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Steep Trails, by John Muir
September, 1995 [Etext #326]
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Transcribed by Judy Gibson, of Descanso, California, USA,
from a book in the collection of the San Diego Natural History Museum,
used by the courtesy of the San Diego Society of Natural History.
Steep Trails
California-Utah-Nevada-Washington-Oregon-The Grand Canyon
by
John Muir
EDITOR'S NOTE
The papers brought together in this volume have, in a general way,
been arranged in chronological sequence. They span a period of
twenty-nine years of Muir's life, during which they appeared as
letters and articles, for the most part in publications of limited and
local circulation. The Utah and Nevada sketches, and the two San
Gabriel papers, were contributed, in the form of letters, to the San
Francisco Evening Bulletin toward the end of the seventies. Written
in the field, they preserve the freshness of the author's first
impressions of those regions. Much of the material in the chapters on
Mount Shasta first took similar shape in 1874. Subsequently it was
rewritten and much expanded for inclusion in Picturesque California,
and the Region West of the Rocky Mountains, which Muir began to edit
in 1888. In the same work appeared the description of Washington and
Oregon. The charming little essay "Wild Wool" was written for the
Overland Monthly in 1875. "A Geologist's Winter Walk" is an extract
from a letter to a friend, who, appreciating its fine literary
quality, took the responsibility of sending it to the Overland Monthly
without the author's knowledge. The concluding chapter on "The Grand
Canyon of the Colorado" was published in the Century Magazine in 1902,
and exhibits Muir's powers of description at their maturity.
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 volume will meet, in every way,
the high expectations of Muir's readers. The recital of his
experiences during a stormy night on the summit of Mount Shasta will
take rank among the most thrilling of his records of adventure. His
observations on the dead towns of Nevada, and on the Indians gathering
their harvest of pine nuts, recall a phase of Western life that has
left few traces in American literature. Many, too, will read with
pensive interest the author's glowing description of what was one time
called the New Northwest. Almost inconceivably great have been the
changes wrought in that region during the past generation. Henceforth
the landscapes that Muir saw there will live in good part only in his
writings, for fire, axe, plough, and gunpowder have made away with the
supposedly boundless forest wildernesses and their teeming life.
William Frederic Bade
Berkeley, California
May, 1918
STEEP TRAILS
CONTENTS
I. Wild Wool
II. A Geologist's Winter Walk
III. Summer Days at Mount Shasta
IV. A Perilous Night on Shasta's Summit
V. Shasta Rambles and Modoc Memories
VI. The City of the Saints
VII. A Great Storm in Utah
VIII. Bathing in Salt Lake
IX. Mormon Lilies
X. The San Gabriel Valley
XI. The San Gabriel Mountains
XII. Nevada Farms
XIII. Nevada Forests
XIV. Nevada's Timber Belt
XV. Glacial Phenomena in Nevada
XVI. Nevada's Dead Towns
XVII. Puget Sound
XVIII. The Forests of Washington
XIX. People and Towns of Puget Sound
XX. An Ascent of Mount Rainier
XXI. The Physical and Climatic Characteristics of Oregon
XXII. The Forests of Oregon and Their Inhabitants
XXIII. The Rivers of Oregon
XXIV. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado
Footnotes
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Crest of the Wahsatch Range
From a point about four miles north of Salt Lake City, Utah.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
At Shasta Soda Springs
A view of Mossbrae Falls, where a subterranean stream coming
down from the glaciers of Mt. Shasta breaks through the
vegetation and flows into the Sacramento River.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
Mount Shasta after a Snowstorm
A view from the west, near Sisson.
From a photograph by Pillsbury's Pictures, Inc.
Mormon Lilies
The plant is known in Utah as the Sego Lily, and in California
and elsewhere as the Mariposa Tulip (Calochortus Nuttallii).
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
Along the Oregon Sea Bluffs
A view near the town of Ecola, Oregon.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
O'Neill's Point
A favorite point of observation overlooking the Grand Canyon
Of Arizona. Now called by the Indian name, Yavapai Point.
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
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 applicable to the ocean
and the sky, that in due calendar time they might be brought to bud
and blossom as the rose. Our efforts are of no avail when we seek to
turn his attention to wild roses, or to the fact that both ocean and
sky are already about as rosy as possible--the one with stars, the
other with dulse, and foam, and wild light. The practical
developments of his culture are orchards and clover-fields wearing a
smiling, benevolent aspect, truly excellent in their way, though a
near view discloses something barbarous in them all. Wildness charms
not my friend, charm it never so wisely: and whatsoever may be the
character of his heaven, his earth seems only a chaos of agricultural
possibilities calling for grubbing-hoes and manures.
Sometimes I venture to approach him with a plea for wildness, when he
good-naturedly shakes a big mellow apple in my face, reiterating his
favorite aphorism, "Culture is an orchard apples; Nature is a crab."
Not all culture, however, is equally destructive and inappreciative.
Azure skies and crystal waters find loving recognition, and few there
be who would welcome the axe among mountain pines, or would care to
apply any correction to the tones and costumes of mountain waterfalls.
Nevertheless, the barbarous notion is almost universally entertained
by civilized man, that there is in all the manufactures of Nature
something essentially coarse which can and must be eradicated by human
culture. I was, therefore, delighted in finding that the wild wool
growing upon mountain sheep in the neighborhood of Mount Shasta was
much finer than the average grades of cultivated wool. This FINE
discovery was made some three months ago[1], while hunting among the
Shasta sheep between Shasta and Lower Klamath Lake. Three fleeces
were obtained--one that belonged to a large ram about four years old,
another to a ewe about the same age, and another to a yearling lamb.
After parting their beautiful wool on the side and many places along
the back, shoulders, and hips, and examining it closely with my lens,
I shouted: "Well done for wildness! Wild wool is finer than tame!"
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 national
wool-growers' associations all the way down to the gude-wife spinning
by her ingleside."
Nature is a good mother, and sees well to the clothing of her many
bairns--birds with smoothly imbricated feathers, beetles with shining
jackets, and bears with shaggy furs. In the tropical south, where the
sun warms like a fire, they are allowed to go thinly clad; but in the
snowy northland she takes care to clothe warmly. The squirrel has
socks and mittens, and a tail broad enough for a blanket; the grouse
is densely feathered down to the ends of his toes; and the wild sheep,
besides his undergarment of fine wool, has a thick overcoat of hair
that sheds off both the snow and the rain. Other provisions and
adaptations in the dresses of animals, relating less to climate than
to the more mechanical circumstances of life, are made with the same
consummate skill that characterizes all the love work of Nature.
Land, water, and air, jagged rocks, muddy ground, sand beds, forests,
underbrush, grassy plains, etc., are considered in all their possible
combinations while the clothing of her beautiful wildlings is
preparing. No matter what the circumstances of their lives may be,
she never allows them to go dirty or ragged. The mole, living always
in the dark and in the dirt, is yet as clean as the otter or the wave-washed seal; and our wild sheep, wading in snow, roaming through
bushes, and leaping among jagged storm-beaten cliffs, wears a dress so
exquisitely adapted to its mountain life that it is always found as
unruffled and stainless as a bird.
On leaving the Shasta hunting grounds I selected a few specimen tufts,
and brought them away with a view to making more leisurely
examinations; but, owing to the imperfectness of the instruments at my
command, the results thus far obtained must be regarded only as rough
approximations.
As already stated, the clothing of our wild sheep is composed of fine
wool and coarse hair. The hairs are from about two to four inches
long, mostly of a dull bluish-gray color, though varying somewhat with
the seasons. In general characteristics they are closely related to
the hairs of the deer and antelope, being light, spongy, and elastic,
with a highly polished surface, and though somewhat ridged and
spiraled, like wool, they do not manifest the slightest tendency to
felt or become taggy. A hair two and a half inches long, which is
perhaps near the average length, will stretch about one fourth of an
inch before breaking. The diameter decreases rapidly both at the top
and bottom, but is maintained throughout the greater portion of the
length with a fair degree of regularity. The slender tapering point
in which the hairs terminate is nearly black: but, owing to its
fineness as compared with the main trunk, the quantity of blackness is
not sufficient to affect greatly the general color. The number of
hairs growing upon a square inch is about ten thousand; the number of
wool fibers is about twenty-five thousand, or two and a half times
that of the hairs. The wool fibers are white and glossy, and
beautifully spired into ringlets. The average length of the staple is
about an inch and a half. A fiber of this length, when growing
undisturbed down among the hairs, measures about an inch; hence the
degree of curliness may easily be inferred. I regret exceedingly that
my instruments do not enable me to measure the diameter of the fibers,
in order that their degrees of fineness might be definitely compared
with each other and with the finest of the domestic breeds; but that
the three wild fleeces under consideration are considerably finer than
the average grades of Merino shipped from San Francisco is, I think,
unquestionable.
When the fleece is parted and looked into with a good lens, the skin
appears of a beautiful pale-yellow color, and the delicate wool fibers
are seen growing up among the strong hairs, like grass among stalks of
corn, every individual fiber being protected about as specially and
effectively as if inclosed in a separate husk. Wild wool is too fine
to stand by itself, the fibers being about as frail and invisible as
the floating threads of spiders, while the hairs against which they
lean stand erect like hazel wands; but, notwithstanding their great
dissimilarity in size and appearance, the wool and hair are forms of
the same thing, modified in just that way and to just that degree that
renders them most perfectly subservient to the well-being of the
sheep. Furthermore, it will be observed that these wild modifications
are entirely distinct from those which are brought chancingly into
existence through the accidents and caprices of culture; the former
being inventions of God for the attainment of definite ends. Like the
modifications of limbs--the fin for swimming, the wing for flying, the
foot for walking--so the fine wool for warmth, the hair for additional
warmth and to protect the wool, and both together for a fabric to wear
well in mountain roughness and wash well in mountain storms.
The effects of human culture upon wild wool are analogous to those
produced upon wild roses. In the one case there is an abnormal
development of petals at the expense of the stamens, in the other an
abnormal development of wool at the expense of the hair. Garden roses
frequently exhibit stamens in which the transmutation to petals may be
observed in various stages of accomplishment, and analogously the
fleeces of tame sheep occasionally contain a few wild hairs that are
undergoing transmutation to wool. Even wild wool presents here and
there a fiber that appears to be in a state of change. In the course
of my examinations of the wild fleeces mentioned above, three fibers
were found that were wool at one end and hair at the other. This,
however, does not necessarily imply imperfection, or any process of
change similar to that caused by human culture. Water lilies contain
parts variously developed into stamens at one end, petals at the
other, as the constant and normal condition. These half wool, half
hair fibers may therefore subserve some fixed requirement essential to
the perfection of the whole, or they may simply be the fine boundary-lines where and exact balance between the wool and the hair is
attained.
I have been offering samples of mountain wool to my friends, demanding
in return that the fineness of wildness be fairly recognized and
confessed, but the returns are deplorably tame. The first question
asked, is, "Now truly, wild sheep, wild sheep, have you any wool?"
while they peer curiously down among the hairs through lenses and
spectacles. "Yes, wild sheep, you HAVE wool; but Mary's lamb had
more. In the name of use, how many wild sheep, think you, would be
required to furnish wool sufficient for a pair of socks?" I endeavor
to point out the irrelevancy of the latter question, arguing that wild
wool was not made for man but for sheep, and that, however deficient
as clothing for other animals, it is just the thing for the brave
mountain-dweller that wears it. Plain, however, as all this appears,
the quantity question rises again and again in all its commonplace
tameness. For in my experience it seems well-nigh impossible to
obtain a hearing on behalf of Nature from any other standpoint than
that of human use. Domestic flocks yield more flannel per sheep than
the wild, therefore it is claimed that culture has improves upon
wildness; and so it has as far as flannel is concerned, but all to the
contrary as far as a sheep's dress is concerned. If every wild sheep
inhabiting the Sierra were to put on tame wool, probably only a few
would survive the dangers of a single season. With their fine limbs
muffled and buried beneath a tangle of hairless wool, they would
become short-winded, and fall an easy prey to the strong mountain
wolves. In descending precipices they would be thrown out of balance
and killed, by their taggy wool catching upon sharp points of rocks.
Disease would also be brought on by the dirt which always finds a
lodgment in tame wool, and by the draggled and water-soaked condition
into which it falls during stormy weather.
No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so
insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the
relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the
world as made especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant,
and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught
from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the
resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.
I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show
that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made
for itself. Not that Nature manifests any such thing as selfish
isolation. In the making of every animal the presence of every other
animal has been recognized. Indeed, every atom in creation may be
said to be acquainted with and married to every other, but with
universal union there is a division sufficient in degree for the
purposes of the most intense individuality; no matter, therefore, what
may be the note which any creature forms in the song of existence, it
is made first for itself, then more and more remotely for all the
world and worlds.
Were it not for the exercise of individualizing cares on the part of
Nature, the universe would be felted together like a fleece of tame
wool. But we are governed more than we know, and most when we are
wildest. Plants, animals, and stars are all kept in place, bridled
along appointed ways, WITH one another, and THROUGH THE MIDST of one
another--killing and being killed, eating and being eaten, in
harmonious proportions and quantities. And it is right that we should
thus reciprocally make use of one another, rob, cook, and consume, to
the utmost of our healthy abilities and desires. Stars attract one
another as they are able, and harmony results. Wild lambs eat as many
wild flowers as they can find or desire, and men and wolves eat the
lambs to just the same extent.
This consumption of one another in its various modifications is a kind
of culture varying with the degree of directness with which it is
carried out, but we should be careful not to ascribe to such culture
any improving qualities upon those on whom it is brought to bear. The
water-ousel plucks moss from the riverbank to build its nest, but is
does not improve the moss by plucking it. We pluck feathers from
birds, and less directly wool from wild sheep, for the manufacture of
clothing and cradle-nests, without improving the wool for the sheep,
or the feathers for the bird that wore them. When a hawk pounces upon
a linnet and proceeds to pull out its feathers, preparatory to making
a meal, the hawk may be said to be cultivating the linnet, and he
certainly does effect an improvement as far as hawk-food is concerned;
but what of the songster? He ceases to be a linnet as soon as he is
snatched from the woodland choir; and when, hawklike, we snatch the
wild sheep from its native rock, and, instead of eating and wearing it
at once, carry it home, and breed the hair out of its wool and the
bones out of its body, it ceases to be a sheep.
These breeding and plucking processes are similarly improving as
regards the secondary uses aimed at; and, although the one requires
but a few minutes for its accomplishment, the other many years or
centuries, they are essentially alike. We eat wild oysters alive with
great directness, waiting for no cultivation, and leaving scarce a
second of distance between the shell and the lip; but we take wild
sheep home and subject them to the many extended processes of
husbandry, and finish by boiling them in a pot--a process which
completes all sheep improvements as far as man is concerned. It will
be seen, therefore, that wild wool and tame wool--wild sheep and tame
sheep--are terms not properly comparable, nor are they in any correct
sense to be considered as bearing any antagonism toward each other;
they are different things. Planned and accomplished for wholly
different purposes.
Illustrative examples bearing upon this interesting subject may be
multiplied indefinitely, for they abound everywhere in the plant and
animal kingdoms wherever culture has reached. Recurring for a moment
to apples. The beauty and completeness of a wild apple tree living
its own life in the woods is heartily acknowledged by all those who
have been so happy as to form its acquaintance. The fine wild
piquancy of its fruit is unrivaled, but in the great question of
quantity as human food wild apples are found wanting. Man, therefore,
takes the tree from the woods, manures and prunes and grafts, plans
and guesses, adds a little of this and that, selects and rejects,
until apples of every conceivable size and softness are produced, like
nut galls in response to the irritating punctures of insects. Orchard
apples are to me the most eloquent words that culture has ever spoken,
but they reflect no imperfection upon Nature's spicy crab. Every
cultivated apple is a crab, not improved, BUT COOKED, variously
softened and swelled out in the process, mellowed, sweetened, spiced,
and rendered pulpy and foodful, but as utterly unfit for the uses of
nature as a meadowlark killed and plucked and roasted. Give to Nature
every cultured apple--codling, pippin, russet--and every sheep so
laboriously compounded--muffled Southdowns, hairy Cotswolds, wrinkled
Merinos--and she would throw the one to her caterpillars, the other to
her wolves.
It is now some thirty-six hundred years since Jacob kissed his mother
and set out across the plains of Padan-aram to begin his experiments
upon the flocks of his uncle, Laban; and, notwithstanding the high
degree of excellence he attained as a wool-grower, and the innumerable
painstaking efforts subsequently made by individuals and associations
in all kinds of pastures and climates, we still seem to be as far from
definite and satisfactory results as we ever were. In one breed the
wool is apt to wither and crinkle like hay on a sun-beaten hillside.
In another, it is lodged and matted together like the lush tangled
grass of a manured meadow. In one the staple is deficient in length,
in another in fineness; while in all there is a constant tendency
toward disease, rendering various washings and dippings indispensable
to prevent its falling out. The problem of the quality and quantity
of the carcass seems to be as doubtful and as far removed from a
satisfactory solution as that of the wool. Desirable breeds blundered
upon by long series of groping experiments are often found to be
unstable and subject to disease--bots, foot rot, blind staggers, etc.
--causing infinite trouble, both among breeders and manufacturers.
Would it not be well, therefore, for some one to go back as far as
possible and take a fresh start?
The source or sources whence the various breeds were derived is not
positively known, but there can be hardly any doubt of their being
descendants of the four or five wild species so generally distributed
throughout the mountainous portions of the globe, the marked
differences between the wild and domestic species being readily
accounted for by the known variability of the animal, and by the long
series of painstaking selection to which all its characteristics have
been subjected. No other animal seems to yield so submissively to the
manipulations of culture. Jacob controlled the color of his flocks
merely by causing them to stare at objects of the desired hue; and
possibly Merinos may have caught their wrinkles from the perplexed
brows of their breeders. The California species (Ovis montana)[2] is a
noble animal, weighing when full-grown some three hundred and fifty
pounds, and is well worthy the attention of wool-growers as a point
from which to make a new departure, for pure wildness is the one great
want, both of men and of sheep.
II
A Geologist's Winter Walk[3]
After reaching Turlock, I sped afoot over the stubble fields and
through miles of brown hemizonia and purple erigeron, to Hopeton,
conscious of little more than that the town was behind and beneath me,
and the mountains above and before me; on through the oaks and
chaparral of the foothills to Coulterville; and then ascended the
first great mountain step upon which grows the sugar pine. Here I
slackened pace, for I drank the spicy, resiny wind, and beneath the
arms of this noble tree I felt that I was safely home. Never did pine
trees seem so dear. How sweet was their breath and their song, and
how grandly they winnowed the sky! I tingled my fingers among their
tassels, and rustled my feet among their brown needles and burrs, and
was exhilarated and joyful beyond all I can write.
When I reached Yosemite, all the rocks seemed talkative, and more
telling and lovable than ever. They are dear friends, and seemed to
have warm blood gushing through their granite flesh; and I love them
with a love intensified by long and close companionship. After I had
bathed in the bright river, sauntered over the meadows, conversed with
the domes, and played with the pines, I still felt blurred and weary,
as if tainted in some way with the sky of your streets. I determined,
therefore, to run out for a while to say my prayers in the higher
mountain temples. "The days are sunful," I said, "and, though now
winter, no great danger need be encountered, and no sudden storm will
block my return, if I am watchful."
The morning after this decision, I started up the canyon of Tenaya,
caring little about the quantity of bread I carried; for, I thought, a
fast and a storm and a difficult canyon were just the medicine I
needed. When I passed Mirror Lake, I scarcely noticed it, for I was
absorbed in the great Tissiack--her crown a mile away in the hushed
azure; her purple granite drapery flowing in soft and graceful folds
down to my feet, embroidered gloriously around with deep, shadowy
forest. I have gazed on Tissiack a thousand times--in days of solemn
storms, and when her form shone divine with the jewelry of winter, or
was veiled in living clouds; and I have heard her voice of winds, and
snowy, tuneful waters when floods were falling; yet never did her soul
reveal itself more impressively than now. I hung about her skirts,
lingering timidly, until the higher mountains and glaciers compelled
me to push up the canyon.
This canyon is accessible only to mountaineers, and I was anxious to
carry my barometer and clinometer through it, to obtain sections and
altitudes, so I chose it as the most attractive highway. After I had
passed the tall groves that stretch a mile above Mirror Lake, and
scrambled around the Tenaya Fall, which is just at the head of the
lake groves, I crept through the dense and spiny chaparral that
plushes the roots of the mountains here for miles in warm green, and
was ascending a precipitous rock front, smoothed by glacial action,
when I suddenly fell--for the first time since I touched foot to
Sierra rocks. After several somersaults, I became insensible from the
shock, and when consciousness returned I found myself wedged among
short, stiff bushes, trembling as if cold, not injured in the
slightest.
