand,
ready to return to the timber; for it was easy
61

STEEP TRAILS
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 canons I had ever been
in seemed to me so dangerous as these immense
slopes, bare against the sky.
The frost was intense, and drifting snow-dust
made breathing at times rather difficult. The
snow was as dry as meal, and the finer particles
drifted freely, rising high in the air, while the
larger portions of the crystals rolled like sand.
I frequently sank to my armpits between
buried blocks of loose lava, but generally only
to my knees. When tired with walking I stiU
wallowed slowly upward on all fours. The
steepness of the slope — thirty-five degrees in
some places — made any kind of progress
fatiguing, while small avalanches were being
constantly set in motion in the steepest places.
But the bracing air and the sublime beauty of
the snowy expanse thrilled every nerve and
made absolute exhaustion impossible. I seemed
to be walking and wallowing in a cloud; but,
holding steadily onward, by half-past ten
o'clock I had gained the highest summit.
I held my commanding foothold in the sky
for two hours, gazing on the glorious landscapes
spread maplike around the immense horizon,
62

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
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 hav
ing 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 glowing in the
sun. Toward the end of my stay a succession
of small clouds struck against the summit rocks
Uke drifting icebergs, darkening the air as they
passed, and producing a chill as definite and
sudden as if ice-water had been dashed in my
face. This is the kind of cloud in which snow-
flowers grow, and I turned and fled.
Finding that I was not closely pursued, I
ventured to take time on the way down for a
visit to the head of the Whitney Glacier and
the "Crater Butte." After I reached the end
of the main summit ridge the descent was but
Uttle more than one continuous soft, mealy,
muffled slide, most luxurious and rapid, though
the hissing, swishing speed attained was ob
scured in great part by flying snow-dust —
a marked contrast to the boring seal-wallow
ing 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,
63

STEEP TRAILS
where firewood was abundant, rolled myself in
my blankets, and went to sleep.
Next morning, having slept little the night
before the ascent and being weary with climb
ing 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 sUvery mountains of cumuli, range over
range, diversified with peak and dome and
hollow fully brought out in Ught and shade.
I gazed enchanted, but cold gray masses,
drifting like dust on a wind-swept plain, began
to shut out the light, forerunners of the coming
storm I had been so anxiously watching. I
made haste to gather as much wood as possi
ble, 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
64

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
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 de
molish my bed, and my bread could be made
to last indefinitely; while in case of need I had
the means of making snowshoes and could
retreat or hold my ground as I pleased.
Presently the storm broke forth into full
snowy bloom, and the thronging crystals dark
ened the air. The wind swept past in hissing
floods, grinding the snow into meal and sweep
ing 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, notwith
standing but Uttle trace of my nest could be
seen after the snow had leveled and buried it,
I was snug and warm, and the passionate up
roar produced a glad excitement.
Day after day the storm continued, piling
snow on snow in weariless abundance. There
were short periods of quiet, when the sun would
seem to look eagerly down through rents in the
clouds, as if to know how the work was ad
vancing. During these cahn intervals I re-
65

STEEP TRAILS
plenished 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 Mm out in
such weather. The mountain sheep also, quite
a large flock of them, came to my camp and
took shelter beside a clump of matted dwarf
pines a little above my nest.
The storm lasted about a week, but before
it was ended Sisson became alarmed and sent
up the guide with animals to see what had be
come 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
66

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
as safe as anybody in the lowlands, lying Uke
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 fur
niture 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, develop
ing many interesting scenes and experiences.
But the next spring, on the other side of this
eventful winter, I saw and felt still more of the
Shasta snow. For then it was my fortune to
get into the very heart of a storm, and to be
held in it for a long time.
On the 28th of April [1875] I led a party up
the mountain for the purpose of making a sur
vey of the summit with reference to the loca
tion 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 estabUshing a camp on the
extreme edge of the timber-line. Here, on our
red trachyte bed, we obtained two hours of
shallow sleep broken for occasional gUmpses
67

STEEP TRAILS
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 be
tokened the approach of a storm; but on gain
ing the summit, we saw toward Lassen's Butte
hundreds of square miles of white cumuU boil
ing dreamily in the sunshine far beneath us,
and causing no alarm.
The sUght 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° in the
shade and rose steadily until at 1 p.m. it stood
at 50°, probably influenced somewhat by radi
ation from the sun-warmed cliffs. A common
bumble-bee, not at all benumbed, zigzagged
vigorously about our heads for a few moments,
as if unconscious of the fact that the nearest
honey flower was a mile beneath him
In the mean time clouds were growing down
in Shasta Valley — massive swelling cumuU,
displaying deUcious 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 continu
es

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
ous cloud-zone. Rhett and Klamath Lakes
were eclipsed beneath clouds scarcely less bril
liant than theu- own silvery disks. The Modoc
Lava Beds, many a snow-laden peak far north
in Oregon, the Scott and Trmity 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 val
ley 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 we might leap down upon them from
where we stood and make our way to the low
lands. No hint was given, by anything in
their appearance, of the fleeting character of
these most subUme and beautiful cloud moun
tains. On the contrary they impressed one as
being lasting additions to the landscape.
The weather of the springtime and summer,
69

STEEP TRAILS
throughout the Sierra in general, is usually
varied by slight local rains and dustings of
snow, most of which are obviously far too joy
ous and life-giving to be regarded as storms —
single clouds growing in the sunny sky, ripen
ing in an hour, showering the heated landscape,
and passing away like a thought, leaving no
visible bodily remains to stain the sky. Snow
storms of the same gentle kind abound among
the high peaks, but in spring they not unfre-
quently attain larger proportions, assuming a
violence and energy of expression scarcely sur
passed by those bred in the depths of winter.
Such was the storm now gathering about us.
It began to declare itself shortly after noon,
suggesting to us the idea of at once seeking
our safe camp in the timber and abandoning
the purpose of making an observation of the
barometer at 3 p.m., — two having already
been made, at 9 a.m., and 12 m., while simul
taneous 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 compeUed to pass
the rest of the day and night on the summit.
But anxiety to complete my observations
stifled my own instinctive promptings to re-
70

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
treat, and held me to my work. No inexperi
enced person was depending on me, and I told
Jerome that we two mountaineers should be
able to ynake our way down through any storm
likely to fall.
Presently thin, fibrous films of cloud began
to blow directly over the summit from north
to south, drawn out in long fairy webs Uke
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 Yosem
ite Falls in flood-time; then, saiUng 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, form
ing at length a thick, opaque, ill-defined em
bankment from the icy meshes of which snow-
flowers began to fall, alternating with hail. The
sky speedily darkened, and just as I had com
pleted my last observation and boxed my
instruments ready for the descent, the storm
began in serious earnest. At first the cUffs
were beaten with hail, every stone of which,
71

STEEP TRAILS
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 deso
late crags down which they went rolling, fall
ing, sliding in a network of curious streams.
After we had forced our way down the ridge
and past the group of hissing fumaroles, the
storm became inconceivably violent. The ther
mometer feU 22° 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 follow
ing stroke in quick, passionate succession, as
though the mountain were being rent to its
foundations and the fires of the old volcano
were breaking forth again.
Could we at once have begun to descend the
snow-slopes leading to the timber, we might
have made good our escape, however dark and
wild the storm. As it was, we had first to make
our way along a dangerous ridge nearly a mile
and a half long, flanked in many places by steep
ice-slopes at the head of the Whitney Glacier
72

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
on one side and by shattered precipices on the
other. Apprehensive of this coming darkness,
I had taken the precaution, when the storm
began, to make the most dangerous points clear
to my mind, and to mark their relations with
reference to the direction of the wind. When,
therefore, the darkness came on, and the be
wildering drift, I felt confident that we could
force our way through it with no other guid
ance. After passing the "Hot Springs" I
halted in the lee of a lava-block to let Jerome,
who had fallen a little behind, come up. Here
he opened a council in which, under circum
stances sufficiently exciting but without evinc
ing any bewilderment, he maintained, in oppo
sition to my views, that it was impossible to
proceed. He firmly refused to make the ven
ture to find the camp, while I, aware of the
dangers that would necessarily attend our
efforts, and conscious of being the cause of his
present peril, decided not to leave him.
Our discussions ended, Jerome made a dash
from the shelter of the lava-block and began
forcing his way back against the wind to the
"Hot Springs," wavering and struggling to
resist being carried away, as if he were fording
a rapid stream. After waiting and watching in
vain for some flaw in the storm that might be
urged as a new argument in favor of attempt-
73

STEEP TRAILS
ing the descent, I was compeUed to follow.
"Here," said Jerome, as we shivered in the
midst of the hissing, sputtering fumaroles,
"we shaU be safe from frost." "Yes," said I,
"we can lie in this mud and steam and sludge,
warm at least on one side; but how can we
protect our lungs from the acid gases, and how,
after our clothing is saturated, shall we be able
to reach camp without freezing, even after the
storm is over? We shaU have to wait for sun
shine, and when will it come?"
The tempered area to which we had com
mitted ourselves extended over about one
fourth of an acre; but it was only about an
eighth of an inch in thickness, for the scalding
gas-jets were shorn off close to the ground by
the oversweeping flood of frosty wind. And
how lavishly the snow fell only mountaineers
may know. The crisp crystal flowers seemed
to touch one another and fairly to thicken the
tremendous blast that carried them. This was
the bloom-time, the summer of the cloud, and
never before have I seen even a mountain
cloud flowering so profusely.
When the bloom of the Shasta chaparral is
falling, the ground is sometimes covered for
hundreds of square miles to a depth of half an
inch. But the bloom of this fertile snow-cloud
grew and matured and fell to a depth of two
74

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
feet in a few hours. Some crystals landed with
their rays ahnost perfect, but most of them
were worn and broken by striking against one
another, or by rolUng on the ground. The
touch of these snow-flowers in cahn weather is
infinitely gentle — glinting, swaying, settling
silently in the dry mountain air, or massed in
flakes soft and downy. To Ue out alone in the
mountains of a stiU night and be touched by
the first of these smaU silent messengers from
the sky is a memorable experience, and the
fineness of that touch none will forget. But
the storm-blast laden with crisp, sharp snow
seems to crush and bruise and stupefy with its
multitude of stings, and compels the bravest
to turn and flee.
The snow feU without abatement until an
hour or two after what seemed to be the natu
ral darkness of the night. Up to the time the
storm first broke on the summit its develop
ment was remarkably gentle. There was a
deUberate growth of clouds, a weaving of
translucent tissue above, then the roar of the
wind and the thunder, and the darkening flight
of snow. Its subsidence 'was not less sudden.
The clouds broke and vanished, not a crystal
was left in the sky, and the stars shone out with
pure and tranquil radiance.
During the storm we lay on our backs so as
75

STEEP TRAILS
to present as Uttle 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 feU, rather augmenting our novel
misery. When the heat became unendurable, on
some spot where steam was escaping through
the sludge, we tried to stop it with snow and
mud, or shifted a little at a time by shoving
with our heels; for to stand in blank exposure
to the fearful wind in our frozen-and-broiled
condition seemed certain death. The acrid
incrustations sublimed from the escaping gases
frequently gave way, opening new vents to
scald us; and, fearing that if at any tune the
wind should fall, carbonic acid, which often
formed a considerable portion of the gaseous
exhalations of volcanoes, might coUect in suffi
cient quantities to cause sleep and death, I
warned Jerome against forgetting himself for
a single moment, even should his sufferings ad
mit of such a thing.
Accordingly, when during the long, dreary
watches of the night we roused from a state of
half-consciousness, we called each other by
76

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT.
name in a frightened, startled way, each fear
ing 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 Uke dim half-forgotten years, so long
and eventful they seemed, though we did
nothing but suffer, StiU the pain was not al
ways of that bitter, intense kind that precludes
thought and takes away all capacity for enjoy
ment, A sort of dreamy stupor came on at
times in which we fancied we saw dry, resinous
logs suitable for campfires, just as after going
days without food men fancy they see bread.
Frozen, bUstered, famished, benumbed, our
bodies seemed lost to us at times — aU 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 immor
tals of light, shining with marvelous brightness
with long lance rays, near-looking and new-
looking, as if never seen before. Again they
would look famiUar and remind us of star
gazing at home. Oftentimes imagination com
ing into play would present charming pictures
77

STEEP TRAILS
of the warm zone below, mingled with others
near and far. Then the bitter wind and the
drift would break the bUssful vision and dreary
pains cover us Uke 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 to-morrow we go a-Maying, and
what campfires we will make, and what sun-
baths we will take!"
The frost grew more and more intense, and
we became icy and covered over with a crust
of frozen snow, as if we had lain cast away in
the drift all winter. In about thirteen hours —
every hour like a year — day began to dawn,
but it was long ere the summit's rocks were
touched by the sun. No clouds were visible
from where we lay, yet the morning was dull
and blue, and bitterly frosty; and hour after
hour passed by while we eagerly watched the
pale Ught steaUng down the ridge to the hollow
where we lay. But there was not a trace of
that warm, flushing sunrise splendor we so long
had hoped for.
As the time drew near to make an effort to
reach camp, we became concerned to know
what strength was left us, and whether or no
we could walk; for we had lain flat all this time
78

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
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
Uke this; and, having proved its existence, I
had no great fear that either of us would fail,
though one of my arms was already benumbed
and hung powerless.
At length, after the temperature was some
what 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 Uft our feet high, and on reaching
the long home slopes laden with loose snow we
made rapid progress, sUding and shuffling and
pitching headlong, our feebleness accelerating
rather than diminishing our speed. When we
had descended some three thousand feet the
sunshine warmed our backs and we began to
revive. At 10 a.m. we reached the timber and
were safe.
Half an hour later we heard Sisson shouting
down among the firs, coining with horses to
take us to the hotel. After breaking a traU
through the snow as far as possible he had tied
his animals and walked up. We had been so
79

STEEP TRAILS
long without food that we cared but Uttle
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 perma
nent damage. Five thousand feet below the
summit we found only three inches of new
snow, and at the base of the mountain only a
sUght shower of rain had faUen, 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 Coun
try," as Sisson calls the Chaparral Zone. In
two hours' ride the last snow-bank was left
behind. Violets appeared along the edges of
the trail, and the chaparral was coining into
bloom, with young UUes and larkspurs about
the open places in rich profusion. How beauti
ful J 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 Uke old
friends, and we felt like speaking to every one
of them as we passed, as if we had been a long
time away in some far, strange country.
In the afternoon we reached Strawberry Val
ley and feU asleep. Next morning we seemed to
80

A NIGHT ON SHASTA'S SUMMIT
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 cov
ered my bed, and the storm on the mountain-
top vanished like a dream.

SHASTA RAMBLES AND MODOC MEMORIES
Arctic beauty and desolation, with their
blessings and dangers, all may be found here,
to test the endurance and skill of adventurous
cUmbers; but far better than climbing the
mountain is going around its warm, fertile base,
enjoying its bounties Uke a bee circUng around
a bank of flowers. The distance is about a hun
dred 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 fuU, but everybody 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, Uke very sick children afraid
of their mother — as if God were dead and the
devil were king.
One may make the trip on horseback, or in
a carriage, even; for a good level road may be
found aU the way round, by Shasta VaUey,
82

SHASTA RAMBLES
Sheep Rock, Elk Flat, Huckleberry VaUey,
Squaw Valley, foUowing 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 north-
em 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 waver
ings 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 pleas
ure and burden altogether, as wood for fires is
everywhere abundant. Only a Uttle food will
be required. Berries and plums abound in
season, and quail and grouse and deer — the
magnificent shaggy mule deer as well as the
common species.
As you sweep around so grand a center, the
mountain itself seems to turn, displaying its
riches Uke the revolving pyramids in jewelers'
windows. One glacier after another comes into
83

STEEP TRAILS
view, and the outUnes of the mountain are
ever changing, though aU 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 snow-fields more or less
completely. The play of colors, from the first
touches of the morning sun on the summit,
down the snow-fields and the ice and lava until
the forests are aglow, is a never-ending deUght,
the rosy lava and the fine flushings of the snow
being ineffably lovely. Thus one saunters on
and on in the glorious radiance in utter peace
and forgetfulness of time.
Yet, strange to say, there are days even here
somewhat dull-looking, when the mountain
seems uncommunicative, sending out no appre
ciable invitation, as if not at home. At such
times its height seems much less, as if, crouch
ing and weary, it were taking rest. But Shasta
is always at home to those who love her, and
is ever in a thriU 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 wander-
84

SHASTA RAMBLES
ing winds, how busy they are, and what a
breadth of sound and motion they make, gUnt-
ing and bubbluig about the crags of the sum
mit, sifting through the woods, feeUng theu*
way from grove to grove, ruffling the loose hair
on the shoulders of the bears, fanning and rock
ing young birds in their cradles, making a
trumpet of every corolla, and carrying their
fragrance around the world.
In unsettled weather, when storms are grow
ing, the mountain looms immensely higher,
and its miles of height become apparent to all,
especiaUy in the gloom of the gathering clouds,
or when the storm is done and they are rolUng
away, torn on the edges and melting while in
the sunshine. Slight rain-storms 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 Uke a roof.
Then the shining of the wet leaves is deUght-
ful, and the steamy fragrance, and the burst
of bird-song from a multitude of thrushes and
finches and warblers that have nests in the
chaparral. The nights, too, are deUghtful, 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
85

STEEP TRAILS
grancHy do the great logs and branches of your
campfire give forth the heat and Ught that
during their long century-Uves 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, famiUar flowers and grasses that
chance to be near seem fax more beautiful and
impressive than by day, and as the dead trees
give forth their Ught all the other riches of
their lives seem to be set free and with the
rejoicing flames rise again to the sky. In set
ting out from Strawberry Valley, by bearing off
to the northwestward a few miles you may see
" , . . beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Limisea hang its twin-born heads,
And [bless] the monument of the man of flowers.
Which breathes his sweet fame through the
northern bowers."
This is one of the few places in Califomia
where the charming Unnaea is found, though
it is common to the northward through Oregon
and Washington. Here, too, you may find the
curious but unlovable darUngtonia, a carnivo
rous plant that devours bumble-bees, grass
hoppers, ants, moths, and other insects, with
insatiable appetite. In approaching it, its
suspicious-looking yeUow-spotted hood and
86

SHASTA RAMBLES
watchful attitude will be likely to make you
go cautiously through the bog where it stands,
as if you were approaching a dangerous snake.
It also occurs in a bog near Sothern's Station
on the stage-road, where I first saw it, and in
other similar bogs throughout the mountains
hereabouts. The "Big Spring" of the Sacramento is
about a mile and a half above Sisson's, issuing
from the base of a drift-covered hill. It is lined
with emerald algae and mosses, and shaded
with alder, wiUow, and thom 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 canon to th©
plain, Muir's Peak, a few miles to the north of the
spring, rises about three thousand feet above
the plain on which it stands, and is easily
climbed. The view is very fine and well repays
the sUght walk to its summit, from which much
of your way about the mountain may be stud
ied 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
87

STEEP TRAILS
or four miles long and terminates at an eleva
tion of about nine thousand five hundred feet
above sea-level, in moraine-sprinkled ice-cUffs
sixty feet high. The long gray slopes leading
up to the glacier seem remarkably smooth and
unbroken. They are much interrupted, never
theless, with abrupt, jagged precipitous gorges,
which, though offering instmctive sections of
the lavas for examination, would better be
shunned by most people. This may be done
by keeping weU down on the base untU front
ing the glacier before beginning the ascent.
The gorge through which the glacier is
drained is raw-looking, deep and narrow, and
indescribably jagged. The walls in many
places overhang; in others they are beveled,
loose, and shifting where the channel has been
eroded by cinders, ashes, strata of firm lavas,
and glacial drift, telUng of many a change from
frost to fire and their attendant fioods 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 Ues in it the year round at an elevation
of eight thousand five hundred feet, and in
sheltered spots a thousand feet lower. Trac-
88

SHASTA RAMBLES
ing this wild changing channel-gorge, gully,
or canon, 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 wiU test the skiU of the
most cautious mountaineers.
Regaining the low ground at the base of the
mountain and holding on in your grand or
bit, you pass through a belt of juniper woods,
caUed "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 faUing-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
89

STEEP TRAILS
these dark ways of the underworld whenever
opportunity offers, if for no other reason to
see with new appreciation on returning to the
sunshine the beauties that lie so thick about us.
Sheep Rock is about twenty miles from
Sisson's, and is one of the principal winter
pasture-grounds of the wild sheep, from which
it takes its name. It is a mass of lava present
ing to the gray sage plain of Shasta VaUey a
bold craggy front two thousand feet high. Its
summit Ues at an elevation of five thousand
five hundred feet above the sea, and has sev
eral square miles of comparatively level sur
face, where bunch-grass grows and the snow
does not Ue deep, thus allowing the hardy
sheep to pick up a Uving through the winter
months when deep snows have driven them
down from the lofty ridges of Shasta.
From here it might be well to leave the im
mediate base of the mountain for a few days
and visit the Lava Beds made famous by the
Modoc War. They Ue about forty miles to the
northeastward, on the south shore of Rhett or
Tule ^ Lake, at an elevation above sea-level of
about forty-five hundred feet. They are a por
tion of a flow of dense black vesicular lava,
dipping northeastward at a low angle, but
Uttle changed as yet by the weather, and about
' Pronounced Too'-lay.
90

SHASTA RAMBLES
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 com
bination of topographical conditions of very
striking character. The way Ues by Mount
Bremer, over stretches of gray sage plains,
interrupted by rough lava-slopes timbered with
juniper and yellow pine, and with here and
there a green meadow and a stream.
This is a famous game region, and you will
be Ukely to meet smaU 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 dweU here
from year to year, winter and summer, de
scending occasionally into the adjacent sage
plains and lava-beds to feed, but ever ready
to take refuge in the jagged crags of their
mountain at every alarm. While traveling
with a company of hunters I saw about fifty
in one flock.
The Van Bremer brothers, after whom the
mountain is named, told me that they once
cUmbed the mountain with their rifles and
hounds on a grand hunt; but, after keeping
up the pursuit for a week, theu- boots and
clothing gave way, and the hounds were lamed
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STEEP TRAILS
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 de
scending ground, and over rough masses of
angular rocks they f eU hopelessly behind. Only
half a dozen sheep were shot as they passed
the hunters stationed near their paths circUng
round the rugged summit. The full-grown
bucks weigh nearly three hundred and fifty
pounds. The mule deer are nearly as heavy. Their
long, massive ears give them a very striking
appearance. One large buck that I measured
stood three feet and seven inches high at the
shoulders, and when the ears were extended
horizontally the distance across from tip to
tip was two feet and one inch.
From the Van Bremer ranch the way to the
Lava Beds leads down the Bremer Meadows
past many a smooth grassy knoU ahd jutting
cliff, along the shore of Lower Klamath Lake,
and thence across a few miles of sage plain to
the brow of the waU-like bluff of lava four hun
dred and fifty feet above Tule Lake. Here you
are looking southeastward, and the Modoc
landscape, which at once takes possession of
you, Ues revealed in front. It is composed of
three principal parts; on your left lies the
92

SHASTA RAMBLES
bright expanse of Tule Lake, on your right an
evergreen forest, and between the two are the
black Lava Beds.
When I first stood there, one bright day be
fore 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 loveUness.
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 mysteri
ous lava plain between them compelled atten
tion. Here you trace yawning fissures, there
clusters of somber pits; now you mark where
the lava is bent and corrugated in swelUng
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 deep-
93

STEEP TRAILS
ened over all the landscape. Then fell the
gloaming, making everything still more for
bidding and mysterious. Then, darkness like
death. Next morning the crisp, sunshiny air made
even the Modoc landscape less hopeless, and
we ventured down the bluff to the edge of the
Lava Beds. Just at the foot of the bluff we
came to a square enclosed by a stone wall. This
is a graveyard where Ue buried thirty soldiers,
most of whom met their fate out in the Lava
Beds, as we leam by the boards marking the
graves — a gloomy place to die in, and deadly-
looking even without Modocs, The poor fel
lows that Ue 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 Gen
eral Canby was slain while seeking to make
peace with the treacherous Modocs.
Two or three miles farther on is the main
stronghold of the Modocs, held by them so
long and defiantly against all the soldiers that
could be brought to the attack. Indians usu
ally choose to hide in taU grass and bush and
94

SHASTA RAMBLES
behind trees, where they can crouch and gUde
Uke 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 VaUey; 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
Modoos held their fort for months, until, weary
of being hemmed in, they chose to withdraw.
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 saUent and reenter
ing 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 pas
sages 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 weU calculated to inspire terror.
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STEEP TRAILS
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 him
self 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 gUded 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.
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 hori
zontal direction. The floor is littered with the
bones of the animals slaughtered for food dur-
uig the war. Some eager archaeologist may
hereafter discover this cabin and startle his
world by announcing another of the Stone Age
96

SHASTA RAMBLES
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 associ
ations and making it beautiful.
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 ui their wake. The countenance of
the lava-beds became less and less forbidding.
Tufts of pale grasses, relieved on the jet rocks,
looked Uke ornaments on a mantel, thick-
furred mats of emerald mosses appeared in
damp spots next the shore, and I noticed one
tuft of smaU ferns. From year to year in the
kindly weather the beds are thus gathering
beauty — beauty for ashes.
Returning to Sheep Rock and following the
old emigrant road, one is soon back again be
neath 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, mgged, crevassed cloudUke
97

STEEP TRAILS
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
Ungering remnants of once great glaciers that
occupied the canons now taken by the rivers,
and in a few centuries will, under present con
ditions, vanish altogether.
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 moraines or
glaciers, or, early in the season, beneath 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 Ught 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.
Only a very smaU portion of the water de-
98

SHASTA RAMBLES
rived 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 theu- 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. To find the big spring of the McCloud, or
"Mud Glacier," which you wiU know by its
size (it being the largest on the east side),
you make your way through sunny, parkUke
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 foUow
the river up or down until you come to it.
99

STEEP TRAILS
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 m the face of the waU of the river-gorge
in the form of a partially interrupted sheet
nearly seventy-five yards in width, and at a
height above the river-bed 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.
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 free
dom of the water from cutting drift, and the
100

SHASTA RAMBLES
constancy of its volume and temperature
throughout the year. The temperature is about
45°, 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,
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 Huckle
berry Valley, complete your circuit without
interruption, emerging at length from beneath
the outspread arms of the sugar pine at Straw
berry Valley, with all the new wealth and
health gathered in your walk; not tired in the
least, and only eager to repeat the round.
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 thek eventful histories. Tracing
I 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 con
fluence with the Pitt, on from there to the vol
canic region about Lassen's Butte, through
101

STEEP TRAILS
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.
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 hun
dred and eighty feet high at the other, and a
rush of crystal rapids between. The banks are
fringed with mbus, rose, plum, cherry, spiraea,
azalea, honeysuckle, hawthorn, ash, alder,
elder, aster, goldenrod, beautiful grasses,
sedges, mshes, 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 CaUfornia 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 estabUshed of all
the northern coniferse.
The volcanic region about Lassen's Butte I
have already in part described. Miles of its
102

SHASTA RAMBLES
flanks are dotted with hot springs, many of
them so sulphurous and boisterous and noisy
in their boiUng that they seem incUned to
become geysers Uke those of the Yellowstone.
The ascent of Lassen's Butte is an easy walk,
and the views from the summit are extremely
telUng, Innumerable lakes and craters sur
round the base; forests of the charming Wil-
Uamson spruce fringe lake and crater aUke; 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.
The "Big Meadows" Ue near the foot of
Lassen's Butte, a beautiful spacious basin set
in the heart of the richly fcH-ested mountains,
scarcely surpassed in the grandeur of its sur
roundings 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 teUing symbols of Nature's
affluence to be found in the mountains.
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STEEP TRAILS
The great wilds of our country, once held to
be boundless and inexhaustible, are being rap
idly invaded and overmn 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.
The Shasta region is still a fresh unspoiled
wilderness, accessible and available for travel
ers of every kind and degree. Would it not
then be a fine thing to set it apart Uke the
Yellowstone and Yosemite as a National Park
for the welfare and benefit of all mankind, pre
serving its fountains and forests and all its
glad Ufe in primeval beauty? Very Uttle 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.