Judging by the sun, I could not have been insensible very long;
probably not a minute, possibly an hour; and I could not remember what
made me fall, or where I had fallen from; but I saw that if I had
rolled a little further, my mountain climbing would have been
finished, for just beyond the bushes the canyon wall steepened and I
might have fallen to the bottom. "There," said I, addressing my feet,
to whose separate skill I had learned to trust night and day on any
mountain, "that is what you get by intercourse with stupid town
stairs, and dead pavements." I felt degraded and worthless. I had
not yet reached the most difficult portion of the canyon, but I
determined to guide my humbled body over the most nerve-trying places
I could find; for I was now awake, and felt confident that the last of
the town fog had been shaken from both head and feet.
I camped at the mouth of a narrow gorge which is cut into the bottom
of the main canyon, determined to take earnest exercise next day. No
plushy boughs did my ill-behaved bones enjoy that night, nor did my
bumped head get a spicy cedar plume pillow mixed with flowers. I
slept on a naked boulder, and when I awoke all my nervous trembling
was gone.
The gorged portion of the canyon, in which I spent all the next day,
is about a mile and a half in length; and I passed the time in tracing
the action of the forces that determined this peculiar bottom gorge,
which is an abrupt, ragged-walled, narrow-throated canyon, formed in
the bottom of the wide-mouthed, smooth, and beveled main canyon. I
will not stop now to tell you more; some day you may see it, like a
shadowy line, from Cloud's Rest. In high water, the stream occupies
all the bottom of the gorge, surging and chafing in glorious power
from wall to wall. But the sound of the grinding was low as I entered
the gorge, scarcely hoping to be able to pass through its entire
length. By cool efforts, along glassy, ice-worn slopes, I reached the
upper end in a little over a day, but was compelled to pass the second
night in the gorge, and in the moonlight I wrote you this short
pencil-letter in my notebook:--
The moon is looking down into the canyon, and how marvelously the
great rocks kindle 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 canyon, 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 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 magnificent
rocks, sisters of the great South Dome. On the right is the
massive, moonlit front of Mount Watkins, 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, falling from the
smooth, glossy flank of Cloud's Rest, happened 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[4] 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 canyon, endeavoring to get
around this difficult part 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
tormented" with raging torrents and choking avalanches 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 alive all through the night. Next morning I rose
nerved and ready for another day of sketching and noting, and any form
of climbing. I escaped from the gorge about noon, after accomplishing
some of the most delicate feats of mountaineering I ever attempted;
and here the canyon is all broadly open again--the floor luxuriantly
forested with pine, and spruce, and silver fir, and brown-trunked
libocedrus. The walls rise in Yosemite forms, and Tenaya Creek comes
down seven hundred feet in a white brush of foam. This is a little
Yosemite valley. It is about two thousand feet above the level of the
main Yosemite, and about twenty-four hundred below Lake Tenaya.
I found the lake frozen, and the ice was so clear and unruffled that
the surrounding mountains and the groves that look down upon it were
reflected almost as perfectly as I ever beheld them in the calm
evening mirrors of summer. At a little distance, it was difficult to
believe the lake frozen at all; and when I walked out on it,
cautiously stamping at short intervals to test the strength of the
ice, I seemed to walk mysteriously, without adequate faith, on the
surface of the water. The ice was so transparent that I could see
through it the beautifully wave-rippled, sandy bottom, and the scales
of mica glinting back the down-pouring light. When I knelt down with
my face close to the ice, through which the sunbeams were pouring, I
was delighted to discover myriads of Tyndall's six-rayed water
flowers, magnificently colored.
A grand old mountain mansion is this Tenaya region! In the glacier
period it was a mer de glace, far grander than the mer de glace of
Switzerland, which is only about half a mile broad. The Tenaya mer de
glace was not less than two miles broad, late in the glacier epoch,
when all the principal dividing crests were bare; and its depth was
not less than fifteen hundred feet. Ice streams from Mounts Lyell and
Dana, and all the mountains between, and from the nearer Cathedral
Peak, flowed hither, welded into one, and worked together. After
eroding this Tanaya Lake basin, and all the splendidly sculptured
rocks and mountains that surround and adorn it, and the great Tenaya
Canyon, with its wealth of all that makes mountains sublime, they were
welded with the vast South, Lyell, and Illilouette glaciers on one
side, and with those of Hoffman on the other--thus forming a portion
of a yet grander mer de glace in Yosemite Valley.
I reached the Tenaya Canyon, on my way home, by coming in from the
northeast, rambling down over the shoulders of Mount Watkins, touching
bottom a mile above Mirror Lake. From thence home was but a saunter
in the moonlight.
After resting one day, and the weather continuing calm, I ran up over
the left shoulder of South Dome and down in front of its grand split
face to make some measurements, completed my work, climbed to the
right shoulder, struck off along the ridge for Cloud's Rest, and
reached the topmost heave of her sunny wave in ample time to see the
sunset.
Cloud's Rest is a thousand feet higher than Tissiack. It is a
wavelike crest upon a ridge, which begins at Yosemite with Tissiack,
and runs continuously eastward to the thicket of peaks and crests
around Lake Tenaya. This lofty granite wall is bent this way and that
by the restless and weariless action of glaciers just as if it had
been made of dough. But the grand circumference of mountains and
forests are coming from far and near, densing into one close
assemblage; for the sun, their god and father, with love ineffable, is
glowing a sunset farewell. Not one of all the assembled rocks or
trees seemed remote. How impressively their faces shone with
responsive love!
I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made
me strong. Down through the junipers; down through the firs; now in
jet shadows, now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare,
clanking rocks; past the huge ghost of South Dome rising weird through
the firs; past the glorious fall of Nevada, the groves of Illilouette;
through the pines of the valley; beneath the bright crystal sky
blazing with stars. All of this mountain wealth in one day!--one of
the rich ripe days that enlarge one's life; so much of the sun upon
one side of it, so much of the moon and stars on the other.
III
Summer Days at Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta rises in solitary grandeur from the edge of a
comparatively low and lightly sculptured lava plain near the northern
extremity of the Sierra, and maintains a far more impressive and
commanding individuality than any other mountain within the limits of
California. Go where you may, within a radius of from fifty to a
hundred miles or more, there stands before you the colossal cone of
Shasta, clad in ice and snow, the one grand unmistakable landmark--the
pole star of the landscape. Far to the southward Mount Whitney lifts
its granite summit four or five hundred feet higher than Shasta, but
it is nearly snowless during the late summer, and is so feebly
individualized that the traveler may search for it in vain among the
many rival peaks crowded along the axis of the range to north and
south of it, which all alike are crumbling residual masses brought
into relief in the degradation of the general mass of the range. The
highest point on Mount Shasta, as determined by the State Geological
Survey, is 14,440 feet above mean tide. That of Whitney, computed
from fewer observations, is about 14,900 feet. But inasmuch as the
average elevation of the plain out of which Shasta rises is only about
four thousand feet above the sea, while the actual base of the peak of
Mount Whitney lies at an elevation of eleven thousand feet, the
individual height of the former is about two and a half times as great
as that of the latter.
Approaching Shasta from the south, one obtains glimpses of its snowy
cone here and there through the trees from the tops of hills and
ridges; but it is not until Strawberry Valley is reached, where there
is a grand out-opening of the forests, that Shasta is seen in all its
glory. From base to crown clearly revealed with its wealth of woods
and waters and fountain snow, rejoicing in the bright mountain sky,
and radiating beauty on all the subject landscape like a sun.
Standing in a fringing thicket of purple spiraea in the immediate
foreground is a smooth expanse of green meadow with its meandering
stream, one of the smaller affluents of the Sacramento; then a zone of
dark, close forest, its countless spires of pine and fir rising above
one another on the swelling base of the mountain in glorious array;
and, over all, the great white cone sweeping far into the thin, keen
sky--meadow, forest, and grand icy summit harmoniously blending and
making one sublime picture evenly balanced.
The main lines of the landscape are immensely bold and simple, and so
regular that it needs all its shaggy wealth of woods and chaparral and
its finely tinted ice and snow and brown jutting crags to keep it from
looking conventional. In general views of the mountain three distinct
zones may be readily defined. The first, which may be called the
Chaparral Zone, extends around the base in a magnificent sweep nearly
a hundred miles in length on its lower edge, and with a breadth of
about seven miles. It is a dense growth of chaparral from three to
six or eight feet high, composed chiefly of manzanita, cherry,
chincapin, and several species of ceanothus, called deerbrush by the
hunters, forming, when in full bloom, one of the most glorious
flowerbeds conceivable. The continuity of this flowery zone is
interrupted here and there, especially on the south side of the
mountain, by wide swaths of coniferous trees, chiefly the sugar and
yellow pines, Douglas spruce, silver fir, and incense cedar, many
specimens of which are two hundred feet high and five to seven feet in
diameter. Goldenrods, asters, gilias, lilies, and lupines, with many
other less conspicuous plants, occur in warm sheltered openings in
these lower woods, making charming gardens of wildness where bees and
butterflies are at home and many a shy bird and squirrel.
The next higher is the Fir Zone, made up almost exclusively of two
species of silver fir. It is from two to three miles wide, has an
average elevation above the sea of some six thousand feet on its lower
edge and eight thousand on its upper, and is the most regular and best
defined of the three.
The Alpine Zone has a rugged, straggling growth of storm-beaten dwarf
pines (Pinus albicaulis), which forms the upper edge of the
timberline. This species reaches an elevation of about nine thousand
feet, but at this height the tops of the trees rise only a few feet
into the thin frosty air, and are closely pressed and shorn by wind
and snow; yet they hold on bravely and put forth an abundance of
beautiful purple flowers and produce cones and seeds. Down towards
the edge of the fir belt they stand erect, forming small, well-formed
trunks, and are associated with the taller two-leafed and mountain
pines and the beautiful Williamson spruce. Bryanthus, a beautiful
flowering heathwort, flourishes a few hundred feet above the
timberline, accompanied with kalmia and spiraea. Lichens enliven the
faces of the cliffs with their bright colors, and in some of the
warmer nooks of the rocks, up to a height of eleven thousand feet,
there are a few tufts of dwarf daisies, wallflowers, and penstemons;
but, notwithstanding these bloom freely, they make no appreciable show
at a distance, and the stretches of rough brown lava beyond the storm-beaten trees seem as bare of vegetation as the great snow fields and
glaciers of the summit.
Shasta is a fire-mountain, an old volcano gradually accumulated and
built up into the blue deep of the sky by successive eruptions of
ashes and molten lava which, shot high in the air and falling in
darkening showers, and flowing from chasms and craters, grew outward
and upward like the trunk of a knotty, bulging tree. Not in one grand
convulsion was Shasta given birth, nor in any one special period of
volcanic storm and stress, though mountains more than a thousand feet
in height have been cast up like molehills in a night--quick
contributions to the wealth of the landscapes, and most emphatic
statements, on the part of Nature, of the gigantic character of the
power that dwells beneath the dull, dead-looking surface of the earth.
But sections cut by the glaciers, displaying some of the internal
framework of Shasta, show that comparatively long periods of
quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which
the cooling lavas ceased to flow, and took their places as permanent
additions to the bulk of the growing mountain. Thus with alternate
haste and deliberation eruption succeeded eruption, until Mount Shasta
surpassed even its present sublime height.
Then followed a strange contrast. The glacial winter came on. The
sky that so often had been darkened with storms of cinders and ashes
and lighted by the glare of volcanic fires was filled with crystal
snow-flowers, which, loading the cooling mountain, gave birth to
glaciers that, uniting edge to edge, at length formed one grand
conical glacier--a down-crawling mantle of ice upon a fountain of
smouldering fire, crushing and grinding its brown, flinty lavas, and
thus degrading and remodeling the entire mountain from summit to base.
How much denudation and degradation has been effected we have no means
of determining, the porous, crumbling rocks being ill adapted for the
reception and preservation of glacial inscriptions.
The summit is now a mass of ruins, and all the finer striations have
been effaced from the flanks by post-glacial weathering, while the
irregularity of its lavas as regards susceptibility to erosion, and
the disturbance caused by inter- and post-glacial eruptions, have
obscured or obliterated those heavier characters of the glacial record
found so clearly inscribed upon the granite pages of the high Sierra
between latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes and 39 degrees. This much,
however, is plain: that the summit of the mountain was considerably
lowered, and the sides were deeply grooved and fluted while it was a
center of dispersal for the glaciers of the circumjacent region. And
when at length the glacial period began to draw near its close, the
ice mantle was gradually melted off around the base of the mountain,
and in receding and breaking up into its present fragmentary condition
the irregular heaps and rings of moraine matter were stored upon its
flanks on which the forests are growing. The glacial erosion of most
of the Shasta lavas gives rise to detritus composed of rough
subangular boulders of moderate size and porous gravel and sand, which
yields freely to the transporting power of running water. Several
centuries ago immense quantities of this lighter material were washed
down from the higher slopes by a flood of extraordinary magnitude,
caused probably by the sudden melting of the ice and snow during an
eruption, giving rise to the deposition of conspicuous delta-like beds
around the base. And it is upon these flood-beds of moraine soil,
thus suddenly and simultaneously laid down and joined edge to edge,
that the flowery chaparral is growing.
Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, Nature
accomplishes her beneficent designs--now a flood of fire, now a flood
of ice, now a flood of water; and again in the fullness of time an
outburst of organic life--forest and garden, with all their wealth of
fruit and flowers, the air stirred into one universal hum with
rejoicing insects, a milky way of wings and petals, girdling the
newborn mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating
against its sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees.
But with such grand displays as Nature is making here, how grand are
her reservations, bestowed only upon those who devotedly seek them!
Beneath the smooth and snowy surface the fountain fires are still
aglow, to blaze forth afresh at their appointed times. The glaciers,
looking so still and small at a distance, represented by the artist
with a patch of white paint laid on by a single stroke of his brush,
are still flowing onward, unhalting, with deep crystal currents,
sculpturing the mountain with stern, resistless energy. How many
caves and fountains that no eye has yet seen lie with all their fine
furniture deep down in the darkness, and how many shy wild creatures
are at home beneath the grateful lights and shadows of the woods,
rejoicing in their fullness of perfect life!
Standing on the edge of the Strawberry Meadows in the sun-days of
summer, not a foot or feather or leaf seems to stir; and the grand,
towering mountain with all its inhabitants appears in rest, calm as a
star. Yet how profound is the energy ever in action, and how great is
the multitude of claws and teeth, wings and eyes, wide awake and at
work and shining! Going into the blessed wilderness, the blood of the
plants throbbing beneath the life-giving sunshine seems to be heard
and felt; plant growth goes on before our eyes, and every tree and
bush and flower is seen as a hive of restless industry. The deeps of
the sky are mottled with singing wings of every color and tone--clouds
of brilliant chrysididae dancing and swirling in joyous rhythm,
golden-barred vespidae, butterflies, grating cicadas and jolly
rattling grasshoppers--fairly enameling the light, and shaking all the
air into music. Happy fellows they are, every one of them, blowing
tiny pipe and trumpet, plodding and prancing, at work or at play.
Though winter holds the summit, Shasta in summer is mostly a massy,
bossy mound of flowers colored like the alpenglow that flushes the
snow. There are miles of wild roses, pink bells of huckleberry and
sweet manzanita, every bell a honey-cup, plants that tell of the north
and of the south; tall nodding lilies, the crimson sarcodes,
rhododendron, cassiope, and blessed linnaea; phlox, calycanthus, plum,
cherry, crataegus, spiraea, mints, and clovers in endless variety;
ivesia, larkspur, and columbine; golden aplopappus, linosyris[5],
bahia, wyethia, arnica, brodiaea, etc.,--making sheets and beds of
light edgings of bloom in lavish abundance for the myriads of the air
dependent on their bounty.
The common honeybees, gone wild in this sweet wilderness, gather tons
of honey into the hollows of the trees and rocks, clambering eagerly
through bramble and hucklebloom, shaking the clustered bells of the
generous manzanita, now humming aloft among polleny willows and firs,
now down on the ashy ground among small gilias and buttercups, and
anon plunging into banks of snowy cherry and buckthorn. They consider
the lilies and roll into them, pushing their blunt polleny faces
against them like babies on their mother's bosom; and fondly, too,
with eternal love does Mother Nature clasp her small bee-babies and
suckle them, multitudes at once, on her warm Shasta breast. Besides
the common honeybee there are many others here, fine, burly, mossy
fellows, such as were nourished on the mountains many a flowery
century before the advent of the domestic species--bumblebees, mason-bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters. Butterflies, too, and moths
of every size and pattern; some wide-winged like bats, flapping slowly
and sailing in easy curves; others like small flying violets shaking
about loosely in short zigzag flights close to the flowers, feasting
in plenty night and day.
Deer in great abundance come to Shasta from the warmer foothills every
spring to feed in the rich, cool pastures, and bring forth their young
in the ceanothus tangles of the chaparral zone, retiring again before
the snowstorms of winter, mostly to the southward and westward of the
mountain. In like manner the wild sheep of the adjacent region seek
the lofty inaccessible crags of the summit as the snow melts, and are
driven down to the lower spurs and ridges where there is but little
snow, to the north and east of Shasta.
Bears, too, roam this foodful wilderness, feeding on grass, clover,
berries, nuts, ant eggs, fish, flesh, or fowl,--whatever comes in
their way,--with but little troublesome discrimination. Sugar and
honey they seem to like best of all, and they seek far to find the
sweets; but when hard pushed by hunger they make out to gnaw a living
from the bark of trees and rotten logs, and might almost live on clean
lava alone.
Notwithstanding the California bears have had as yet but little
experience with honeybees, they sometimes succeed in reaching the
bountiful stores of these industrious gatherers and enjoy the feast
with majestic relish. But most honeybees in search of a home are wise
enough to make choice of a hollow in a living tree far from the
ground, whenever such can be found. There they are pretty secure, for
though the smaller brown and black bears climb well, they are unable
to gnaw their way into strong hives, while compelled to exert
themselves to keep from falling and at the same time endure the stings
of the bees about the nose and eyes, without having their paws free to
brush them off. But woe to the unfortunates who dwell in some
prostrate trunk, and to the black bumblebees discovered in their
mossy, mouselike nests in the ground. With powerful teeth and claws
these are speedily laid bare, and almost before time is given for a
general buzz the bees, old and young, larvae, honey, stings, nest, and
all, are devoured in one ravishing revel.
The antelope may still be found in considerable numbers to the
northeastward of Shasta, but the elk, once abundant, have almost
entirely gone from the region. The smaller animals, such as the wolf,
the various foxes, wildcats, coon, squirrels, and the curious wood rat
that builds large brush huts, abound in all the wilder places; and the
beaver, otter, mink, etc., may still be found along the sources of the
rivers. The blue grouse and mountain quail are plentiful in the woods
and the sage-hen on the plains about the northern base of the
mountain, while innumerable smaller birds enliven and sweeten every
thicket and grove.
There are at least five classes of human inhabitants about the Shasta
region: the Indians, now scattered, few in numbers and miserably
demoralized, though still offering some rare specimens of savage
manhood; miners and prospectors, found mostly to the north and west of
the mountain, since the region about its base if overflowed with lava;
cattle-raisers, mostly on the open plains to the northeastward and
around the Klamath Lakes; hunters and trappers, where the woods and
waters are wildest; and farmers, in Shasta Valley on the north side of
the mountain, wheat, apples, melons, berries, all the best production
of farm and garden growing and ripening there at the foot of the great
white cone, which seems at times during changing storms ready to fall
upon them--the most sublime farm scenery imaginable.
The Indians of the McCloud River that have come under my observation
differ considerably in habits and features from the Diggers and other
tribes of the foothills and plains, and also from the Pah Utes and
Modocs. They live chiefly on salmon. They seem to be closely related
to the Tlingits of Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and may readily
have found their way here by passing from stream to stream in which
salmon abound. They have much better features than the Indians of the
plains, and are rather wide awake, speculative and ambitious in their
way, and garrulous, like the natives of the northern coast.
Before the Modoc War they lived in dread of the Modocs, a tribe living
about the Klamath Lake and the Lava Beds, who were in the habit of
crossing the low Sierra divide past the base of Shasta on freebooting
excursions, stealing wives, fish, and weapons from the Pitts and
McClouds. Mothers would hush their children by telling them that the
Modocs would catch them.