VI
THE CITY OF THE SAINTS *
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 adomed
with glacier-sculptured peaks, stretches con
tinuously along the eastern horizon, forming
the boundary of the Great Salt Lake Basin;
while across the valley of the Jordan south-
westward 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 be
yond, at a distance of fifty miles, is seen the
picturesque wall of the lakeside mountains
blending with the lake and the sky.
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 col
lected and transformed into ice, and ranks of
' Letter dated "Salt Lake City, Utah, May 15, 1877."
[Editor.] 105

STEEP TRAILS
profound shadowy canons, while moraines
commensurate with the lofty fountains extend
into the vaUeys, forming far the grandest series
of glacial monuments I have yet seen this side
of the Sierra.
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 atten
tion 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 canon; and it is just where this
stream comes forth into the Ught on the edge
of the valley of the Jordan that the Mormons
have built theu- new Jerusalem.
At first sight there is nothing very marked
in the external appearance of the town except
ing 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 Uke a field of glacier boulders
overgrown with aspens, such as one often meets
in the upper vaUeys of the Califomia Sierra,
for only the angular roofs are clearly visible.
106

<Z
Os
a
o<<
HM

.Vifir^v;^

'^¦^ferf^.'i

THE CITY OF THE SAINTS
Perhaps nineteen twentieths of the houses
are built of bluish-gray adobe bricks, and are
only one or two stories high, forming fine cot
tage 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 simpUcity, indicating love for flow
ers by people comparatively poor, rather than
deUberate efforts of the rich for shoTvy artistic
effects. They are like the pet gardens of chil
dren, about as artless and humble, and har
monize with the low dwelUngs to which they
belong. In ahnost every one you find daisies,
and mint, and lilac bushes, and rows of plain
EngUsh tuUps, Lilacs and tuUps are the most
characteristic flowers, and nowhere have I
seen them in greater perfection. As Oakland
is preeminently a city of roses, so is this Mor
mon Saints' Rest a city of Ulacs 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.
The surrounding commons, the marshy
levels of the Jordan, and dry, graveUy lake
107

STEEP TRAILS
benches on the slopes of the Wahsatch foot
hills are now gay with wild flowers, chief
among which are a species of phlox, with an
abundance of rich pink corollas, growing among
sagebmsh in showy tufts, and a beautiful
papiUonaceous 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 giUa.
It is deUghtful 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 Uttle Latter-Days with
their precious bouquets, and at such times it
was hard to believe the dark, bloody passages
of Mormon history.
But to return to the city. As soon as City
Creek approaches its upper Umit 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 pre
vents their becoming offensive, and Uttle Saints
108

THE CITY OF THE SAINTS
not over particular may be seen drinking from
them everywhere.
The streets are remarkably wide and the
buildings low, making them appear yet wider
than they really are. Trees are planted along
the sidewalks — ehns, 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 Uttle regularity in the
buildings — now a row of plain adobe struc
tures, half store, half dwelling, then a high
mercantUe 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 Cooperative Mercantile Institution),
while many a small, codfishy corner grocery
bears the legend "Holiness to the Lord,
Z.C.M.L" But Uttle evidence wiU 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.
Most of the women I have chanced to meet,
109

STEEP TRAILS
especially those from the country, have a
weary, repressed look, as if for the sake of their
reUgion 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, look
ing as innocent and unspeculative as a lot of
heifers, while the mascuUne 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 Ufe, 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.
Polygamy, as far as I have observed, exerts
a more degrading influence upon husbands than
upon wives. The love of the latter finds expres
sion in flowers and children, whUe the former
seem to be rendered incapable of pure love of
anything. The spirit of Mormonism is in
tensely exclusive and un-American. A more
withdrawn, compact, sealed-up body of people
110

THE CITY OF THE SAINTS
could hardly be found on the face of the earth
than is gathered here, notwithstanding rail
roads, telegraphs, and the penetrating lights
that go sifting through society everywhere in
this revolutionary, question-askuig 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 offen
sive to any free man.
"We Saints," they are continuaUy saying,
"are not as bad as we are caUed. 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
wiU 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 dis
cussed 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
111

STEEP TRAILS
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.
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 pecu-
Uarity 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.
But however "the peculiar doctrines" and
"pecuUar practices" of Mormonism have
affected the bodies and the minds of the old
Saints, the Uttle 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 deUght
ful 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, these Mormon children, "Utah's best
crop," seem remarkably bright and promising.
112

THE CITY OF THE SAINTS
From children one passes naturally into the
blooming wilderness, to the pure reUgion of
sunshine and snow, where all the good and the
evil of this strange people Ufts and vanishes
from the mind Uke mist from the mountains.

VII
A GREAT STORM IN UTAH *
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 swelUng and
booming adown the canons, and out in the
valley of the Jordan a thousand rain-pools are
gleaming in the sun.
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 canons 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 vaUey and plain from range to range, be
stowing their benefactions in most cordial and
1 Letter dated "Salt Lake City, Utah, May 19, 1877."
[Editor.] 114

A GREAT STORM IN UTAH
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 re
minding 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 reUgion.
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 them
selves along the mountain-tops, and sending
out long, overlapping wings across the valley;
and even where no cloud was visible, an ob
scuring film absorbed the sunlight, giving rise
to a cold, bluish darkness. Nevertheless, dis
tant objects along the boundaries of the land
scape were revealed with wonderful distinct-
115

STEEP TRAILS
ness in this weird, subdued, cloud-sifted light.
The mountains, in particular, with the forests
on their flanks, their mazy laceUke canons, the
wombs of the ancient glaciers, and their mar
velous 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.
While we were reveUng in this rare, ungarish
grandeur, tuming from range to range, study
ing the darkening sky and Ustening to the stiU
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 pro
found calm. At 4.30 p.m. a dark brownish
cloud appeared close down on the plain to
wards the lake, extending from the northern
extremity of the Oquirrh Range in a north
easterly direction as far as the eye could reach.
Its pecuUar color and structure excited our
attention without enabUng us to decide cer
tainly as to its character, but we were not left
long in doubt, for in a few minutes it came
sweeping over the valley in wild uproar, a
116

A GREAT STORM IN UTAH
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, ecUpsmg aU
the landscapes ui its course — the bending
trees, the dust streamers, and the wild onrush
of everything movable giving it an appreciable
visibiUty that rendered it grand and inspiring.
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 falUng
in the foul streets was a pitiful sight.
Notwithstanding the vaunted refining influ
ences of towns, purity of all kinds — pure
hearts, pure streams, pure snow — must here
be exposed to terrible trials. City Creek, com
ing 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 UUes
in gardens most loved are tainted with a thou
sand 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
117

STEEP TRAILS
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
famiUes 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 deUght. The old Latter-Days seemed
to shun them. I should Uke to see how Mr.
Young, the Lake Prophet, would meet such
messengers. But to return to the storm. Toward the even
ing of the 18th it began to wither. The snowy
skirts of the Wahsatch Mountains appeared
beneath the Ufting 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 Uke 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 por
tions of the plain were flushed with red and
purple, and aU the mountains and the clouds
above them were painted in corresponding
118

A GREAT STORM IN UTAH
loveUness. Earth and sky, round and round
the entire landscape, was one ravishing reve
lation of color, infinitely varied and inter-
blended. I have seen many a glorious sunset beneath
Ufting storm-clouds on the mountains, but
nothing comparable with this. I felt as if new-
arrived in some other far-off world. The moun
tains, the plams, the sky, aU 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 yeUows, and deli
cious pearly grays divinely toned and inter-
blended, 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 canons like
tinted wool, rising and drooping around the
topmost peaks, fondUng their mgged bases, or,
saiUng alongside, traUed their lustrous fringes
through the pines as if taking a last view of
their accomplished work. Then came dark
ness, and the glorious day was done.
This afternoon the Utah mountains and val
leys seem to belong to our own very world
again. They are covered with common sun
shine. Down here on the banks of the Jordan,
119

STEEP TRAILS
larks and redwings are swinging on the rushes;
the balmy air is instinct with immortal Ufe;
the wild flowers, the grass, and the farmers'
grain are fresh as if, Uke the snow, they had
come out of heaven, and the last of the angel
clouds are fleeing from the mountains.

VIII
bathing in salt LAKE *
When the north wmd blows, bathing in Salt
Lake is a glorious baptism, for then it is aU
wildly awake with waves, blooming like a
prauie m snowy crystal foam. Plunging con
fidently into the midst of the grand uproar you
are hugged and welcomed, and swim without
effort, rocking and heaving up and down, in
deUghtful 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.
The nearest point on the shore-Une is dis
tant 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
1 Letter dated "Lake Point, Utah, May 20, 1877." [Ed
itor.] 121

STEEP TRAILS
their feet in the clear blue brine, with fine
curving 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 pleas
ure 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 flow
ery hillsides together.
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 ffies come thronging to the Ught,
and birds sing their best. The mountain-ranges,
stretching majesticaUy north and south, were
piled with pearly cumuli, the sky overhead was
pure azure, and the wind-swept lake was all
aroU and aroar with whitecaps.
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
122

BATHING IN SALT LAKE
the rocks that bounded the cove on the east.
The outer ranks, ever broken, ever builded,
formed a magnificent rampart, sculptured and
corniced Uke the hanging wall of a bergschrund,
and appeared hopelessly insurmountable, how
ever easily one might ride the swelling waves
beyond. I feasted awhile on their beauty,
watching their coming in from afar like faith
ful messengers, to tell their stories one by one;
then I turned reluctantly away, to botanize
and wait a cahn. But the cahn 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.
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 mo
tion, as if, like a fish, I had been afloat all my
Ufe, now low out of sight in the smooth, glassy
vaUeys, now bounding aloft on firm combing
crests, whUe the crystal foam beat against my
breast with keen, crisp clashing, as if composed
123

STEEP TRAILS
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 Uke Uving creatures, blooming and
rejoicing in the brightness of the day, and
chanting the history of their grand mountain
home. 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
bum Uke fire." I was conscious only of a joy
ous 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
pecuUar. In calm weather, however, the sus
taining power of the water might probably be
more marked. This was by far the most excit
ing 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.
Since the completion of the transcontinental
124

BATHING IN SALT LAKE
and Utah railways, this magnificent lake in
the heart of the continent has become as acces
sible as any watering-place on either coast; and
I am sure that thousands of travelers, sick and
weU, 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 excur
sions; and then, besides the bracing waters,
the climate is deUghtful. The mountains rise
into the cool sky furrowed with canons ahnost
yosemitic in grandeur, and filled with a glori
ous profusion of flowers and trees. Lovers of
science, lovers of wildness, lovers of pure rest
will find here more than they may hope for.
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 earUer history will vanish from the
mind as completely as when we bathe in the
fountain azure of the Sierra.

IX
MORMON LILIES ^
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 cli
mate. 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 tme
Uly, and only a very few Uliaceous 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. Neverthe
less, in the building and planting of this grand
Territory the UUes were not forgotten. Far
back in the dim geologic ages, when the sedi
ments 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
» Letter dated "Salt Lake, July, 1877." [Editor.]
126

MORMON LILIES
forth from innumerable rifts and craters; when
the ice of the Glacial Period was laid Uke a
mantle over every mountain and valley —
throughout all these immensely protracted
periods, m the throng of these majestic opera
tions. Nature kept her flower children in mind.
She considered the UUes, and, while planting
the plains with sage and the hiUs with cedar,
she has covered at least one mountain with
golden erythroniums and fritillarias as its
crowning glory, as if wilUng to show what she
could do in the lily line even here.
Looking southward from the south end of
Salt Lake, the two northmost peaks of the
Oquirrh Range are seen swelling cahnly into
the cool sky without any marked character,
excepting only their snow crowns, and a few
smaU weedy-looking patches of spruce and fir,
the simpUcity 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 after
wards 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 hol
lows, and over aU the smooth crown of snow.
127

STEEP TRAILS
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 jag
ged 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 leam what the Oquirrh rocks were made of,
what trees composed the curious patches of
forest; and, perhaps more than all, I was ani
mated 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.
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
128

MORMON LILIES
corresponding abundance of winged blossoms
above them, moths and butterffies, the legu
minosae of the insect kingdom. This floweriness
is maintained with deUghtful variety all the
way up through rocks and bushes to the snow
— violets, UUes, gUias, Oenotheras, wallflowers,
ivesias, saxifrages, smilax, and miles of bloom
ing bushes, chiefly azalea, honeysuckle, brier
rose, buckthorn, and eriogonum, aU meeting
and blending in divine accord.
Two UUaceous plants in particular, Erythro-
nium 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 UUaceous plants.
The whole mountain-side was aglow with
them, from a height of fifty-five hundred feet
to the very edge of the snow. Although re
markably fragile, both in form and in substance,
they are endowed with plenty of deep-seated
vitaUty, enabUng them to grow in all kinds of
places — down in leafy glens, in the lee of wind-
beaten ledges, and beneath the bmshy tangles
of azalea, and oak, and prickly roses — every
where forming the crowning glory of the flow
ers. If the neighboring mountains are as rich
in UUes, then this may well be called the Lily
Range, After climbing about a thousand feet above
129

STEEP TRAILS
the plain I came to a picturesque mass of rock,
cropping up through the underbmsh 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 com
posed 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 be
tween the rock and the bushes, and both the
erythronium and the fritillaria were in fuU
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 exceed
ing six inches in height, so that the most
searching winds that sweep the mountains
scarce reach low enough to shake their bells.
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 oppo-
130

MORMON LILIES
site 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, Uke 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 Uke the carnivorous darUng
tonia, the fly-catcher, the walking fem, etc. I
hardly know how the Uttle beUs I have been
describing would be regarded by seekers of this
class, but every true flower-lover who comes to
consider these Utah UUes will surely be well
rewarded, however long the way.
Pushing on up the rugged slopes, I found
many deUghtful seclusions — moist nooks at
the foot of cUffs, and UUes in every one of
them, not growing close together like daisies,
but weU apart, with plenty of room for their
beUs 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 aUve,
sleeping deep beneath the ground, Uke field
mice in their nests; then the snow-flowers fall
above them, UUes over UUes, until the spring
winds blow, and these winter UUes wither in
turn; then the hiding erythroniums and fritil
larias rise again, responsive to the first touches
of the sun. 131

STEEP TRAILS
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 plant
ing 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 Unnets.
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 about forty feet in height.
Among their giant relatives of the Sierra the
very largest would seem mere saplings. A con
siderable portion of the south side of the moun
tain is planted with a species of aspen, called
"quaking asp" by the wood-choppers. It
seems to be quite abundant on many of the
eastem mountains of the basin, and forms a
marked feature of their upper forests.
Wading up the curves of the summit was
rather toilsome, for the snow, which was soft
ened by the blazing sun, was from ten to
twenty feet deep, but the view was one of the
132

MORMON LILIES
most impressively subUme I ever beheld.
Snowy, ice-sculptured ranges bounded the
horizon aU around, while the great lake, eighty
miles long and fifty miles wide, lay fully re
vealed beneath a Uly sky. The shore-lines,
marked by a ribbon of white sand, were seen
sweepmg around many a bay and promon
tory in elegant curves, and picturesque islands
rising to mountain heights, and some of them
capped with pearly cumuU. 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 Moun
tains. Utah Lake, lying thirty-five miles to
the south, was in full sight also, and the river
Jordan, which Unks the two together, may be
traced in silvery gleams throughout its whole
course. 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 UUes 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
133

STEEP TRAILS
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
UUes 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."
The other liliaceous plants I have met in
Utah are two species of zigadenas, Fritillaria
atropurpurea, Calochortus Nuttallii, and three
or four handsome alUums. One of these UUes,
the calochortus, several species of which are
weU 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 pre
vailed, especially in the southern settlements,
on account of drouth and grasshoppers, and
throughout one hunger winter in particular,
thousands of the people subsisted chiefly on
the bulbs of these tulips, called "sego" by the
Indians, who taught them its use.
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
134

?J S;
3 5

MORMON LILIES
freckled like the petals of Fritillaria atropur^
purea. They are fmit rather than flower —
good brown bread. But down in the San Pitch
VaUey at Gunnison, I discovered a genuine
Uly, happily named Lily Young, She is a
granddaughter of Brigham Young, slender and
graceful, with Uly-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 UUes, will ever rise
in clear reUef, and associated with them will
always be the Mormon Uly of San Pitch.

THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY ^
The sun vaUey 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 hUls. Cultivation is not
wholly wanting, for here are the choicest 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 accompUshed by the old mission
aries 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.
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 hand
some, conceited Uttle town of Los Angeles,
where one finds Spanish adobes and Yankee
shingles meeting and overlapping in very curi-
' Letter dated "September 1, 1877." [Editor.]
136

THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY
ous antagonism. I beUeve 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 Ught, 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 bmsque Uttle bits of civiUzation 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. At Pasadena I had the rare good fortune to
meet my old friend Doctor Cougar, with whom
I had studied chemistry and mathematics
fifteen years ago. He exalted San Gabriel above
aU other inhabitable vaUeys, 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 advan
tages offered by nearly every new State and
Territory. Here I have made my home, and
137

THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY
vigorous and yielding immense crops of fmit,
although they are only twenty feet apart."
Seedlings are said to begin to bear remunera
tive crops in their tenth year, but by superior
cultivation this long unproductive period may
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 irri
gated by making rmgs of earth around them,
which are connected with smaU 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 cost
of transportation to San Francisco, commission
on sales, etc. He considers flOOO 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.
139

STEEP TRAILS
The lemon and lime are also cultivated here
to some extent, and considerable attention is
now being given to the Florida banana, and
the oUve, ahnond, and English walnut. But
the orange interest heavily overshadows every
other, while vines have of late years been so
unremunerative they are seldom mentioned.
This is preeminently a fmit land, but the
fame of its productions has in some way far
outmn the results that have as yet been
attained. Experiments have been tried, and
good beginnings made, but the number of
really valuable, well-estabUshed groves is
scarce as one to fifty, compared with the newly
planted. Many causes, however, have com
bined 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 fmit, are the burning and shining
lights that direct and energize the sanguine
newcomers. After witnessing the bad effect of homeless-
ness, developed to so destructive an extent in
Califomia, it would reassure every lover of his
race to see the hearty home-building going on
here and the blessed contentment that natu
rally follows it. Travel-worn pioneers, who
have been tossed about like boulders in fiood-
time, are thronging hither as to a kind of ter-
140

THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY
restrial heaven, resolved to rest. They build,
and plant, and settle, and so come under nat
ural influences. When a man plants a tree he
plants himself. Every root is an anchor, over
which he rests with grateful interest, and be
comes sufficiently cahn to feel the joy of Uving.
He necessarily makes the acquaintance of the
sun and the sky. Favorite trees fiU his mind,
and, whUe 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 col
ored fruits, as if it were transparent, and leams
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.
The Pasadena Colony, located on the south
west comer 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 accompUshed in the county. It now num
bers about sixty famiUes, mostly drawn from
the better class of vagabond pioneers, who,
during their rolUng-stone days have managed
141

STEEP TRAILS
to gather sufficient gold moss to purchase from
ten to forty acres of land. They are perfectly
hilarious in their newly found Ufe, 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 mean
time 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 sea
soned with a smack of mental ozone, Attic salt,
which struck me as being rare among the tiUers
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.
If we look now at these southern valleys in
general, it wiU appear at once that with all
their advantages they Ue 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
142

THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY
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. Nor is there anything sufficiently reviving
in the fine climate to form a reliable induce
ment for veiy sick people. Most of this class,
from aU 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 hard 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, Uke most others, to be adapted for well
people only. From all I could find out regard
ing 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.
The summer cUmate of the fix and pine woods
of the Sierra Nevada would, I think, be found
143

STEEP TRAILS
infinitely more reviving; but because these
woods have not been advertised like patent
medicines, few seem to think of the spicy, vivi
fying influences that pervade their fountain
freshness and beauty.

XI
the SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS*
After saying so much for human culture in
my last, perhaps I may now be aUowed a word
for wildness — the wildness of this southland,
pure and untamable as the sea.
In the mountains of San Gabriel, overlook
ing the lowland vines and fruit groves. Mother
Nature is most ruggedly, thornily savage. Not
even in the Sierra have I ever made the ac
quaintance of mountains more rigidly inac
cessible. The slopes are exceptionally steep
and insecure to the foot of the explorer, how
ever great his strength or skill may be, but
thorny chaparral constitutes their chief de
fense. With the exception of Uttle 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 topog
raphy, in shaggy, ungovernable exuberance,
fairly dwarfing the utmost efforts of human
culture out of sight and mind.
» Letter written during the first week of September, 1877.,
[Editor.] 145

STEEP TRAILS
But in the very heart of this thorny wilder
ness, down in the deUs, you may find gardens
filled with the fairest flowers, that any child
would love, and unapproachable Unns fined
with UUes and ferns, where the ousel builds its
mossy hut and sings in chorus with the white
falUng water. Bears, also, and panthers, wolves,
wildcats, wood rats, squirrels, foxes, snakes,
and innumerable birds, aU find grateful homes
here, adding wildness to wildness in glorious
profusion and variety.
Where the coast ranges and the Sierra
Nevada come together we find a very compU-
cated system of short ranges, the geology and
topography of which is yet hidden, and many
years of laborious study must be given for
anj^hing 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 domi
nating peak, rises towards the eastern extrem
ity of the range to a height of about six thou
sand 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 south-
146

THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS
em 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 aU seems gray, barren,
silent — dead, bleached bones of mountains,
overgrown with scrubby bushes, like gray
moss. But all mountains are fuU of hidden
beauty, and the next day after my arrival at
Pasadena I suppUed myself with bread and
eagerly set out to give myself to their keeping.
On the first day of my excursion I went only
as far as the mouth of Eaton Canon, 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 look
ing for a camping-ground among the boulder
beds of the canon, I came upon a strange, dark
man of doubtful parentage. He kindly invited
me to camp with him, and led me to his Uttle
hut. AU 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 CaUfomia. He happened to be
out of candles, so we sat in the dark while he
gave me a sketch of his Ufe, which was exceed
ingly picturesque. Then he showed me his
plans for the future. He was going to settle
among these canon boulders, and make money,
147

STEEP TRAILS
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 doUars. 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
seU water down the valley; and then the hill
side 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." AU this prospec
tive 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.
Half an hour's easy rambUng up the canon
brought me to the foot of "The FaU," famous
throughout the valley settlements as the finest
yet discovered in the range. It is a charming
Uttle thing, with a voice sweet as a songbird's,
leaping some thirty-five or forty feet into a
round, mirror pool. The cUff back of it and on
both sides is completely covered with thick,
148

THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS
furry mosses, and the white faU 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 fems and dabble away their
hot hoUdays in the cool pool. They are fortu
nate in finding so fresh a retreat so near their
homes. It is the Yosemite of San Gabriel. The
waUs, though not of the tme Yosemite type
either in form or sculpture, rise to a height of
nearly two thousand feet. Fems 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-Uke bottom of the valley, the whole form
ing a charming little poem of wildness — the
vestibule of these shaggy mountain temples.
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 vaUey 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
eastem rim, and from first to last during three
days spent in this excursion, I had to con-
149

STEEP TRAILS
tend with the richest, most self-possessed and
uncompromising chaparral I have ever enjoyed
since first my mountaineering began.
For a hundred feet or so the ascent was prac
ticable 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 the wild ani
mals, in particular for bears, wolves, and wUd-
cats. In the densest places I came upon wood-
rat villages whose huts were from four to eight
feet high, built in the same style of architec
ture as those of the muskrats.
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 mapUke beneath, and to drink
in the rare loveUness of the sunUght before
hastening down in search of water. Pushing
through another mile of chaparral, I emerged
into one of the most beautiful parkUke groves
of Uve 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
150

THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS
dry channel of one of the tributary streams,
but, following it down a short distance, I de
scried 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 avail
able only by filtering it through sand and
charcoal. This I resolved to do in case the
night came on before I found better. Follow
ing the channel a mile farther down to its con
fluence with another, larger tributary, I found
a lot of boulder pools, clear as crystal, and
brimming full, linked together by little gUs-
tening currents just strong enough to sing.
Flowers in full bloom adorned the banks, UUes
ten feet high, and luxuriant ferns arching over
one another in lavish abundance, while a noble
old Uve 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.
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
151

STEEP TRAILS
base of the mountain the channel was dry, and
the chaparral closed over from bank to bank,
so that I was compeUed to creep more than a
mile on hands and knees.
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 smaU
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 dis
covered one rattler between my feet. But there
was a bashful look in his eye, and a withdraw
ing, 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 there
fore passed on, liftuig my foot a little higher
than usual, and left him to enjoy his life m this
his own home.
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 foUowing
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 fuU of seams, making the camp
a very unsafe one during an earthquake.
152

THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS
Next day the chaparral, in ascending the
eastem rim of the basin, was, if possible, denser
and more stubbornly bayoneted than ever. I
foUowed 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 aU my pains. Most of the plants are
identical with those of the Sierra, but there are
quite a number of Mexican species. One conif
erous tree was all I found. This is a spruce of
a species new to me, Douglasii macrocarpa.^
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 snaked and wolves.
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 de
scription. My bread gave out a day before
reaching the settlements, but I felt all the
fresher and clearer for the fast.
* [The spruce, or hemlock, then known as Abies Douglasii
var. macrocarpa is now called Pseudotsuga macrocarpa.]

XII

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 tme. For not
withstanding it has gardens, grainfields, and
hayfields generously productive, these com
pared with the arid stretches of valley and
plain, as beheld in general views from the
mountain-tops, are mere specks lying incon
spicuously here and there, in out-of-the-way
places, often thirty or forty miles apart.
In leafy regions, blessed with copious rains,
we leam to measure the productive capacity
of the soil by its natural vegetation. But this
rule is almost whoUy inapplicable here, for,
notwithstanding its savage nakedness, scarce
at all veUed by a sparse growth of sage and
linosyris,^ the desert soU 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
> Written at Ward, Nevada, in September, 1878. [Editor.]
• See footnote on p. 38. 154

NEVADA FARMS
mountain-ranges have been thoroughly cmshed
and ground by glaciers, thrashed and vitaUzed
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 thunder-showers 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 dur
ing 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 smaU rills that slip quietly down the
upper canons through narrow strips of flowery
verdure, most of them sinking and vanishing
155

STEEP TRAILS
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.
It is upon these small outflowing rills that
most of the Nevada ranches are located, Ijang
countersunk beneath the general level, just
where the mountains meet the plains, at an
average elevation of five thousand feet above
sea-level. AU the cereals and garden vege
tables thrive here, and yield bountiful crops.
Fruit, however, has been, as yet, grown suc
cessfully in only a few specially favored sppts.
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 soU is not too strongly impregnated
with salts, some grain is raised. Reese River
VaUey, Big Smoky VaUey, and White River
156

NEVADA FARMS
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.
Still another class equally well defined, both
as to distribution and as to products, is re
stricted to that portion of western Nevada and
the eastern border of Califomia 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 val
leys 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 chan
nels, and the sleeping ground, starting at once
into action, pours forth its wealth without stint.
But notwithstanding the many porous fields
thus fertiUzed, considerable portions of the
waters of aU these rivers continue to reach their
old deathbeds in the desert, indicating that in
these salt valleys there still is room for com
ing farmers. In middle and eastern Nevada,
however, every riU that I have seen in a ride of
three thousand miles, at aU available for irriga
tion, has been claimed and put to use.
157

STEEP TRAILS
It appears, therefore, that under present
conditions the limit of agricultural develop
ment ui 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 irrigat
ing from ten to fifty acres, were claimed more
than twenty years ago.
A majority of these pioneer settlers are
plodding Dutchmen, Uving 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 mshes, was sold at
from two to three hundred doUars 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 doUars a ton, while
all sorts of garden products find ready sale at
high prices. 158

NEVADA FARMS
With rich mine markets and salubrious cli
mate, 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 soUtude, most of
them having been elected from adventurers
from Califomia — the pioneers of pioneers.
The passing stranger, however, is always wel
comed and suppUed 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 mar
ried hope to return to CaUfomia to educate
their children, and the ease with which money
is made renders the fuffilhnent of these hopes
comparatively sure.
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 vaUeys that stretch from north to
south, seldom will your eye be intermpted by
159

STEEP TRAILS
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
aUke naked and shadowless in the sun-glare;
and though, perhaps, traveUng 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, alka-
Une wildness.
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 confi
dently 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. 160

NEVADA FARMS
The immense expanse of mountain-girt val
leys, on the edges of which these hidden ranches
Ue, 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 joUy
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.
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
clauns 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.
On the CaUfornia side of the Sierra grain wiU
not ripen at a much greater elevation than
four thousand feet above sea-level. The val
leys of Nevada Ue 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
161

STEEP TRAILS
feet above the sea, the grain harvest is about
a month later than in CaUfornia. In Reese
River Valley, six thousand feet, it begins near
the end of August. Winter grain ripens some
what earlier, while occasionally one meets a
patch of barley in some cool, high-lying canon
that wiU not mature before the middle of
September. UnUke Califomia, Nevada wiU 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 cleft and porous character
of the mountain rocks, tilted at every angle,
and the presence of springs bursting forth in
the valleys far from the mountain sources,
indicate accumulations of water from the melt
ing snows that have escaped evaporation,
which, no doubt, may in many places now
barren be brought to the surface in flowing
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 vaUeys. The encouragement that suc-
162

NEVADA FARMS
cessful experiments of this kind would give to
emigration seeking farms forms an object well
worthy the attention of the Government. But
aU that Califomia farmers in the grand central
vaUey requu-e is the preservation of the forests
and the wise distribution of the glorious abun
dance of water from the snow stored on the
west flank of the Sierra.
Whether any considerable area of these sage
plains wiU ever thus be made to blossom in
grass and wheat, experience wUl show. But in
the mean time Nevada is beautiful in her wild
ness, and if tillers of the soU can thus be brought
to see that possibly Nature may have other
uses even for rich soil besides the feeding of
human beings, then wUl these foodless "des
erts" have taught a fine lesson.

XIII
NEVADA FORESTS^
When the traveler from Califomia has
crossed the Sierra and gone a little way down
the eastem 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 al
ways present a singularly barren aspect, ap
pearing gray and forbidding and shadeless,
Uke heaps of ashes dumped from the blazing
sky. But wheresoever we may venture to go in
all this good world, nature is ever found richer
and more beautiful than she seems, and no
where may you meet with more varied and
deUghtful 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
' Written at Eureka, Nevada, in October, 1878. [Editor.]
164

NEVADA FORESTS
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 exuber
ance of California, but still amply sufficient
throughout the barest deserts for a clear mani
festation of God's love.
Though Nevada is situated in what is caUed
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, to
gether 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 Eastem
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
165

STEEP TRAILS
down in sheltered hollows on moist moraines,
would be regarded in California only as groves
of sapUngs, 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.
The height of the timber-line 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 observa
tion whose summits rise distinctly above the
tree-Une. 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.
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 CaU
fomia. By far the most abundant and inter-
166

NEVADA FORESTS
esting of these is the Pinus Fremontiana,^ or
nut pine. In the number of individual treet
and extent of range this curious Uttle conifer
surpasses aU 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 juni
per on the lower slopes to break the continuity
of these curious woods, which, though dark-
looking at a Uttle distance, are yet ahnost
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 com
prehensively, 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 vaUey and lofty crowning dome.
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
•Now called Pinits TnonophyUa, or one-leaf pinon. [Editor.]
167

STEEP TRAILS
eyes at the mountains rising along their edges,
perhaps twenty miles away, but no invitation
that is at all Ukely to be understood is discern
ible. Every mountain, however high it swells
into the sky, seems utterly barren. Approach
ing nearer, a low bmshy 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 Unosyris, or a purple aster, or a tuft
of dry bunch-grass.
The harshest mountain-sides, hot and water
less, seem best adapted to the nut pine's de
velopment. 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, grasp
ing roots. It is a sturdy, thickset Uttle 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
168

THE SAGE LEVELS OF THE NEVADA DESERT

NEVADA FORESTS
so dark a mass in the distance, the foUage is a
pale grayish green, in stiff, awl-shaped fascicles.
When examined closely these round needles
seem incUned 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 pre
vailing gray of the mountains on which they
deUght to dweU.
The value of this species to Nevada is not
easily overestimated. It furnishes fuel, char
coal, and timber for the mines, and, together
with the enduring juniper, so generally asso
ciated with it, supplies the ranches with abun
dance of firewood and rough fencing. Many a
square mile has already been denuded in sup
plying 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 Uke this one, the pine-nut crop of
Nevada is, perhaps, greater than the entire
wheat crop of CaUfornia, concerning which so
much is said and felt throughout the food-
markets of the world.
The Indians alone appreciate this portion
169

STEEP TRAILS
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 Ughtly scorched by burning a thin
covering of brushwood over them. The resin,
with which the cones are bedraggled, is thus
burned off, the nuts sUghtly 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, Uke birds' eggs. The shells are thin,
and may be cmshed between the thumb and
finger. The kernels are white and waxy-look
ing, becoming brown by roasting, sweet and
deUcious 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.
Looking over the whole continent, none of
Nature's bounties seems to me so great as
170

NEVADA FORESTS
this in the way of food, none so Uttle appre
ciated. Fortunately for the Indians and wild
animals that gather around Nature's board,
this crop is not easily harvested in a monopol
izing way. If it could be gathered Uke wheat
the whole would be carried away and dissi
pated in towns, leaving the brave inhabitants
of these wilds to starve.
Long before the harvest-time, which is in
September and October, the Indians examine
the trees with keen discernment, and inas
much as the cones require two years to mature
from the first appearance of the Uttle red ro
settes 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; ba'skets,
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 cav
alcades curiously picturesque. Flaming scarfs
and caUco skirts stream loosely over the
knotty ponies, usually two squaws astride of
each, with the small baby midgets bandaged
171

STEEP TRAILS
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.
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, foUowed
by the children; beating begins with loud noise
and chatter; the burs fly right and left, lodg
ing against stones and sagebmsh; 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,
garmlous as jays, the first grand nut feast
begins. Sufficient quantities are thus obtained
in a few weeks to last all winter.
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 moun
tains, besides immense numbers of rabbits and
hares; but the pine-nuts are their main de
pendence — their staff of Ufe, their bread.
Insects also, scarce noticed by man, come
in for their share of this fine bounty. Eggs
are deposited, and the baby grubs, happy fel
lows, find themselves in a sweet world of
172

NEVADA FORESTS
plenty, feeding their way through the heart
of the cone from one nut-chamber to another,
secure from rain and wind and heat, untU
their wings are grown and they are ready to
launch out into the free ocean of air and light.

XIV
Nevada's timber belt ^
The pine woods on the tops of the Nevada
mountains are already shining and blooming
in winter snow, making a most blessedly re
freshing 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.
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 accompUshed, every
nut will doubtless have been put to use.
All of the nine Nevada conifers mentioned
in my last letter are also found in CaUfomia,
* Written at Pioche, Nevada, in October, 1878. [Editor.]
174

NEVADA'S TIMBER BELT
excepting only the Rocky Mountain spmce,
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 Uke CaUfomia 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.
MUls have been built in the most accessible
canons of the higher ranges, and sufficient
lumber of an inferior kind is made to supply
most of the local demand. The principal lum
ber 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 aU the higher ranges throughout the
State. In botanical characters it is nearly
alUed to the Weymouth, or white, pine of the
Eastem States, and to the sugar and moun
tain pines of the Sierra. In open situations
it branches near the ground and tosses out
175

STEEP TRAILS
long down-curving limbs aU around, often
gaining in this way a very strikingly pictur
esque 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.
On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and Golden
Gate ranges we find a still hardier and more
picturesque species, called the foxtaU 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 nee
dles, which radiate all around Uke an electric
fox- or squirrel-taU. The needles are about an
inch and a half long, sUghtly curved, elastic,
and glossily polished, so that the sunshine sift
ing through them makes them bum with a
fine silvery luster, while their number and
elastic temper teU deUghtfuUy in the singing
winds. This tree is preeminently 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 slen
der, tapering towers of shining verdure; others
with two or three specialized branches pushed
176

NEVADA'S TIMBER BELT
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
paraUel to the axis of the mountain, with the
elegant tassels hung in charming order be
tween 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 vari
ety of arching forms, standing free or in groups,
leaning away from or toward each other in
curious architectural stmctures, — innumer
able 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 crumbUng 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 ex
travagantly picturesque, offering a richer and
more varied series of forms to the artist than
any other species I have yet seen.
One of the most interesting mountain excur-
177

STEEP TRAILS
sions 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 industri
ously among the faUing nuts; ripe wiUows and
aspens made gorgeous masses of color on the
msset 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 cov
ered with brown grasses, enriched with sun
flowers, columbines, and larkspurs and patches
of Unosyris, mostly frost-nipped and gone to
seed, yet making fine bits of yellow and purple
in the general brown.
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 meUow sunshine sifted in
ravishing splendor, showing every leaf to be
as beautiful in color as the wing of a butter-
178

NEVADA'S TIMBER BELT
fly, 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 cov
ered with them, giving rise to remarkably
beautiful effects in general views — waving,
trembUng masses of pale, translucent green
in spring and summer, yeUow 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, con
forming to all its hollows and ridges Uke a
mantle, yet roughened on the surface with
innumerable ascending spires.
Just above the aspens we entered a fine,
close growth of foxtail pine, the tallest and
most evenly planted I had yet seen. It ex
tended along a waving ridge tending north and
south and down both sides with but Uttle in
terruption for a distance of about five nules.
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 taUest specimens measured
over eighty feet, with a diameter of eighteen
inches; but many of the younger trees, grow
ing in tufts, were nearly fifty feet high, with a
diameter of only five or six inches, while their
179

STEEP TRAILS
slender shafts were hidden from top to bottom
by a close, fringy growth of tasseled branch-
lets. 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
pecuUar beauties of the predominating foxtails
by contrast.
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.
On Wheeler's Peak, the dominating sum
mit of the Snake Mountains, I found aU 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 spmce. First, as in the other
ranges, we find the juniper and nut pine; then,
higher, the white pine and balsam fir; then the
Douglas spmce and this new Rocky Moun
tain spruce, which is common eastward from
here, though this range is, as far as I have ob
served, its western limit. It is one of the larg-
180

NEVADA'S TIMBER BELT
est 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.
The foUage is bright yellowish and bluish
green, according to exposure and age, growing
all around the branchlets, though inclined to
turn upward from the under sides, like that
of the plushy firs of Califomia, making re
markably handsome femlike 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 outUne, though a
few of the larger branches shoot out in free
exuberance, reUeving the spire from any un-
picturesque stiffness of aspect, while the coni
cal summit is crowded with thousands of rich
brown cones to complete its beauty.
We made the ascent of the peak just after
the first storm had whitened its summit and
brightened the atmosphere. The foot-slopes
are Uke 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 sum-
181

STEEP TRAILS
mit rismg about a thousand feet above the
timber-line, 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.
Some portions of the wood were almost im
penetrable, but in general we found no diffi
culty 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 yeUows
of the lichened boles which had been freshened
by the late storm; while the tip of every spke
looking up through the shadows was dipped
in deepest blue.
The ground was strewn with burs and
182

NEVADA'S TIMBER BELT
needles and faUen trees; and, down in the dells,
on the north side of the dome, where strips of
aspen are imbedded in the spmces, every
breeze sent the ripe leaves flying, some lodging
in the spmce boughs, making them bloom
again, while the fresh snow beneath looked
Uke a fine painting.
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 Uke 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, notwithstand
ing 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.

XV
GLACIAL PHENOMENA IN NEVADA *
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 condi
tion of things due not alone to the long-con
tinued action of post-glacial agents, but also
in great part to the perishable character of
the rocks of which they were made. The bot
toms of the main valleys, once grooved and
planished like the glacier pavements of the
Sierra, lie buried beneath sediments and detri
tus derived from the adjacent mountains, and
now form the arid sage plains; characteristic
U-shaped canons have become V-shaped by
the deepening of their bottoms and straight
ening of their sides, and decaying glacier head
lands 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 re
mains of the more recent and the more enduring
• Written at Eureka, Nevada, in November, 1878.
[Editor.] 184

GLACIAL PHENOMENA IN NEVADA
phenomena to cast a good Ught well back upon
the conditions of the ancient ice-sheet that
covered this interestmg region, and upon the
system of distinct glaciers that loaded the
tops of the mountains and filled the canons
long after the ice-sheet had been broken up.
The first glacial traces that I noticed in the
basin are on the Wassuck, Augusta, and To
yabe ranges, consisting of ridges and canons,
whose trends, contours, and general sculpture
are in great part specifically glacial, though
deeply blurred by subsequent denudation.
These discoveries were made during the sum
mer of 1876-77, And agam, 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, canons with V-
shaped cross sections, wide n6v^ amphitheatres,
moutonneed rocks, glacier meadows, and one
glacier lake, all as fresh and telUng as if the
glaciers to which they belonged had scarcely
vanished. 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 canon vaUey
on the north side of the mountain and trend
ing first in a northerly direction, then curving
185

STEEP TRAILS
around to the west, while a well-characterized
terminal moraine, formed by the glacier to
wards 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 tribu
tary, extend in a general northwesterly direc
tion nearly to the level of Big Smoky VaUey,
about fifty-five hundred feet above sea-level.
Four other canons, extending down the
eastem slopes of this grand old mountain into
Monito Valley, are hardly less rich in glacial
records, while the effects of the mountain-
shadows in controlUng and directing the move
ments of the residual glaciers to which all these
phenomena belonged are everywhere deUght
fuUy apparent in the trends of the canons
and ridges, and in the massive sculpture of
the n6v6 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 outUne against the
sky, as observed from the plains, and is whit
ened 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 Uke the smaller ones
is broken abmptly down on the edges by the
186

GLACLIL PHENOMENA IN NEVADA
action of the ice. Its height is approximately
eleven thousand three hundred feet above the
sea. A few days after making these interesting
discoveries, I found other well-preserved gla
cial traces on Arc Dome, the culminating sum
mit 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 Ungered until quite re
cently beneath the coolest shadows of the
dome, the moraines and n6v6-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 stiU easily
readable from the plains at a distance of fif
teen or twenty miles.
The Hot Creek Mountains, lying to the
east of the Toquima and Monito ranges,
reach the culminating point on a deeply ser
rate 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
187

STEEP TRAILS
which have been eroded from the soUd mass of
the mountain by a group of small residual
glaciers that Ungered in their shadows long
after the larger ice rivers had vanished. On
its western decUvities are found a group of
well-characterized moraines, canons, and roches
moutonnees, all of which are unmistakably
fresh and teUing. 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 — saxi
frages, larkspurs, dwarf birch, ribes, and par-
nassia, etc. — beautiful memories of the Ice
Age, representing a once greatly extended
flora. 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 lo the snow-bearing winds,
188

GLACIAL PHENOMENA IN NEVADA
and the physical characteristics of the rock-
formations. 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 m the basin, every marked fea
ture is a glacier monument — peaks, vaUeys,
ridges, meadows, and lakes. And because here
the snow-fountains lay at a greater height,
while the rock, an exceedingly hard quartz
ite, 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 Ungering 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 vaUeys. From one stand
point I counted nine of these glacial channels
with their moraines sweeping grandly out to
the plains to deep sheer- walled n^v^f ountains
at their heads, making a most vivid picture
of the last days of the Ice Period,
I have thus far directed attention only to
the most recent and appreciable of the phe
nomena; but it must be borne in mind that
less recent and less obvious traces of glacial
action abound on all the ranges throughout
189

STEEP TRAILS
the entire basin, where the fine striae and
grooves have been obUterated, 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 van
ished. 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 canons, ridges,
and peaks themselves, the glacial pecuUari-
ties of whose trends and contours cannot be
hid from the eye of the skilled observer untU
changes have been wrought upon them far
more destructive than those to which these
basin ranges have yet been subjected.
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.
But grand as is this vision deUneated in
these old records, this is not aU; for there is
not wanting evidence of a still grander glacia-
190

GLACIAL PHENOMENA IN NEVADA
tion extending over aU the valleys now form
ing 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 weU as the valleys
present abundant evidence of this grand origin.
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 outswelUng
curves, Uke the outstanding portions of canon-
walls. Moreover, the extremities of the ranges
taper out like those of dividing ridges which
have been ground away by dividing and con
fluent glaciers. Furthermore, the horizontal
sections of separate mountains, standing iso
lated in the great valleys, are lens-shaped like
those of mere rocks that rise in the channels
of ordinary canon glaciers, and which have
been overflowed or past-flowed, while m many
of the smaller valleys roches moutonnees occur
in great abundance. 191

STEEP TRAILS
Again, the mineralogical and physical char
acters 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
Uke a mountain-range, is found to be com
posed 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.
I cannot, however, present all the esvidence
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.
Fu-st, 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 vaUeys, but com
paratively bald and featureless. 192

GLACIAL PHENOMENA IN NEVADA
Second, this tableland, bounded on the east
and west by lofty mountain-ranges, but com
paratively 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 in
terior ranges and valleys into reUef by erosion.
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 van
ished in turn, after sculpturing the ranges
into their present condition.
Fourth, the few immense lakes extending
over the lowlands, in the midst of which many
of the interior ranges stood as islands, be
came shaUow 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
filUng of their basins with detritus from the
mountains, and now form sage plains and "al
kali flats."
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 sUver cur
rents to the sea, and becoming graduaUy more
193

STEEP TRAILS
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.