During my stay at the Government fish-hatching station on the McCloud
I was accompanied in my walks along the riverbank by a McCloud boy
about ten years of age, a bright, inquisitive fellow, who gave me the
Indian names of the birds and plants that we met. The water-ousel he
knew well and he seemed to like the sweet singer, which he called
"Sussinny." He showed me how strips of the stems of the beautiful
maidenhair fern were used to adorn baskets with handsome brown bands,
and pointed out several plants good to eat, particularly the large
saxifrage growing abundantly along the river margin. Once I rushed
suddenly upon him to see if he would be frightened; but he
unflinchingly held his ground, struck a grand heroic attitude, and
shouted, "Me no fraid; me Modoc!"
Mount Shasta, so far as I have seen, has never been the home of
Indians, not even their hunting ground to any great extent, above the
lower slopes of the base. They are said to be afraid of fire-mountains and geyser basins as being the dwelling places of
dangerously powerful and unmanageable gods. However, it is food and
their relations to other tribes that mainly control the movements of
Indians; and here their food was mostly on the lower slopes, with
nothing except the wild sheep to tempt them higher. Even these were
brought within reach without excessive climbing during the storms of
winter.
On the north side of Shasta, near Sheep Rock, there is a long cavern,
sloping to the northward, nearly a mile in length, thirty or forty
feet wide, and fifty feet or more in height, regular in form and
direction like a railroad tunnel, and probably formed by the flowing
away of a current of lava after the hardening of the surface. At the
mouth of this cave, where the light and shelter is good, I found many
of the heads and horns of the wild sheep, and the remains of
campfires, no doubt those of Indian hunters who in stormy weather had
camped there and feasted after the fatigues of the chase. A wild
picture that must have formed on a dark night--the glow of the fire,
the circle of crouching savages around it seen through the smoke, the
dead game, and the weird darkness and half-darkness of the walls of
the cavern, a picture of cave-dwellers at home in the stone age!
Interest in hunting is almost universal, so deeply is it rooted as an
inherited instinct ever ready to rise and make itself know. Fine
scenery may not stir a fiber of mind or body, but how quick and how
true is the excitement of the pursuit of game! Then up flames the
slumbering volcano of ancient wildness, all that has been done by
church and school through centuries of cultivation is for the moment
destroyed, and the decent gentleman or devout saint becomes a howling,
bloodthirsty, demented savage. It is not long since we all were
cavemen and followed game for food as truly as wildcat or wolf, and
the long repression of civilization seems to make the rebound to
savage love of blood all the more violent. This frenzy, fortunately,
does not last long in its most exaggerated form, and after a season of
wildness refined gentlemen from cities are not more cruel than hunters
and trappers who kill for a living.
Dwelling apart in the depths of the woods are the various kinds of
mountaineers,--hunters, prospectors, and the like,--rare men, "queer
characters," and well worth knowing. Their cabins are located with
reference to game and the ledges to be examined, and are constructed
almost as simply as those of the wood rats made of sticks laid across
each other without compass or square. But they afford good shelter
from storms, and so are "square" with the need of their builders.
These men as a class are singularly fine in manners, though their
faces may be scarred and rough like the bark of trees. On entering
their cabins you will promptly be placed on you good behavior, and,
your wants being perceived with quick insight, complete hospitality
will be offered for body and mind to the extent of the larder.
These men know the mountains far and near, and their thousand voices,
like the leaves of a book. They can tell where the deer may be found
at any time of year or day, and what they are doing; and so of all the
other furred and feathered people they meet in their walks; and they
can send a thought to its mark as well as a bullet. The aims of such
people are not always the highest, yet how brave and manly and clean
are their lives compared with too many in crowded towns mildewed and
dwarfed in disease and crime! How fine a chance is here to begin life
anew in the free fountains and skylands of Shasta, where it is so easy
to live and to die! The future of the hunter is likely to be a good
one; no abrupt change about it, only a passing from wilderness to
wilderness, from one high place to another.
Now that the railroad has been built up the Sacramento, everybody with
money may go to Mount Shasta, the weak as well as the strong, fine-grained, succulent people, whose legs have never ripened, as well as
sinewy mountaineers seasoned long in the weather. This, surely, is
not the best way of going to the mountains, yet it is better than
staying below. Many still small voices will not be heard in the noisy
rush and din, suggestive of going to the sky in a chariot of fire or a
whirlwind, as one is shot to the Shasta mark in a booming palace-car
cartridge; up the rocky canyon, skimming the foaming river, above the
level reaches, above the dashing spray--fine exhilarating translation,
yet a pity to go so fast in a blur, where so much might be seen and
enjoyed.
The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but
of men. Therefore we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going
to the mountains is going home. Yet how many are doomed to toil in
town shadows while the white mountains beckon all along the horizon!
Up the canyon to Shasta would be a cure for all care. But many on
arrival seem at a loss to know what to do with themselves, and seek
shelter in the hotel, as if that were the Shasta they had come for.
Others never leave the rail, content with the window views, and cling
to the comforts of the sleeping car like blind mice to their mothers.
Many are sick and have been dragged to the healing wilderness
unwillingly for body-good alone. Were the parts of the human machine
detachable like Yankee inventions, how strange would be the gatherings
on the mountains of pieces of people out of repair!
How sadly unlike the whole-hearted ongoing of the seeker after gold is
this partial, compulsory mountaineering!--as if the mountain
treasuries contained nothing better than gold! Up the mountains they
go, high-heeled and high-hatted, laden like Christian with
mortifications and mortgages of divers sorts and degrees, some
suffering from the sting of bad bargains, others exulting in good
ones; hunters and fishermen with gun and rod and leggins; blythe and
jolly troubadours to whom all Shasta is romance; poets singing their
prayers; the weak and the strong, unable or unwilling to bear mental
taxation. But, whatever the motive, all will be in some measure
benefited. None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however
imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister will not preach a
perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and
the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly
displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer.
Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere
business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.
Possibly a branch railroad may some time be built to the summit of
Mount Shasta like the road on Mount Washington. In the mean time
tourists are dropped at Sisson's, about twelve miles from the summit,
whence as headquarters they radiate in every direction to the so-called "points of interest"; sauntering about the flowery fringes of
the Strawberry Meadows, bathing in the balm of the woods, scrambling,
fishing, hunting; riding about Castle Lake, the McCloud River, Soda
Springs, Big Spring, deer pastures, and elsewhere. Some demand bears,
and make excited inquiries concerning their haunts, how many there
might be altogether on the mountain, and whether they are grizzly,
brown, or black. Others shout, "Excelsior," and make off at once for
the upper snow fields. Most, however, are content with comparatively
level ground and moderate distances, gathering at the hotel every
evening laden with trophies--great sheaves of flowers, cones of
various trees, cedar and fir branches covered with yellow lichens, and
possibly a fish or two, or quail, or grouse.
But the heads of deer, antelope, wild sheep, and bears are
conspicuously rare or altogether wanting in tourist collections in the
"paradise of hunters." There is a grand comparing of notes and
adventures. Most are exhilarated and happy, though complaints may
occasionally be heard--"The mountain does not look so very high after
all, nor so very white; the snow is in patches like rags spread out to
dry," reminding one of Sydney Smith's joke against Jeffrey, "D--n the
Solar System; bad light, planets too indistinct." But far the greater
number are in good spirits, showing the influence of holiday enjoyment
and mountain air. Fresh roses come to cheeks that long have been
pale, and sentiment often begins to blossom under the new inspiration.
The Shasta region may be reserved as a national park, with special
reference to the preservation of its fine forests and game. This
should by all means be done; but, as far as game is concerned, it is
in little danger from tourists, notwithstanding many of them carry
guns, and are in some sense hunters. Going in noisy groups, and with
guns so shining, they are oftentimes confronted by inquisitive Douglas
squirrels, and are thus give opportunities for shooting; but the
larger animals retire at their approach and seldom are seen. Other
gun people, too wise or too lifeless to make much noise, move slowly
along the trails and about the open spots of the woods, like benumbed
beetles in a snowdrift. Such hunters are themselves hunted by the
animals, which in perfect safety follow them out of curiosity.
During the bright days of midsummer the ascent of Shasta is only a
long, safe saunter, without fright or nerve strain, or even serious
fatigue, to those in sound health. Setting out from Sisson's on
horseback, accompanied by a guide leading a pack animal with
provision, blankets, and other necessaries, you follow a trail that
leads up to the edge of the timberline, where you camp for the night,
eight or ten miles from the hotel, at an elevation of about ten
thousand feet. The next day, rising early, you may push on to the
summit and return to Sisson's. But it is better to spend more time in
the enjoyment of the grand scenery on the summit and about the head of
the Whitney Glacier, pass the second night in camp, and return to
Sisson's on the third day. Passing around the margin of the meadows
and on through the zones of the forest, you will have good
opportunities to get ever-changing views of the mountain and its
wealth of creatures that bloom and breathe.
The woods differ but little from those that clothe the mountains to
the southward, the trees being slightly closer together and generally
not quite so large, marking the incipient change from the open sunny
forests of the Sierra to the dense damp forests of the northern coast,
where a squirrel may travel in the branches of the thick-set trees
hundreds of miles without touching the ground. Around the upper belt
of the forest you may see gaps where the ground has been cleared by
avalanches of snow, thousands of tons in weight, which, descending
with grand rush and roar, brush the trees from their paths like so
many fragile shrubs or grasses.
At first the ascent is very gradual. The mountain begins to leave the
plain in slopes scarcely perceptible, measuring from two to three
degrees. These are continued by easy gradations mile after mile all
the way to the truncated, crumbling summit, where they attain a
steepness of twenty to twenty-five degrees. The grand simplicity of
these lines is partially interrupted on the north subordinate cone
that rises from the side of the main cone about three thousand feet
from the summit. This side cone, past which your way to the summit
lies, was active after the breaking-up of the main ice-cap of the
glacial period, as shown by the comparatively unwasted crater in which
it terminates and by streams of fresh-looking, unglaciated lava that
radiate from it as a center.
The main summit is about a mile and a half in diameter from southwest
to northeast, and is nearly covered with snow and neve, bounded by
crumbling peaks and ridges, among which we look in vain for any sure
plan of an ancient crater. The extreme summit is situated on the
southern end of a narrow ridge that bounds the general summit on the
east. Viewed from the north, it appears as an irregular blunt point
about ten feet high, and is fast disappearing before the stormy
atmospheric action to which it is subjected.
At the base of the eastern ridge, just below the extreme summit, hot
sulphurous gases and vapor escape with a hissing, bubbling noise from
a fissure in the lava. Some of the many small vents cast up a spray
of clear hot water, which falls back repeatedly until wasted in vapor.
The steam and spray seem to be produced simply by melting snow coming
in the way of the escaping gases, while the gases are evidently
derived from the heated interior of the mountain, and may be regarded
as the last feeble expression of the mighty power that lifted the
entire mass of the mountain from the volcanic depths far below the
surface of the plain.
The view from the summit in clear weather extends to an immense
distance in every direction. Southeastward, the low volcanic portion
of the Sierra is seen like a map, both flanks as well as the crater-dotted axis, as far as Lassen's Butte[6], a prominent landmark and an
old volcano like Shasta, between ten and eleven thousand feet high,
and distant about sixty miles. Some of the higher summit peaks near
Independence Lake, one hundred and eighty miles away, are at times
distinctly visible. Far to the north, in Oregon, the snowy volcanic
cones of Mounts Pitt, Jefferson, and the Three Sisters rise in clear
relief, like majestic monuments, above the dim dark sea of the
northern woods. To the northeast lie the Rhett and Klamath Lakes, the
Lava Beds, and a grand display of hill and mountain and gray rocky
plains. The Scott, Siskiyou, and Trinity Mountains rise in long,
compact waves to the west and southwest, and the valley of the
Sacramento and the coast mountains, with their marvelous wealth of
woods and waters, are seen; while close around the base of the
mountain lie the beautiful Shasta Valley, Strawberry Valley,
Huckleberry Valley, and many others, with the headwaters of the
Shasta, Sacramento, and McCloud Rivers. Some observers claim to have
seen the ocean from the summit of Shasta, but I have not yet been so
fortunate.
The Cinder Cone near Lassen's Butte is remarkable as being the scene
of the most recent volcanic eruption in the range. It is a
symmetrical truncated cone covered with gray cinders and ashes, with a
regular crater in which a few pines an inch or two in diameter are
growing. It stands between two small lakes which previous to the last
eruption, when the cone was built, formed one lake. From near the
base of the cone a flood of extremely rough black vesicular lava
extends across what was once a portion of the bottom of the lake into
the forest of yellow pine.
This lava flow seems to have been poured out during the same eruption
that gave birth to the cone, cutting the lake in two, flowing a little
way into the woods and overwhelming the trees in its way, the ends of
some of the charred trunks still being visible, projecting from
beneath the advanced snout of the flow where it came to rest; while
the floor of the forest for miles around is so thickly strewn with
loose cinders that walking is very fatiguing. The Pitt River Indians
tell of a fearful time of darkness, probably due to this eruption,
when the sky was filled with falling cinders which, as they thought,
threatened every living creature with destruction, and say that when
at length the sun appeared through the gloom it was red like blood.
Less recent craters in great numbers dot the adjacent region, some
with lakes in their throats, some overgrown with trees, others nearly
bare--telling monuments of Nature's mountain fires so often lighted
throughout the northern Sierra. And, standing on the top of icy
Shasta, the mightiest fire-monument of them all, we can hardly fail to
look forward to the blare and glare of its next eruption and wonder
whether it is nigh. Elsewhere men have planted gardens and vineyards
in the craters of volcanoes quiescent for ages, and almost without
warning have been hurled into the sky. More than a thousand years of
profound calm have been known to intervene between two violent
eruptions. Seventeen centuries intervened between two consecutive
eruptions on the island of Ischia. Few volcanoes continue permanently
in eruption. Like gigantic geysers, spouting hot stone instead of hot
water, they work and sleep, and we have no sure means of knowing
whether they are only sleeping or dead.
IV
A Perilous Night on Shasta's Summit
Toward the end of summer, after a light, open winter, one may reach
the summit of Mount Shasta without passing over much snow, by keeping
on the crest of a long narrow ridge, mostly bare, that extends from
near the camp-ground at the timberline. But on my first excursion to
the summit the whole mountain, down to its low swelling base, was
smoothly laden with loose fresh snow, presenting a most glorious mass
of winter mountain scenery, in the midst of which I scrambled and
reveled or lay snugly snowbound, enjoying the fertile clouds and the
snow-bloom in all their growing, drifting grandeur.
I had walked from Redding, sauntering leisurely from station to
station along the old Oregon stage road, the better to see the rocks
and plants, birds and people, by the way, tracing the rushing
Sacramento to its fountains around icy Shasta. The first rains had
fallen on the lowlands, and the first snows on the mountains, and
everything was fresh and bracing, while an abundance of balmy sunshine
filled all the noonday hours. It was the calm afterglow that usually
succeeds the first storm of the winter. I met many of the birds that
had reared their young and spent their summer in the Shasta woods and
chaparral. They were then on their way south to their winter homes,
leading their young full-fledged and about as large and strong as the
parents. Squirrels, dry and elastic after the storms, were busy about
their stores of pine nuts, and the latest goldenrods were still in
bloom, though it was now past the middle of October. The grand color
glow--the autumnal jubilee of ripe leaves--was past prime, but,
freshened by the rain, was still making a fine show along the banks of
the river and in the ravines and the dells of the smaller streams.
At the salmon-hatching establishment on the McCloud River I halted a
week to examine the limestone belt, grandly developed there, to learn
what I could of the inhabitants of the river and its banks, and to
give time for the fresh snow that I knew had fallen on the mountain to
settle somewhat, with a view to making the ascent. A pedestrian on
these mountain roads, especially so late in the year, is sure to
excite curiosity, and many were the interrogations concerning my
ramble. When I said that I was simply taking a walk, and that icy
Shasta was my mark, I was invariably admonished that I had come on a
dangerous quest. The time was far too late, the snow was too loose
and deep to climb, and I should be lost in drifts and slides. When I
hinted that new snow was beautiful and storms not so bad as they were
called, my advisers shook their heads in token of superior knowledge
and declared the ascent of "Shasta Butte" through loose snow
impossible. Nevertheless, before noon of the second of November I was
in the frosty azure of the utmost summit.
When I arrived at Sisson's everything was quiet. The last of the
summer visitors had flitted long before, and the deer and bears also
were beginning to seek their winter homes. My barometer and the
sighing winds and filmy half-transparent clouds that dimmed the
sunshine gave notice of the approach of another storm, and I was in
haste to be off and get myself established somewhere in the midst of
it, whether the summit was to be attained or not. Sisson, who is a
mountaineer, speedily fitted my out for storm or calm as only a
mountaineer could, with warm blankets and a week's provisions so
generous in quantity and kind that they easily might have been made to
last a month in case of my being closely snowbound. Well I knew the
weariness of snow-climbing, and the frosts, and the dangers of
mountaineering so late in the year; therefore I could not ask a guide
to go with me, even had one been willing. All I wanted was to have
blankets and provisions deposited as far up in the timber as the snow
would permit a pack animal to go. There I could build a storm nest
and lie warm, and make raids up and around the mountain in accordance
with the weather.
Setting out on the afternoon of November first, with Jerome Fay,
mountaineer and guide, in charge of the animals, I was soon plodding
wearily upward through the muffled winter woods, the snow of course
growing steadily deeper and looser, so that we had to break a trail.
The animals began to get discouraged, and after night and darkness
came on they became entangled in a bed of rough lava, where, breaking
through four or five feet of mealy snow, their feet were caught
between angular boulders. Here they were in danger of being lost, but
after we had removed packs and saddles and assisted their efforts with
ropes, they all escaped to the side of a ridge about a thousand feet
below the timberline.
To go farther was out of the question, so we were compelled to camp as
best we could. A pitch pine fire speedily changed the temperature and
shed a blaze of light on the wild lava-slope and the straggling storm-bent pines around us. Melted snow answered for coffee, and we had
plenty of venison to roast. Toward midnight I rolled myself in my
blankets, slept an hour and a half, arose and ate more venison, tied
two days' provisions to my belt, and set out for the summit, hoping to
reach it ere the coming storm should fall. Jerome accompanied me a
little distance above camp and indicated the way as well as he could
in the darkness. He seemed loath to leave me, but, being reassured
that I was at home and required no care, he bade me good-bye and
returned to camp, ready to lead his animals down the mountain at
daybreak.
After I was above the dwarf pines, it was fine practice pushing up the
broad unbroken slopes of snow, alone in the solemn silence of the
night. Half the sky was clouded; in the other half the stars sparkled
icily in the keen, frosty air; while everywhere the glorious wealth of
snow fell away from the summit of the cone in flowing folds, more
extensive and continuous than any I had ever seen before. When day
dawned the clouds were crawling slowly and becoming more massive, but
gave no intimation of immediate danger, and I pushed on faithfully,
though holding myself well in hand, ready to return to the timber; for
it was easy to see that the storm was not far off. The mountain rises
ten thousand feet above the general level of the country, in blank
exposure to the deep upper currents of the sky, and no labyrinth of
peaks and canyons I had ever been in seemed to me so dangerous as
these immense slopes, bare against the sky.
The frost was intense, and drifting snow dust made breathing at times
rather difficult. The snow was as dry as meal, and the finer
particles drifted freely, rising high in the air, while the larger
portions of the crystals rolled like sand. I frequently sank to my
armpits between buried blocks of loose lava, but generally only to my
knees. When tired with walking I still wallowed slowly upward on all
fours. The steepness of the slope--thirty-five degrees in some
places--made any kind of progress fatiguing, while small avalanches
were being constantly set in motion in the steepest places. But the
bracing air and the sublime beauty of the snowy expanse thrilled every
nerve and made absolute exhaustion impossible. I seemed to be walking
and wallowing in a cloud; but, holding steadily onward, by half-past
ten o'clock I had gained the highest summit.
I held my commanding foothold in the sky for two hours, gazing on the
glorious landscapes spread maplike around the immense horizon, and
tracing the outlines of the ancient lava-streams extending far into
the surrounding plains, and the pathways of vanished glaciers of which
Shasta had been the center. But, as I had left my coat in camp for
the sake of having my limbs free in climbing, I soon was cold. The
wind increased in violence, raising the snow in magnificent drifts
that were drawn out in the form of wavering banners blowing in the
sun. Toward the end of my stay a succession of small clouds struck
against the summit rocks like drifting icebergs, darkening the air as
they passed, and producing a chill as definite and sudden as if ice-water had been dashed in my face. This is the kind of cloud in which
snow-flowers grow, and I turned and fled.