XVI
Nevada's dead towns ^
Nevada is one of the very youngest and
wildest of the States; nevertheless it is already
strewn with ruins that seem as gray and sUent
and time-worn as if the civilization to which
they belonged had perished centuries ago.
Yet, strange to say, aU these mins are results
of minmg efforts made within the last few-
years. Wander where you may throughout
the length and breadth of this mountain-
barred wUdemess, you everywhere come upon
these dead mining towns, with their taU chim
ney-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 dis
coveries, and now known only through tradi
tion — tradition ten years old.
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 prob-
' Date and place of writing not given. Published in the
San Francisco Evening Bulletin, January 15, 1879. [Editor.]
195

STEEP TRAILS
ably only camps built by bands of prospec
tors, and inhabited for a few months or years,
while some specially interesting canon was
being explored, and then carelessly abandoned
for more promising fields. But many were
real towns, regularly laid out and incorpo
rated, containing well-built hotels, churches,
school-houses, post-offices, and jails, as well
as the mills on which they all depended; and
whose weU-graded streets were filled with
lawyers, doctors, brokers, hangmen, real-estate
agents, etc., the whole population numbering
several thousand,
A few years ago the population of Hamil
ton is said to have been nearly eight thousand;
that of Treasure Hill, six thousand; of Sher-
mantown, 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 some
thing to turn up. Treasure Hill has about half
as many, Shermantown one family, and Swan
sea none, whUe on the other hand the grave
yards are far too full.
In one canon of the Toyabe range, near
Austin, I found no less than five dead towns
without a single inhabitant. The streets and
196

NEVADA'S DEAD TOWNS
blocks of "real estate" graded on the hiUsides
are rapidly falUng back into the wilderness.
Sage-brushes are growing up around the forges
of the blacksmith shops, and lizards bask on
the crumbling walls.
While traveling southward from Austin
down Big Smoky Valley, I noticed a remark
ably tall and imposing column, rising like a
lone pine out of the sage-brush on the edge of
a dry gulch. This proved to be a smokestack
of soUd masonry. It seemed strangely out of
place in the desert, as if it had been trans
ported 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 stUl 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 aU the busy throng that so lav
ishly spent their time and money here only
one man remains — a lone bachelor with one
suspender. 197

STEEP TRAILS
Mining discoveries and progress, retrogres
sion 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 CaUfomia
would discover some rich ore — how much or
little mattered not at first. These specimens
fell among excited seekers after wealth Uke
sparks in gunpowder, and in a few days the
wilderness was disturbed with the noisy clang
of miners and bmlders. A little town would
then spring up, and before anything Uke a
careful survey of any particular lode would be
made, a company would be formed, and expen
sive mills built. Then, after all the machinery
was ready for the ore, perhaps Uttle, or none at
all, was to be found. Meanwhile another dis
covery 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.
Passing through the dead town of Schell-
boume last month, I asked one of the few lin
gering inhabitants why the town was built.
"For the mines," he replied. "And where are
the mines?" "On the mountains back here."
198

NEVADA'S DEAD TOWNS
"And why were they abandoned?" I asked.
"Are they exhausted?" "Oh, no," he repUed,
"they are not exhausted; on the contrary,
they have never been worked at aU, for un
fortunately, just as we were about ready to
open them, the Cherry Creek mines were dis
covered 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."
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 Califomia
had ample time and means to recover from
their first attacks of mining fever whUe crawl
ing laboriously across the plains, and on their
arrival on any portion of the Sierra gold belt,
they at once began to make money. No mat
ter in what gulch or canon they worked, some
measure of success was sure, however unskill
ful they might be. And though while making
ten doUars a day they might be agitated by
hopes of making twenty, or of striking their
picks against hundred- or thousand-doUar
nuggets, men of ordinary nerve could stiU
199

STEEP TRAILS
work on with comparative steadiness, and
remain rational.
But in the case of the Nevada miner, he
too often spent himself in years of weary search
without gaining a dollar, traveUng 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 innumer
able tunnels into the hillsides, while his as
sayed 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.
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 Ue hid
in the veins of the mountains. But in the
search the seekers too often become insane,
and strike about blindly in the dark Uke rav
ing madmen. Seven hundred and fifty tons
of ore from the original Eberhardt mine on
Treasure HiU yielded a milUon and a half dol
lars, 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
200

NEVADA'S DEAD TOWNS
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 weU as miners — left their own right
work and fell in a perfect storm of energy upon
the White Pine HiUs, covering the ground Uke
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 mins to teU of the
tremendous energy expended, as heaps of giant
boulders in the valley teU of the spent power
of the mountain floods.
In marked contrast with this destmctive
unrest is the orderly deUberation 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 lead
ing the way from level to level, calling atten
tion to the precious ore-masses which the work
men were slowly breaking to pieces with their
picks, Uke navvies wearing away the day in a
railroad cutting; whUe down at the smelting
works the bars of bulUon were handled with
less eager haste than the farmer shows in gath
ering his sheaves. 201

STEEP TRAILS
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 sacri
fices, 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 mins one meets never fails to produce a
saddening effect.
The dim old mins of Europe, so eagerly
sought after by travelers, have something
pleasing about them, whatever their histori
cal 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 mgged angles
are soothed and freshened and embossed with
green mosses, fresh Ufe and decay mingUng in
pleasing measures, and the whole vanishing
softly like a ripe, tranquU day fading into night.
So, also, among the older ruins of the East there
is a fitness felt. They have served their time^
and Uke the weather-beaten mountains are wast
ing harmoniously. The same is in some degree
tme of the dead mining towns of Califomia.
202

NEVADA'S DEAD TOWNS
But those lying to the eastward of the Sierra
throughout the ranges of the Great Basin
waste in the dry wilderness Uke the bones of
cattle that have died of thirst. Many of them
do not represent any good accompUshment,
and have no right to be. They are monuments
of fraud and ignorance — sins against science.
The drifts and tunnels in the rocks may per
haps be regarded as the prayers of the pros
pector, offered for the wealth he so earnestly
craves; but, Uke prayers of any kind not in
harmony with nature, they are unanswered.
But, after all, effort, however misappUed, is
better than stagnation. Better toil bUndly,
beating every stone in turn for grains of gold,
whether they contain any or not, than Ue
down in apathetic decay.
The fever period is fortunately passing away.
The prospector is no longer the raving, wan
dering ghoul of ten years ago, rushing in ran
dom lawlessness among the hiUs, hungry and
footsore; but cool and skiUful, well suppUed
with every necessary, and clad in his right
mind. CapitaUsts, too, and the pubUc in gen
eral, have become wiser, and do not take fire
so readUy from mining sparks; while at the
same time a vast amount of real work is being
done, and the ratio between growth and de
cay is constantly becoming better.

XVII
PUGET SOUND
Washington Territory, recently admitted *
into the Union as a State, Ues between latitude
46° and 49° and longitude 117° and 125°, form
ing 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 West-
em Washington, differing greatly from each
other in ahnost every way, the western sec
tion being less than half as large as the eastem,
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 re
sources. Within her borders every kind of soil and cU
mate may be found — the densest woods and
dryest plains, the smoothest levels and roughest
' November 11, 1889; Muir's description probably was
written toward the end of the same year. [Editor.]
204

PUGET SOUND
mountains. She is rich in square miles (some
seventy thousand of them), in coal, timber, and
iron, and in sheltered inland waters that ren
der these resources advantageously accessible.
She also is already rich in busy workers, who
work hard, tb,ough not always wisely, hack
ing, 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.
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 west-
em portion of Washington, between the Cas
cade 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 shore-Une 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.
205

STEEP TRAILS
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 com
posed in landscapes sublime in magnitude, yet
exquisitely fine and fresh, and full of glad,
rejoicing Ufe. 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 blend
ing 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 innumer
able; while the islands, with soft, waving out
Unes, lavishly adorned with spmces 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 aU,
faithful and changeless as the stars.
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
206

PUGET SOUND
fingers of the Sound, we are so completely in
land and surrounded by mountains that it is
hard to realize that we are saiUng on a branch
of the salt sea. We are constantly reminded
of Lake Tahoe. There is the same clearness
of the water in cahn weather without any
trace of the ocean swell, the same picturesque
winding and sculpture of the shore-Une 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 de
pendent on the weather. As we double cape
after cape and round the uncounted islands,
new combinations come to view in endless
variety, sufficient to fiU and satisfy the lover
of wild beauty through a whole life.
Oftentimes in the stiUest 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 Uke views in mid-ocean;
then, the clouds Ufting, some islet wiU be pre
sented 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 over-
207

STEEP TRAILS
head, the whole island will be set free and
brought forward in vivid reUef 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, coining and going from
darkness to Ught 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.
For the tourist sailing to Puget Sound from
San Francisco there is but Uttle that is at aU
striking in the scenery within reach by the
way untU 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 uninvit
ing, the magnificent redwood forests stretch
ing along this portion of the California coast
seeming to keep well back, away from the
heavy winds, so that very Uttle is seen of them;
while there are no deep inlets or lofty moun
tains visible to break the regular monotony.
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PUGET SOUND
Along the coast of Oregon the woods of spmce
and fix come down to the shore, kept fresh and
vigorous by copious rains, and become denser
and taUer to the northward until, rounding
Cape Flattery, we enter the Strait of Fuca,
where, sheltered from the ocean gales, the for
ests 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 mar
velous network of inland waters that extends
along the margin of the continent to the north
ward for a thousand miles.
This magnificent inlet was named for Juan
de Fuca, who discovered it in 1592 while seek
ing a mythical strait, supposed to exist some
where 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 main
land. Cape Flattery, the western termination of
the Olympic Range, is terribly mgged and
jagged, and in stormy weather is utterly in
accessible from the sea. Then the ponderous
rollers of the deep Pacific thunder amid its
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STEEP TRAILS
caverns and cliffs with the foam and uproar
of a thousand Yosemite waterfalls. The bones
of many a noble ship Ue 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 swell
ing waves, and find grateful retreats back in
the inmost bores of its storm-lashed caverns;
while in many a chink and hollow of the high
est crags, not visible from beneath, a great
variety of water-fowl make homes and rear
their young.
But not always are the inhabitants safe,
even in such wave-defended castles as these,
for the Indians of the neighboring shores ven
ture forth in the calmest summer weather in
their frail canoes to spear the seals in the nar
row gorges amid the grinding, gurgUng din of
the restless waters. At such times also the
hunters make out to scale many of the appar
ently inaccessible cUffs for the eggs and young
of the gulls and other water-birds, occasionally
losing their Uves in these perilous adventures,
which give rise to many an exciting story told
around the camp-fires at night when the storms
roar loudest.
Passing through the strait, we have the
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PUGET SOUND
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 cahn weather, or when the
clouds are lifting and rolling off the mountains
after a storm, all these views are truly magni
ficent. 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. EUas. Its fires are sleep
ing 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.
But the Olympic Mountains most of all
command attention, seen telUngly 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, form
ing 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
211

STEEP TRAILS
valleys mark the courses of the Olympic gla
ciers at the period of their greatest extension,
when they poured their tribute into that por
tion of the great northern ice-sheet that over-
swept the south end of Vancouver Island and
filled the strait with flowing ice as it is now
filled with ocean water.
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 Colum
bia. The Victoria harbor is too narrow and
difficult of access for the larger class of ships;
therefore a landing has to be made at Esqui
malt. The distance, however, is only about
three miles, and the way is delightful, wind
ing on through a charming forest of Douglas
spruce, with here and there groves of oak and
madrone, and a rich undergrowth of hazel, dog
wood, willow, alder, spiraea, mbus, huckle
berry, and wild rose. Pretty cottages occur at
intervals along the road, covered with honey
suckle, and many an upswelUng rock, freshly
glaciated and furred with yellow mosses and
Uchen, telUng interesting stories of the icy past.
Victoria is a quiet, handsome, breezy town,
beautifully located on finely modulated ground
at the mouth of the Canal de Haro, with charm
ing views in front, of islands and mountains
212

PUGET SOUND
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 open-
uigs; then comes the forest primeval, dense
and shaggy and well-nigh impenetrable.
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 gov
ernment 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 cot
tages embowered in honeysuckle and cUmb-
ing roses. One soon discovers that this is no
Yankee town. The English faces and the way
that EngUsh is spoken alone would tell that;
while in business quarters there is a staid dig
nity 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
213

STEEP TRAILS
cUmate, 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.
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 fiU the air with fra
grance after a shower. And how brightly then
do the red berries of the dogwood shine out
from the warm yeUow-green of leaves and
mosses! But stiU more interesting and significant
are the glacial phenomena displayed here
abouts. AU 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-
214

PUGET SOUND
glacial agencies. The town streets and the
roads are graded in moraine material, among
scratched and grooved rock-bosses that are
as unweathered and telUng 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.
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-In-
dianish trinket as a memento. At certain sea
sons 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, mar
tens, 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. Vancouver is the southmost and the largest
215

STEEP TRAILS
of the countless islands forming the great ar
chipelago that stretches a thousand nules to
the northward. Its shores have been known a
long time, but Uttle is known of the lofty moun
tainous 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 viUages,
and traveUng 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 Uttle attention
thus far. Gold, the grand attraction that Ughts
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 Ues.
Leaving Victoria for Port Townsend, after
we are fairly out on the free open water. Mount
Baker is seen rising soUtary 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 gla-
216

PUGET SOUND
ciers, some of which come weU down into the
woods, and never, so far as I have heard, has
been climbed, though m aU 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. 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, quar
rels 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.
San Juan is one of a thickset cluster of is
lands that fills the waters between Vancouver
and the mainland, a Uttle to the north of Vic
toria. In some of the intricate channels be
tween these islands the tides run at times like
impetuous rushing rivers, rendering naviga-
217

STEEP TRAILS
tion 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 al
together, the ships, getting no direction from
their hehns, 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.
All the way over to Port Townsend the
Olympic Mountains weU maintain their mas
sive, imposing grandeur, and present their
elaborately carved summits in clear reUef,
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 dweU upon them. The
highest peaks are Mount Constance and Mount
Olympus, said to be about eight thousand feet
high. In two or three hours after leaving Vic
toria, we arrive at the handsome Uttle town
of Port Townsend, situated at the mouth of
Puget Sound, on the west side. The residen
tial portion of the town is set on the level top
218

PUGET SOUND
of the bluff that bounds Port Townsend Bay,
whUe another nearly level space of moderate
extent, reaching from the base of the bluff to
the shore-line, is occupied by the business
portion, thus making a town of two separate
and distinct stories, which are connected by
long, ladder-like ffights of stairs. In the streets
of the lower story, while there is no lack of
animation, there is but Uttle business noise as
compared with the amount of business trans
acted. 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
aU 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.
This being the port of entry, all vessels have
to stop here, and they make a Uvely show about
the wharves and in the bay. The winds stir
the flags of every civiUzed nation, while the
Indians in their long-beaked canoes gUde
about from ship to ship, satisfying their curi
osity or trading with the crews. Keen traders
these Indians are, and few indeed of the sail
ors 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
219

STEEP TRAILS
stores, made up of EngUsh, 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 wil
derness; tourists on their way home by the
Sound and the Columbia River or to Alaska
or California.
The upper story of Port Townsend is charm
ingly 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 sel
dom found in towns set on the edge of a wild
forest. The people seem to have come here to
make tme homes, attracted by the beauty and
fresh breezy healthfulness of the place as weU
as by business advantages, trusting to nat
ural growth and advancement instead of rest
less "booming" methods. They perhaps hive
caught some of the spirit of cahn moderation
and enjoyment from their EngUsh 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.
220

PUGET SOUND
A few miles up the bay is Fort Townsend,
which makes a pretty picture with the green
woods rising back of it and the cahn water in
front. Across the mouth of the Sound lies the
long, narrow Whidbey Island, named by Van
couver for one of his Ueutenants. 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
soU is good and easily worked, and a consid
erable portion of the island has been under
cultivation for many years. Fertile fields,
open, parkUke groves of oak, and thick masses
of evergreens succeed one another in charming
combinations to make this "the garden spot
of the Territory."
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 some
times 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 "Ad
miralty Inlet" and one of the long, narrow
branches "Hood's Canal," applying the name
221

STEEP TRAILS
"Puget Sound" only to the comparatively
small southern portion. The latter name,
however, is now applied generally to the en
tire inlet, and is commonly shortened by the
people hereabouts to "The Sound." The nat
ural wealth and commercial advantages of the
Sound region were quickly recognized, and
the cause of the activity prevaiUng here is not
far to seek. Vancouver, long before civiliza
tion 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 com
munication which may tend in any consider
able degree to faciUtate 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 soUd barrier to the sea, without open
ings, 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 south
ward. His descriptions of the scenery — Mounts
222

PUGET SOUND
Baker, Rainier, St. Helen's, etc. — were as
enthusiastic as those of the most eager land
scape-lover of the present day, when scenery
is in fashion. He says in one place: "To de
scribe 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 cUmate, the immeasurable pleasing land
scapes, and the abundant fertUity that un
assisted 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 na
ture seems ready to bestow on cultivation."
"A picture so pleasing could not fail to call
to our remembrance certain deUghtful and
beloved situations in old England." So warm,
indeed, were the praises he sung that his state
ments were received in England with a good
deal of hesitation. But they were amply cor
roborated 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.
223

STEEP TRAILS
I venture nothing in saying there is no coun
try in the world that possesses waters Uke
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 gigan
tic timber coming down to the very shores,
these waters are unsurpassed, unapproach
able." The Sound region has a fine, fresh, clean
cUmate, weU 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-basins
and low and willowy bogs, all are kept whole
some and sweet the year round. Cloud and
sunshine alternate in bracing, cheering suc
cession, 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 aU.
Heavy, long-continued rains occur in the
winter months. Then every leaf, bathed and
brightened, rejoices. Filtering drops and cur-
224

PUGET SOUND
rents through all the shaggy undergrowth of the
woods go with tribute to the smaU 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 thous
and 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 aU 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 par
ticles of rock-mud, worn off the sides and bot
toms 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 smaUer
material is carried farther and outspread in
flats, perhaps for coming wheat-fields and gar
dens, the finest of it going out to sea, floating
on the tides for weeks and months ere it finds
rest on the bottom.
Snow seldom falls to any great depth on the
225

STEEP TRAILS
lowlands, though it comes in glorious abun
dance on the mountains. And only on the
mountains does the temperature faU much
below the freezing-point. In the warmest sum
mer weather a temperature of eighty-five de
grees or even more occasionally is reached, but
not for long at a time, as such heat is speed
ily followed by a breeze from the sea. The
most charming days here are days of perfect
cahn, when all the winds are holding their
breath and not a leaf stirs. Then the surface
of the Sound shines Uke 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 Uving thing on which he is
pouring his blessings, while they in turn, with
perhaps the exception of man, seem conscious
of the presence of the sun as a benevolent
father and stand hushed and waiting.

XVIII
THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON
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 {Pseu
dotsuga 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
Uvely bright-green drooping foUage, handsome
pendent cones, and a shaft exquisitely straight
and regular. For so large a tree it is astonish
ing how many find nourishment and space to
grow on any given area. The magnificent
shafts push their spires into the sky close to
gether with as regular a growth as that of a
well-tilled field of grain. And no ground has
been better tiUed 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 meUowed 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 aU the land. 227

STEEP TRAILS
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 sur
passingly favorable. The average size of all
the trees of this species found up to an eleva
tion on the mountain-slopes of, say, two thou
sand 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.
In proportion to its weight when dry, the
228

THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON
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, pUes, and heavy
timbers in general. But its hardness and lia-
bUity to warp render it much inferior to white
or sugar pine for fine work. In the lumber-
markets of Califomia it is known as "Oregon
pine" and is used ahnost exclusively for spars,
bridge-timbers, heavy planking, and the frame
work of houses.
The same species extends northward in
abundance through British Columbia and
southward through the coast and middle re
gions of Oregon and CaUfomia. It is also a
common tree in the canons and hoUows 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 yel
low pine and incense cedar, it forms a pretty
weU-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 Califor
nia. But, though widely distributed, it is only
229

STEEP TRAILS
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.
Growing with the Douglas we find the white
spruce, or "Sitka pine," as it is sometimes
called. This also is a very beautiful and ma
jestic tree, frequently attaining a height of
two hundred feet or more and a diameter of
five or six feet. It is very abundant in south
eastern 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 Snoquahnie 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.
In habit and general appearance it resembles
the Douglas spmce, 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.
230

THE FORESTS OP WASHINGTON
The timber is tough, close-grained, white, and
looks more Uke pine that any other of the
spruces. It splits freely, makes exceUent shin
gles and in general use in house-building takes
the place of pine. I have seen logs of this spe
cies a hundred feet long and two feet in dia
meter at the upper end. It was named in honor
of the old Scotch botanist Archibald Menzies,
who came to this coast with Vancouver in
1792.1 The beautiful hemlock spmce 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 rough
est work, such as wharf-building.
The Westem arbor-vitae '^ {Thuja gigantea)
grows to a size tmly gigantic on low rich
ground. Specimens ten feet in diameter and
a hundred and forty feet high are not at aU
rare. Some that I have heard of are said to
be fifteen and even eighteen feet thick. Clad
in rich, glossy plumes, with gray Uchens cov
ering their smooth, tapering boles, perfect trees
1 [This tree, now known to botanists as Picea sitchensis,
was named Abies Menziesii by Lindley in 1833.]
^ Also known as "canoe cedar," and described in Jep-
son's Silva of Califomia imder the more recent specific name
Thuja plicata. [Editor.] 231

STEEP TRAILS
of this species are tmly 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.
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
spmce, the Abies Pattoniana.^ This last is per
haps 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 Uke this for anything like a
complete description of it, or of the others I
have just mentioned. Of the three firs, one
{Picea grandis),^ grows near the coast and is
one of the largest trees in the forest, some
times attaining a height of two hundred and
fifty feet. The timber, however, is inferior in
quaUty and not much sought after while so
much that is better is within reach. One of the
others (P. amabilis, var. nobilis) forms mag
nificent forests by itself at a height of about
three thousand to four thousand feet above
the sea. The rich plushy, plumeUke branches
grow in regular whorls around the tmnk, and
on the topmost whorls, standing erect, are the
* Now classified as Tsuga mertensiana Sarg. [Editor.]
' Now Abies grandis Lindley. [Editor.]
232

THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON
large, beautiful cones. This is far the most
beautiful of aU the firs. In the Sierra Nevada
it forms a considerable portion of the main
forest belt on the westem 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 timber-line 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. The pines are nowhere abundant in the
State. The largest, the yellow pine {Pinus
ponderosa), occurs here and there on margins
of dry graveUy prairies, and only in such sit
uations 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) ^ grows near the coast
and is a fine large tree, clothed Uke the arbor-
vitae in a glorious wealth of flat, feathery
1 Chamcecyparis lawsoniana Pari. (Port Orford cedar) in
Jepsoij's SUva. [Editor.] 233

STEEP TRAILS
branches. The other is found here and there
weU up toward the edge of the timber-line.
This is the fine Alaska cedar (C. Nootkatensis),
the lumber from which is noted for its dura
bility, fineness of grain, and beautiful yellow
color, and for its fragrance, which resembles
that of sandal-wood. The Alaska Indians
make their canoe-paddles of it and weave
matting and coarse cloth from the fibrous
brown bark.
Among the different kinds of hardwood trees
are the oak, maple, madrona, birch, alder, and
wild apple, while large cottonwoods are com
mon along the rivers and shores of the num
erous lakes.
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 seam
less 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
234

THE FORESTS OP WASHINGTON
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 Uke 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 na
tive of the tropics, naked and painted, beside
that dark mossy ocean of northland conifers.
Not even a pahn tree would seem more out of
place here.
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 spmces. It grows ahnost
everywhere throughout the entire extent of
the forest until the higher slopes of the moun
tains are reached, and produces a very pic
turesque and deUghtful effect; reUeving the
bareness of the great shafts of the evergreens,
without being close enough in its growth to
235

STEEP TRAILS
hide them wholly, or to cover the bright mossy
carpet that is spread beneath aU the dense parts
of the woods.
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 Wash
ington, but is never found scattered among
the conifers in the dense woods. It keeps to
gether mostly in magnificent groves by itself
on the damp levels along the banks of streams
or lakes where the ground is subject to over
flow. In such situations it attains a height
of seventy-five to a hundred feet and a diam
eter of four to eight feet. The tmnk sends
out large Umbs 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 for
est 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 weU. The largest of these maple
236

THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON
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.
Looking now at the forests in a comprehen
sive 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, re
presenting several generations of growth,
everything about them giving the impression
that these are indeed the "forests primeval,"
while in the younger portions, where the ele
vation 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. When we examine the ground we find that
it is as free from those mounds of brown crum-
237

STEEP TRAILS
bling 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 devas
tated by fire, as the black, melancholy monu
ments rising here and there above the young
growth bear witness. Then, with this fiery,
suggestive testimony, on examining those sec
tions 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 condi
tions of drouth made their burning possible.
Then, the bare ground sprinkled with the
winged seeds 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 faUen, we
find no traces of fire, nor from the extreme
dampness of the ground can we see any possi-
biUty of fire ever mnning there.
238

THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON
Fire, then, is the great governing agent in
forest-distribution and to a great extent also
in the conditions of forest-growth. , Where fer
tile lands are very wet one half the year and
very dry the other, there can be no forests at
aU. 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 for
ests 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 soUd. And so in
fact they are in general found to be. The larg
est openings are those of the lakes and prai
ries, the smaller of beaver-meadows, bogs, and
the rivers; none of them large enough to make
a distinct mark in comprehensive views.
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, ly
ing imbedded in the green wilderness. The
rivers are numerous and are but Uttle affected
by the weather, flowing with deep, steady
239

STEEP TRAILS
currents the year round. They are short, how
ever, none of them drawing their sources from
beyond the Cascade Range. Some are navi
gable for small steamers on thek lower courses,
but the openings they make in the woods are
very narrow, the tall trees on their banks lean
ing over in some places, making fine shady
tunnels. The largest of the prairies that I have seen
lies to the south of Tacoma on the Une 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 Yehn. 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. No
where 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 spe
cies 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
240

THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON
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, blackber
ries, 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 Uttle sunshine can
reach the ground, there is but little under
bmsh of any kind, only a very Ught 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 faUen
tunber and thick carpet of moss covering aU
the ground. 241

STEEP TRAILS
Notwithstanding the tremendous energy
displayed in lumbering and the grand scale
on which it is being carried on, ind the num
ber of settlers pushing into every opening in
search of farmlands, the woods of Washington
are still almost entirely virgin and wild, with
out trace of human touch, savage or civiUzed.
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 Uttle 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 estabUshed homes on the prairies or
open borders of the woods and in the valleys
of the Chehalis and CowUtz before the gold
days of Califomia. Most of the early immi
grants from the Eastem States, however, set
tled in the fertile and open Willamette Valley
of Oregon. Even now, when the search for
land is so keen, with the exception of the bot
tom lands around the Sound and on the lower
242

THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON
reaches of the rivers, there are comparatively
few spots of cultivation in western Washing
ton. On every meadow or opening of any kind
some one wiU be found keeping cattle, plant
ing hop-vines, or raising hay, vegetables, and
patches of grain. All the large spaces avail
able, even back near the summits of the Cas
cade Mountains, were occupied long ago. The
newcomers, buUding their cabins where the
beavers once built theirs, keep a few cows and
industriously seek to enlarge their small mea
dow patches by chopping, girdling, and burn
ing the edge of the encircling forest, gnawing
Uke beavers, and scratching for a Uving 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.
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 chips have been fall
ing in perpetual storm Uke 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
243

STEEP TRAILS
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 neigh
boring trees appear to have closed over the
gaps made by the removal of the larger and
better ones, maintaining the general contin
uity of the forest and leaving no sign on the
sylvan sea, at least as seen from a distance.
In felUng the trees they cut them off usu
ally 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
244

THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON
across. And when the tree is about to faU,
warned by the faint crackling of the strained
fibers, they jump to the ground, and stand
back out of danger from flying Umbs, while
the noble giant that had stood erect in glori
ous strength and beauty century after cen
tury, bows low at last and with gasp and groan
and booming throb faUs to earth.
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 workmien 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, select
ing 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 growUng 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 null wharves.
Many of the long, slender boles so abundant
245

STEEP TRAILS
in these woods are saved for spars, and so ex
cellent is their quaUty 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, cheer
ily waving over the blue, heaving water, re
sponsive to the same winds that rocked them
when they stood at home in the woods. After
standing in one place all their Uves they now,
Uke sight-seeing tourists, go round the world,
meeting many a relative from the old home
forest, some Uke themselves, wandering free,
clad in broad canvas foUage, others planted
head downward in mud, holding wharf plat
forms aloft to receive the wares of all nations.
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 estabUshments, as at
Ports Blakely, Madison, Discovery, Gamble,
Ludlow, etc., with a capacity all together of
over three miUion feet a day. Nevertheless,
246

THE FORESTS OF WASHINGTON
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 nulls. All
else seems as serene and unscathed as the
sUent watching mountains.

XIX
people and towns of puget sound
As one strolls in the woods about the logging-
camps, most of the lumbermen are found to
be interesting people to meet, kind and obUg-
ing 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, some
what haggard appearance. Their faces are
doubtful in color, neither sickly nor quite
healthy-looking, and seamed with deep wrin
kles Uke the bark of the spruces, but with no
trace of anxiety. Their clothing is full of rosin
and never wears out. A Uttle 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 Uke the trees above
them, and they walk with a swaying, rocking
gait altogether free from quick, jerky fussiness,
for chopping and log-rolUng have quenched aU
that. They are also slow of speech, as if partly
248

TOWNS OF PUGET SOUND
out of breath, and when one tries to draw them
out on some subject away from logs, aU the
fresh, leafy, outreaching branches of the mind
seem to have been withered and kiUed with
fatigue, leaving their Uves Uttle more than
dry lumber. Many a tree have these old axe
men 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.
A very different man, seen now and then
at long intervals but usually invisible, is the
free roamer of the wilderness — hunter, pros
pector, 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 weU
nourished in the wealth of the wilderness,
coining into contact with free nature in a
thousand forms, diinking 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 rest-
249

STEEP TRAILS
ing, and aU the wUdemess 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 smaU 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, Uke forest shadows, thickens into
darkness and his day is done. In these Wash
ington wUds, Uving alone, aU sorts of men may
perchance be found — poets, philosophers, and
even full-blown transcendentaUsts, though you
may go far to find them.
Indians are seldom to be met with away
from the Sound, excepting about the few out
lying hop-ranches, to which they resort in
great numbers during the picking-season. Nor
in your walks in the woods will you be Ukely
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 con-
250

TOWNS OF PUGET SOUND
siderable 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 soUtudes of the
forest, but their numbers have been greatly re
duced 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 com
mon 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 kUled 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.
The towns of Puget Sound are of a very
Uvely, progressive, and aspiring kind, fortu
nately with abundance of substance about
them to warrant their ambition and make
them grow. Like young sapUng sequoias,
they are sending out their roots far and near
for nourishment, counting confidently on lon
gevity and grandeur of stature. Seattle and
251

STEEP TRAILS
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 Des
tiny." Seattle is also charmingly located
about twenty miles down the Sound from
Tacoma, on ElUott Bay. It is the terminus of
the Seattle, Lake-Shore, and Eastem Railroad,
now in process of construction, and calls it-
seU the "Queen City of the Sound" and the
"MetropoUs of Washington." What the pop
ulations of these towns number I am not able
to say with anything Uke exactness. They
are probably about the same size and they
each claim to have about twenty thousand
people; but their figures are so rapidly chang
ing, 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 bmsh 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.
252

TOWNS OF PUGET SOUND
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 abeady
towns "with aU modem improvements, first-
class in every particular," as is said of hotels.
They have electric motors and Ughts, paved
broadways and boulevards, substantial busi
ness 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 hun
dred 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. Vig
orous Ufe and strife are to be seen everywhere.
The spirit of progress is in the air. Still it is
hard to reaUze 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
253

STEEP TRAILS
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 civiUzation has to offer,
while on some of the lines of advancement it
is at the front.
Notwithstanding the sharp rivalry between
different sections and towns, the leading men
mostly puU 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, — Ameri
cans, Scandinavians, Irish, Scotch, and Ger
mans being joined together in the white heat
of work Uke reUgious crowds in time of re
vival 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.
Seattle was named after an old Indian chief
254

TOWNS OF PUGET SOUND
who lived in this part of the Sound. He was
very proud of the honor and Uved 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 pUes, was destroyed
by fire a few months ago,i with unmense loss.
The people, however, are in no wise discour
aged, and ere long the loss wiU be gain, inas
much as a better class of buildings, chiefly of
brick, are being erected in place of the in
flammable wooden ones, which, with com
paratively few exceptions, were buUt of pitchy
spmce. 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 smaU cost on the steamers. Others wiU
take the train to the FrankUn 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, Eraser River, or Vancouver, the
» 1889.
255

STEEP TRAILS
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 Une of the North-
em 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.
Among the most interesting of all the sum
mer 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 fertUe, and beautifully diver
sified 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 por
tions most easily cleared some three hun
dred acres of hop-vines have been planted and
are now in fuU 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
256

TOWNS OF PUGET SOUND
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 hang
ing in loose, handsome clusters.
Perhaps enough of hops might be raised in
Washington for the wants of aU 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 house
hold 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 caUcoes, lowering the rustUng
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 fireUght shining on their wild
jolly faces. But woe to the ranch should fire
water get there!
But the chief attractions here are not found
in the hops, but in trout-fishing and bear-
257

STEEP TRAILS
hunting, and in the two fine faUs 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 faU 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 weU-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.
Though to a Califomian the height of this
fall would not seem great, the volume of water
is heavy, and all the surroundings are deUght-
258

TOWNS OF PUGET SOUND
ful. 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 fems 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 deU 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 be
neath some of the thickets, and across a grav
eUy plain deforested by fire many years ago.
Orange UUes are plentiful, and handsome shin
ing mats of the kinrnkinic, sprinkled with
bright scarlet berries.
From a place caUed "Hunt's," at the end of
the wagon-road, a traU leads through lush, drip
ping 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, jungermaimia, etc., in
broad sheets and bosses, where never a dust-
particle floated, and where all the flowers,
259

STEEP TRAILS
fresh with mist and spray, are wetter than
water-liUes. The pool at the foot of the faU
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 deUcate maiden
hairs and aspleniums with fronds outspread
gathering the rainbow sprays, and the myr
iads of hooded mosses, every cup fresh and
shining.

XX
AN ASCENT OF MOUNT RAINIER
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 made
hereabouts is to Mount Rainier, to climb to
the top of its icy crown. The mountain is very
high,^ fourteen thousand four hundred feet,
and laden with glaciers that are terribly rough
ened and intermpted 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.
' 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 as "the highest peak (14,363 feet) within the United
States." The United States Baedeker and railroad literatur(
overstate its altitude by more than a hundred feet. [Editor.]
261

STEEP TRAILS
Last summer I gained the summit from the
south side, in a day and a half from the tim
ber-line, 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 am
bitious 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, traveUng
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 ani
mals. The noble King Mountain was in full
view from here, glorifying the bright, sunny
day with his presence, rising in godUke ma
jesty over the woods, with the magnificent
prairie as a foreground. The distance to the
mountain from Yelm in a straight line is per
haps fifty miles; but by the mule and yeUow-
jacket traU we had to follow it is a hundred
miles. For, notwithstanding a portion of this
trail runs in the au", where the wasps work
hardest, it is far from being an air-line as com
monly understood. 262

AN ASCENT OF MOUNT RAINIER
By night of the third day we reached the
Soda Springs on the right bank of the Nis-
qually, 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 Ues up the Nisqually Canon,
the bottom of which is flat in some places and
the walls very high and precipitous, like those
of the Yosemite VaUey. The upper part of
the canon is stUl occupied by one of the Nis
qually 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 boul
ders as well as Ughter material, whUe its savage
roar is bewildering.
At this point we left the canon, 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; ^ so also is the corresponding
1 Doubtless the red silver fir, now classified as Abies ama
bilis. [Editor.] 263

STEEP TRAILS
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 spmce, 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 continu
ous 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, leav
ing 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 moun
tain-top wanderings.
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 moun
tain, wholly unveiled, awful in bulk and ma
jesty, filling all the view Uke a separate, new
born world, yet withal so fine and so beautiful
264

AN ASCENT OF MOUNT RAINIER
it might well fire the duUest observer to des
perate enthusiasm. Long we gazed in silent
admiration, buried in tall daisies and anem
ones by the side of a snowbank. Higher we
could not go with the animals and find food
for them and wood for our own camp-fires,
for just beyond this Ues 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 UUes
and the lines of the mountains with reference
to a way to the summit.
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, with
out fire of course, as we were now many miles
beyond the timber-Une and without much to
265

STEEP TRAILS
cover us. After eating a Uttle hardtack, each
of us leveled a spot to Ue 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 fol
lowed 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 aU the climb
ing 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 exer
cise. 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
266

AN ASCENT OF MOUNT RAINIER
surface almost everywhere was bare, hard,
snowless ice, extremely sUppery; and, though
smooth in general, it was interrupted by a
network of yawning crevasses, outspread like
Unes 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.
Thus prepared, we stepped forth afresh,
slowly groping om* 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.
We remained on the summit nearly two
hours, looking about us at the vast maplike
267

STEEP TRAILS
views, comprehending hundreds of miles of
the Cascade Range, with theu- black intermin
able forests and white volcanic cones in glori
ous array reaching far into Oregon; the Sound
region also, and the great plains of eastem
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 cra
ters, where their edges come in contact. Sul
phurous 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, in
deed, to a great extent, of the entire mountain,
would tend to show that Rainier is still a com
paratively young mountain. With the excep
tion of the projecting Ups of the craters and
the top of a subordinate summit a short
distance to the northward, the mountain is
soUdly capped with ice aU 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.
268

AN ASCENT OF MOUNT RAINIER
The descent was accomplished without dis
aster, 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 pres
ence of mind, he threw himself on his face
and digging his alpenstock into the ice, grad
ually retarded his motion until he came to
rest. Another broke through a sUm 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. Fall
ing 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.
We were rather weak from want of nourish
ment, and some suffered from sunburn, not
withstanding the partial protection of glasses
and veils; otherwise, all were unscathed and
well. The view we enjoyed from the summit
269

STEEP TRAILS
could hardly be surpassed in subUmity 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
mountains than on their frozen tops. Doubly
happy, however, is the man to whom lofty
mountain-tops are within reach, for the Ughts
that shine there illumine all that Ues below.

XXI
THE PHYSICAL AND CLIMATIC CHARACTERISTICS
OF OREGON
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, fertUe 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 wilder
ness and, like Washington, once a part of the
Oregon Territory, abounds in bold, far-reach
ing 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, ex
quisitely plushy and soft, overshadowed by
jagged crags barren as icebergs; forests seem
ingly boundless and plains with no tree in
sight; presenting a wide range of conditions,
but as a whole favorable to industry. Natural
271

STEEP TRAILS
wealth of an available kind abounds nearly
everjrwhere, 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 wild
ness. The scenery is mostly of a comfortable,
assuring kind, grand and inspiring without
too much of that dreadful overpowering sub
limity and exuberance which tend to discour
age effort and cast people into inaction and
superstition. Ever since Oregon was first heard of in the
romantic, adventurous, hunting, trapping WUd
West days, it seems to have been regarded
as the most attractive and promising of aU
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 win-
272

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
ter ere they reached the promised land. They
crossed the Rocky Mountains to Fort HaU;
thence foUowed down the Snake River for
three or four hundred miles, their cattle limp
ing and faiUng on the rough lava plains; swim
ming the streams too deep to be forded, mak
ing 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 WiUam-
ette Valley on the river with rafts and boats.
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 weU-nigh aboUshed the old dis
tances and dangers, and brought forward the
New West into near and familiar companion
ship with the rest of the world.
Purely wild for unnumbered centuries, a
paradise of oily, salmon-fed Indians, Oregon
273

STEEP TRAILS
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, civiUzation is beginning to take
root, towns are springing up and flourishing
vigorously Uke a crop adapted to the soil, and
the whole kindly wUdemess Ues invitingly
near with all its wealth open and ripe for use.
In saiUng 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 har
bors have been discovered for coasting ves
sels, which are of great importance to the
lumbermen, dairymen, and farmers of the coast
region. But Uttle 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.
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
274

P m

O
O H «
o H aEh

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
swirled in the restless breakers. The abrupt
ness of the shore allows the massive waves
that have come from far over the broad Paci
fic 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.
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 yeUow, purple and blue.
The rocks, gUstening 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, monu
ments of a thousand storms, types of perma
nence, 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 thou-
275

STEEP TRAILS
sands of miles away, traveUng with majestic,
slow-heaving deUberation, 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!
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 Usten un
disturbed in the heart of it. Perhaps now and
then we may dimly see the tops of the high
est breakers, looking ghostly in the gloom;
but when the water happens to be phosphores
cent, as it oftentimes is, then both the sea
and the rocks are visible, and the wild, exult
ing, up-dashing spray bums, 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, msh wildly
down every gulch to the sea, as if eager to join
the waves m thek grand, savage harmony;
deep calling unto deep in the heart of the
276

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
great, dark night, making a sight and a song
unspeakably sublime and glorious.
In the pleasant weather of summer, after
the rainy season is past and only occasional
refreshing showers faU, washing the sky and
bringing out the fragrance of the flowers and
the evergreens, then one may enjoy a fine,
free walk aU the way across the State from
the sea to the eastem 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 val
ley, wild garden and desert, presenting land
scape beauty on a grand scale and in a thou
sand forms, and new lessons without number,
delightful to learn. Oregon has three moun
tain-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 Eastem and Westem 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 eastem section is about
two hundred and thirty nules wide, and is
made up in great part of the treeless plains
277

STEEP TRAILS
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.
In general views the westem section seems
to be covered with one vast, evenly planted
forest, vnth. 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 timber-line. Nevertheless, em
bosomed in this forest and lying in the great
trough between the Cascades and coast moun
tains, there are some of the best bread-bearing
vaUeys to be found in the world. The largest
of these are the Willamette, Umpqua, and
Rogue River Valleys. Inasmuch as a consid
erable portion of these main valleys was tree
less, or nearly so, as well as surpassingly fer
tile, they were the first to attract settlers; and
the WiUamette, being at once the largest and
nearest to tide water, was settled first of all,
and now contains the greater portion of the
po]julation and wealth of the State.
The cUmate of this section, like the corre
sponding portion of Washington, is rather
278

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
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 Umbs of good size and fiber
and, unless overworked in the woods, live to a
good old age, hale and hearty.
But, Uke every other happy valley in the
world, the simshine 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 dis
appoint the hopes of the husbandman. Many
a tale, good-natured or otherwise, is told con
cerning the overflowing abundance of the
Oregon rains. Once an EngUsh traveler, as the
story goes, went to a store to make some pur
chases and on leaving found that rain was fall
ing; 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 repUed that he thought the shower
279

STEEP TRAILS
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 aU wetter or
cloudier than his own.
No climate seems the best for everybody.
Many there be who waste their Uves in a vain
search for weather with which no fault may
be found, keeping themselves and their fami
lies in constant motion, like floating seaweeds
that never strike root, yielding compUance to
every current of news concerning countries
yet untried, beUeving that everywhere, any
where, the sky is fairer and the grass grows
greener than where they happen to be. Be
fore the Oregon and CaUfornia 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 dis
satisfied climate-seekers, too wet and too dry,
might be seen plodding along through the dust
in the old " '49 style," 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,
280

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
and it was curious to hear those perpetual
pioneers comparing notes and seeking infor
mation around the camp-fires.
"Where are you from?" some Oregonian
would ask.
"TheJoaqum."
"It'sdry there, ain't it?"
"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 whUe, Uke it does in every reg'lar white man's
country; and that, I guess, will be Oregon, if
the news be true."
"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 wdll. I've just come from there, plumb
drowned out, and I told my wife to jump into
the wagon and we would start out and see if
we could n'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."
"Well, if you be a homed toad or coyote,"
the seeker of moisture would reply, "then
281

STEEP TRAILS
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 rat
tle and tell you when you come to it."
"All right, partner, we'll swap square, you
can have mine in Yamhill and the rain thrown
in. Last August a painter sharp came along
one day wanting to know the way to WiUam
ette Falls, and I told him: 'Young man, just
wait a Uttle and you'll find falls enough with
out going to Oregon City after them. The
whole dog-gone Noah's flood of a country wiU
be a fall and melt and float away some day.' "
And more to the same effect.
But no one need leave Oregon in search of
fair weather. The wheat and cattle region of
eastem Oregon and Washington on the upper
Columbia plains is dry enough and dusty
enough more than half the year. The tmth
is, most of these wanderers enjoy the freedom
of gTPsy 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 compeUed
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
282

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
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 Uke good soldiers
in time of war are ever ready to march. Their
journey of Ufe is indeed a journey wdth very
matter-of-fact thorns in the way, though not
wholly wanting in compensation.
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 de
sire to find a country at once fertile and win-
terless, 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 eastem and old west
em 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,
whUe to keep cool in summers and warm in
283

STEEP TRAILS
the icy winters was weU-nigh impossible to
poor farmers.
Along the coast and throughout the greater
part of western Oregon in general, snow sel
dom falls on the lowlands to a greater depth
than a few inches, and never Ues long. Grass
is green aU winter. The average tempera
ture for the year in the Willamette Valley is
about 52°, the highest and lowest being about
100° and 20°, though occasionally a much
lower temperature is reached.
The average rainfall is about fifty or fifty-
five inches in the WUlamette 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 imtil
April or May. Then the whole country is sol
emnly 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 duU time of it. Of
aU the year only about one fourth of the days
284

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
are clear, while three fourths have more or less
of fogs, clouds, or rain.
The fogs occur mostly in the faU and spring.
They are grand, far-reaching affairs of two
kinds, the black and the white, some of the lat
ter being very beautiful, and the infinite deU-
cacy and tenderness of their touch as they linger
to caress the tall evergreens is most exquisite.
On farms and highways and in streets of towns,
where work has to be done, there is nothing
picturesque or attractive in any obvious way
about the gray, serious-faced rain-storms.
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 tmnk,
leaving no spot naked or uncared-for, there the
rain is welcomed, and every drop that faUs
finds a place and use as sweet and pure as it
self. 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 i&
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STEEP TRAILS
easily found beneath the great trees in some
hollow out of the wdnd, 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.
" 'T were worth ten years of peaceful life, one glance at
this array."
The snow that falls in the lowland woods is
usually soft, and makes a fine show coining
through the trees in large, feathery tufts,
loading the branches of the firs and spruces
and cedars and weighing them down against
the tmnks until they look slender and sharp
as arrows, while a strange, muffled sUence
prevails, giving a peculiar solemnity to every
thing. 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.
While these gracious rains are searching the
roots of the lowlands, corresponding snows are
busy along the heights of the Cascade Moun
tains. Month after month, day and night the
heavens shed their icy bloom in stormy, meas
ureless abundance, filling the grand upper f ounr
tains of the rivers to last through the summer.
286

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
Aw^ul 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
dowm as by a gentle hand and put to rest,
not again to see the light or move leaf or Umb
until the grand awakening of the springtime,
while the larger ammals and most of the birds
seek food and shelter in the foothills on the
borders of the valleys and plains.
The lofty volcanic peaks are yet more heav
ily snow-laden. To their upper zones no sum
mer 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 manifes
tations of power. Happy is the man who may
get near them to see and hear. In some shel
tered camp nest on the edge of the timber-
Une 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 care
ful forecast a sufficient supply has been pro
vided and securely placed during the summer.
Nevertheless, to be thus deeply snowbound
high in the sky is not without generous com-
287

STEEP TRAILS
pensation for all the cost. And when we at
length go dowm 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.
The fate of the high-flying mountain snow-
flowers is a fascinating study, though Uttle
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, in
tense 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. Gradu
aUy the loose crystals by the pressure of their
own weight are welded together into clear ice,
and, as glaciers, march steadily, silently on,
wdth invisible motion, in broad, deep currents,
grinding their way with irresistible energy to
the warmer lowlands, where they vanish in
glad, rejoicing streams.
In the sober weather of Oregon lightning
makes but little show. Those magnificent
thunder-storms that so frequently adorn and
glorify the sky of the Mississippi VaUey are
288

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
wanting here. Dull thunder and Ughtning
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 un-
knowm. 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 rolUng or rising here and there into hiUs
and short mountain spurs. Though well sup
pUed with rivers in most of its main sections,
it is generaUy 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 Ught over eastem 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. When we read of the mountain-ranges of
Oregon and Washington with detailed descrip
tions of their old volcanoes towering snow-
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STEEP TRAILS
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 im
mense deposits on the great central upUft of
the Cascade Range are mostly melted off
before the middle of summer by the compara
tively 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 por
tion of the general landscape.
As we approach Oregon from the coast in
summer, no hint of snowry mountains can be
290

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
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 surpass
ingly 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
and 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!
The principal mountains of the range are
Mounts Pitt, Scott, and Thielson, Diamond
Peak, the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson,
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STEEP TRAILS
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. The heights back of Portland command
one of the best general views of the forests and
also of the most famous of the great moun
tains 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 wdlderness in which it is planted.
The river is displayed to fine advantage in
the foreground of our main view, sweeping
292

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
in beautiful curves around rich, leafy islands,
its banks fringed with willows.
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 ^ to Mount Baker, a distance of about
six hundred miles, which once flamed Uke
gigantic watch-fires along the coast. Some of
them have been active in recent times, but
no considerable addition to the bulk of Mount
' Lassen Peak on recent maps. [Editor.]
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STEEP TRAILS
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, how
ever, and is fairly well proportioned. Though
it is eleven thousand feet high, it is too far off
to make much show under ordinary condi
tions 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 wdnter 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 wdnter 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 im
pressive. It gives the supreme touch of gran
deur to all the main Columbia views, rising
at every turn, solitary, majestic, awe-inspiring,
the mling spirit of the landscape. But, Uke
mountains everywhere, it varies greatly in
impressiveness and apparent height at differ
ent times and seasons, not alone from dif
ferences as to the dimness or transparency of
294

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
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 duU, shmnken mass of rocks
and ice had lost all power to charm.
Never shall I forget my first glorious view
of Mount Hood one cahn 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 sum
mer 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. Sev
eral 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 sweUs that made aU the
Ught pleasure-craft bow and nod in hearty
295

STEEP TRAILS
salutation as they passed. The crowd was
being constantly increased by new arrivals
from both shores, sailboats, rowboats, racing-
sheUs, rafts, were loaded with gayly dressed
people, and here and there some adventurous
man or boy might be seen as a merry saUor
on a single plank or spar, apparently as deep
in enjoyment as were any on the water. It
seemed as if aU the towm were coining 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.
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, shout
ing, "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 mel
low light of the sunset was streaming, I soon
discovered the source of my friend's excite
ment. There stood Mount Hood in all the
glory of the alpenglow, looming immensely
296

CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON
high, beaming with intelligence, and so im
pressive that one was overawed as if suddenly
brought before some superior being newly
arrived from the sky.
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, en
thusiastic and benevolent, glowing like a
countenance with ineffable repose and beauty,
before which we could only gaze in devout and
lowly admiration.
The far-famed Oregon forests cover aU the
western section of the State, the mountains
as well as the lowlands, with the exception of
a few graveUy spots and open spaces in the
central portions of the great cultivated val
leys. Beginning on the coast, where then-
outer ranks are drenched and buffeted by
wind-driven scud from the sea, they press on
in close, majestic ranks over the coast moun
tains, across the broad central vaUeys, and
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STEEP TRAILS
over the Cascade Range, broken and halted
only by the few great peaks that rise like
islands above the sea of evergreens.
In descending the eastern slopes of the Cas
cades the rich, abounding, triumphant exu
berance of the trees is quickly subdued; they
become smaller, grow wdde apart, leaving dry
spaces without moss covering or underbmsh,
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 eastem 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 fire
wood. Along the stream-bottoms there is
usually more or less of cottonwood and wiUow,
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.