Finding that I was not closely pursued, I ventured to take time on the
way down for a visit to the head of the Whitney Glacier and the
"Crater Butte." After I had reached the end of the main summit ridge
the descent was but little more than one continuous soft, mealy,
muffled slide, most luxurious and rapid, though the hissing, swishing
speed attained was obscured in great part by flying snow dust--a
marked contrast to the boring seal-wallowing upward struggle. I
reached camp about an hour before dusk, hollowed a strip of loose
ground in the lee of a large block of red lava, where firewood was
abundant, rolled myself in my blankets, and went to sleep.
Next morning, having slept little the night before the ascent and
being weary with climbing after the excitement was over, I slept late.
Then, awaking suddenly, my eyes opened on one of the most beautiful
and sublime scenes I ever enjoyed. A boundless wilderness of storm
clouds of different degrees of ripeness were congregated over all the
lower landscape for thousands of square miles, colored gray, and
purple, and pearl, and deep-glowing white, amid which I seemed to be
floating; while the great white cone of the mountain above was all
aglow in the free, blazing sunshine. It seemed not so much an ocean
as a land of clouds--undulating hill and dale, smooth purple plains,
and silvery mountains of cumuli, range over range, diversified with
peak and dome and hollow fully brought out in light and shade.
I gazed enchanted, but cold gray masses, drifting like dust on a wind-swept plain, began to shut out the light, forerunners of the coming
storm I had been so anxiously watching. I made haste to gather as
much wood as possible, snugging it as a shelter around my bed. The
storm side of my blankets was fastened down with stakes to reduce as
much as possible the sifting-in of drift and the danger of being blown
away. The precious bread sack was placed safely as a pillow, and when
at length the first flakes fell I was exultingly ready to welcome
them. Most of my firewood was more than half rosin and would blaze in
the face of the fiercest drifting; the winds could not demolish my
bed, and my bread could be made to last indefinitely; while in case of
need I had the means of making snowshoes and could retreat or hold my
ground as I pleased.
Presently the storm broke forth into full snowy bloom, and the
thronging crystals darkened the air. The wind swept past in hissing
floods, grinding the snow into meal and sweeping down into the hollows
in enormous drifts all the heavier particles, while the finer dust was
sifted through the sky, increasing the icy gloom. But my fire glowed
bravely as if in glad defiance of the drift to quench it, and,
notwithstanding but little trace of my nest could be seen after the
snow had leveled and buried it, I was snug and warm, and the
passionate uproar produced a glad excitement.
Day after day the storm continued, piling snow on snow in weariless
abundance. There were short periods of quiet, when the sun would seem
to look eagerly down through rents in the clouds, as if to know how
the work was advancing. During these calm intervals I replenished my
fire--sometimes without leaving the nest, for fire and woodpile were
so near this could easily be done--or busied myself with my notebook,
watching the gestures of the trees in taking the snow, examining
separate crystals under a lens, and learning the methods of their
deposition as an enduring fountain for the streams. Several times,
when the storm ceased for a few minutes, a Douglas squirrel came
frisking from the foot of a clump of dwarf pines, moving in sudden
interrupted spurts over the bossy snow; then, without any apparent
guidance, he would dig rapidly into the drift where were buried some
grains of barley that the horses had left. The Douglas squirrel does
not strictly belong to these upper woods, and I was surprised to see
him out in such weather. The mountain sheep also, quite a large flock
of them, came to my camp and took shelter beside a clump of matted
dwarf pines a little above my nest.
The storm lasted about a week, but before it was ended Sisson became
alarmed and sent up the guide with animals to see what had become of
me and recover the camp outfit. The news spread that "there was a man
on the mountain," and he must surely have perished, and Sisson was
blamed for allowing any one to attempt climbing in such weather; while
I was as safe as anybody in the lowlands, lying like a squirrel in a
warm, fluffy nest, busied about my own affairs and wishing only to be
let alone. Later, however, a trail could not have been broken for a
horse, and some of the camp furniture would have had to be abandoned.
On the fifth day I returned to Sisson's, and from that comfortable
base made excursions, as the weather permitted, to the Black Butte, to
the foot of the Whitney Glacier, around the base of the mountain, to
Rhett and Klamath Lakes, to the Modoc region and elsewhere, developing
many interesting scenes and experiences.
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 survey of the summit with reference to the
location of the Geodetic monument. On the 30th, accompanied by Jerome
Fay, I made another ascent to make some barometrical observations, the
day intervening between the two ascents being devoted to establishing
a camp on the extreme edge of the timberline. Here, on our red
trachyte bed, we obtained two hours of shallow sleep broken for
occasional glimpses of the keen, starry night. At two o'clock we
rose, breakfasted on a warmed tin-cupful of coffee and a piece of
frozen venison broiled on the coals, and started for the summit. Up
to this time there was nothing in sight that betokened the approach of
a storm; but on gaining the summit, we saw toward Lassen's Butte
hundreds of square miles of white cumuli boiling dreamily in the
sunshine far beneath us, and causing no alarm.
The slight weariness of the ascent was soon rested away, and our
glorious morning in the sky promised nothing but enjoyment. At 9 a.m.
the dry thermometer stood at 34 degrees in the shade and rose steadily
until at 1 p.m. it stood at 50 degrees, probably influenced somewhat
by radiation from the sun-warmed cliffs. A common bumblebee, not at
all benumbed, zigzagged vigorously about our heads for a few moments,
as if unconscious of the fact that the nearest honey flower was a mile
beneath him.
In the mean time clouds were growing down in Shasta Valley--massive
swelling cumuli, displaying delicious tones of purple and gray in the
hollows of their sun-beaten bosses. Extending gradually southward
around on both sides of Shasta, these at length united with the older
field towards Lassen's Butte, thus encircling Mount Shasta in one
continuous cloud zone. Rhett and Klamath Lakes were eclipsed beneath
clouds scarcely less brilliant than their own silvery disks. The
Modoc Lava Beds, many a snow-laden peak far north in Oregon, the Scott
and Trinity and Siskiyou Mountains, the peaks of the Sierra, the blue
Coast Range, Shasta Valley, the dark forests filling the valley of the
Sacramento, all in turn were obscured or buried, leaving the lofty
cone on which we stood solitary in the sunshine between two skies--a
sky of spotless blue above, a sky of glittering cloud beneath. The
creative sun shone glorious on the vast expanse of cloudland; hill and
dale, mountain and valley springing into existence responsive to his
rays and steadily developing in beauty and individuality. One huge
mountain-cone of cloud, corresponding to Mount Shasta in these newborn
cloud ranges, rose close alongside with a visible motion, its firm,
polished bosses seeming so near and substantial that we almost fancied
that we might leap down upon them from where we stood and make our way
to the lowlands. No hint was given, by anything in their appearance,
of the fleeting character of these most sublime and beautiful cloud
mountains. On the contrary they impressed one as being lasting
additions to the landscape.
The weather of the springtime and summer, throughout the Sierra in
general, is usually varied by slight local rains and dustings of snow,
most of which are obviously far too joyous and life-giving to be
regarded as storms--single clouds growing in the sunny sky, ripening
in an hour, showering the heated landscape, and passing away like a
thought, leaving no visible bodily remains to stain the sky.
Snowstorms of the same gentle kind abound among the high peaks, but in
spring they not unfrequently attain larger proportions, assuming a
violence and energy of expression scarcely surpassed by those bred in
the depths of winter. Such was the storm now gathering about us.
It began to declare itself shortly after noon, suggesting to us the
idea of at once seeking our safe camp in the timber and abandoning the
purpose of making an observation of the barometer at 3 p.m.,--two
having already been made, at 9 a.m., and 12 m., while simultaneous
observations were made at Strawberry Valley. Jerome peered at short
intervals over the ridge, contemplating the rising clouds with anxious
gestures in the rough wind, and at length declared that if we did not
make a speedy escape we should be compelled to pass the rest of the
day and night on the summit. But anxiety to complete my observations
stifled my own instinctive promptings to retreat, and held me to my
work. No inexperienced person was depending on me, and I told Jerome
that we two mountaineers should be able to make our way down through
any storm likely to fall.
Presently thin, fibrous films of cloud began to blow directly over the
summit from north to south, drawn out in long fairy webs like carded
wool, forming and dissolving as if by magic. The wind twisted them
into ringlets and whirled them in a succession of graceful
convolutions like the outside sprays of Yosemite Falls in flood time;
then, sailing out into the thin azure over the precipitous brink of
the ridge they were drifted together like wreaths of foam on a river.
These higher and finer cloud fabrics were evidently produced by the
chilling of the air from its own expansion caused by the upward
deflection of the wind against the slopes of the mountain. They
steadily increased on the north rim of the cone, forming at length a
thick, opaque, ill-defined embankment from the icy meshes of which
snow-flowers began to fall, alternating with hail. The sky speedily
darkened, and just as I had completed my last observation and boxed my
instruments ready for the descent, the storm began in serious earnest.
At first the cliffs were beaten with hail, every stone of which, as
far as I could see, was regular in form, six-sided pyramids with
rounded base, rich and sumptuous-looking, and fashioned with loving
care, yet seemingly thrown away on those desolate crags down which
they went rolling, falling, sliding in a network of curious streams.
After we had forced our way down the ridge and past the group of
hissing fumaroles, the storm became inconceivably violent. The
thermometer fell 22 degrees in a few minutes, and soon dropped below
zero. The hail gave place to snow, and darkness came on like night.
The wind, rising to the highest pitch of violence, boomed and surged
amid the desolate crags; lightning flashes in quick succession cut the
gloomy darkness; and the thunders, the most tremendously loud and
appalling I ever heard, made an almost continuous roar, stroke
following stroke in quick, passionate succession, as though the
mountain were being rent to its foundations and the fires of the old
volcano were breaking forth again.
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 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 bewildering drift, I felt
confident that we could force our way through it with no other
guidance. 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 circumstances sufficiently
exciting but without evincing any bewilderment, he maintained, in
opposition to my views, that it was impossible to proceed. He firmly
refused to make the venture 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 attempting the descent, I was compelled to follow. "Here,"
said Jerome, as we shivered in the midst of the hissing, sputtering
fumaroles, "we shall 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 shall have to wait for
sunshine, and when will it come?"
The tempered area to which we had committed ourselves extended over
about one fourth of an acre; but it was only about an eighth of an
inch in thickness, for the scalding gas jets were shorn off close to
the ground by the oversweeping flood of frosty wind. And how lavishly
the snow fell only mountaineers may know. The crisp crystal flowers
seemed to touch one another and fairly to thicken the tremendous blast
that carried them. This was the bloom-time, the summer of the cloud,
and never before have I seen even a mountain cloud flowering so
profusely.
When the bloom of the Shasta chaparral is falling, the ground is
sometimes covered for hundreds of square miles to a depth of half an
inch. But the bloom of this fertile snow cloud grew and matured and
fell to a depth of two feet in a few hours. Some crystals landed with
their rays almost perfect, but most of them were worn and broken by
striking against one another, or by rolling on the ground. The touch
of these snow-flowers in calm weather is infinitely gentle--glinting,
swaying, settling silently in the dry mountain air, or massed in
flakes soft and downy. To lie out alone in the mountains of a still
night and be touched by the first of these small silent messengers
from the sky is a memorable experience, and the fineness of that touch
none will forget. But the storm-blast laden with crisp, sharp snow
seems to crush and bruise and stupefy with its multitude of stings,
and compels the bravest to turn and flee.
The snow fell without abatement until an hour or two after what seemed
to be the natural darkness of the night. Up to the time the storm
first broke on the summit its development was remarkably gentle.
There was a deliberate growth of clouds, a weaving of translucent
tissue above, then the roar of the wind and the thunder, and the
darkening flight of snow. Its subsidence was not less sudden. The
clouds broke and vanished, not a crystal was left in the sky, and the
stars shone out with pure and tranquil radiance.
During the storm we lay on our backs so as to present as little
surface as possible to the wind, and to let the drift pass over us.
The mealy snow sifted into the folds of our clothing and in many
places reached the skin. We were glad at first to see the snow
packing about us, hoping it would deaden the force of the wind, but it
soon froze into a stiff, crusty heap as the temperature fell, rather
augmenting our novel misery.
When the heat became unendurable, on some spot where steam was
escaping through the sludge, we tried to stop it with snow and mud, or
shifted a little at a time by shoving with our heels; for to stand in
blank exposure to the fearful wind in our frozen-and-broiled condition
seemed certain death. The acrid incrustations sublimed from the
escaping gases frequently gave way, opening new vents to scald us;
and, fearing that if at any time the wind should fall, carbonic acid,
which often formed a considerable portion of the gaseous exhalations
of volcanoes, might collect in sufficient quantities to cause sleep
and death, I warned Jerome against forgetting himself for a single
moment, even should his sufferings admit of such a thing.
Accordingly, when during the long, dreary watches of the night we
roused from a state of half-consciousness, we called each other by
name in a frightened, startled way, each fearing the other might be
benumbed or dead. The ordinary sensations of cold give but a faint
conception of that which comes on after hard climbing with want of
food and sleep in such exposure as this. Life is then seen to be a
fire, that now smoulders, now brightens, and may be easily quenched.
The weary hours wore away like dim half-forgotten years, so long and
eventful they seemed, though we did nothing but suffer. Still the
pain was not always of that bitter, intense kind that precludes
thought and takes away all capacity for enjoyment. A sort of dreamy
stupor came on at times in which we fancied we saw dry, resinous logs
suitable for campfires, just as after going days without food men
fancy they see bread.
Frozen, blistered, famished, benumbed, our bodies seemed lost to us at
times--all dead but the eyes. For the duller and fainter we became
the clearer was our vision, though only in momentary glimpses. Then,
after the sky cleared, we gazed at the stars, blessed immortals of
light, shining with marvelous brightness with long lance rays, near-looking and new-looking, as if never seen before. Again they would
look familiar and remind us of stargazing at home. Oftentimes
imagination coming into play would present charming pictures of the
warm zone below, mingled with others near and far. Then the bitter
wind and the drift would break the blissful vision and dreary pains
cover us like clouds. "Are you suffering much? Jerome would inquire
with pitiful faintness. "Yes," I would say, striving to keep my voice
brave, "frozen and burned; but never mind, Jerome, the night will wear
away at last, and tomorrow we go a-Maying, and what campfires we will
make, and what sunbaths we will take!"
The frost grew more and more intense, and we became icy and covered
over with a crust of frozen snow, as if we had lain cast away in the
drift all winter. In about thirteen hours--every hour like a year--day began to dawn, but it was long ere the summit's rocks were touched
by the sun. No clouds were visible from where we lay, yet the morning
was dull and blue, and bitterly frosty; and hour after hour passed by
while we eagerly watched the pale light stealing down the ridge to the
hollow where we lay. But there was not a trace of that warm, flushing
sunrise splendor we so long had hoped for.
As the time drew near to make an effort to reach camp, we became
concerned to know what strength was left us, and whether or no we
could walk; for we had lain flat all this time without once rising to
our feet. Mountaineers, however, always find in themselves a reserve
of power after great exhaustion. It is a kind of second life,
available only in emergencies like this; and, having proved its
existence, I had no great fear that either of us would fail, though
one of my arms was already benumbed and hung powerless.
At length, after the temperature was somewhat mitigated on this
memorable first of May, we arose and began to struggle homeward. Our
frozen trousers could scarcely be made to bend at the knee, and we
waded the snow with difficulty. The summit ridge was fortunately
wind-swept and nearly bare, so we were not compelled to lift our feet
high, and on reaching the long home slopes laden with loose snow we
made rapid progress, sliding and shuffling and pitching headlong, our
feebleness accelerating rather than diminishing our speed. When we
had descended some three thousand feet the sunshine warmed our backs
and we began to revive. At 10 a.m. we reached the timber and were
safe.
Half an hour later we heard Sisson shouting down among the firs,
coming with horses to take us to the hotel. After breaking a trail
through the snow as far as possible he had tied his animals and walked
up. We had been so long without food that we cared but little about
eating, but we eagerly drank the coffee he prepared for us. Our feet
were frozen, and thawing them was painful, and had to be done very
slowly by keeping them buried in soft snow for several hours, which
avoided permanent damage. Five thousand feet below the summit we
found only three inches of new snow, and at the base of the mountain
only a slight shower of rain had fallen, showing how local our storm
had been, notwithstanding its terrific fury. Our feet were wrapped in
sacking, and we were soon mounted and on our way down into the thick
sunshine--"God's Country," as Sisson calls the Chaparral Zone. In two
hours' ride the last snowbank was left behind. Violets appeared along
the edges of the trail, and the chaparral was coming into bloom, with
young lilies and larkspurs about the open places in rich profusion.
How beautiful seemed the golden sunbeams streaming through the woods
between the warm brown boles of the cedars and pines! All my friends
among the birds and plants seemed like OLD friends, and we felt like
speaking to every one of them as we passed, as if we had been a long
time away in some far, strange country.
In the afternoon we reached Strawberry Valley and fell asleep. Next
morning we seemed to have risen from the dead. My bedroom was flooded
with sunshine, and from the window I saw the great white Shasta cone
clad in forests and clouds and bearing them loftily in the sky.
Everything seemed full and radiant with the freshness and beauty and
enthusiasm of youth. Sisson's children came in with flowers and
covered my bed, and the storm on the mountaintop banished like a
dream.
V
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
climbers; but far better than climbing the mountain is going around
its warm, fertile base, enjoying its bounties like a bee circling
around a bank of flowers. The distance is about a hundred miles, and
will take some of the time we hear so much about--a week or two--but
the benefits will compensate for any number of weeks. Perhaps the
profession of doing good may be full, but every body should be kind at
least to himself. Take a course of good water and air, and in the
eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no
harm will befall you. Some have strange, morbid fears as soon as they
find themselves with Nature, even in the kindest and wildest of her
solitudes, like very sick children afraid of their mother--as if God
were dead and the devil were king.
One may make the trip on horseback, or in a carriage, even; for a good
level road may be found all the way round, by Shasta Valley, Sheep
Rock, Elk Flat, Huckleberry Valley, Squaw Valley, following for a
considerable portion of the way the old Emigrant Road, which lies
along the east disk of the mountain, and is deeply worn by the wagons
of the early gold-seekers, many of whom chose this northern route as
perhaps being safer and easier, the pass here being only about six
thousand feet above sea level. But it is far better to go afoot.
Then you are free to make wide waverings and zigzags away from the
roads to visit the great fountain streams of the rivers, the glaciers
also, and the wildest retreats in the primeval forests, where the best
plants and animals dwell, and where many a flower-bell will ring
against your knees, and friendly trees will reach out their fronded
branches and touch you as you pass. One blanket will be enough to
carry, or you may forego the pleasure and burden altogether, as wood
for fires is everywhere abundant. Only a little food will be
required. Berries and plums abound in season, and quail and grouse
and deer--the magnificent shaggy mule deer as well as the common
species.
As you sweep around so grand a center, the mountain itself seems to
turn, displaying its riches like the revolving pyramids in jewelers'
windows. One glacier after another comes into view, and the outlines
of the mountain are ever changing, though all the way around, from
whatever point of view, the form is maintained of a grand, simple cone
with a gently sloping base and rugged, crumbling ridges separating the
glaciers and the snowfields more or less completely. The play of
colors, from the first touches of the morning sun on the summit, down
the snowfields and the ice and lava until the forests are aglow, is a
never-ending delight, the rosy lava and the fine flushings of the snow
being ineffably lovely. Thus one saunters on and on in the glorious
radiance in utter peace and forgetfulness of time.
Yet, strange to say, there are days even here somewhat dull-looking,
when the mountain seem uncommunicative, sending out no appreciable
invitation, as if not at home. At such time its height seems much
less, as if, crouching and weary, it were taking rest. But Shasta is
always at home to those who love her, and is ever in a thrill of
enthusiastic activity--burning fires within, grinding glaciers
without, and fountains ever flowing. Every crystal dances responsive
to the touches of the sun, and currents of sap in the growing cells of
all the vegetation are ever in a vital whirl and rush, and though many
feet and wings are folded, how many are astir! And the wandering
winds, how busy they are, and what a breadth of sound and motion they
make, glinting and bubbling about the crags of the summit, sifting
through the woods, feeling their way from grove to grove, ruffling the
loose hair on the shoulders of the bears, fanning and rocking young
birds in their cradles, making a trumpet of every corolla, and
carrying their fragrance around the world.