XXII
THE FORESTS OF OREGON AND THEIR
INHABITANTS
Like the forests of Washington, already
described, those of Oregon are in great part
made up of the Douglas spruce,^ or Oregon
pine {Abies Douglasii). A large number of
miUs are at work upon this species, especiaUy
along the Columbia, but these as yet have
made but little impression upon its dense
masses, the miUs here being smaU as compared
with those of the Puget Sound region. The
white cedar, or Port Orford cedar {Cupressus
Lawsoniana, or Chamcecyparis Lawsoniana), is
one of the most beautiful of the evergreens, and
produces excellent lumber, considerable quan
tities of which are shipped to the San Fran
cisco market. It is found mostly about Coos
Bay, along the Coquille River, and on the
northern slopes of the Siskiyou Mountains,
and extends dowm the coast into California.
The silver firs, the spruces, and the colossal
arbor-vitse, or white cedar ^ {Thuja gigantea),
described in the chapter on Washington, are
1 Pseudotsttga taxifolia. Brit. [Editor.]
' Thuja plicata Don. [Editor.]
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STEEP TRAILS
also found here in great beauty and perfec
tion, 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 impor
tant of which, both as to lumber and as to the
part they play in the general wealth and
beauty of the forests, are the yeUow and sugar
pines {Pinus ponderosa and P. Lambertiana).
The yeUow pine is most abundant on the east
ern 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 WiUamette Valley. In the southern
portion of the State the sugar pine, which is the
king of aU 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 HUls that this noble
tree was first discovered by the enthusiastic
botanical explorer David Douglas, in the year
1826. This is the Douglas for whom the noble
Douglas spruce is named, and many a fair
blooming plant also, which wdU serve to keep
his memory fresh and sweet as long sfs beauti
ful trees and flowers are loved. The Indians
300

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
of the lower Columbia River watched him
wdth 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
aU 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 caUed him the "Man of Grass," a title
of which he was proud.
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 weU as among
the rich underbmsh and smaUer herbaceous
vegetation. It was whUe 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
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STEEP TRAILS
caUed AUes), and from the seeds which he
then collected and sent home tall trees are
now growing in Scotland.
In one of his trips that summer, in the
lower Willamette VaUey, 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 foUowing season
was spent on the upper waters of the Colum
bia, and it was not untU September that he
returned to Fort Vancouver, about the time
of the setting-in of the wdnter rains. Never
theless, 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 WiUamette 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 : —
October 26th, 1826. Weather dull. Cold and
cloudy. When my friends in England are made
acquainted with my travels I fear they will think
that I have told them nothing but my miseries. . . .
I quitted my camp early in the morning to survey
the neighboring country, leaving my guide to take
charge of the horses until my return in the evening.
About an hour's walk from the camp I met an
Indian, who on perceiving me instantly strung his
302

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
bow, placed on his left arm a sleeve of raccoon skin
and stood on the defensive. Being quite sure that
conduct was prompted by fear and not by hostile
intentions, the poor fellow having probably never
seen such a being as myself before, I laid my gun
at my feet on the ground and waved my hand for
him to come to me, which he did slowly and with
great caution. I then made him place his bow and
quiver of arrows beside my gun, and striking a
light gave him a smoke out of my own pipe and
a present of a few beads. With my pencil I made
a rough sketch of the cone and pine tree which I
wanted to obtain and drew his attention to it, when
he instantly pointed with his hand to the hills
fifteen or twenty miles distant towards the south;
and when I expressed my intention of going thither,
cheerfully set about accompanying me. At midday
I reached my long-wished-for pines and lost no
time in examining them and endeavoring to collect
specimens and seeds. New and strange things sel
dom fail to make strong impressions and are there
fore frequently overrated; so that, lest I should
never see my friends in England to inform them
verbally of this most beautiful and immensely
grand tree, I shall here state the dimensions of the
largest I could find among several that had been
blown down by the wind. At three feet from the
ground its circumference is fifty-seven feet, nine
inches; at one hundred and thirty-four feet, seven
teen feet five inches; the extreme length two hun
dred and forty-five feet. ... As it was impossible
either to climb the tree or hew it down, I endeavored
to knock off the cones by firing at them with ball,
when the report of my gun brought eight Indians,
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STEEP TRAILS
all of them painted with red earth, armed with
bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint knives.
They appeared anything but friendly. I explained
to them what I wanted and they seemed satisfied
and sat down to smoke; but presently I saw one of
them string his bow and another sharpen his flint
Imife with a pair of wooden pincers and suspend it
on the wrist of his right hand. Further testimony
of their intentions was unnecessary. To save my
self by flight was impossible, so without hesitation
I stepped back about five paces, cocked my gun,
drew one of the pistols out of my belt, and holding
it in my left hand, the gun in my right, showed
myself determined to fight for my life. As much
as possible I endeavored to preserve my coolness,
and thus we stood looking at one another without
making any movement or uttering a word for per
haps ten minutes, when one at last, who seemed to
be the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some
tobacco; this I signified they should have if they
fetched a quantity of cones. They went off immedi
ately in search of them, and no sooner were they all
out of sight than I picked up my three cones and
some twigs of the trees and made the quickest pos
sible retreat, hurrying back to my camp, which I
reached before dusk. The Indian who last under
took to be my guide to the trees I sent off before
gaining my encampment, lest he should betray me.
How irksome is the darkness of night to one under
such circumstances. I cannot speak a word to my
guide, nor have I a book to divert my thoughts,
which are continually occupied with the dread lest
the hostile Indians should trace me hither and make
an attack. I now write lying on the grass with my
304

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
gun cocked beside me, and penning these lines by
the light of my Columbian candle, namely, an ignited
piece of rosin-wood.
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 aU others not only in size but in
beauty and majesty. Oregon may weU be
proud that its discovery was made within
her borders, and that, though it is far more
abundant in CaUfomia, she has the largest
known specimens. In the Sierra the finest
sugar pine forests Ue 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.
No lover of trees wiU ever forget his first
meeting wdth the sugar pine. In most coni
ferous 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 conven
tional forms as any of the oaks. No two are
so much aUke as to hide their individuality
from any observer. Every tree is appreciated
as a study in itself and proclaims in no uncer
tain terms the surpassing grandeur of the spe
cies. The branches, mostly near the summit,
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are sometimes nearly forty feet long, feathered
richly all around with short, leafy branchlets,
and tasselled with cones a foot and a half long.
And when these superb arms are outspread,
radiating in every direction, an immense crowm-
like mass is formed which, poised on the no
ble shaft and filled with sunshine, is one of
the grandest forest objects conceivable. But
though so wUd 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 be
comes more and more original and indepen
dent in style, pushes boldly aloft into the
wdnds and sunshine, growing ever more stately
and beautiful, a joy and inspiration to every
beholder. Unfortunately, the sugar pine makes excel
lent lumber. It is too good to live, and is
already passing rapidly away before the wood
man's axe. Surely out of all of the aboimd-
ing 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
306

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
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 wUl be the men who, having
the power and the love and benevolent forecast
to do this, wUl do it. They wdll not be forgot
ten. The trees and their lovers wUl sing their
praises, and generations yet unborn will rise
up and call them blessed.
Dotting the prairies and fringing the edges
of the great evergreen forests we find a con
siderable 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, par
ticularly about the Dalles, and a consider
able quantity of useful lumber is made from
it and sold, sometimes for eastern white oak,
to wagon-makers. Kellogg's oak is a magnifi
cent tree and does much for the picturesque
beauty of the Umpqua and Rogue River Val
leys where it abounds. It is also found in aU
the Yosemite valleys of the Sierra, and its
acorns form an important part of the food
of the Digger Indians. In the Siskiyou Moun-
307

STEEP TRAILS
tains there is a Uve 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 Ore
gon, oftentimes five to eight feet in diameter.
The maples are the same as those in Wash
ington, 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 Snoqual
mie River.
The Oregon ash is now rare along the stream-
banks of westem Oregon, and it grows to a
good size and furnishes lumber that is for
some purposes equal to the white ash of the
Westem States.
Nuttall's flowering dogwood makes a brave
display with its wealth of showy involucres
in the spring along cool streams. Specimens
of the flowers may be found measuring eight
inches in diameter.
The wild cherry {Prunus emarginata, var,
mollis) is a smaU, 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.
308

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
The wdld apple {Pyrus rivularis) is a fine,
hearty, handsome Uttle tree that grows well in
rich, cool soil along streams and on the edges of
beaver-meadows from CaUfornia through Ore
gon 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 wdth its abundant
clusters of flowers, which are white and fra
grant. The fruit is very small and savagely
acid. It is wholesome, however, and is eaten by
birds, bears, Indians, and many other adven
turers, great and small.
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
civiUzation, 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 gar
den fiifty or sixty miles in circumference, and
so deep and luxuriant and closely woven it
309

STEEP TRAILS
seems as if Nature, glad to find an opening,
were economizing space and trying to see how
many of her bright-eyed darlings she can get
together in one mountain wreath.
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 camas-
sia 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 mar
gins of the deep woods there is a magnificent
tangle of gaultheria and hucklebterry bushes
with their myriads of pink bells, reinforced
with hazel, cornel, mbus of many species,
wild plum, cherry, and crab apple; besides
thousands of charming bloomers to be found
in all sorts of places throughout the wilder
ness whose mere names are refreshing, such
as Unnsea, menziesia, pyrola, chimaphila, brodi-
sea, smilacina, fritillaria, calochortus, triUium,
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 jour-
310

THE FORESTS OP OREGON
ney into the wilderness. And besides these
there is a charming underworld of ferns and
mosses flourishing gloriously beneath aU the
woods. Everybody loves wild woods and flowers
more or less. Seeds of all these Oregon ever
greens and of many of the flowering shrubs and
plants have been sent to almost every coun
try 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 flnd these woods and gar
dens 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 Califomia trees, the mere dead
skin, excited the wondering attention of thou
sands when it was set up in the Crystal Pal
ace in London, as did also a few peeled spars,
the shafts of mere saplings from Oregon or
Washington. Could one of these great sUver
fiirs or sugar pines three hundred feet high
have been transplanted entire to that exhibi
tion, how enthusiastic would have been the
praises accorded to it!
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 thou-
311

STEEP TRAILS
sands of square miles in extent, attract but
little attention. Most travelers content them
selves wdth 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 saU-
ors to a Ufe-raft. When an excursion into the
woods is proposed, all sorts of exaggerated
or imaginary dangers are conjured up, filUng
the kindly, soothing wilderness with colds,
fevers, Indians, bears, snakes, bugs, impass
able rivers, and jungles of bmsh, to which is
always added quick and sure starvation.
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. More
over, the most of them have been either buried
since the settlement of the country or civilized
into comparative innocence, industry, or harm
less laziness. There are bears in the woods,
but not in such numbers nor of such unspeak
able ferocity as towm-dwellers imagine, nor
do bears spend their lives in going about the
country Uke the devil, seeking whom they
may devour. Oregon bears, Uke most others,
312

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
have no liking for man either as meat or as
society; and whUe 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 wdld, 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.
As early as 1843, while the settlers num
bered 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 destme-
tion of wild animals destructive to tame ones,
which committee in due time begged to report
as follows: —
It being admitted by all that bears, wolves, pan
thers, etc., are destructive to the useful animals
owned by the settlers of this colony, your commit
tee would submit the following resolutions as the
sense of this meeting, by which the community may
be governed in carrying on a defensive and destruc
tive war on all such animals: —
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Resolved, 1st. — That we deem it expedient for
the community to take immediate measures for
the destruction of all wolves, panthers and bears,
and such other animals as are known to be destruc
tive to cattle, horses, sheep and hogs.
2d. — That a bounty of fifty cents be paid for
the destruction of a small wolf, $3.00 for a large
wolf, $1.50 for a lynx, $2.00 for a bear and $5.00
for a panther.
This center of destruction was in the Wil
lamette 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 In
dians could be found, and vast numbers of
these animals were kUled. Their destmction
has since gone on at an accelerated rate from
year to year as the settlements have been ex
tended, so that in some cases it is difficult to
obtain specimens enough for the use of nat
uralists. But even before any of these settle
ments 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.
When Lewis and Clark made their fiamous
314

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
trip across the continent in 1804-05, when all
the Rocky Mountain region was wdld, 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 mUes
of savage wUderness. 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.
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 wdth horses. Therefore
they had to wait some weeks. This was at
the head of one of the northern branches of
Snake River, and, their scanty stock of provi
sions being nearly exhausted, the whole party
was compelled to live mostly on bears and
315

STEEP TRAILS
dogs; deer, antelope, and elk, usually abun
dant, were now scarce because the region had
been closely hunted over by the Indians before
their arrival.
Lewis and Clark had killed a number of
bears and saved the skins of the more interest
ing specimens, and the variations they found
in size, color of the hair, etc., made great dif
ficulty in classification. Wishing to get the
opinion of the Chopumish Indians, near one
of whose villages they were encamped, con
cerning the various species, the explorers im-
packed their bundles and spread out for ex
amination 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, aU those with the
extremities of the hair of a white or frosty
color wdthout 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 naUs 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
Ught reddish-browm, were classed under the
name yack-ah, and were said to resemble each
316

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
other in being smaller and having shorter nails,
in climbing trees, and being so little vicious
that they could be pursued with safety.
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 Pacffic Coast
and the East, which never vary in color.
As much as possible should be made by the
ordinary traveler of these descriptions, for he
wiU be likely to see very Uttle of any species
for himseU; 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 smaU openings
in the midst of thickets where berries are most
abundant. As for rattlesnakes, the other grand dread
of town-dweUers 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 aU. In all my walks in the
317

STEEP TRAILS
Oregon forest I have never met a single speci
men, though a few have been seen at long
intervals. 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 kUled
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
cattle-men. Whether the moose still lingers
in Oregon or Washington I am unable to say.
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
so dangerous. He is a brave, sturdy, shaggy
mountaineer of an animal, enjoying the free
dom and security of crumbling ridges and
overhanging cliffs above the glaciers, often
times beyond the reach of the most daring
hunter. They seem to be as much at home on
318

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
the ice and snow-fields as on the crags, making
their way in flocks from ridge to ridge on the
great volcanic mountains by crossing the gla
ciers 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 ad
mirable skill, and the mountaineer may sel
dom do better in such places than to foUow
their trail, if he can. In the rich alpine gar
dens and meadows they find abundance of
food, venturing sometimes weU down in the
prairie openings on the edge of the timber-
line, but holding themselves ever alert and
watchful, ready to flee to their highland cas
tles at the faintest alarm. When their summer
pastures are buried beneath the winter snows,
they make haste to the lower ridges, seeking
the wdnd-beaten crags and slopes where the
snow cannot lie at any great depth, feeding
at times on the leaves and twdgs of bushes
when grass is beyond reach.
The wdld sheep is another admirable alpine
rover, but comparatively rare in the Oregon
mountains, choosing rather the drier ridges
to tihe southward on the Cascades and to the
eastward among the spurs of the Rocky Moun
tain chain. 319

STEEP TRAILS
Deer give beautiful animation to the forests,
harmonizing finely in their color and move
ments wdth the gray and browm shafts of the
trees and the swaying of the branches as they
stand in groups at rest, or move gracefuUy
and noiselessly over the mossy ground about
the edges of beaver-meadows and flowery
glades, daintUy culling the leaves and tips of
the mints and aromatic bushes on which they
feed. There are three species, the black-tailed,
white-taUed, 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, kUUng for
food, for hides, or for mere wanton sport, hav
ing well-nigh exterminated them in the more
accessible regions, while elsewhere they are
too often at the mercy of the wolves.
GUding about in their shady forest homes,
keeping well out of sight, there is a multitude
of sleek fur-clad animals Uving and enjoying
their clean, beautiful Uves. 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 succes
sive folds of exaggeration and fancy. Unsatis-
320

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
fying as these accounts must be, a tourist's
frightened msh and scramble through the
woods yields far less than the hunter's wildest
stories, whUe in wn-iting we can do but little
more than to give a few names, as they come
to mind, — beaver, squirrel, coon, fox, mar
ten, fisher, otter, ermine, wildcat, — only this
instead of fuU 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 ex
quisitely clean through aU the pitUess weather.
For many years before the settlement of
the country the fur of the beaver brought a
high price, and therefore it was pursued with
wearUess 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 caUed
"free trappers" made their appearance. Bold,
enterprising men, eager to make money, and
inclined at the same time to reUsh the Ucense
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 mo
lest them. There they would set their traps,
321

STEEP TRAILS
while the buffalo, antelope, deer, etc., fur
nished a royal supply of food. In a few months
their pack-animals would be laden with thou
sands of dollars' worth of fur.
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 wUder the better, provided their scalps
could be saved. Oftentimes they were com
pelled to set their traps and visit them by
night and lie hid during the day, when oper
ating 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 an(i "good time," and go again
to the bears and beavers, untU at length a bul
let 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,
322

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
and earned fame, and, by their knowledge of
the topography of the vast West then unex
plored, have been able to render important
service to the country; but most of them laid
their bones in the wdlderness after a few short,
keen seasons. So great were the perils that be
set 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 whoUy 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 thou
sand 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.
But there is a little airy, effin animal in these
woods, and in aU 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 wdU throughout aU these noble forests, you
everywhere find this Uttle squirrel the master-
existence. Though only a few mches long, so
intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness, he
stirs every grove with wUd life, and makes
himself more important than the great bears
that shuffle through the berry tangles beneath
323

STEEP TRAILS
hun. Every tree feels the sting of his sharp
feet. Nature has made hrni master-forester,
and committed the greater part of the conif
erous crops to his management. Probably
over haU 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 wdnter 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 preemi
nently so, possessing every squirrelish attri
bute, fully developed and concentrated. He is
the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch
to brancn 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 skUl without ap
parent effort. One never tires of this bright
spark of life, the brave Uttle voice crying in
the wUdemess. His varied, piney gossip is as
savory to the air as balsam to the palate.
324

THE FORESTS OF OREGON
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, whUe
in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a jay. A
smaU thing, but fiUing and animating aU the
woods. Nor is there any lack of wings, notwith
standing few are to be seen on short, noisy
rambles. The ousel sweetens the shady glens
and canons 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 wUl
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 lunbs off the
trees as they pass, awkwardly stmggling
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 aU the
life about them for miles. It is this class oi
hunters and travelers who report that there
325

STEEP TRAILS
are "no birds in the woods or game animals
of any kind larger than mosquitoes."
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 sahnon, 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
wUdness.

XXIII
THE RIVERS OF OREGON
Turning from the woods and their inhabi
tants to the rivers, we find that while the for
mer are rarely seen by travelers beyond the
immediate borders of the settlements, the
great river of Oregon draws crowds of visitors,
and is never without raithusiastic admirers
to sound its praises. Every summer since the
completion of the first overland railroad, tour
ists 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 weU 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 be
longs and which nobody can measure — the
Eraser, McKenzie, Saskatchewan, the Mis
souri, Yellowstone, Platte, and the Colorado,
with their glacier and geyser fountains, then-
famous canons, lakes, forests, and vast flow-
327

STEEP TRAILS
ery prairies and plains. These great rivers and
the Columbia are intimately related. All draw
their upper waters from the same high foun
tains 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, coUecting their
tributaries, they set out on their grand jour
ney to the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Ocean.
The Columbia, viewed as one from the sea
to the mountains, is like a rugged, broad-
topped, picturesque old oak about six hun
dred miles long and nearly a thousand miles
wide measured across the spread of its upper
branches, the main limbs gnarled and swoUen
with lakes and lakelike expansions, while in
numerable smaller lakes shine like fruit among
the smaller branches. The main trunk extends
back through the Coast and Cascade Moun
tains 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.
The south branch, the longer of the two,
called the Snake, or Lewds, River, extends into
the Rocky Mountains as far as the Yellow
stone National Park, where its head tribu
taries interlace with those of the Colorado,
Missouri, and YeUowstone. The north branch,
328

THE RIVERS OF OREGON
stiU caUed the Columbia, extends through
Washington far into British territory, its high
est tributaries reaching back through long
parallel spurs of the Rockies between and
beyond the headwaters of the Eraser, Atha
basca, and Saskatchewan. Each of these maui
branches, dividing again and again, spreads
a network of channels over the vast compli
cated 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 crys
tal 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
easUy recognized by the difference in coloj?
and by the drift of leaves, berries, pine cones,
branches, and trunks of trees that they carry.
That so large a river as the Columbia, mak
ing a telling current so far from shore, should
329

STEEP TRAILS
remain undiscovered while one exploring ex
pedition after another sailed Jjast seems re
markable, even after due aUowance is made
for the cloudy weather that prevaUs here
abouts 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 a fash
ionable business, and when such large game
was no longer to be found, islands lying un
claimed in the great oceans, inhabited by use
ful 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.
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 aU 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 wdth su
perb audacity, fought the natives if they cared
330

THE RIVERS OF OREGON
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 bat
tled for, and passed from hand to hand in
treaties and settlements made during the
intermissions of war.
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 hmidred
and seventy miles in a northwesterly direction
to a plain caUed "Boat Encampment," receiv
ing 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 Encamp
ment 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.
The Whirlpool River takes its rise near the
summit of the main axis of the range on the
331

STEEP TRAILS
fifty-fourth parallel, and is the northmost of
aU the Columbia waters. About thirty mUes
above its confluence with the Columbia it
flows through a lake called the Punch-Bowl,
and thence it passes between Mounts Hooker
and Browm, said to be fifteen thousand and
sixteen thousand feet high, making magnifi
cent scenery; though the height of the moun
tains thereabouts has been considerably over
estimated. From Boat Encampment the river,
now a large, clear stream, said to be nearly
a third of a mUe in width, doubles back on its
original course and flows southward as far
as its confluence with the Spokane in Wash
ington, a distance of nearly three hundred
mUes in a direct line, most of the way through
a wild, rocky, picturesque mass of mountains,
charmingly forested wdth pine and spmce —
though the trees seem strangely smaU, Uke
second growth saplings, to one famiUar with
the westem forests of Washington, Oregon,
and CaUfornia.
About forty-five miles below Boat Encamp
ment are the Upper Dalles, or DaUes de Mort,
and thirty nules farther the Lower DaUes,
where the river makes a magnificent uproar
and interrupts navigation. About thirty miles
below the Lower DaUes the river expands into
Upper Arrow Lake, a beautiful sheet of water
332

THE RIVERS OF OREGON
forty miles long and five mUes 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
mUes in length, and after these rapids are
passed, the river enters Lower Arrow Lake,
which is Uke the Upper Arrow, but is even
longer and not so straight.
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 smaU steamers for a
hundred and fifty mUes. It is an exceedingly
crooked stream, heading beyond the upper
Columbia lakes, and, in its mazy course, flow
ing to aU 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 up
wards of seventy miles in length with an aver
age wddth of five miles. A short distance below
the confluence of the Kootenay, near the
boundary-line between Washington and Brit
ish Columbia, another large stream comes in
from the east, Clarke's Fork, or the Flathead
River. Its upper sources are near those of the
333

STEEP TRAILS
Missouri and South Saskatchewan, and in
its course it flows through two large and beau
tiful lakes, the Flathead and the Pend d'OreUle.
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, whUe its many picturesque
islands crowned with evergreens, and its wind
ing shores forming an endless variety of bays
and promontories lavishly crowded with spirey
spruce and cedar, recaU some of the best of
the island scenery of Alaska.
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,
FaUs on the main river, with a total descent
of about fifty feet. Fifty miles farther down,
the Spokane River, a clear, dashing stream,
cornes in from the east. It is about one hun
dred and twenty miles long, and takes its rise
m the beautiful Lake Coeur d'AI^ne, m Idaho,
which receives the drainage of nearly a hundred
nules of the western slopes of the Bitter Root
Mountains, through the St. Joseph and Coeur
334

THE RIVERS OF OREGON
d'Altoe Rivers. The lake is about twenty
miles long, set in the midst of charming scen
ery, and, like Pend d'OreOle, is easy of access
and is already attracting attention as a sum
mer place for enjoyment, rest, and health.
The famous Spokane Falls are in Washing
ton, 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 avaUable of
Water-powers in the State. The city of the
same name is buUt 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 mshing 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
m livmg water, the Spokane Falls are unri
valled, at least as far as my observation has
reached. Nowhere else have I seen such les
sons 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, caUing aloud in
33f;

STEEP TRAILS
the midst of the busy throng, and making
glorious offerings for every use of utUity or
adornment. From the mouth of the Spokane the Colum
bia, now out of the woods, flows to the west
ward with a broad, stately current for a hun
dred and twenty miles to receive the Okina-
gan, 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 nules, 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 des
erts, whUe 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, al
though the gloominess of its canon is relieved
in some manner by its many falls and springs,
336

THE RIVERS OF OREGON
some of the springs being large enough to ap
pear as the outlets of subterranean rivers. They
gush out from the faces of the sheer black waUs
and descend foaming with brave roar and
beauty to sweU the flood below.
From where the river skirts the base of the
Blue Mountains its surroundings are less for
bidding. Much of the country is fertile, but
its canon is every^vhere deep and almost in
accessible. Steamers make their way up as
far as Lewdston, 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 HaU on
the head of the south fork, which shows how
desperately unmanageable a river it must be.
A few miles above the mouth of the Snake
the Yakima, which drains a considerable por
tion 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 con
sumed in irrigated fields and meadows in pass
ing through the settlements along its course,
337

STEEP TRAILS
and by evaporation on the parched desert
plains. The grand flood of the Columbia, now
from half a irule to a mile wide, sweeps on to
the westward, holding a nearly direct course
until it reaches the mouth of the WiUamette,
where it tums 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 aU its course
from the mouth of the Yakima to the sea, a
distance of three hundred miles, the only con
siderable affluent from the northward is the
Cowlitz, which heads in the glaciers of Mount
Rainier. 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 Moun
tains, shaded with taU 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 UmatUla. Its valley is in great
part fertile, and is noted for the interesting
fossUs discovered in it by Professor Condon
in sections cut by the river through the over
lying lava-beds. 338

THE RIVERS OF OREGON
The Deschutes River comes in from the
south about twenty nules 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 num
ber 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 vol
ume of water makes a grand display. During
the flood-season the falls are obliterated and
skUlful boatmen pass over them in safety; whUe
the DaUes, some six or eight miles below, may be
passed during low water but are utterly impas
sable in flood-time. At the DaUes the vast river
is jammed together into a long, narrow slot of
unknown depth cut sheer down in the basalt.
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
339

STEEP TRAILS
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 run
ning parallel wdth the one usually occupied.
AU these inferior gorges now come into use,
and the huge, roaring torrent, stUl rising and
spreading, at length overwhelms the high
jagged rock walls between them, making a
tremendous display of chafing, surging, shat
tered currents, counter-currents, and hoUow
whirls that no words can be made to describe.
A few nules below the Dalles the storm-tossed
river gets itself together again, looks like
water, becomes silent, and with stately, tran
quil deliberation goes on its way, out of the
gray region of sage and sand into the Oregon
woods. Thirty-five or forty nules below the
Dalles are the Cascades of the Columbia,
where the river in passing through the moun
tains 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 ob
struction is to be overcome by locks, which
are now being made.
Between the Dalles and the Cascades the
river is Uke a lake a mile or two wdde, lying
in a vaUey, or canon, about three thousand feet
340

THE RIVERS OF OREGON
deep. The walls of the canon lean weU back
in most places, and leave here and there small
strips, or bays, of level ground along the wa
ter's edge. But towards the Cascades, and
for some distance below them, the immediate
banks are guarded by waUs of columnar ba
salt, 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 faUs on both sides of the canon of the
Columbia are far larger and more interesting
in every way than would be guessed from the
sUght gUmpses one gets of them while sailing
past on the river, or from the car windows.
The Multnomah FaUs are particularly inter
esting, and occupy fern-lined gorges of marvel
ous 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 weU worthy of a place beside
the famous falls of the Yosemite Valley.
341

STEEP TRAILS
According to an Indian tradition, the river
of the Cascades once flowed through the ba
salt beneath a natural bridge that was broken
dowm 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 sub
merged trees standing erect may be found
along both shores, whUe, as we have seen, the
whole river for thirty nules above the Cas
cades looks like a lake or mUl-pond. On the
other hand, it is held by some that the sub
merged groves were carried into their places
by immense landslides.
Much of interest in this connection must
necessarily be omitted for want of space.
About forty mUes below the Cascades the
river receives the WiUamette, 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 WUlamette
are fifteen miles above Portland, where the
river, coming out of dense woods, breaks its
way across a bar of black basalt and faUs
forty feet in a passion of snowy foam, showing
342

THE RIVERS OF OREGON
to fine advantage against its background of
evergreens. Of the fertUity and beauty of the Willam
ette 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.
It was here the first settlements for agri
culture were made and a provisional govern
ment organized, whUe the settlers, isolated
in the far wUderness, numbered only a few
thousand and were laboring under the oppo
sition of the British Government and the
Hudson's Bay Company. Eager desire in the
acquisition of territory on the part of these
pioneer state-buUders was more truly bound
less than the wilderness they were in, and their
unconscionable patriotism was equaled only
by their beUigerence. For here, while nego
tiations 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 Uttle land-hungry settlement only a mere
quarter-million of miles! 343

STEEP TRAILS
As the WiUamette is one of the most food
ful of valleys, so is the Columbia one of the
most foodful of rivers. Durmg the fisher's
harvest-time salmon from the sea come in
countless miUions, urging their way against
faUs, rapids, and shaUows, 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
Uke loaves of bread ready for the oven. The
supply seemed inexhaustible, as weU 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 miUions of young
fry are now sown Uke wheat in the river every
year, from hatching-establishments belonging
to the Government.
All of the Oregon waters that win their way
to the sea are 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
344

THE RIVERS OF OREGON
drain large and fertile and beautiful valleys.
Rogue River Valley is peculiarly attractive.
With a fine climate, and kindly, productive
soU, 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 Sis
kiyou, Coast, Umpqua, and Cascade Moun
tains. 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 aU others the
garden vaUey of Oregon and the most delight
ful place for a home. On the eastern rim of
the vaUey, in the Cascade Mountains, about
sixty miles from Medford in a direct Une, is
the remarkable Crater Lake, usually regarded
as the one grand wonder of the region. It Ues
in a deep, sheer-walled basin about seven thou
sand feet above the level of the sea, supposed
to be the crater of an extinct volcano.
Oregon as it is to-day is a very young coun
try, though most of it seems old. Contem
plating the Columbia sweeping from forest to
forest, across plain and desert, one is led to
say of it, as did Byron of the ocean, —
"Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."
345

STEEP TRAILS
How ancient appear the crumbling basaltic
monuments along its banks, and the gray
plains to the east of the Cascades! Neverthe
less, the river as weU 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 alto
gether 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.
Then came the fire period wdth 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, whUe yet the vol
canic 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
to-day.

XXIV
THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO
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 hUls out of his way, eager,
like the Devil, to show him aU the kingdoms
of the world and their glory and fooUshness,
spiritualising travel for him with lightning and
steam, aboUshing space and time and ahnost
everything else. Little chUdren and tender,
piUpy people, as weU as storm-seasoned ex
plorers, may now go ahnost 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.
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 com
pletion of the first transcontinental raUway;
next came the YeUowstone and icy Alaska,
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STEEP TRAILS
by the northern roads; and last the Grand
Canon of the Colorado, which, naturaUy the
hardest to reach, has now become, by a branch
of the Santa F6, the most accessible of aU.
Of course, with this wonderful extension of
steel ways through our wildness there is loss
as well as gain. Nearly all railroads are bor
dered by belts of desolation. The finest wU
demess perishes as if stricken with pestUence.
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 be
yond man's power to spoil — the ocean, the
two icy ends of the globe, and the Grand
Canon. When I first heard of the Santa F6 trains
running to the edge of the Grand Canon 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 caterpiUars, and the noise they
make is as little disturbing as the hooting of
an owl in the lonely woods. 348

THE GRAND CANON AT O'NEILL'S POINT

THE GRAND CANON
In a dry, hot, monotonous forested plateau,
seemingly boundless, you come suddenly and
without warning upon the abmpt edge of a
gigantic sunken landscape of the wdldest, most
multitudinous features, and those features,
sharp and angular, are made out of flat beds of
Umestone and sandstone forming a spiry, jag
ged, gloriously colored mountain-range coun
tersunk in a level gray plain. It is a hard job
to sketch it even in scrawmiest outline; and,
try as I may, not in the least sparing myself,
I cannot teU the hundredth part of the won
ders of its features — the side-canons, 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 mUe high, yet
beneath one's feet. AU this, however, is less
difficult than to give any idea of the impres
sion 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 swdmming in Ught, every
radiant spire pointing the way to the heavens.
But it is impossible to conceive what the
349

STEEP TRAILS
canon is, or what impression it makes, from
descriptions or pictures, however good. Nat
urally it is untellable even to those who have
seen something perhaps a Uttle like it on a
small scale in this same plateau region. One's
most extravagant expectations are indefi
nitely 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 YeUowstone, the Pyra^-
mids, Chicago — aU would be lost if tumbled
into it." NaturaUy enough, iUustrations as to
size are sought for among other canons like or
unUke it, with the common result of worse con
founding confusion. The prudent keep sUence.
It was once said that the "Grand Canon could
put a dozen Yosemites in its vest pocket."
The justly famous Grand Canon of the
Yellowstone is, Uke the Colorado, gorgeously
colored and abruptly countersunk in a pla
teau, and both are mainly the work of water.
But the Colorado's canon is more than a thou
sand times larger, and as a score or two of new
buUdings of ordinary size would not appre
ciably change the general view of a great city,
so hundreds of YeUowstones might be eroded
in the sides of the Colorado Canon without
noticeably augmenting its size or the richness
of its sculpture. 350

THE GRAND CANON
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 canon that I have seen or heard of ap
proaches in smooth, flawless strength and
grandeur the granite face of El Capitan or
the Tenaya side of Cloud's Rest. These co
lossal cliffs, types of permanence, are about
three thousand and six thousand feet high;
those of the canon that are sheer are about
half as high, and are types of fleeting change;
whUe glorious-domed Tissiack, noblest of
mountain buUdings, far from being over
shadowed or lost in this rosy, spiry canon
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, com
paring the Grand Canon in a general way
with the glacial Yosemite, says: "And the
Yosemite — ah, the lovely Yosemite! Dumped
down into the wUdemess of gorges and moun
tains, it would take a guide who knew of its
existence a long time to find it." This is strik
ing, and shows up weU above the levels of com
monplace description; but it is confusing, and
351

STEEP TRAILS
has the fatal fault of not being tme. As weU
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 wdth the clouds.
Every feature of Nature's big face is beau
tiful, — height and hoUow, 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.
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 canons of every
color, sheer-walled and deep, aU of which
seem to be represented in this one grand canon
of canons.
It is very hard to give anything like an ade
quate conception of its size; much more of
its color, its vast wall-sculpture, the wealth
of ornate architectural buildings that fiU it,
or, most of all, the tremendous impression it
makes. According to Major PoweU, it is about
352

THE GRAND CANON
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 canons 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 re
cesses — alcoves, cirques, amphitheaters, and
side-canons — 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 vari
ous colors, run like broad ribbons, marvelously
beautiful and effective even at a distance of
ten or twelve nules. And the vast space these
glorious walls inclose, instead of being empty,
is crowded with gigantic architectural rock-
forms gorgeously colored and adomed with
towers and spires like works of art.
Looking dowm from this level plateau, we
are more impressed with a feeUng 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
mUe or nearly a mUe above their sunken, hid-
353

STEEP TRAILS
den bases, some to a level with our standpoint,
but none higher. And in the inspiring morning
light aU are so fresh and rosy-looking that they
seem new-bom; as if, like the quick-growing
crimson snow-plants of the Califomia woods,
they had just spmng up, hatched by the
warm, brooding, motherly weather.
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 for
ests, where aU magnitudes are great, the weary,
satiated traveler sees none of them tmly. It
is so with these majestic rock structures.
Though mere residual masses of the plateau,
they are dowered with the grandeur and re
pose of moimtains, together wdth the finely
chiseled carving and modeUng of man's tem
ples 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 wdth lines strictly regular and decora
tive, and aU 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
354

THE GRAND CANON
in wdldest extravagance held her bravest
stmctures as common as gravel-piles. Yon
der stands a spiry cathedral nearly five thou
sand feet in height, nobly symmetrical, wdth
sheer buttressed waUs and arched doors and
windows, as richly finished and decorated wdth
sculptures as the great rock temples of India
or Egypt. Beside it rises a huge castle wdth
arched gateway, turrets, watch-towers, ram
parts, etc., and to right and left palaces, obe-
Usks, and pyramids fairly fill the gulf, aU colos
sal and all lavishly painted and carved. Here
and there a fiat-topped structure may be seen,
or one imperfectly domed; but the prevaiUng
style is ornate Gothic, with many hints of
Egyptian and Indian.
Throughout this vast extent of wdld archi
tecture — nature's own capital city — there
seem to be no ordinary dweUings. AU look like
grand and important pubUc structures, except
perhaps some of the lower pyramids, broad-
based and sharp-pointed, covered with down-
flowing talus Uke loosely set tents with hollow,
sagging sides. The roofs often have disinte
grated 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
mle. Nevertheless they are ever changing: their
355

STEEP TRAILS
tops are now a dome, now a flat table or a
spire, as harder or softer strata are reached
in thdr slow degradation, while the sides, with
aU their fine moldings, are being steadily un
dermined 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 buUding, however compli
cated 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 soUd strata extend wdth wonder
ful constancy for very great distances, and
pass through and give style to thousands of
separate structures, however their smaUer
characters may vary.
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 sUghtest 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 Unes go sweeping
356

THE GRAND CANON
along the great waUs in and out around all
the intricate system of side-canons, amphi
theaters, cirques, and sc'aUops into which they
are sculptured. From one point hundreds
of mUes of this fairy embroidery may be
traced. It is aU 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
Uke a bullet to a mark had been the sub
ject of a separate thought, so sure is the out
come of beauty through the stormy centuries.
Surely nowhere else are there iUustrations so
striking of the natural beauty of desolation
and death, so many of nature's own mountain
buUdings wasting in glory of high desert air
— going to dust. See how steadfast in beauty
they aU are in their going. Look again and
again how the rough, dusty boulders and sand
of disintegration from the upper ledges wreathe
in beauty the next and next below wdth these
wonderful taluses, and how the colors are finer
the faster the waste. We oftentimes see Nature
giving beauty for ashes — as in the flowers of a
prairie after fire — but here the very dust and
ashes are beautiful.
Gazing across the mighty chasm, we at last
discover that it is not its great depth nor
length, nor yet these wonderful buUdings, that
357

STEEP TRAILS
most impresses us. It is its immense width,
sharply defined by precipitous waUs plungmg
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 vaUeys of ero
sion are as great — in aU 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 canon views
is the opposite waU. 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, whUe
the other, though far distant, is beheld in aU
its glory of color and noble proportions — the
one supreme beauty and wonder to which the
eye is ever turning. For whUe charming with
its beauty it tells the story of the stupendous
erosion of the canon — 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, appre
hended at once Uke a burst of light, celestial
color its natural vesture, coining in glory to
358

THE GRAND CANON
mind and heart as to a home prepared for it
from the very begmning. WUdness 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
Uke a star in glory of Ught on its way through
the heavens.
I have observed scenery-hunters of aU sorts
getting first views of yosemites, glaciers. White
Mountain ranges, etc. Mixed with the en
thusiasm which such scenery naturaUy excites,
there is often weak gushing, and many splut
ter aloud Uke Uttle waterfalls. Here, for a few
moments at least, there is sUence, and all are
in dead earnest, as if awed and hushed by an
earthquake — perhaps untU 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.
Roads have been made from Bright Angel
Hotel through the Coconino Forest to the
ends of outstanding promontories, command
ing extensive views up and down the canon.
The nearest of them, three or four miles east
and west, are O'NeUl's Pomt and Rowe's
Point; the latter, besides commanding the
etemaUy interesting canon, gives wide-sweep-
359

STEEP TRAILS
ing views southeast and west over the dark
forest roof to the San Francisco and Mount
TrumbuU volcanoes — the bluest of moun
tains over the blackest of level woods.
Instead of thus riding in dust wdth the crowd,
more wiU be gained by going quietly afoot
along the rim at different times of day and
night, free to observe the vegetation, the fos
sUs in the rocks, the seams beneath overhang
ing ledges once inhabited by Indians, and to
watch the stupendous scenery in the chang
ing Ughts and shadows, clouds, showers, and
storms. One need not go hunting the so-
called "points of interest." The verge any
where, everywhere, is a point of interest be
yond one's wdldest dreams.
As yet, few of the promontories or throng
of mountain buUdings in the canon are named.
Nor among such exuberance of forms are
names thought of by the bewdldered, hurried
tourist. He would be as likely to think of
names for waves in a storm. The Eastem
and Westem Cloisters, Hindu Amphitheater,
Cape Royal, Powell's Plateau, Grand View
Pomt, Pomt Sublune, BisseU 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
360

THE GRAND CANON
others are scattered over a large stretch of the
canon wUderness.
All the canon rock-beds are lavishly painted,
except a few neutral bars and the granite notch
at the bottom occupied by the river, which
makes but Uttle sign. It is a vast -wUdemess
of rocks in a sea of light, colored and glowing
Uke oak and maple woods in autumn, when
the sun-gold is richest. I have just said that
it is impossible to leam what the canon is
Uke from descriptions and pictures. PoweU's
and Dutton's descriptions present magnificent
¦\dews not only of the canon but of aU the grand
region round about it; and Holmes's drawings,
accompanying Dutton's report, are wonder-
fuUy good. Surely faithful and loving skUl
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 bmsh
or pencU, 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.
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 Canon below the
faUs comes to mind; but, wonderful as it is,
361

STEEP TRAILS
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
canon has, as we have seen, its own charac
teristic color. The summit limestone-beds are
pale yellow; next below these are the beauti
ful rose-colored cross-bedded sandstones; next
there are a thousand feet of brUUant red sand
stones; 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. Be
tween these are many neutral-tinted beds.
The prevailing colors are wonderfuUy deep
and clear, changing and blending with vary
ing intensity from hour to hour, day to day,
season to season; throbbing, wavering, glow
ing, 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 glowdng in one smooth, aU-
pervading ethereal radiance like the alpen
glow, uniting the rocky world with the heavens.
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 begm! The dead and the Uving,
362

THE GRAND CANON
rocks and hearts alike, awake and sing the
new-old song of creation. AU the massy head
lands and salient angles of the waUs, and the
multitudinous temples and palaces, seem to
catch the Ught at once, ,and cast thick black
shadows athwart hoUow and gorge, bringing
out details as weU as the main massive fea
tures of the architecture; while aU the rocks,
as if wUd 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 Ught and
song, shouting color haUelujahs.
As the day draws to a close, shadows, won
drous, black, and thick, Uke those of the morn
ing, fiU up the waU hoUows, whUe the glowdng
rocks, their rough angles burned off, seem soft
and hot to the heart as they stand submerged
in purple haze, which now fiUs the canon Uke
a sea. StUl deeper, richer, more divine grow
the great waUs and temples, untU in the su
preme flaming glory of sunset the whole canon
is transfigured, as if aU the Ufe 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.
Strange to say, in the fuU white effulgence
of the midday hours the bright colors grow
363

STEEP TRAILS
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 shout
ing 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
canon clouds are bom.
A good storm-cloud fuU of Ughtning and rain
on its way to its work on a sunny desert day
is a glorious object. Across the canon, oppo
site the hotel, is a Uttle tributary of the Colo
rado caUed Bright Angel Creek. A fountain-
cloud stUl better deserves the name "Angel
of the Desert WeUs" — clad in bright plum
age, carrying cool shade and Uving water to
countless anunals 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 passion
ate torrent, roaring, replying to the rejoicing
Ughtning — stones, tons in weight, hurrying
364

THE GRAND CANON
away as if frightened, showing something of
the way Grand Canon work is done. Most of
the fertile summer clouds of the canon are
of this sort, massive, swelling cumiUi, 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, gUde
wdth beautiful motion along the middle of
the canon in flocks, tuming aside here and
there, lingering as if studying the needs of
particular spots, exploring side-canons, peering
into hoUows lUce birds seeking nest-places, or
hovering aloft on outspread wings. They scan
aU the red wilderness, dispensing their bless
ings of cool shadows and rain where the need
is the greatest, refreshing the rocks, their off
spring as well as the vegetation, continuing
their sculpture, deepening gorges and sharp
ening peaks. Sometimes, blending aU together,
they weave a ceiling from rim to rim, per
haps opening a window here and there for
sunshine to stream through, suddenly Ughting
some palace or temple and making it flare in
the rain as if on fire.
Sometimes, as one sits gazing from a high,
jutting pr'omontory, the sky aU clear, showing
not the slightest wisp or pencUing, a bright
365

STEEP TRAILS
band of cumuli wiU appear suddenly, coming
up the canon in single file, as if tracing a weU-
knowm traU, 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
canon, yet foUowdng its course for a long time,
noiseless, as if hunting, then suddenly darting
Ughtning at unseen marks, and hurrying on.
Or they loiter here and there as if idle, Uke
laborers out of work, waiting to be hired.
Half a dozen or more showers may often
times be seen falling at once, while far the
greater part of the sky is in sunshine, and not
a raindrop comes nigh one. These thunder-
showers from as many separate clouds, look
ing like wisps of long hair, may vary greatly
in effects. The pale, faint streaks are showers
that faU to reach the ground, being evapo
rated on the way down through the dry, thirsty
air, Uke streams in deserts. Many, on the other
hand, which in the distance seem insignifi
cant, are really heavy rain, however local;
these are the gray wdsps weU zigzagged with
lightning. The darker ones are torrent rain,
which on broad, steep slopes of favorable con
formation give rise to so-caUed "cloud-bursts " ;
and wonderful is the commotion they cause.
366

THE GRAND CANON
The gorges and gulches below them, usually
dry, break out in loud uproar, with a sudden
downrush of muddy, boulder-laden floods.
Do-wn they aU go in one simultaneous gush,
roaring Uke Uons rudely awakened, each of
the tawny brood actually kicking up a dust
at the first onset.
During the winter months snow falls over
aU the high plateau, usually to a considerable
depth, whitening the rim and the roofs of the
canon buUduigs. But last winter, when I
arrived at Bright Angel in the middle of Janu
ary, there was no snow in sight, and the
ground was dry, greatly to my disappomtment,
for I had made the trip mainly to see the
canon in its winter garb. Soothingly I was
informed that this was an exceptional sea
son, 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 saUors of the
summer skies. Under the lee of a rim-ledge,
with another snow-lover, I watched its move
ments as it took possession of the canon and
aU 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
367

STEEP TRAILS
and gentleness of touch, and fondled the little
cedars and pines as they quivered eagerly in
the wdnd like young birds begging their moth
ers to feed them. The first flakes and crystals
began to fly about noon, sweeping straight
up the middle of the canon, and swirling in
magnificent eddies along the sides. GraduaUy
the hearty swarms closed their ranks, and all
the canon was lost in gray gloom except a
short section of the wall and a few trees be
side 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
canon of Bright Angel Creek, inclosing a sun
lit mass of the canon 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 back
ground, a range of noble cumuli towered aloft
Uke snow-laden mountains, their pure pearl
bosses flooded with sunshine. The whole no
ble picture, calmly glowdng, was framed in thick
gray gloom, which soon closed over it; and
the storm went on, opening and closing until
night covered all.
Two days later, when we were on a jutting
point about eighteen miles east of Bright Angel
368

THE GRAND CANON
and one thousand feet higher, we enjoyed
another storm of equal glory as to cloud effects,
though only a few inches of snow feU. Before
the storm began we had a magnificent view
of this grander upper part of the canon and
also of the Coconino Forest and the Painted
Desert. The march of the clouds wdth their
storm banners flying over this sublime land
scape was unspeakably glorious, and so also
was the breaking up of the storm next mom-
ing — the mingling of sUver-capped rock, sun
shine, and cloud.
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 canons attract like high mountains; the
deeper they are, the more surely are we drawn
into them. On foot, of course, there is no dan
ger whatever, and, wdth ordinary precautions,
but Uttle on animals. In comfortable tourist
faith, unthinking, unfearing, down go men,
women, and chUdren on whatever is offered,
horse, mule, or burro, as if saying with Jean
Paul, "fear nothing but fear" — not without
reason, for these canon trails dowm the stair
ways of the gods are less dangerous than they
369

STEEP TRAILS
seem, less dangerous than home stairs. The
guides are cautious, and so are the experi
enced, much-enduring beasts. The scrawniest
Rosinantes and wizened-rat mules clmg hard
to the rocks endwise or sidewise, like lizards
or ants. From terrace to terrace, climate to
climate, doivn one creeps in sun and shade,
through gorge and gully and grassy ravine,
and, after a long scramble on foot, at last be
neath the mighty cUffs one comes to the grand,
roaring river.
To the mcfuntaineer the depth of the canon,
from five thousand to six thousand feet, wdll
not seem so very wonderful, for he has often
explored others that are about as deep. But
the most experienced wdU be awestruck by the
vast extent of strange, countersunk scenery,
the multitude of huge rock monuments of
painted masonry buUt up in regular courses
towering above, beneath, and round about
him. By the Bright Angel TraU the last fif
teen 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
Uke this part, and are content to stop at the
end of the horse-traU and look down on the
dull-brown flood from the edge of the Indian
Garden Plateau. By the new Hance TraU,
excepting a few daringly steep spots, you can
370

THE GRAND CANON
ride all the way to the river, where there is a
good spacious camp-ground in a mesquite
grove. This traU, buUt by brave Hance, be
gins 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 lit'tle 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 traU, 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
cUnging to his animal and watching its steps.
But aU who have time should go prepared to
camp awhile on the river-bank, to rest and
leam 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 Doug
las spruce, with ferns and saxifrages that
recaU snowy mountains; below these, yeUow
pine, nut pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam, ash,
maple, holly-leaved berberis, cowania, spiraea,
dwarf oak, and other smaU shmbs and trees.
In dry gulches and on taluses and sun-beaten
crags are sparsely scattered yuccas, cactuses,
371

STEEP TRAILS
agave, etc. Where springs gush from the rocks
there are willow thickets, grassy flats, and
bright, flowery gardens, and in the hottest
recesses the deUcate abronia, mesquite, woody
compositae, and arborescent cactuses.
The most striking and characteristic part
of this widely varied vegetation are the cac-
taceae — strange, leafless, old-fashioned plants
with beautiful flowers and fruit, in every way
able and admirable. While grimly defending
themselves wdth 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 roUed-up porcupines, crouch
ing in rock-hollows beneath a mist of gray
lances, unmoved by the wildest winds. Others,
standing as erect as bushes and trees or taU
branchless piUars 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 south
ern Arizona. Several species of tree yuccas
in the same deserts, laden in early spring with
372.