In unsettled weather, when storms are growing, the mountain looms
immensely higher, and its miles of height become apparent to all,
especially in the gloom of the gathering clouds, or when the storm is
done and they are rolling away, torn on the edges and melting while in
the sunshine. Slight rainstorms are likely to be encountered in a
trip round the mountain, but one may easily find shelter beneath well-thatched trees that shed the rain like a roof. Then the shining of
the wet leaves is delightful, and the steamy fragrance, and the burst
of bird song from a multitude of thrushes and finches and warblers
that have nests in the chaparral.
The nights, too, are delightful, watching with Shasta beneath the
great starry done. A thousand thousand voices are heard, but so
finely blended they seem a part of the night itself, and make a deeper
silence. And how grandly do the great logs and branches of your
campfire give forth the heat and light that during their long century-lives they have so slowly gathered from the sun, storing it away in
beautiful dotted cells and beads of amber gum! The neighboring trees
look into the charmed circle as if the noon of another day had come,
familiar flowers and grasses that chance to be near seem far more
beautiful and impressive than by day, and as the dead trees give forth
their light all the other riches of their lives seem to be set free
and with the rejoicing flames rise again to the sky. In setting out
from Strawberry Valley, by bearing off to the northwestward a few
miles you may see
"...beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnaea 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 California where the charming linnaea
is found, though it is common to the northward through Oregon and
Washington. Here, too, you may find the curious but unlovable
darlingtonia, a carnivorous plant that devours bumblebees,
grasshoppers, ants, moths, and other insects, with insatiable
appetite. In approaching it, its suspicious-looking yellow-spotted
hood and watchful attitude will be likely to make you go cautiously
through the bog where it stands, as if you were approaching a
dangerous snake. It also occurs in a bog near Sothern's Station on
the stage road, where I first saw it, and in other similar bogs
throughout the mountains hereabouts.
The "Big Spring" of the Sacramento is about a mile and a half above
Sisson's, issuing from the base of a drift-covered hill. It is lined
with emerald algae and mosses, and shaded with alder, willow, and
thorn bushes, which give it a fine setting. Its waters, apparently
unaffected by flood or drouth, heat or cold, fall at once into white
rapids with a rush and dash, as if glad to escape from the darkness to
begin their wild course down the canyon to the plain.
Muir's Peak, a few miles to the north of the spring, rises about three
thousand feet above the plain on which it stands, and is easily
climbed. The view is very fine and well repays the slight walk to its
summit, from which much of your way about the mountain may be studied
and chosen. The view obtained of the Whitney Glacier should tempt you
to visit it, since it is the largest of the Shasta glaciers and its
lower portion abounds in beautiful and interesting cascades and
crevasses. It is three or four miles long and terminates at an
elevation of about nine thousand five hundred feet above sea level, in
moraine-sprinkled ice cliffs sixty feet high. The long gray slopes
leading up to the glacier seem remarkably smooth and unbroken. They
are much interrupted, nevertheless, with abrupt, jagged precipitous
gorges, which though offering instructive sections of the lavas for
examination, would better be shunned by most people. This may be done
by keeping well down on the base until fronting the glacier before
beginning the ascent.
The gorge through which the glacier is drained is raw-looking, deep
and narrow, and indescribably jagged. The walls in many places
overhang; in others they are beveled, loose, and shifting where the
channel has been eroded by cinders, ashes, strata of firm lavas, and
glacial drift, telling of many a change from frost to fire and their
attendant floods of mud and water. Most of the drainage of the
glacier vanishes at once in the porous rocks to reappear in springs in
the distant valley, and it is only in time of flood that the channel
carries much water; then there are several fine falls in the gorge,
six hundred feet or more in height. Snow lies in it the year round at
an elevation of eight thousand five hundred feet, and in sheltered
spots a thousand feet lower. Tracing this wild changing channel-gorge, gully, or canyon, the sections will show Mount Shasta as a huge
palimpsest, containing the records, layer upon layer, of strangely
contrasted events in its fiery-icy history. But look well to your
footing, for the way will test the skill of the most cautious
mountaineers.
Regaining the low ground at the base of the mountain and holding on in
your grand orbit, you pass through a belt of juniper woods, called
"The Cedars," to Sheep Rock at the foot of the Shasta Pass. Here you
strike the old emigrant road, which leads over the low divide to the
eastern slopes of the mountain. In a north-northwesterly direction
from the foot of the pass you may chance to find Pluto's Cave, already
mentioned; but it is not easily found, since its several mouths are on
a level with the general surface of the ground, and have been made
simply by the falling-in of portions of the roof. Far the most
beautiful and richly furnished of the mountain caves of California
occur in a thick belt of metamorphic limestone that is pretty
generally developed along the western flank of the Sierra from the
McCloud River to the Kaweah, a distance of nearly four hundred miles.
These volcanic caves are not wanting in interest, and it is well to
light a pitch pine torch and take a walk in these dark ways of the
underworld whenever opportunity offers, if for no other reason to see
with new appreciation on returning to the sunshine the beauties that
lie so thick about us.
Sheep Rock is about twenty miles from Sisson's, and is one of the
principal winter pasture grounds of the wild sheep, from which it
takes its name. It is a mass of lava presenting to the gray sage
plain of Shasta Valley a bold craggy front two thousand feet high.
Its summit lies at an elevation of five thousand five hundred feet
above the sea, and has several square miles of comparatively level
surface, where bunchgrass grows and the snow does not lie deep, thus
allowing the hardy sheep to pick up a living through the winter months
when deep snows have driven them down from the lofty ridges of Shasta.
From here it might be well to leave the immediate base of the mountain
for a few days and visit the Lava Beds made famous by the Modoc War.
They lie about forty miles to the northeastward, on the south shore of
Rhett or Tule[7] Lake, at an elevation above sea level of about forty-five hundred feet. They are a portion of a flow of dense black
vesicular lava, dipping northeastward at a low angle, but little
changed as yet by the weather, and about as destitute of soil as a
glacial pavement. The surface, though smooth in a general way as seen
from a distance, is dotted with hillocks and rough crater-like pits,
and traversed by a network of yawning fissures, forming a combination
of topographical conditions of very striking character. The way lies
by Mount Bremer, over stretches of gray sage plains, interrupted by
rough lava slopes timbered with juniper and yellow pine, and with here
and there a green meadow and a stream.
This is a famous game region, and you will be likely to meet small
bands of antelope, mule deer, and wild sheep. Mount Bremer is the
most noted stronghold of the sheep in the whole Shasta region. Large
flocks dwell here from year to year, winter and summer, descending
occasionally into the adjacent sage plains and lava beds to feed, but
ever ready to take refuge in the jagged crags of their mountain at
every alarm. While traveling with a company of hunters I saw about
fifty in one flock.
The Van Bremer brothers, after whom the mountain is named, told me
that they once climbed the mountain with their rifles and hounds on a
grand hunt; but, after keeping up the pursuit for a week, their boots
and clothing gave way, and the hounds were lamed and worn out without
having run down a single sheep, notwithstanding they ran night and
day. On smooth spots, level or ascending, the hounds gained on the
sheep, but on descending ground, and over rough masses of angular
rocks they fell hopelessly behind. Only half a dozen sheep were shot
as they passed the hunters stationed near their paths circling round
the rugged summit. The full-grown bucks weigh nearly three hundred
and fifty pounds.
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 knoll and jutting cliff,
along the shore of Lower Klamath Lake, and thence across a few miles
of sage plain to the brow of the wall-like bluff of lava four hundred
and fifty feet above Tule Lake. Here you are looking southeastward,
and the Modoc landscape, which at once takes possession of you, lies
revealed in front. It is composed of three principal parts; on your
left lies the bright expanse of Tule Lake, on your right an evergreen
forest, and between the two are the black Lava Beds.
When I first stood there, one bright day before sundown, the lake was
fairly blooming in purple light, and was so responsive to the sky in
both calmness and color it seemed itself a sky. No mountain shore
hides its loveliness. It lies wide open for many a mile, veiled in no
mystery but the mystery of light. The forest also was flooded with
sun-purple, not a spire moving, and Mount Shasta was seen towering
above it rejoicing in the ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. But
neither the glorified woods on the one hand, nor the lake on the
other, could at first hold the eye. That dark mysterious lava plain
between them compelled attention. Here you trace yawning fissures,
there clusters of somber pits; now you mark where the lava is bent and
corrugated in swelling ridges and domes, again where it breaks into a
rough mass of loose blocks. Tufts of grass grow far apart here and
there and small bushes of hardy sage, but they have a singed
appearance and can do little to hide the blackness. Deserts are
charming to those who know how to see them--all kinds of bogs,
barrens, and heathy moors; but the Modoc Lava Beds have for me an
uncanny look. As I gazed the purple deepened over all the landscape.
Then fell the gloaming, making everything still more forbidding and
mysterious. Then, darkness like death.
Next morning the crisp, sunshiny air made even the Modoc landscape
less hopeless, and we ventured down the bluff to the edge of the Lava
Beds. Just at the foot of the bluff we came to a square enclosed by a
stone wall. This is a graveyard where lie buried thirty soldiers,
most of whom met their fate out in the Lava Beds, as we learn by the
boards marking the graves--a gloomy place to die in, and deadly-looking even without Modocs. The poor fellows that lie here deserve
far more pity than they have ever received. Picking our way over the
strange ridges and hollows of the beds, we soon came to a circular
flat about twenty yards in diameter, on the shore of the lake, where
the comparative smoothness of the lava and a few handfuls of soil have
caused the grass tufts to grow taller. This is where General Canby
was slain while seeking to make peace with the treacherous Modocs.
Two or three miles farther on is the main stronghold of the Modocs,
held by them so long and defiantly against all the soldiers that could
be brought to the attack. Indians usually choose to hide in tall
grass and bush and behind trees, where they can crouch and glide like
panthers, without casting up defenses that would betray their
positions; but the Modoc castle is in the rock. When the Yosemite
Indians made raids on the settlers of the lower Merced, they withdrew
with their spoils into Yosemite Valley; and the Modocs boasted that in
case of war they had a stone house into which no white man could come
as long as they cared to defend it. Yosemite was not held for a
single day against the pursuing troops; but the Modocs held their fort
for months, until, weary of being hemmed in, they chose to withdraw.
It consists of numerous redoubts formed by the unequal subsidence of
portions of the lava flow, and a complicated network of redans
abundantly supplied with salient and re-entering angles, being united
each to the other and to the redoubts by a labyrinth of open and
covered corridors, some of which expand at intervals into spacious
caverns, forming as a whole the most complete natural Gibraltar I ever
saw. Other castles scarcely less strong are connected with this by
subterranean passages known only to the Indians, while the unnatural
blackness of the rock out of which Nature has constructed these
defenses, and the weird, inhuman physiognomy of the whole region are
well calculated to inspire terror.
Deadly was the task of storming such a place. The breech-loading
rifles of the Indians thrust through chinks between the rocks were
ready to pick off every soldier who showed himself for a moment, while
the Indians lay utterly invisible. They were familiar with byways
both over and under ground, and could at any time sink suddenly out of
sight like squirrels among the loose boulders. Our bewildered
soldiers heard them shooting, now before, now behind them, as they
glided from place to place through fissures and subterranean passes,
all the while as invisible as Gyges wearing his magic ring. To judge
from the few I have seen, Modocs are not very amiable-looking people
at best. When, therefore, they were crawling stealthily in the gloomy
caverns, unkempt and begrimed and with the glare of war in their eyes,
they must have seemed very demons of the volcanic pit.
Captain Jack's cave is one of the many somber cells of the castle. It
measures twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter at the entrance, and
extends but a short distance in a horizontal direction. The floor is
littered with the bones of the animals slaughtered for food during the
war. Some eager archaeologist may hereafter discover this cabin and
startle his world by announcing another of the Stone Age caves. The
sun shines freely into its mouth, and graceful bunches of grass and
eriogonums and sage grow about it, doing what they can toward its
redemption from degrading associations and making it beautiful.
Where the lava meets the lake there are some fine curving bays,
beautifully embroidered with rushes and polygonums, a favorite resort
of waterfowl. On our return, keeping close along shore, we caused a
noisy plashing and beating of wings among cranes and geese. The
ducks, less wary, kept their places, merely swimming in and out
through openings in the rushes, rippling the glassy water, and raising
spangles in their wake. The countenance of the lava beds became less
and less forbidding. Tufts of pale grasses, relieved on the jet
rocks, looked like ornaments on a mantel, thick-furred mats of emerald
mosses appeared in damp spots next the shore, and I noticed one tuft
of small ferns. From year to year in the kindly weather the beds are
thus gathering beauty--beauty for ashes.
Returning to Sheep Rock and following the old emigrant road, one is
soon back again beneath the snows and shadows of Shasta, and the Ash
Creek and McCloud Glaciers come into view on the east side of the
mountain. They are broad, rugged, crevassed cloudlike masses of down-grinding ice, pouring forth streams of muddy water as measures of the
work they are doing in sculpturing the rocks beneath them; very unlike
the long, majestic glaciers of Alaska that riverlike go winding down
the valleys through the forests to the sea. These, with a few others
as yet nameless, are lingering remnants of once great glaciers that
occupied the canyons now taken by the rivers, and in a few centuries
will, under present conditions, vanish altogether.
The rivers of the granite south half of the Sierra are outspread on
the peaks in a shining network of small branches, that divide again
and again into small dribbling, purling, oozing threads drawing their
sources from the snow and ice of the surface. They seldom sink out of
sight, save here and there in the moraines or glaciers, or, early in
the season, beneath the banks and bridges of snow, soon to issue
again. But in the north half, laden with rent and porous lava, small
tributary streams are rare, and the rivers, flowing for a time beneath
the sky of rock, at length burst forth into the light in generous
volume from seams and caverns, filtered, cool, and sparkling, as if
their bondage in darkness, safe from the vicissitudes of the weather
in their youth, were only a blessing.
Only a very small portion of the water derived from the melting ice
and snow of Shasta flows down its flanks on the surface. Probably
ninety-nine per cent of it is at once absorbed and drained away
beneath the porous lava-folds of the mountain to gush forth, filtered
and pure, in the form of immense springs, so large, some of them, that
they give birth to rivers that start on their journey beneath the sun,
full-grown and perfect without any childhood. Thus the Shasta River
issues from a large lake-like spring in Shasta Valley, and about two
thirds of the volume of the McCloud gushes forth in a grand spring on
the east side of the mountain, a few miles back from its immediate
base.
To find the big spring of the McCloud, or "Mud Glacier," which you
will know by its size (it being the largest on the east side), you
make your way through sunny, parklike woods of yellow pine, and a
shaggy growth of chaparral, and come in a few hours to the river
flowing in a gorge of moderate depth, cut abruptly down into the lava
plain. Should the volume of the stream where you strike it seem
small, then you will know that you are above the spring; if large,
nearly equal to its volume at its confluence with the Pitt River, then
you are below it; and in either case have only to follow the river up
or down until you come to it.
Under certain conditions you may hear the roar of the water rushing
from the rock at a distance of half a mile, or even more; or you may
not hear it until within a few rods. It comes in a grand, eager gush
from a horizontal seam in the face of the wall of the river gorge in
the form of a partially interrupted sheet nearly seventy-five yards in
width, and at a height above the riverbed of about forty feet, as
nearly as I could make out without the means of exact measurement.
For about fifty yards this flat current is in one unbroken sheet, and
flows in a lacework of plashing, upleaping spray over boulders that
are clad in green silky algae and water mosses to meet the smaller
part of the river, which takes its rise farther up. Joining the river
at right angles to its course, it at once swells its volume to three
times its size above the spring.
The vivid green of the boulders beneath the water is very striking,
and colors the entire stream with the exception of the portions broken
into foam. The color is chiefly due to a species of algae which seems
common in springs of this sort. That any kind of plant can hold on
and grow beneath the wear of so boisterous a current seems truly
wonderful, even after taking into consideration the freedom of the
water from cutting drift, and the constance of its volume and
temperature throughout the year. The temperature is about 45 degrees,
and the height of the river above the sea is here about three thousand
feet. Asplenium, epilobium, heuchera, hazel, dogwood, and alder make
a luxurious fringe and setting; and the forests of Douglas spruce
along the banks are the finest I have ever seen in the Sierra.
From the spring you may go with the river--a fine traveling companion--down to the sportsman's fishing station, where, if you are getting
hungry, you may replenish your stores; or, bearing off around the
mountain by Huckleberry Valley, complete your circuit without
interruption, emerging at length from beneath the outspread arms of
the sugar pine at Strawberry Valley, with all the new wealth and
health gathered in your walk; not tired in the least, and only eager
to repeat the round.
Tracing rivers to their fountains makes the most charming of travels.
As the life-blood of the landscapes, the best of the wilderness comes
to their banks, and not one dull passage is found in all their
eventful histories. Tracing the McCloud to its highest springs, and
over the divide to the fountains of Fall River, near Fort Crook,
thence down that river to its confluence with the Pitt, on from there
to the volcanic region about Lassen's Butte, through the Big Meadows
among the sources of the Feather River, and down through forests of
sugar pine to the fertile plains of Chico--this is a glorious saunter
and imposes no hardship. Food may be had at moderate intervals, and
the whole circuit forms one ever-deepening, broadening stream of
enjoyment.
Fall River is a very remarkable stream. It is only about ten miles
long, and is composed of springs, rapids, and falls--springs
beautifully shaded at one end of it, a showy fall one hundred and
eighty feet high at the other, and a rush of crystal rapids between.
The banks are fringed with rubus, rose, plum cherry, spiraea, azalea,
honeysuckle, hawthorn, ash, alder, elder, aster, goldenrod, beautiful
grasses, sedges, rushes, mosses, and ferns with fronds as large as the
leaves of palms--all in the midst of a richly forested landscape.
Nowhere within the limits of California are the forests of yellow pine
so extensive and exclusive as on the headwaters of the Pitt. They
cover the mountains and all the lower slopes that border the wide,
open valleys which abound there, pressing forward in imposing ranks,
seemingly the hardiest and most firmly established of all the northern
coniferae.
The volcanic region about Lassen's Butte I have already in part
described. Miles of its flanks are dotted with hot springs, many of
them so sulphurous and boisterous and noisy in their boiling that they
seem inclined to become geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
The ascent of Lassen's Butte is an easy walk, and the views from the
summit are extremely telling. Innumerable lakes and craters surround
the base; forests of the charming Williamson spruce fringe lake and
crater alike; the sunbeaten plains to east and west make a striking
show, and the wilderness of peaks and ridges stretch indefinitely away
on either hand. The lofty, icy Shasta, towering high above all, seems
but an hour's walk from you, though the distance in an air-line is
about sixty miles.
The "Big Meadows" lie near the foot of Lassen's Butte, a beautiful
spacious basin set in the heart of the richly forested mountains,
scarcely surpassed in the grandeur of its surroundings by Tahoe.
During the Glacial Period it was a mer de glace, then a lake, and now
a level meadow shining with bountiful springs and streams. In the
number and size of its big spring fountains it excels even Shasta.
One of the largest that I measured forms a lakelet nearly a hundred
yards in diameter, and, in the generous flood it sends forth offers
one of the most telling symbols of Nature's affluence to be found in
the mountains.
The great wilds of our country, once held to be boundless and
inexhaustible, are being rapidly invaded and overrun in every
direction, and everything destructible in them is being destroyed.
How far destruction may go it is not easy to guess. Every landscape,
low and high, seems doomed to be trampled and harried. Even the sky
is not safe from scath--blurred and blackened whole summers together
with the smoke of fires that devour the woods.
The Shasta region is still a fresh unspoiled wilderness, accessible
and available for travelers of every kind and degree. Would it not
then be a fine thing to set it apart like the Yellowstone and Yosemite
as a National Park for the welfare and benefit of all mankind,
preserving its fountains and forests and all its glad life in primeval
beauty? Very little of the region can ever be more valuable for any
other use--certainly not for gold nor for grain. No private right or
interest need suffer, and thousands yet unborn would come from far and
near and bless the country for its wise and benevolent forethought.
VI
The City of the Saints[8]
The mountains rise grandly round about this curious city, the Zion of
the new Saints, so grandly that the city itself is hardly visible.
The Wahsatch Range, snow-laden and adorned with glacier-sculpted
peaks, stretches continuously along the eastern horizon, forming the
boundary of the Great Salt Lake Basin; while across the valley of the
Jordan southwestward from here, you behold the Oquirrh Range, about as
snowy and lofty as the Wahsatch. To the northwest your eye skims the
blue levels of the great lake, out of the midst of which rise island
mountains, and beyond, at a distance of fifty miles, is seen the
picturesque wall of the lakeside mountains blending with the lake and
the sky.
The glacial developments of these superb ranges are sharply sculptured
peaks and crests, with ample wombs between them where the ancient
snows of the glacial period were collected and transformed into ice,
and ranks of profound shadowy canyons, while moraines commensurate
with the lofty fountains extend into the valleys, forming far the
grandest series of glacial monuments I have yet seen this side of the
Sierra.
In beginning this letter I meant to describe the city, but in the
company of these noble old mountains, it is not easy to bend one's
attention upon anything else. Salt Lake cannot be called a very
beautiful town, neither is there anything ugly or repulsive about it.
From the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills, or old lake benches, toward
Fort Douglas it is seen to occupy the sloping gravelly delta of City
Creek, a fine, hearty stream that comes pouring from the snows of the
mountains through a majestic glacial canyon; and it is just where this
stream comes forth into the light on the edge of the valley of the
Jordan that the Mormons have built their new Jerusalem.
At first sight there is nothing very marked in the external appearance
of the town excepting its leafiness. Most of the houses are veiled
with trees, as if set down in the midst of one grand orchard; and seen
at a little distance they appear like a field of glacier boulders
overgrown with aspens, such as one often meets in the upper valleys of
the California Sierra, for only the angular roofs are clearly visible.
Perhaps nineteen twentieths of the houses are built of bluish-gray
adobe bricks, and are only one or two stories high, forming fine
cottage homes which promise simple comfort within. They are set well
back from the street, leaving room for a flower garden, while almost
every one has a thrifty orchard at the sides and around the back. The
gardens are laid out with great simplicity, indicating love for
flowers by people comparatively poor, rather than deliberate efforts
of the rich for showy artistic effects. They are like the pet gardens
of children, about as artless and humble, and harmonize with the low
dwellings to which they belong. In almost every one you find daisies,
and mint, and lilac bushes, and rows of plain English tulips. Lilacs
and tulips are the most characteristic flowers, and nowhere have I
seen them in greater perfection. As Oakland is pre-eminently a city
of roses, so is this Mormon Saints' Rest a city of lilacs and tulips.
The flowers, at least, are saintly, and they are surely loved. Scarce
a home, however obscure, is without them, and the simple,
unostentatious manner in which they are planted and gathered in pots
and boxes about the windows shows how truly they are prized.
The surrounding commons, the marshy levels of the Jordan, and dry,
gravelly lake benches on the slopes of the Wahsatch foothills are now
gay with wild flowers, chief among which are a species of phlox, with
an abundance of rich pink corollas, growing among sagebrush in showy
tufts, and a beautiful papilionaceous plant, with silky leaves and
large clusters of purple flowers, banner, wings, and keel exquisitely
shaded, a mertensia, hydrophyllum, white boragewort, orthocarpus,
several species of violets, and a tall scarlet gilia. It is
delightful to see how eagerly all these are sought after by the
children, both boys and girls. Every day that I have gone botanizing
I have met groups of little Latter-Days with their precious bouquets,
and at such times it was hard to believe the dark, bloody passages of
Mormon history.
But to return to the city. As soon as City Creek approaches its upper
limit its waters are drawn off right and left, and distributed in
brisk rills, one on each side of every street, the regular slopes of
the delta upon which the city is built being admirable adapted to this
system of street irrigation. These streams are all pure and sparkling
in the upper streets, but, as they are used to some extent as sewers,
they soon manifest the consequence of contact with civilization,
though the speed of their flow prevents their becoming offensive, and
little Saints not over particular may be seen drinking from them
everywhere.
The streets are remarkably wide and the buildings low, making them
appear yet wider than they really are. Trees are planted along the
sidewalks--elms, poplars, maples, and a few catalpas and hawthorns;
yet they are mostly small and irregular, and nowhere form avenues half
so leafy and imposing as one would be led to expect. Even in the
business streets there is but little regularity in the buildings--now
a row of plain adobe structures, half store, half dwelling, then a
high mercantile block of red brick or sandstone, and again a row of
adobe cottages nestled back among apple trees. There is one immense
store with its sign upon the roof, in letters big enough to be read
miles away, "Z.C.M.I." (Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution),
while many a small, codfishy corner grocery bears the legend "Holiness
to the Lord, Z.C.M.I." But little evidence will you find in this
Zion, with its fifteen thousand souls, of great wealth, though many a
Saint is seeking it as keenly as any Yankee Gentile. But on the other
had, 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, especially those from the
country, have a weary, repressed look, as if for the sake of their
religion they were patiently carrying burdens heavier than they were
well able to bear. But, strange as it must seem to Gentiles, the many
wives of one man, instead of being repelled from one another by
jealousy, appear to be drawn all the closer together, as if the real
marriage existed between the wives only. Groups of half a dozen or so
may frequently be seen on the streets in close conversation, looking
as innocent and unspeculative as a lot of heifers, while the masculine
Saints pass them by as if they belonged to a distinct species. In the
Tabernacle last Sunday, one of the elders of the church, in
discoursing upon the good things of life, the possessions of Latter-Day Saints, enumerated fruitful fields, horses, cows, wives, and
implements, the wives being placed as above, between the cows and
implements, without receiving any superior emphasis.
Polygamy, as far as I have observed, exerts a more degrading influence
upon husbands that upon wives. The love of the latter finds
expression in flowers and children, while the former seem to be
rendered incapable of pure love of anything. The spirit of Mormonism
is intensely exclusive and un-American. A more withdrawn, compact,
sealed-up body of people could hardly be found on the face of the
earth than is gathered here, notwithstanding railroads, telegraphs,
and the penetrating lights that go sifting through society everywhere
in this revolutionary, question-asking century. Most of the Mormons I
have met seem to be in a state of perpetual apology, which can hardly
be fully accounted for by Gentile attacks. At any rate it is
unspeakable offensive to any free man.
"We Saints," they are continually saying, "are not as bad as we are
called. We don't murder those who differ with us, but rather treat
them with all charity. You may go through our town night or day and
no harm shall befall you. Go into our houses and you will be well
used. We are as glad as you are that Lee was punished," etc. While
taking a saunter the other evening we were overtaken by a
characteristic Mormon, "an umble man," who made us a very deferential
salute and then walked on with us about half a mile. We discussed
whatsoever of Mormon doctrines came to mind with American freedom,
which he defended as best he could, speaking in an excited but
deprecating tone. When hard pressed he would say: "I don't understand
these deep things, but the elders do. I'm only an umble tradesman."
In taking leave he thanked us for the pleasure of our querulous
conversation, removed his hat, and bowed lowly in a sort of Uriah Heep
manner, and then went to his humble home. How many humble wives it
contained, we did not learn.
Fine specimens of manhood are by no means wanting, but the number of
people one meets here who have some physical defect or who attract
one's attention by some mental peculiarity that manifests itself
through the eyes, is astonishingly great in so small a city. It would
evidently be unfair to attribute these defects to Mormonism, though
Mormonism has undoubtedly been the magnet that elected and drew these
strange people together from all parts of the world.
But however "the peculiar doctrines" and "peculiar practices" of
Mormonism have affected the bodies and the minds of the old Saints,
the little Latter-Day boys and girls are as happy and natural as
possible, running wild, with plenty of good hearty parental
indulgence, playing, fighting, gathering flowers in delightful
innocence; and when we consider that most of the parents have been
drawn from the thickly settled portion of the Old World, where they
have long suffered the repression of hunger and hard toil, the Mormon
children, "Utah's best crop," seem remarkably bright and promising.
From children one passes naturally into the blooming wilderness, to
the pure religion of sunshine and snow, where all the good and the
evil of this strange people lifts and vanishes from the mind like mist
from the mountains.
VII
A Great Storm in Utah[9]
Utah has just been blessed with one of the grandest storms I have ever
beheld this side of the Sierra. The mountains are laden with fresh
snow; wild streams are swelling and booming adown the canyons, and out
in the valley of the Jordan a thousand rain-pools are gleaming in the
sun.
With reference to the development of fertile storms bearing snow and
rain, the greater portion of the calendar springtime of Utah has been
winter. In all the upper canyons of the mountains the snow is now
from five to ten feet deep or more, and most of it has fallen since
March. Almost every other day during the last three weeks small local
storms have been falling on the Wahsatch and Oquirrh Mountains, while
the Jordan Valley remained dry and sun-filled. But on the afternoon
of Thursday, the 17th ultimo, wind, rain, and snow filled the whole
basin, driving wildly over valley and plain from range to range,
bestowing their benefactions in most cordial and harmonious storm-measures. The oldest Saints say they have never witnessed a more
violent storm of this kind since the first settlement of Zion, and
while the gale from the northwest, with which the storm began, was
rocking their adobe walls, uprooting trees and darkening the streets
with billows of dust and sand, some of them seemed inclined to guess
that the terrible phenomenon was one of the signs of the times of
which their preachers are so constantly reminding them, the beginning
of the outpouring of the treasured wrath of the Lord upon the Gentiles
for the killing of Joseph Smith. To me it seemed a cordial outpouring
of Nature's love; but it is easy to differ with salt Latter-Days in
everything--storms, wives, politics, and religion.
About an hour before the storm reached the city I was so fortunate as
to be out with a friend on the banks of the Jordan enjoying the
scenery. Clouds, with peculiarly restless and self-conscious
gestures, were marshaling themselves along the mountain-tops, and
sending out long, overlapping wings across the valley; and even where
no cloud was visible, an obscuring film absorbed the sunlight, giving
rise to a cold, bluish darkness. Nevertheless, distant objects along
the boundaries of the landscape were revealed with wonderful
distinctness in this weird, subdued, cloud-sifted light. The
mountains, in particular, with the forests on their flanks, their mazy
lacelike canyons, the wombs of the ancient glaciers, and their
marvelous profusion of ornate sculpture, were most impressively
manifest. One would fancy that a man might be clearly seen walking on
the snow at a distance of twenty or thirty miles.
While we were reveling in this rare, ungarish grandeur, turning from
range to range, studying the darkening sky and listening to the still
small voices of the flowers at our feet, some of the denser clouds
came down, crowning and wreathing the highest peaks and dropping long
gray fringes whose smooth linear structure showed that snow was
beginning to fall. Of these partial storms there were soon ten or
twelve, arranged in two rows, while the main Jordan Valley between
them lay as yet in profound calm. At 4:30 p.m. a dark brownish cloud
appeared close down on the plain towards the lake, extending from the
northern extremity of the Oquirrh Range in a northeasterly direction
as far as the eye could reach. Its peculiar color and structure
excited our attention without enabling us to decide certainly as to
its character, but we were not left long in doubt, for in a few
minutes it came sweeping over the valley in a wild uproar, a torrent
of wind thick with sand and dust, advancing with a most majestic
front, rolling and overcombing like a gigantic sea-wave. Scarcely was
it in plain sight ere it was upon us, racing across the Jordan, over
the city, and up the slopes of the Wahsatch, eclipsing all the
landscapes in its course--the bending trees, the dust streamers, and
the wild onrush of everything movable giving it an appreciable
visibility that rendered it grand and inspiring.
This gale portion of the storm lasted over an hour, then down came the
blessed rain and the snow all through the night and the next day, the
snow and rain alternating and blending in the valley. It is long
since I have seen snow coming into a city. The crystal flakes falling
in the foul streets was a pitiful sight.
Notwithstanding the vaunted refining influences of towns, purity of
all kinds--pure hearts, pure streams, pure snow--must here be exposed
to terrible trials. City Creek, coming from its high glacial
fountains, enters the streets of this Mormon Zion pure as an angel,
but how does it leave it? Even roses and lilies in gardens most loved
are tainted with a thousand impurities as soon as they unfold. I
heard Brigham Young in the Tabernacle the other day warning his people
that if they did not mend their manners angels would not come into
their houses, though perchance they might be sauntering by with little
else to do than chat with them. Possibly there may be Salt Lake
families sufficiently pure for angel society, but I was not pleased
with the reception they gave the small snow angels that God sent among
them the other might. Only the children hailed them with delight.
The old Latter-Days seemed to shun them. I should like to see how Mr.
Young, the Lake Prophet, would meet such messengers.
But to return to the storm. Toward the evening of the 18th it began
to wither. The snowy skirts of the Wahsatch Mountains appeared
beneath the lifting fringes of the clouds, and the sun shone out
through colored windows, producing one of the most glorious after-storm effects I ever witnessed. Looking across the Jordan, the gray
sagey slopes from the base of the Oquirrh Mountains were covered with
a thick, plushy cloth of gold, soft and ethereal as a cloud, not
merely tinted and gilded like a rock with autumn sunshine, but deeply
muffled beyond recognition. Surely nothing in heaven, nor any mansion
of the Lord in all his worlds, could be more gloriously carpeted.
Other portions of the plain were flushed with red and purple, and all
the mountains and the clouds above them were painted in corresponding
loveliness. Earth and sky, round and round the entire landscape, was
one ravishing revelation of color, infinitely varied and interblended.
I have seen many a glorious sunset beneath lifting storm clouds on the
mountains, but nothing comparable with this. I felt as if new-arrived
in some other far-off world. The mountains, the plains, the sky, all
seemed new. Other experiences seemed but to have prepared me for
this, as souls are prepared for heaven. To describe the colors on a
single mountain would, if it were possible at all, require many a
volume--purples, and yellows, and delicious pearly grays divinely
toned and interblended, and so richly put on one seemed to be looking
down through the ground as through a sky. The disbanding clouds
lingered lovingly about the mountains, filling the canyons like tinted
wool, rising and drooping around the topmost peaks, fondling their
rugged bases, or, sailing alongside, trailed their lustrous fringes
through the pines as if taking a last view of their accomplished work.
Then came darkness, and the glorious day was done.
This afternoon the Utah mountains and valleys seem to belong to our
own very world again. They are covered with common sunshine. Down
here on the banks of the Jordan, larks and redwings are swinging on
the rushes; the balmy air is instinct with immortal life; the wild
flowers, the grass, and the farmers' grain are fresh as if, like the
snow, they had come out of heaven, and the last of the angel clouds
are fleeing from the mountains.
VIII
Bathing in Salt Lake[10]
When the north wind blows, bathing in Salt Lake is a glorious baptism,
for then it is all wildly awake with waves, blooming like a prairie in
snowy crystal foam. Plunging confidently into the midst of the grand
uproar you are hugged and welcomed, and swim without effort, rocking
and heaving up and down, in delightful rhythm, while the winds sing in
chorus and the cool, fragrant brine searches every fiber of your body;
and at length you are tossed ashore with a glad Godspeed, braced and
salted and clean as a saint.
The nearest point on the shoreline is distant about ten miles from
Salt Lake City, and is almost inaccessible on account of the boggy
character of the ground, but, by taking the Western Utah Railroad, at
a distance of twenty miles you reach what is called Lake Point, where
the shore is gravelly and wholesome and abounds in fine retreating
bays that seem to have been made on purpose for bathing. Here the
northern peaks of the Oquirrh Range plant their feet in the clear blue
brine, with fine curbing insteps, leaving no space for muddy levels.
The crystal brightness of the water, the wild flowers, and the lovely
mountain scenery make this a favorite summer resort fro pleasure and
health seekers. Numerous excursion trains are run from the city, and
parties, some of them numbering upwards of a thousand, come to bathe,
and dance, and roam the flowery hillsides together.
But at the time of my first visit in May, I fortunately found myself
alone. The hotel and bathhouse, which form the chief improvements of
the place, were sleeping in winter silence, notwithstanding the year
was in full bloom. It was one of those genial sun-days when flowers
and flies come thronging to the light, and birds sing their best. The
mountain ranges, stretching majestically north and south, were piled
with pearly cumuli, the sky overhead was pure azure, and the wind-swept lake was all aroll and aroar with whitecaps.
I sauntered along the shore until I came to a sequestered cove, where
buttercups and wild peas were blooming close down to the limit reached
by the waves. Here, I thought, is just the place for a bath; but the
breakers seemed terribly boisterous and forbidding as they came
rolling up the beach, or dashed white against the rocks that bounded
the cove on the east. The outer ranks, ever broken, ever builded,
formed a magnificent rampart, sculptured and corniced like the hanging
wall of a bergschrund, and appeared hopelessly insurmountable, however
easily one might ride the swelling waves beyond. I feasted awhile on
their beauty, watching their coming in from afar like faithful
messengers, to tell their stories one by one; then I turned
reluctantly away, to botanize and wait a calm. But the calm did not
come that day, nor did I wait long. In an hour or two I was back
again to the same little cove. The waves still sang the old storm
song, and rose in high crystal walls, seemingly hard enough to be cut
in sections, like ice.
Without any definite determination I found myself undressed, as if
some one else had taken me in hand; and while one of the largest waves
was ringing out its message and spending itself on the beach, I ran
out with open arms to the next, ducked beneath its breaking top, and
got myself into right lusty relationship with the brave old lake.
Away I sped in free, glad motion, as if, like a fish, I had been
afloat all my life, now low out of sight in the smooth, glassy
valleys, now bounding aloft on firm combing crests, while the crystal
foam beat against my breast with keen, crisp clashing, as if composed
of pure salt. I bowed to every wave, and each lifted me right royally
to its shoulders, almost setting me erect on my feet, while they all
went speeding by like living creatures, blooming and rejoicing in the
brightness of the day, and chanting the history of their grand
mountain home.
A good deal of nonsense has been written concerning the difficulty of
swimming in this heavy water. "One's head would go down, and heels
come up, and the acrid brine would burn like fire." I was conscious
only of a joyous exhilaration, my limbs seemingly heeding their own
business, without any discomfort or confusion; so much so, that
without previous knowledge my experience on this occasion would not
have led me to detect anything peculiar. In calm weather, however,
the sustaining power of the water might probably be more marked. This
was by far the most exciting and effective wave excursion I ever made
this side of the Rocky Mountains; and when at its close I was heaved
ashore among the sunny grasses and flowers, I found myself a new
creature indeed, and went bounding along the beach with blood all
aglow, reinforced by the best salts of the mountains, and ready for
any race.
Since the completion of the transcontinental and Utah railways, this
magnificent lake in the heart of the continent has become as
accessible as any watering-place on either coast; and I am sure that
thousands of travelers, sick and well, would throng its shores every
summer were its merits but half known. Lake Point is only an hour or
two from the city, and has hotel accommodations and a steamboat for
excursions; and then, besides the bracing waters, the climates is
delightful. The mountains rise into the cool sky furrowed with
canyons almost yosemitic in grandeur, and filled with a glorious
profusion of flowers and trees. Lovers of science, lovers of
wildness, lovers of pure rest will find here more than they may hope
for.
As for the Mormons one meets, however their doctrines be regarded,
they will be found as rich in human kindness as any people in all our
broad land, while the dark memories that cloud their earlier history
will vanish from the mind as completely as when we bathe in the
fountain azure of the Sierra.
IX
Mormon Lilies[11]
Lilies are rare in Utah; so also are their companions the ferns and
orchids, chiefly on account of the fiery saltness of the soil and
climate. You may walk the deserts of the Great Basin in the bloom
time of the year, all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the
snowy Wahsatch, and your eyes will be filled with many a gay malva,
and poppy, and abronia, and cactus, but you may not see a single true
lily, and only a very few liliaceous plants of any kind. Not even in
the cool, fresh glens of the mountains will you find these favorite
flowers, though some of these desert ranges almost rival the Sierra in
height. Nevertheless, in the building and planting of this grand
Territory the lilies were not forgotten. Far back in the dim geologic
ages, when the sediments of the old seas were being gathered and
outspread in smooth sheets like leaves of a book, and when these
sediments became dry land, and were baked and crumbled into the sky as
mountain ranges; when the lava-floods of the Fire Period were being
lavishly poured forth from innumerable rifts and craters; when the ice
of the Glacial Period was laid like a mantle over every mountain and
valley--throughout all these immensely protracted periods, in the
throng of these majestic operations, Nature kept her flower children
in mind. She considered the lilies, and, while planting the plains
with sage and the hills with cedar, she has covered at least one
mountain with golden erythroniums and fritillarias as its crowning
glory, as if willing to show what she could do in the lily line even
here.