THE GRAND CANON
superb white lUies, form forests hardly less
wonderful, though here they grow singly or
in smaU lonely groves. The low, ahnost stem-
less Yucca baccata, with beautiful Uly flowers
and sweet banana-Uke fruit, prized by the
Indians, is common along the canon-rim,
growing on lean, rocky soU beneath mountain-
mahogany, nut pines, and junipers, beside
dense flowery mats of Spiraea ccespitosa and
the beautiful pinnate-leaved Spircea mille-
folia. The nut pine {Pinus edulis) scattered
along the upper slopes and roofs of the canon
buUdings, 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 pa
tiently, faithfuUy fruitful for centuries. In
dians and insects and ahnost every desert bird
and beast come to it to be fed.
To civUized people from com and cattle and
wheat-field countries the canon at first sight
seems as uninhabitable as a glacier crevasse,
utterly silent and barren. Nevertheless it is
the home of a multitude of our fellow-mortals,
men as well as animals and plants. Centu
ries ago it was inhabited by tribes of Indians,
373

STEEP TRAILS
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. Theu- cliff-dwellings,
almost numberless, are stiU to be seen in the
canon, scattered along both sides from top
to bottom and throughout its entire length,
built of stone and mortar in seams and fis
sures like swallows' nests, or on isolated ridges
and peaks. The ruins of larger buUdings are
found on open spots by the river, but most of
them aloft on the brink of the wdldest, giddi
est 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 waUs; and
some of them were covered wdth 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.
In recesses along the river and on the first
plateau flats above its gorge were fields and
gardens of considerable size, where irrigating-
374

THE GRAND CANON
ditches may stiU be traced. Some of these an
cient 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 canon Indians I have met here seem to
be Uving much as did their ancestors, though
not now driven into rock-dens. They are able,
erect men, with commanding eyes, which noth
ing that they wish to see can escape. They
are never in a hurry, have a strikingly meas
ured, deUberate, 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 wUderness
may offer. Evidently their Uves are not bitter.
The largest of the canon animals one is
Ukely to see is the wUd sheep, or Rocky Moun
tain 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 jump-
able places in the sheer ribbon cliffs, bound
ing from crag to crag in easy grace and con
fidence of strength, his great horns held high
375

STEEP TRAILS
above his shoulders, wUd red blood beating and
hissing through every fiber of him Uke the
wind through a quivering mountain pine.
Deer also are occasionally met in the canon,
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 wiUow 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, weU-
dressed, clear-eyed, happy little beasts —
wood rats, kangaroo rats, gophers, wood mice,
skunks, rabbits, bob-cats, 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.
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 canon wilderness.
Here at Hance's river-camp or a few mUes
above it brave Powell and his brave men
passed their first night in the canon on their
376

THE GRAND CANON
adventurous voyage of discovery thu-ty-three^
years ago. They faced a thousand dangers,
open or hidden, now in their boats gladly
sUding down swift, smooth reaches, now roUed
over and over in back-combing surges of rough,
roaring cataracts, sucked under in eddies,
swimming like beavers, tossed and beaten Uke
castaway drift — stout-hearted, undaunted, do-
mg their work through it aU. After a month
of this they floated smoothly out of the dark,
gloomy, roaring abyss into light and safety two
hundred nules below. As the flood rushes past
us, heavy-laden wdth desert mud, we natur
aUy think of its sources, its countless silvery
branches outspread on thousands of snowy
mountains along the crest of the continent,
and the Ufe 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, Coche-
1 Muir wrote this description in 1902; Major J. W. Powell
made his descent through the canon, with small boats, in
1869. [Editor.l 377

STEEP TRAILS
topa, 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, aU 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 canons, the beginning of the system
culminating in this grand canon of canons.
Our warm caiion camp is also a good place
to give a thought to the glaciers which stiU
exist at the heads of the highest tributaries.
Some of them are of considerable size, espe
cially 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 Colo
rado 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 tmnk 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
378

THE GRAND CANON
important feature since they first came to
Ught at the close of the Glacial Period.
The so-called Grand Colorado Plateau, of
which the Grand Canon 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 canon it
rises in a series of subordinate plateaus, diver
sified wdth green meadows, marshes, bogs,
ponds, forests, and grovy park valleys, a fav
orite 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 gla
ciers — blackened with lava-flows, dotted with
volcanoes and beautiful buttes, and Imed wdth
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 mUe or two high,
WaUsmg quietly about in the alleys and by
ways of the Grand Canon city, we learn some
thing of the way it was made; and all must
admire effects so great from means apparently
379

STEEP TRAILS
so simple; rain striking Ugbt hammer-blows
or heavier in streams, with many rest Sun
days; soft air and light, gentle sappers and
miners, toUing forever; the big river sa-wing
the plateau asunder, carrying away the eroded
and ground waste, and exposing the edges of
the strata to the weather; rain torrents saw
ing cross-streets and alleys, exposing the strata
in the same way in hundreds of sections, the
softer, less resisting beds weathermg and re
ceding faster, thus undermining the harder
beds, which fall, not only in smaU weathered
particles, but in heavy sheer-cleaving masses,
assisted down from time to time by kindly
earthquakes, rain torrents mshing the fallen
material to the river, keeping the waU rocks
constantly exposed. Thus the canon grows
wider and deeper. So also do the side-canons
and amphitheaters, whUe secondary gorges
and cirques gradually isolate masses of the
promontories, forming new buildings, aU of
which are being weathered and pulled and
shaken down whUe being buUt, showing de
struction 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
yeUow stones like trees in autumn shedding
their leaves, going to dust like beautiful days
380

THE GRAND CANON
to night, proclaimmg as with the tongues of
angels the natural beauty of death.
Every building is seen to be a remnant of
once continuous beds of sedunents, — sand
and slime on the floor of an ancient sea, and
fiUed wdth the remains of animals, — and ev
ery 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,
hiUs, buttes, and other monumental masses
of the plateau on either side of the canon, 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 Canon is
as nothing. Thus each wonder in sight be
comes a window through which other wonders
come to view. In no other part of this conti
nent are the wonders of geology, the records
of the world's auld lang syne, more widely
opened, or displayed in higher pUes. The whole
canon is a mine of fossils, in which five thou
sand feet of horizontal strata are exposed in
regular succession over more than a thousand
square nules of wall-space, and on the adja
cent plateau region there is another series of
beds twice as thick, forming a grand geological
381

STEEP TRAILS
Ubrary — a collection of stone books cover
ing thousands of nules of shelving, tier on
tier, conveniently arranged for the student.
And with what wonderful scriptures are their
pages fiUed — myriad forms of successive
floras and faunas, lavishly illustrated with
colored drawings, carrying us back into the
midst of the Ufe of a past infinitely remote.
And as we go on and on, studying this old, old
life in the Ught of the life beating warmly
about us, we enrich and lengthen our own.

THE END

INDEX

INDEX

Animals, wild, danger from,
312-17.
Antelope, 41.
Apple, wild {Pyrus rivularis),
309.
Apples, wQd and cultivated,
15, 16.
Arbor-vitse, Westem, 231,
232.
Arbutus, Menzies, 234, 235.
Arc Dome, 187.
Arrow Lak^, 332, 333.
Ash, Oregon, 308.
Ash Creek Glacier, 97, 98.
Aspen, 178, 179.
Banana, 137.
Bathing, in Great Salt Lake,
121-25.
Bear, black, 251.
Bear, brown, 251.
Bears, of Mt. Shasta, 39, 40;
and bees, 40; trails in the
San Gabriel Mts., 153;
absence in Nevada, 183;
of Oregon, 312-14; Lewis
and Clark on species of,
316, 317.
Beaver, ia Oregon, 321-23;
at the Grand Canon,
376.
Bees, 38^0.
Berries, of Washington, 240,
241.
Big Smoky Valley, 186, 197.

Big Spring of the Sacramento,
87.
Bu-ds, of Mt. Shasta, 41; of
the Troy Range, Nevada,
180; of Oregon, 325, 326;
of the Grand Canon, 376.
Blue Mts., 298.
Boat Encampment, 331, 332.
Bremer Meadows, 92.
Cactuses, 371, 372.
Calochortus Nuttallii, 134.
Calypso borealis, 310.
Camassia, 310.
Canoe River, 331.
Cape Flattery, 209, 210.
Cape Horn, Columbia River,
341.
Cascade Mts., 268, 286-92,
298.
Cascades of the Columbia,
340-42.
Cedar, Alaska, 234.
Cedar, canoe, 231 note.
Cedar, white or Port Orford,
299.
Cereus giganteus, 372.
ChaudiSre Falls, 334.
Cherry, wild (Prunus emargi
nata, var. mollis), 308.
Cinder Cone, 64, 65.
City Creek, 106, 108, 117.
Clark, Capt. WiUiam, 314-
17.
Clarke's Fork, 333.

385

INDEX

Climate, individual tastes in,
280-82.
Cloud's Rest, 23, 24, 27, 28.
Coast Range, 290.
Coconino Forest, 373.
Colorado River, 352; Powell's
voyage, 376, 377; course,
377, 378; geology, 378-82.
Coliunbia Lakes, 331.
Columbia River, 293; ma
jesty, 327, 328; branches,
328, 329; discharge, 329;
discovery, 330; course and
tributaries, 331-45; salmon
harvest, 344; geology, 345,
346.
Congar, Dr., 137, 138.
Coulterville, 19.
Co-wlitz River, 338.
Crater Lake, 346.
Culture, vs. wildness, 3-18.
Cjrpress (Chamcecyparis law
soniana), 233 and note.
Dalles, the, 332, 339, 340.
DarUngtonia, 86, 87.
Deer, of Mt. Shasta, 39;
about Puget Sound, 250;
of Oregon, 320.
Deer, mule, 92, 320.
De Fuca, Juan, 209.
Deschutes River, 339.
Dogwood, Nuttall's flowering,
308.
Douglas, David, 227, 300-05.
Eaton Canon, 147-49.
Eaton Creek, 148.
Elk, 41, 251, 318.
Erythronium grandiflorum,
129-31.
Eureka, 201.

FaU, a, 21, 22.
FaU River, 101, 102.
FaUs of the Columbia, 339.
Fay, Jerome, 60, 61, 67-80.
Fir (Abies grandis), 232 and
note, 300.
Fir (Picea amabilis, var.
nobilis), 232, 233.
Fir (Picea subalpina), 233.
Fir, balsam, 180.
Flathead River, 333.
Flowers, of Mt. Shasta, 31-
33, 38; of Utah, 108, 126-
35; of Oregon, 309, 310; of
the Grand Canon, 371-
73.
Forests, of Nevada, 164r-83;
of Washington, 227-47;
fibre a governing agent in
distribution and growth,
238, 239; of Oregon, 297-
309. See also Trees.
Fort Townsend, 221.
Fritillaria pudica, 129-31.
Fuca, Juan de, 209.
Fumaroles, on Mt. Shasta,
72-78.
Gaultheria, 240, 241.
Glaciation, about Yosemite,
24, 26-28; at Mt. Shasta,
33-36; in Nevada, 184-
94; of the Olympic Mts.,
212; of Vancouver Island,
214, 215.
Glaciers: Ash Creek, 97, 98;
McCloud, 97-99; Mud, 99;
Whitney, 51, 63, 67, 87-89;
of Mt. Rainier, 261, 263;
of the tributaries of the
Colorado, 378.
Goat, wild, 318, 319,

386

INDEX

Grand Cafion of the Colorado,
stupendous natine of, 348-
50; compared with Yo
semite, 351, 352; size,
352, 353; wUd architecture,
363-57; immense width,
358; silence of visitors, 359;
view-points, 359, 360; ter
minology, 360; colors, 361,
362; at dawn and at sunset,
362, 363; at midday, 363,
364; thunder-showers, 364-
67; snow, 367-69; Bright
Angel Trail, 369, 370;
Hance Trail, 370, 371;
vegetation, 371-73; cliff-
dweUers, 373, 374; modern
Indians, 375; animal Ufe,
375, 376; PoweU's explora
tion, 376, 377; geology,
378-82.
Granite Mt., 166.
Great Basin, glacial phe
nomena of, 184r-94.
Great Salt Lake, 105; bath
ing in, 121-25; seen from a
moimtain-top, 133.
Green River, 256.
Green River Hot Springs,
266.
Half Dome. See Tissiack.
Hemlock spruce, 231.
Honey-bees, 38, 40.
Hop Ranch, 256-59.
Hopeton, 19.
Hops, 256, 257.
Hot Creek Mts., 187, 188.
Hot Springs, Mt. Shasta, 72-
78.
Hudson's Bay Company, 215,
217, 314, 337, 343, 344.

Hunting and hunters, 44r-46.
Hunt's, 269.
lUilouette, 27, 28.
Indians, of the Shasta region,
41-44, 66; Modocs, 42, 43,
94r-96; and pine-nuts, 169-
74; other food, 172; of Pu
get Sound, 209, 260; Seattle,
264, 255; hop-picking, 257;
Douglas's adventure, 302-
04; of Oregon, 312; on the
species of bears, 316; tra
dition of the Cascades of
the Columbia, 342; in the
Grand Canon, 373-75.
Ingraham, Prof., 262.
Irrigation, 148.
Jeff Davis Mts., 189.
John Day River, 638.
Jordan, the river, Utah, 106,
107, 119.
Juan de Fuca, Strait of, 208,
209.
Keith, WiUiam, 262.
Kettle FaUs, 334.
King Mt., 262.
Klamath Lake, Lower, 92.
Kootenay Lake, 333.
Kootenay Biver, 333.
Lake Cceur d'A16ne, 334,
336.
Lake Squak, 239.
Lake Tenaya, 26-28.
Lake Washington, 239.
Lassen's Butte, 63 and note,
64, 65, 101-03.
Lava, cave formed by, 44;
at Lassen's Butte, 55.

387

INDEX

Lava Beds, 54, 90-97.
Lewis and Clark, 314r-17.
Lewis River. See Snake River.
LUies, of Utah, 126-36.
Linnaea, 86.
Longmire, Mr., 262.
Los Angeles, 136.
Lumbering, in Washington,
242-47.
Lumbermen, 248, 249.
McAdie, Prof. A.G., 261 note.
McCloud Glacier, 97-99.
McCloud River, 42, 43, 58,
99-101; big spring of, 99,
100.
Madrona, 234, 236.
Maples, of Washington, 235,
236; of Oregon, 308.
Menzies, Archibald, 231.
Mining, decay of, in Nevada,
197-203.
Mirror Lake, 20.
Modoc War, 94r-96.
Monito VaUey, 186.
Mormons, love of flowers,
108, 110, 134; the women,
109, 110, 134, 135; influ
ence of polygamy, 110-
12; chUdren, 112; Brigham
Young, 117, 118; human
kindness, 126; saved from
famine by Uly bulbs, 134;
LUy Young, 135.
Mt. Baker, 211, 216, 217.
Mt. Bremer, 91.
Mt. Brown, 332.
Mt. Constance, 218.
Mt. Hood, 293-97.
Mt. Hooker, 332.
Mt. Jefferson, Nevada, 185-
87.

Mt. Moriah, 166.
Mt. Olympus, Washington,
218.
Mt. Rainier, 208, 261-70.
Mt. San Antonio, 146.
Mt. Shasta, altitude, 29, 30;
views of, 30, 31; zones on,
31, 32; geology, 33-36,
52-66; flowers, 38; insects,
38, 39; mammals, 39-41;
birds, 41; human inhabit
ants, 41-50; hunting about,
49, 60; excursions on, 51;
forest, 51, 52; ascent, 52,
53; gases and vapor, 53;
view from summit, 63-56;
two snowstorm adventiu-es
on, 67-81 ; the Hot Springs,
72-78; rambles on and
about, 82-104.
Mt. Watkins, 24, 27.
Mt. Whitney, 29, 30.
Mountain-chmbing, for aU
sorts of people, 46-48.
Mud Glacier, 99.
Muir's Peak, 87.
Multnomah FaUs, 341.
Nevada, seems one vast
desert, 154; agricultiu-e,
154^63; forests, . 164-83;
larger animals, 183; glacial
phenomena, 184-94; dead
towns, "195-203.
Nevada FaU, 28.
NisquaUy Canon, 263.
North Dome, Nevada, 181-83.
Oak, KeUogg's, 307.
Oak, live, 308.
Oak, white (Quercus Garry-
ana), 307.

38S

INDEX

Okinagan River, 336.
Olympia, 206.
Olympic Mts., 211, 218.
Oquirrh Mts., 121, 127, 128;
storm and sunset, 114-
19; flowers, 128-33; view
from, 132, 133.
Orange-culture, 138-42.
Oregon, woods along shore,
209; topography, 271, 272,
277, 278; settlement, 272-
273; shore scenery, 274-
76; chmate, 278-89; moun
tains, 289-98; forests, 297-
312; flowers,309, 310; mam
mals, 312-25; rattlesnakes,
317; birds, 325, 326; rivers,
327-46; geology, 346, 346.
Ousel, water, 43, 325.
Pasadena, 137, 141, 142.
Pend d'OreiUe Lake, 334.
Pine, dwarf (Pinus albi
caulis), 32.
Pine, foxtaU, 175-80.
Pine, nut, 167-74, 373.
Pine, Oregon. See Spruce,
Douglas.
Pine, sugar, 19, 300; discov
ery, 302-05; character, 305,
306; and the lumberman,
306, 307.
Pine, white (Pinus fleccHis),
175, 176, 180.
Pine, yeUow, 102, 233, 300.
Pinon, 167-74.
Pinus contorta, 233.
Pinus monticola, 233.
Pitch, an Indian, 135.
Pitt River, 99, 101, 102.
Pluto's Cave, 89.
Port Totrasend, 218-21.

Portland, Ore., 292.
PoweU, Major John W., 352,
376, 377.
Pseudotsuga macrocarpa, 153
note.
Puget Sound, 205-26; people
and towns of, 248-60.
Rat, wood, 41, 150.
Rattlesnakes, 152, 317.
Rhododendron, 310.
Rogue River, 344.
Rogue River VaUey, 345.
Rose, wUd, 214.
Sacramento River, Big
Spring of, 87.
Salal, 240, 241.
Salmon, 344.
Salmon-berry, 241.
Salt Lake. See Great Salt
Lake.
Salt Lake City, situation,
105, 106; description, 106-
09; the people, 109-12.
San Gabriel Mts., 137, 145-
53.
San Gabriel VaUey, 136-44.
San Juan Island, 217.
San Pasqual Rancho, 141.
San Pitch, the Lily of, 135.
Santa Monica, 136.
ScheUbourne, 198, 199.
Seattle, 246, 251-55.
Seattle, Indian chief, 254,
255.
Sego, 134.
Shasta River, 99.
Shasta VaUey, 41, 54.
Sheep, domestic, culture of,
16, 17.
Sheep, mountain, wool of,

389

INDEX

4-11, 17, 18; size, 17, 18;
of Mt. Shasta, 39, 66, 90-
92; in the Oquirrh Mts.,
132; in Oregon, 319; of the
Grand Canon, 375.
Sheep Rock, 44, 89, 90.
Shorb, J. De Barth, 138, 139.
Sisson, 59, 66, 79, 80.
Sisson's, 49, 61, 59, 67.
Snake Mts., 180-83, 188, 189.
Snake River, 328, 336.
Snoqualmie FaU, 258, 259.
Snoqualmie River, 237, 256,
258, 259.
Snowstorms, two adventures
on Mt. Shasta, 57-81.
Soda Springs, near Mt. Rai
nier, 263.
Sothern's Station, 87.
South Dome. See Tissiack.
Spokane FaUs, 335.
Spokane River, 334.
Spruce. See Fir.
Spruce (Tsuga Mertensiana),
232 and note.
Spruce, Douglas, 227-30, 299.
Spruce, hemlock, 231.
Spruce, Rocky Mountain, 175,
180-83.
Spruce, white, or Sitka pine,
230, 231.
Squirrel, Douglas, 66, 323-25.
Storm, a grand, 114-18.
Strait of Juan de Fuca, 208,
209.
Strawberry Meadows, 37, 49.
Strawberry Valley, 30, 54,
70, 80, 81, 86, 101.
Sunset, a glorious, 118, 119.

Tacoma, 246, 252, 253.
Tenaya Cafion, 20-27.

Tenaya Creek, 24, 25.
Tenaya FaU, 21.
Tissiack, or HaH Dome, or
South Dome, 20, 21, 24, 27,
28, 351.
Toquima Mts., 185-87.
Towns, deserted, 195-203.
Toyabe Range, 161, 185, 187.
Trappers, 321-23.
Trees, of Mt. Shasta, 31, 32;
of the Oquirrh Mts., 132;
of Nevada, 166-83; of
Washington, 227-36; of
Oregon, 298-309; of the
Grand Canon of the Colo
rado, 371-73. See also For
ests.
Troy Range, 178.
Tule Lake, 90, 92, 93.
TuUp, Mariposa, 134.
Turlock, 19.
UmatUla River, 338.
Umpqua HUls, 300.
Umpqua River, 344.
Utah, observations in, 105-
35.
Utah Lake, 133.
Van Bremer brothers, 91,
92.
Vancouver, George, 221, 222;
quoted, 223.
Vancouver Island, 211-16.
Van Trump, guide, 262.
Victoria, B.C., 212-16.
Volcanoes and volcanic phe
nomena, Mt. Shasta, 33-
36, 62-56; Indians' fear
of, 43, 55; Lassen Peak
and Cinder Cone, 53 and
note, 54, 55, 101-03; cra-

390

INDEX

ters in the Shasta region,
66; danger of eruption, 56;
Mt. Baker, 211; Mt. Rai
nier, 268; in Oregon, 346.
Wahsatch Mts., 105; storm
and sunset, 114^19.
WaUa-WaUa River, 338.
Washington, Territory and
State, topography and re
sources, 204, 205; observa
tions in, 205-70; forests,
227-47; lakes and rivers,
239, 240; prairies, 240;
berries, 240, 241; lumber
ing, 242-47; farming and
cattle-raising, 242, 243;
people, 248-50; animal life,
250, 251; towns, 251-55;
excursions, 255-60.
Water-ousel, 43, 325.
Wheeler's Peak, 166, 180-
83.

Whidbey Island, 221.
Whirlpool River, 331, 332.
White Pme HUls, 201.
Whitney Glacier, 51, 63, 67i
87-89.
Wildness, vs. culture, 3-18.
WUkes, Charles, quoted, 223.
WUlamette River, 292, 295,
296, 342.
Willamette VaUey, 284, 314,
343, 344.
Wolverine, 183.
Wolves, 313-15.
Yakima River, 337.
Yehn Prairie, 262.
Yosemite, a winter walk
about, 19-28; compared
with the Grand Canon,
351, 352.
Young, Brigham, 117.
Young, Lily, 135.
Yuccas, 372, 373.

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