Looking southward from the south end of Salt Lake, the two northmost
peaks of the Oquirrh Range are seen swelling calmly into the cool sky
without any marked character, excepting only their snow crowns, and a
few weedy-looking patches of spruce and fir, the simplicity of their
slopes preventing their real loftiness from being appreciated. Gray,
sagey plains circle around their bases, and up to a height of a
thousand feet or more their sides are tinged with purple, which I
afterwards found is produced by a close growth of dwarf oak just
coming into leaf. Higher you may detect faint tintings of green on a
gray ground, from young grasses and sedges; then come the dark pine
woods filling glacial hollows, and over all the smooth crown of snow.
While standing at their feet, the other day, shortly after my
memorable excursion among the salt waves of the lake, I said: "Now I
shall have another baptism. I will bathe in the high sky, among cool
wind-waves from the snow." From the more southerly of the two peaks a
long ridge comes down, bent like a bow, one end in the hot plains, the
other in the snow of the summit. After carefully scanning the jagged
towers and battlements with which it is roughened, I determined to
make it my way, though it presented but a feeble advertisement of its
floral wealth. This apparent barrenness, however, made no great
objection just then, for I was scarce hoping for flowers, old or new,
or even for fine scenery. I wanted in particular to learn what the
Oquirrh rocks were made of, what trees composed the curious patches of
forest; and, perhaps more than all, I was animated by a mountaineer's
eagerness to get my feet into the snow once more, and my head into the
clear sky, after lying dormant all winter at the level of the sea.
But in every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks. I
had not gone more than a mile from Lake Point ere I found the way
profusely decked with flowers, mostly compositae and purple
leguminosae, a hundred corollas or more to the square yard, with a
corresponding abundance of winged blossoms above them, moths and
butterflies, the leguminosae of the insect kingdom. This floweriness
is maintained with delightful variety all the way up through rocks and
bushes to the snow--violets, lilies, gilias, oenotheras, wallflowers,
ivesias, saxifrages, smilax, and miles of blooming bushes, chiefly
azalea, honeysuckle, brier rose, buckthorn, and eriogonum, all meeting
and blending in divine accord.
Two liliaceous plants in particular, Erythronium grandiflorum and
Fritillaria pudica, are marvelously beautiful and abundant. Never
before, in all my walks, have I met so glorious a throng of these fine
showy liliaceous plants. The whole mountainside was aglow with them,
from a height of fifty-five hundred feet to the very edge of the snow.
Although remarkably fragile, both in form and in substance, they are
endowed with plenty of deep-seated vitality, enabling them to grow in
all kinds of places--down in leafy glens, in the lee of wind-beaten
ledges, and beneath the brushy tangles of azalea, and oak, and prickly
roses--everywhere forming the crowning glory of the flowers. If the
neighboring mountains are as rich in lilies, then this may well be
called the Lily Range.
After climbing about a thousand feet above the plain I came to a
picturesque mass of rock, cropping up through the underbrush on one of
the steepest slopes of the mountain. After examining some tufts of
grass and saxifrage that were growing in its fissured surface, I was
going to pass it by on the upper side, where the bushes were more
open, but a company composed of the two lilies I have mentioned were
blooming on the lower side, and though they were as yet out of sight,
I suddenly changed my mind and went down to meet them, as if attracted
by the ringing of their bells. They were growing in a small, nestlike
opening between the rock and the bushes, and both the erythronium and
the fritillaria were in full flower. These were the first of the
species I had seen, and I need not try to tell the joy they made.
They are both lowly plants,--lowly as violets,--the tallest seldom
exceeding six inches in height, so that the most searching winds that
sweep the mountains scarce reach low enough to shake their bells.
The fritillaria has five or six linear, obtuse leaves, put on
irregularly near the bottom of the stem, which is usually terminated
by one large bell-shaped flower; but its more beautiful companion, the
erythronium, has two radical leaves only, which are large and oval,
and shine like glass. They extend horizontally in opposite
directions, and form a beautiful glossy ground, over which the one
large down-looking flower is swung from a simple stem, the petals
being strongly recurved, like those of Lilium superbum. Occasionally a
specimen is met which has from two to five flowers hung in a loose
panicle. People oftentimes travel far to see curious plants like the
carnivorous darlingtonia, the fly-catcher, the walking fern, etc. I
hardly know how the little bells I have been describing would be
regarded by seekers of this class, but every true flower-lover who
comes to consider these Utah lilies will surely be well rewarded,
however long the way.
Pushing on up the rugged slopes, I found many delightful seclusions--moist nooks at the foot of cliffs, and lilies in every one of them,
not growing close together like daisies, but well apart, with plenty
of room for their bells to swing free and ring. I found hundreds of
them in full bloom within two feet of the snow. In winter only the
bulbs are alive, sleeping deep beneath the ground, like field mice in
their nests; then the snow-flowers fall above them, lilies over
lilies, until the spring winds blow, and these winter lilies wither in
turn; then the hiding erythroniums and fritillarias rise again,
responsive to the first touches of the sun.
I noticed the tracks of deer in many places among the lily gardens,
and at the height of about seven thousand feet I came upon the fresh
trail of a flock of wild sheep, showing that these fine mountaineers
still flourish here above the range of Mormon rifles. In the planting
of her wild gardens, Nature takes the feet and teeth of her flocks
into account, and makes use of them to trim and cultivate, and keep
them in order, as the bark and buds of the tree are tended by
woodpeckers and linnets.
The evergreen woods consist, as far as I observed, of two species, a
spruce and a fir, standing close together, erect and arrowy in a
thrifty, compact growth; but they are quite small, say from six to
twelve or fourteen inches in diameter, and bout forty feet in height.
Among their giant relatives of the Sierra the very largest would seem
mere saplings. A considerable portion of the south side of the
mountain is planted with a species of aspen, called "quaking asp" by
the wood-choppers. It seems to be quite abundant on many of the
eastern mountains of the basin, and forms a marked feature of their
upper forests.
Wading up the curves of the summit was rather toilsome, for the snow,
which was softened by the blazing sun, was from ten to twenty feet
deep, but the view was one of the most impressively sublime I ever
beheld. Snowy, ice-sculptured ranges bounded the horizon all around,
while the great lake, eighty miles long and fifty miles wide, lay
fully revealed beneath a lily sky. The shorelines, marked by a ribbon
of white sand, were seen sweeping around many a bay and promontory in
elegant curves, and picturesque islands rising to mountain heights,
and some of them capped with pearly cumuli. And the wide prairie of
water glowing in the gold and purple of evening presented all the
colors that tint the lips of shells and the petals of lilies--the most
beautiful lake this side of the Rocky Mountains. Utah Lake, lying
thirty-five miles to the south, was in full sight also, and the river
Jordan, which links the two together, may be traced in silvery gleams
throughout its whole course.
Descending the mountain, I followed the windings of the main central
glen on the north, gathering specimens of the cones and sprays of the
evergreens, and most of the other new plants I had met; but the lilies
formed the crowning glory of my bouquet--the grandest I had carried in
many a day. I reached the hotel on the lake about dusk with all my
fresh riches, and my first mountain ramble in Utah was accomplished.
On my way back to the city, the next day, I met a grave old Mormon
with whom I had previously held some Latter-Day discussions. I shook
my big handful of lilies in his face and shouted, "Here are the true
saints, ancient and Latter-Day, enduring forever!" After he had
recovered from his astonishment he said, "They are nice."
The other liliaceous plants I have met in Utah are two species of
zigadenas, Fritillaria atropurpurea, Calochortus Nuttallii, and three
or four handsome alliums. One of these lilies, the calochortus,
several species of which are well known in California as the "Mariposa
tulips," has received great consideration at the hands of the Mormons,
for to it hundreds of them owe their lives. During the famine years
between 1853 and 1858, great destitution prevailed, especially in the
southern settlements, on account of drouth and grasshoppers, and
throughout one hunger winter in particular, thousands of the people
subsisted chiefly on the bulbs of the tulips, called "sego" by the
Indians, who taught them its use.
Liliaceous women and girls are rare among the Mormons. They have seen
too much hard, repressive toil to admit of the development of lily
beauty either in form or color. In general they are thickset, with
large feet and hands, and with sun-browned faces, often curiously
freckled like the petals of Fritillaria atropurpurea. They are fruit
rather than flower--good brown bread. But down in the San Pitch
Valley at Gunnison, I discovered a genuine lily, happily named Lily
Young. She is a granddaughter of Brigham Young, slender and graceful,
with lily-white cheeks tinted with clear rose, She was brought up in
the old Salt Lake Zion House, but by some strange chance has been
transplanted to this wilderness, where she blooms alone, the "Lily of
San Pitch." Pitch is an old Indian, who, I suppose, pitched into the
settlers and thus acquired fame enough to give name to the valley.
Here I feel uneasy about the name of this lily, for the compositors
have a perverse trick of making me say all kinds of absurd things
wholly unwarranted by plain copy, and I fear that the "Lily of San
Pitch" will appear in print as the widow of Sam Patch. But, however
this may be, among my memories of this strange land, that Oquirrh
mountain, with its golden lilies, will ever rise in clear relief, and
associated with them will always be the Mormon lily of San Pitch.
X
The San Gabriel Valley[12]
The sun valley of San Gabriel is one of the brightest spots to be
found in all our bright land, and most of its brightness is wildness--wild south sunshine in a basin rimmed about with mountains and hills.
Cultivation is not wholly wanting, for here are the choices of all the
Los Angeles orange groves, but its glorious abundance of ripe sun and
soil is only beginning to be coined into fruit. The drowsy bits of
cultivation accomplished by the old missionaries and the more recent
efforts of restless Americans are scarce as yet visible, and when
comprehended in general views form nothing more than mere freckles on
the smooth brown bosom of the Valley.
I entered the sunny south half a month ago, coming down along the cool
sea, and landing at Santa Monica. An hour's ride over stretches of
bare, brown plain, and through cornfields and orange groves, brought
me to the handsome, conceited little town of Los Angeles, where one
finds Spanish adobes and Yankee shingles meeting and overlapping in
very curious antagonism. I believe there are some fifteen thousand
people here, and some of their buildings are rather fine, but the
gardens and the sky interested me more. A palm is seen here and there
poising its royal crown in the rich light, and the banana, with its
magnificent ribbon leaves, producing a marked tropical effect--not
semi-tropical, as they are so fond of saying here, while speaking of
their fruits. Nothing I have noticed strikes me as semi, save the
brusque little bits of civilization with which the wilderness is
checkered. These are semi-barbarous or less; everything else in the
region has a most exuberant pronounced wholeness. The city held me
but a short time, for the San Gabriel Mountains were in sight,
advertising themselves grandly along the northern sky, and I was eager
to make my way into their midst.
At Pasadena I had the rare good fortune to meet my old friend Doctor
Congar, with whom I had studied chemistry and mathematics fifteen
years ago. He exalted San Gabriel above all other inhabitable
valleys, old and new, on the face of the globe. "I have rambled,"
said he, "ever since we left college, tasting innumerable climates,
and trying the advantages offered by nearly every new State and
Territory. Here I have made my home, and here I shall stay while I
live. The geographical position is exactly right, soil and climate
perfect, and everything that heart can wish comes to our efforts--flowers, fruits, milk and honey, and plenty of money. And there," he
continued, pointing just beyond his own precious possessions, "is a
block of land that is for sale; buy it and be my neighbor; plant five
acres with orange trees, and by the time your last mountain is climbed
their fruit will be your fortune." He then led my down the valley,
through the few famous old groves in full bearing, and on the estate
of Mr. Wilson showed me a ten-acre grove eighteen years old, the last
year's crop from which was sold for twenty thousand dollars. "There,"
said he, with triumphant enthusiasm, "what do you think of that? Two
thousand dollars per acre per annum for land worth only one hundred
dollars."
The number of orange trees planted to the acre is usually from forty-nine to sixty-nine; they then stand from twenty-five to thirty feet
apart each way, and, thus planted, thrive and continue fruitful to a
comparatively great age. J. DeBarth Shorb, an enthusiastic believer
in Los Angeles and oranges, says, "We have trees on our property fully
forty years old, and eighteen inches in diameter, that are still
vigorous and yielding immense crops of fruit, although they are only
twenty feet apart." Seedlings are said to begin to bear remunerative
crops in their tenth year, but by superior cultivation this long
unproductive period my be somewhat lessened, while trees from three to
five years old may be purchased from the nurserymen, so that the
newcomer who sets out an orchard may begin to gather fruit by the
fifth or sixth year. When first set out, and for some years
afterward, the trees are irrigated by making rings of earth around
them, which are connected with small ditches, through which the water
is distributed to each tree. Or, where the ground is nearly level,
the whole surface is flooded from time to time as required. From 309
trees, twelve years old from the seed, DeBarth Shorb says that in the
season of 1874 he obtained an average of $20.50 per tree, or $1435 per
acre, over and above the cost of transportation to San Francisco,
commission on sales, etc. He considers $1000 per acre a fair average
at present prices, after the trees have reached the age of twelve
years. The average price throughout the county for the last five
years has been about $20 or $25 per thousand; and, inasmuch as the
area adapted to orange culture is limited, it is hoped that this price
may not greatly fall for many years.
The lemon and lime are also cultivated here to some extent, and
considerable attention is now being given to the Florida banana, and
the olive, almond, and English walnut. But the orange interest
heavily overshadows every other, while vines have of late years been
so unremunerative they are seldom mentioned.
This is pre-eminently a fruit land, but the fame of its productions
has in some way far outrun the results that have as yet been attained.
Experiments have been tried, and good beginnings made, but the number
of really valuable, well-established groves is scarce as one to fifty,
compared with the newly planted. Many causes, however, have combined
of late to give the business a wonderful impetus, and new orchards are
being made every day, while the few old groves, aglow with golden
fruit, are the burning and shining lights that direct and energize the
sanguine newcomers.
After witnessing the bad effect of homelessness, developed to so
destructive an extent in California, it would reassure every lover of
his race to see the hearty home-building going on here and the blessed
contentment that naturally follows it. Travel-worn pioneers, who have
been tossed about like boulders in flood time, are thronging hither as
to a kind of a terrestrial heaven, resolved to rest. They build, and
plant, and settle, and so come under natural influences. When a man
plants a tree he plants himself. Every root is an anchor, over which
he rests with grateful interest, and becomes sufficiently calm to feel
the joy of living. He necessarily makes the acquaintance of the sun
and the sky. Favorite trees fill his mind, and, while tending them
like children, and accepting the benefits they bring, he becomes
himself a benefactor. He sees down through the brown common ground
teeming with colored fruits, as if it were transparent, and learns to
bring them to the surface, What he wills he can raise by true
enchantment. With slips and rootlets, his magic wands, they appear at
his bidding. These, and the seeds he plants, are his prayers, and by
them brought into right relations with God, he works grander miracles
every day than ever were written.
The Pasadena Colony, located on the southwest corner of the well-known
San Pasqual Rancho, is scarce three years old, but it is growing
rapidly, like a pet tree, and already forms one of the best
contributions to culture yet accomplished in the county. It now
numbers about sixty families, mostly drawn from the better class of
vagabond pioneers, who, during their rolling-stone days have managed
to gather sufficient gold moss to purchase from ten to forty acres of
land. They are perfectly hilarious in their newly found life, work
like ants in a sunny noonday, and, looking far into the future,
hopefully count their orange chicks ten years or more before they are
hatched; supporting themselves in the meantime on the produce of a few
acres of alfalfa, together with garden vegetables and the quick-growing fruits, such as figs, grapes, apples, etc., the whole
reinforced by the remaining dollars of their land purchase money.
There is nothing more remarkable in the character of the colony than
the literary and scientific taste displayed. The conversation of most
I have met here is seasoned with a smack of mental ozone, Attic salt,
which struck me as being rare among the tillers of California soil.
People of taste and money in search of a home would do well to
prospect the resources of this aristocratic little colony.
If we look now at these southern valleys in general, it will appear at
once that with all their advantages they lie beyond the reach of poor
settlers, not only on account of the high price of irrigable land--one
hundred dollars per acre and upwards--but because of the scarcity of
labor. A settler with three or four thousand dollars would be
penniless after paying for twenty acres of orange land and building
ever so plain a house, while many years would go by ere his trees
yielded an income adequate to the maintenance of his family.
Nor is there anything sufficiently reviving in the fine climate to
form a reliable inducement for very sick people. Most of this class,
from all I can learn, come here only to die, and surely it is better
to die comfortably at home, avoiding the thousand discomforts of
travel, at a time when they are so heard to bear. It is indeed
pitiful to see so many invalids, already on the verge of the grave,
making a painful way to quack climates, hoping to change age to youth,
and the darkening twilight of their day to morning. No such health-fountain has been found, and this climate, fine as it is, seems, like
most others, to be adapted for well people only. From all I could
find out regarding its influence upon patients suffering from
pulmonary difficulties, it is seldom beneficial to any great extent in
advanced cases. The cold sea winds are less fatal to this class of
sufferers than the corresponding winds further north, but,
notwithstanding they are tempered on their passage inland over warm,
dry ground, they are still more or less injurious.
The summer climate of the fir and pine woods of the Sierra Nevada
would, I think, be found infinitely more reviving; but because these
woods have not been advertised like patent medicines, few seem to
think of the spicy, vivifying influences that pervade their fountain
freshness and beauty.
XI
The San Gabriel Mountains[13]
After saying so much for human culture in my last, perhaps I may now
be allowed a word for wildness--the wildness of this southland, pure
and untamable as the sea.
In the mountains of San Gabriel, overlooking the lowland vines and
fruit groves, Mother Nature is most ruggedly, thornily savage. Not
even in the Sierra have I ever made the acquaintance of mountains more
rigidly inaccessible. The slopes are exceptionally steep and insecure
to the foot of the explorer, however great his strength or skill may
be, but thorny chaparral constitutes their chief defense. With the
exception of little park and garden spots not visible in comprehensive
views, the entire surface is covered with it, from the highest peaks
to the plain. It swoops into every hollow and swells over every
ridge, gracefully complying with the varied topography, in shaggy,
ungovernable exuberance, fairly dwarfing the utmost efforts of human
culture out of sight and mind.
But in the very heart of this thorny wilderness, down in the dells,
you may find gardens filled with the fairest flowers, that any child
would love, and unapproachable linns lined with lilies and ferns,
where the ousel builds its mossy hut and sings in chorus with the
white falling water. Bears, also, and panthers, wolves, wildcats;
wood rats, squirrels, foxes, snakes, and innumerable birds, all find
grateful homes here, adding wildness to wildness in glorious profusion
and variety.
Where the coast ranges and the Sierra Nevada come together we find a
very complicated system of short ranges, the geology and topography of
which is yet hidden, and many years of laborious study must be given
for anything like a complete interpretation of them. The San Gabriel
is one or more of these ranges, forty or fifty miles long, and half as
broad, extending from the Cajon Pass on the east, to the Santa Monica
and Santa Susanna ranges on the west. San Antonio, the dominating
peak, rises towards the eastern extremity of the range to a height of
about six thousand feet, forming a sure landmark throughout the valley
and all the way down to the coast, without, however, possessing much
striking individuality. The whole range, seen from the plain, with
the hot sun beating upon its southern slopes, wears a terribly
forbidding aspect. There is nothing of the grandeur of snow, or
glaciers, or deep forests, to excite curiosity or adventure; no trace
of gardens or waterfalls. From base to summit all seems gray, barren,
silent--dead, bleached bones of mountains, overgrown with scrubby
bushes, like gray moss. But all mountains are full of hidden beauty,
and the next day after my arrival at Pasadena I supplied myself with
bread and eagerly set out to give myself to their keeping.
On the first day of my excursion I went only as far as the mouth of
Eaton Canyon, because the heat was oppressive, and a pair of new shoes
were chafing my feet to such an extent that walking began to be
painful. While looking for a camping ground among the boulder beds of
the canyon, I came upon a strange, dark man of doubtful parentage. He
kindly invited me to camp with him, and led me to his little hut. All
my conjectures as to his nationality failed, and no wonder, since his
father was Irish and mother Spanish, a mixture not often met even in
California. He happened to be out of candles, so we sat in the dark
while he gave me a sketch of his life, which was exceedingly
picturesque. Then he showed me his plans for the future. He was
going to settle among these canyon boulders, and make money, and marry
a Spanish woman. People mine for irrigating water along the foothills
as for gold. He is now driving a prospecting tunnel into a spur of
the mountains back of his cabin. "My prospect is good," he said, "and
if I strike a strong flow, I shall soon be worth five or ten thousand
dollars. That flat out there, " he continued, referring to a small,
irregular patch of gravelly detritus that had been sorted out and
deposited by Eaton Creek during some flood season, "is large enough
for a nice orange grove, and, after watering my own trees, I can sell
water down the valley; and then the hillside back of the cabin will do
for vines, and I can keep bees, for the white sage and black sage up
the mountains is full of honey. You see, I've got a good thing." All
this prospective affluence in the sunken, boulder-choked flood-bed of
Eaton Creek! Most home-seekers would as soon think of settling on the
summit of San Antonio.
Half an hour's easy rambling up the canyon brought me to the foot of
"The Fall," famous throughout the valley settlements as the finest yet
discovered in the range. It is a charming little thing, with a voice
sweet as a songbird's, leaping some thirty-five or forty feet into a
round, mirror pool. The cliff back of it and on both sides is
completely covered with thick, furry mosses, and the white fall shines
against the green like a silver instrument in a velvet case. Here
come the Gabriel lads and lassies from the commonplace orange groves,
to make love and gather ferns and dabble away their hot holidays in
the cool pool. They are fortunate in finding so fresh a retreat so
near their homes. It is the Yosemite of San Gabriel. The walls,
though not of the true Yosemite type either in form or sculpture, rise
to a height of nearly two thousand feet. Ferns are abundant on all
the rocks within reach of the spray, and picturesque maples and
sycamores spread a grateful shade over a rich profusion of wild
flowers that grow among the boulders, from the edge of the pool a mile
or more down the dell-like bottom of the valley, the whole forming a
charming little poem of wildness--the vestibule of these shaggy
mountain temples.
The foot of the fall is about a thousand feet above the level of the
sea, and here climbing begins. I made my way out of the valley on the
west side, followed the ridge that forms the western rim of the Eaton
Basin to the summit of one of the principal peaks, thence crossed the
middle of the basin, forcing a way over its many subordinate ridges,
and out over the eastern rim, and from first to last during three days
spent in this excursion, I had to contend with the richest, most self-possessed and uncompromising chaparral I have every enjoyed since
first my mountaineering began.
For a hundred feet or so the ascent was practicable only by means of
bosses of the club moss that clings to the rock. Above this the ridge
is weathered away to a slender knife-edge for a distance of two or
three hundred yards, and thence to the summit it is a bristly mane of
chaparral. Here and there small openings occur, commanding grand
views of the valley and beyond to the ocean. These are favorite
outlooks and resting places for bears, wolves, and wildcats. In the
densest places I came upon woodrat villages whose huts were from four
to eight feet high, built in the same style of architecture as those
of the muskrats.
The day was nearly done. I reached the summit and I had time to make
only a hasty survey of the topography of the wild basin now outspread
maplike beneath, and to drink in the rare loveliness of the sunlight
before hastening down in search of water. Pushing through another
mile of chaparral, I emerged into one of the most beautiful parklike
groves of live oak I ever saw. The ground beneath was planted only
with aspidiums and brier roses. At the foot of the grove I came to
the dry channel of one of the tributary streams, but, following it
down a short distance, I descried a few specimens of the scarlet
mimulus; and I was assured that water was near. I found about a
bucketful in a granite bowl, but it was full of leaves and beetles,
making a sort of brown coffee that could be rendered available only by
filtering it through sand and charcoal. This I resolved to do in case
the night came on before I found better. Following the channel a mile
farther down to its confluence with another, larger tributary, I found
a lot of boulder pools, clear as crystal, and brimming full, linked
together by little glistening currents just strong enough to sing.
Flowers in full bloom adorned the banks, lilies ten feet high, and
luxuriant ferns arching over one another in lavish abundance, while a
noble old live oak spread its rugged boughs over all, forming one of
the most perfect and most secluded of Nature's gardens. Here I
camped, making my bed on smooth cobblestones.
Next morning, pushing up the channel of a tributary that takes its
rise on Mount San Antonio, I passed many lovely gardens watered by
oozing currentlets, every one of which had lilies in them in the full
pomp of bloom, and a rich growth of ferns, chiefly woodwardias and
aspidiums and maidenhairs; but toward the base of the mountain the
channel was dry, and the chaparral closed over from bank to bank, so
that I was compelled to creep more than a mile on hands and knees.
In one spot I found an opening in the thorny sky where I could stand
erect, and on the further side of the opening discovered a small pool.
"Now, HERE," I said, "I must be careful in creeping, for the birds of
the neighborhood come here to drink, and the rattlesnakes come here to
catch them." I then began to cast my eye along the channel, perhaps
instinctively feeling a snaky atmosphere, and finally discovered one
rattler between my feet. But there was a bashful look in his eye, and
a withdrawing, deprecating kink in his neck that showed plainly as
words could tell that he would not strike, and only wished to be let
alone. I therefore passed on, lifting my foot a little higher than
usual, and left him to enjoy his life in this his own home.
My next camp was near the heart of the basin, at the head of a grand
system of cascades from ten to two hundred feet high, one following
the other in close succession and making a total descent of nearly
seventeen hundred feet. The rocks above me leaned over in a
threatening way and were full of seams, making the camp a very unsafe
one during an earthquake.
Next day the chaparral, in ascending the eastern rim of the basin,
was, if possible, denser and more stubbornly bayoneted than ever. I
followed bear trails, where in some places I found tufts of their hair
that had been pulled out in squeezing a way through; but there was
much of a very interesting character that far overpaid all my pains.
Most of the plants are identical with those of the Sierra, but there
are quite a number of Mexican species. One coniferous tree was all I
found. This is a spruce of a species new to me, Douglasii
macrocarpa.[14]
My last camp was down at the narrow, notched bottom of a dry channel,
the only open way for the life in the neighborhood. I therefore lay
between two fires, built to fence out snakes and wolves.
From the summit of the eastern rim I had a glorious view of the valley
out to the ocean, which would require a whole book for its
description. My bread gave out a day before reaching the settlements,
but I felt all the fresher and clearer for the fast.
XII
Nevada Farms[15]
To the farmer who comes to this thirsty land from beneath rainy skies,
Nevada seems one vast desert, all sage and sand, hopelessly
irredeemable now and forever. And this, under present conditions, is
severely true. For notwithstanding it has gardens, grainfields, and
hayfields generously productive, these compared with the arid
stretches of valley and plain, as beheld in general views from the
mountain tops, are mere specks lying inconspicuously here and there,
in out-of-the-way places, often thirty or forty miles apart.
In leafy regions, blessed with copious rains, we learn to measure the
productive capacity of the soil by its natural vegetation. But this
rule is almost wholly inapplicable here, for, notwithstanding its
savage nakedness, scarce at all veiled by a sparse growth of sage and
linosyris[16], the desert soil of the Great Basin is as rich in the
elements that in rainy regions rise and ripen into food as that of any
other State in the Union. The rocks of its numerous mountain ranges
have been thoroughly crushed and ground by glaciers, thrashed and
vitalized by the sun, and sifted and outspread in lake basins by
powerful torrents that attended the breaking-up of the glacial period,
as if in every way Nature had been making haste to prepare the land
for the husbandman. Soil, climate, topographical conditions, all that
the most exacting could demand, are present, but one thing, water, is
wanting. The present rainfall would be wholly inadequate for
agriculture, even if it were advantageously distributed over the
lowlands, while in fact the greater portion is poured out on the
heights in sudden and violent thundershowers called "cloud-bursts,"
the waters of which are fruitlessly swallowed up in sandy gulches and
deltas a few minutes after their first boisterous appearance. The
principal mountain chains, trending nearly north and south, parallel
with the Sierra and the Wahsatch, receive a good deal of snow during
winter, but no great masses are stored up as fountains for large
perennial streams capable of irrigating considerable areas. Most of
it is melted before the end of May and absorbed by moraines and
gravelly taluses, which send forth small rills that slip quietly down
the upper canyons through narrow strips of flowery verdure, most of
them sinking and vanishing before they reach the base of their
fountain ranges. Perhaps not one in ten of the whole number flow out
into the open plains, not a single drop reaches the sea, and only a
few are large enough to irrigate more than one farm of moderate size.
It is upon these small outflowing rills that most of the Nevada
ranches are located, lying countersunk beneath the general level, just
where the mountains meet the plains, at an average elevation of five
thousand feet above sea level. All the cereals and garden vegetables
thrive here, and yield bountiful crops. Fruit, however, has been, as
yet, grown successfully in only a few specially favored spots.
Another distinct class of ranches are found sparsely distributed along
the lowest portions of the plains, where the ground is kept moist by
springs, or by narrow threads of moving water called rivers, fed by
some one or more of the most vigorous of the mountain rills that have
succeeded in making their escape from the mountains. These are mostly
devoted to the growth of wild hay, though in some the natural meadow
grasses and sedges have been supplemented by timothy and alfalfa; and
where the soil is not too strongly impregnated with salts, some grain
is raised. Reese River Valley, Big Smoky Valley, and White River
Valley offer fair illustrations of this class. As compared with the
foothill ranches, they are larger and less inconspicuous, as they lie
in the wide, unshadowed levels of the plains--wavy-edged flecks of
green in a wilderness of gray.
Still another class equally well defined, both as to distribution and
as to products, is restricted to that portion of western Nevada and
the eastern border of California which lies within the redeeming
influences of California waters. Three of the Sierra rivers descend
from their icy fountains into the desert like angels of mercy to bless
Nevada. These are the Walker, Carson, and Truckee; and in the valleys
through which they flow are found by far the most extensive hay and
grain fields within the bounds of the State. Irrigating streams are
led off right and left through innumerable channels, and the sleeping
ground, starting at once into action, pours forth its wealth without
stint.
But notwithstanding the many porous fields thus fertilized,
considerable portions of the waters of all these rivers continue to
reach their old deathbeds in the desert, indicating that in these salt
valleys there still is room for coming farmers. In middle and eastern
Nevada, however, every rill that I have seen in a ride of three
thousand miles, at all available for irrigation, has been claimed and
put to use.
It appears, therefore, that under present conditions the limit of
agricultural development in the dry basin between the Sierra and the
Wahsatch has been already approached, a result caused not alone by
natural restrictions as to the area capable of development, but by the
extraordinary stimulus furnished by the mines to agricultural effort.
The gathering of gold and silver, hay and barley, have gone on
together. Most of the mid-valley bogs and meadows, and foothill rills
capable of irrigating from ten to fifty acres, were claimed more than
twenty years ago.
A majority of these pioneer settlers are plodding Dutchmen, living
content in the back lanes and valleys of Nature; but the high price of
all kinds of farm products tempted many of even the keen Yankee
prospectors, made wise in California, to bind themselves down to this
sure kind of mining. The wildest of wild hay, made chiefly of carices
and rushes, was sold at from two to three hundred dollars per ton on
ranches. The same kind of hay is still worth from fifteen to forty
dollars per ton, according to the distance from mines and comparative
security from competition. Barley and oats are from forty to one
hundred dollars a ton, while all sorts of garden products find ready
sale at high prices.
With rich mine markets and salubrious climate, the Nevada farmer can
make more money by loose, ragged methods than the same class of
farmers in any other State I have yet seen, while the almost savage
isolation in which they live seems grateful to them. Even in those
cases where the advent of neighbors brings no disputes concerning
water rights and ranges, they seem to prefer solitude, most of them
having been elected from adventurers from California--the pioneers of
pioneers. The passing stranger, however, is always welcomed and
supplied with the best the home affords, and around the fireside,
while he smokes his pipe, very little encouragement is required to
bring forth the story of the farmer's life--hunting, mining, fighting,
in the early Indian times, et. Only the few who are married hope to
return to California to educate their children, and the ease with
which money is made renders the fulfillment of these hopes
comparatively sure.
After dwelling thus long on the farms of this dry wonderland, my
readers may be led to fancy them of more importance as compared with
the unbroken fields of Nature than they really are. Making your way
along any of the wide gray valleys that stretch from north to south,
seldom will your eye be interrupted by a single mark of cultivation.
The smooth lake-like ground sweeps on indefinitely, growing more and
more dim in the glowing sunshine, while a mountain range from eight to
ten thousand feet high bounds the view on either hand. No singing
water, no green sod, no moist nook to rest in--mountain and valley
alike naked and shadowless in the sun-glare; and though, perhaps,
traveling a well-worn road to a gold or silver mine, and supplied with
repeated instructions, you can scarce hope to find any human
habitation from day to day, so vast and impressive is the hot, dusty,
alkaline wildness.
But after riding some thirty or forty miles, and while the sun may be
sinking behind the mountains, you come suddenly upon signs of
cultivation. Clumps of willows indicate water, and water indicates a
farm. Approaching more nearly, you discover what may be a patch of
barley spread out unevenly along the bottom of a flood bed, broken
perhaps, and rendered less distinct by boulder piles and the fringing
willows of a stream. Speedily you can confidently say that the grain
patch is surely such; its ragged bounds become clear; a sand-roofed
cabin comes to view littered with sun-cracked implements and with an
outer girdle of potato, cabbage, and alfalfa patches.
The immense expanse of mountain-girt valleys, on the edges of which
these hidden ranches lie, make even the largest fields seem comic in
size. The smallest, however, are by no means insignificant in a
pecuniary view. On the east side of the Toyabe Range I discovered a
jolly Irishman who informed me that his income from fifty acres,
reinforced by a sheep range on the adjacent hills, was from seven to
nine thousand dollars per annum. His irrigating brook is about four
feet wide and eight inches deep, flowing about two miles per hour.
On Duckwater Creek, Nye County, Mr. Irwin has reclaimed a tule swamp
several hundred acres in extent, which is now chiefly devoted to
alfalfa. On twenty-five acres he claims to have raised this year
thirty-seven tons of barley. Indeed, I have not yet noticed a meager
crop of any kind in the State. Fruit alone is conspicuously absent.
On the California side of the Sierra grain will not ripen at much
greater elevation than four thousand feet above sea level. The
valleys of Nevada lie at a height of from four to six thousand feet,
and both wheat and barley ripen, wherever water may be had, up to
seven thousand feet. The harvest, of course, is later as the
elevation increases. In the valleys of the Carson and Walker Rivers,
four thousand feet above the sea, the grain harvest is about a month
later than in California. In Reese River Valley, six thousand feet,
it begins near the end of August. Winter grain ripens somewhat
earlier, while occasionally one meets a patch of barley in some cool,
high-lying canyon that will not mature before the middle of September.
Unlike California, Nevada will probably be always richer in gold and
silver than in grain. Utah farmers hope to change the climate of the
east side of the basin by prayer, and point to the recent rise in the
waters of the Great Salt Lake as a beginning of moister times. But
Nevada's only hope, in the way of any considerable increase in
agriculture, is from artesian wells. The experiment has been tried on
a small scale with encouraging success. But what is now wanted seems
to be the boring of a few specimen wells of a large size out in the
main valleys. The encouragement that successful experiments of this
kind would give to emigration seeking farms forms an object well
worthy the attention of the Government. But all that California
farmers in the grand central valley require is the preservation of the
forests and the wise distribution of the glorious abundance of water
from the snow stored on the west flank of the Sierra.
Whether any considerable area of these sage plains well ever thus be
made to blossom in grass and wheat, experience will show. But in the
mean time Nevada is beautiful in her wildness, and if tillers of the
soil can thus be brought to see that possibly Nature may have other
uses even for RICH soils besides the feeding of human beings, then
will these foodless "deserts" have taught a fine lesson.
XIII
Nevada Forests[17]
When the traveler from California has crossed the Sierra and gone a
little way down the eastern flank, the woods come to an end about as
suddenly and completely as if, going westward, he had reached the
ocean. From the very noblest forests in the world he emerges into
free sunshine and dead alkaline lake-levels. Mountains are seen
beyond, rising in bewildering abundance, range beyond range. But
however closely we have been accustomed to associate forests and
mountains, these always present a singularly barren aspect, appearing
gray and forbidding and shadeless, like heaps of ashes dumped from the
blazing sky.
But wheresoever we may venture to go in all this good world, nature is
ever found richer and more beautiful than she seems, and nowhere may
you meet with more varied and delightful surprises than in the byways
and recesses of this sublime wilderness--lovely asters and abronias on
the dusty plains, rose-gardens around the mountain wells, and resiny
woods, where all seemed so desolate, adorning the hot foothills as
well as the cool summits, fed by cordial and benevolent storms of rain
and hail and snow; all of these scant and rare as compared with the
immeasurable exuberance of California, but still amply sufficient
throughout the barest deserts for a clear manifestation of God's love.
Though Nevada is situated in what is called the "Great Basin," no less
than sixty-five groups and chains of mountains rise within the bounds
of the State to a height of about from eight thousand to thirteen
thousand feet above the level of the sea, and as far as I have
observed, every one of these is planted, to some extent, with
coniferous trees, though it is only upon the highest that we find
anything that may fairly be called a forest. The lower ranges and the
foothills and slopes of the higher are roughened with small scrubby
junipers and nut pines, while the dominating peaks, together with the
ridges that swing in grand curves between them, are covered with a
closer and more erect growth of pine, spruce, and fir, resembling the
forests of the Eastern States both as to size and general botanical
characteristics. Here is found what is called the heavy timber, but
the tallest and most fully developed sections of the forests, growing
down in sheltered hollows on moist moraines, would be regarded in
California only as groves of saplings, and so, relatively, they are,
for by careful calculation we find that more than a thousand of these
trees would be required to furnish as much timber as may be obtained
from a single specimen of our Sierra giants.
The height of the timberline in eastern Nevada, near the middle of the
Great Basin, is about eleven thousand feet above sea level;
consequently the forests, in a dwarfed, storm-beaten condition, pass
over the summits of nearly every range in the State, broken here and
there only by mechanical conditions of the surface rocks. Only three
mountains in the State have as yet come under my observation whose
summits rise distinctly above the treeline. These are Wheeler's Peak,
twelve thousand three hundred feet high, Mount Moriah, about twelve
thousand feet, and Granite Mountain, about the same height, all of
which are situated near the boundary line between Nevada and Utah
Territory.
In a rambling mountaineering journey of eighteen hundred miles across
the state, I have met nine species of coniferous trees,--four pines,
two spruces, two junipers, and one fir,--about one third the number
found in California. By far the most abundant and interesting of
these is the Pinus Fremontiana,[18] or nut pine. In the number of
individual trees and extent of range this curious little conifer
surpasses all the others combined. Nearly every mountain in the State
is planted with it from near the base to a height of from eight
thousand to nine thousand feet above the sea. Some are covered from
base to summit by this one species, with only a sparse growth of
juniper on the lower slopes to break the continuity of these curious
woods, which, though dark-looking at a little distance, are yet almost
shadeless, and without any hint of the dark glens and hollows so
characteristic of other pine woods. Tens of thousands of acres occur
in one continuous belt. Indeed, viewed comprehensively, the entire
State seems to be pretty evenly divided into mountain ranges covered
with nut pines and plains covered with sage--now a swath of pines
stretching from north to south, now a swath of sage; the one black,
the other gray; one severely level, the other sweeping on complacently
over ridge and valley and lofty crowning dome.
The real character of a forest of this sort would never be guessed by
the inexperienced observer. Traveling across the sage levels in the
dazzling sunlight, you gaze with shaded eyes at the mountains rising
along their edges, perhaps twenty miles away, but no invitation that
is at all likely to be understood is discernible. Every mountain,
however high it swells into the sky, seem utterly barren. Approaching
nearer, a low brushy growth is seen, strangely black in aspect, as
though it had been burned. This is a nut pine forest, the bountiful
orchard of the red man. When you ascend into its midst you find the
ground beneath the trees, and in the openings also, nearly naked, and
mostly rough on the surface--a succession of crumbling ledges of lava,
limestones, slate, and quartzite, coarsely strewn with soil weathered
from the. Here and there occurs a bunch of sage or linosyris, or a
purple aster, or a tuft of dry bunch-grass.
The harshest mountainsides, hot and waterless, seem best adapted to
the nut pine's development. No slope is too steep, none too dry;
every situation seems to be gratefully chosen, if only it be
sufficiently rocky and firm to afford secure anchorage for the tough,
grasping roots. It is a sturdy, thickset little tree, usually about
fifteen feet high when full grown, and about as broad as high, holding
its knotty branches well out in every direction in stiff zigzags, but
turning them gracefully upward at the ends in rounded bosses. Though
making so dark a mass in the distance, the foliage is a pale grayish
green, in stiff, awl-shaped fascicles. When examined closely these
round needles seem inclined to be two-leaved, but they are mostly held
firmly together, as if to guard against evaporation. The bark on the
older sections is nearly black, so that the boles and branches are
clearly traced against the prevailing gray of the mountains on which
they delight to dwell.
The value of this species to Nevada is not easily overestimated. It
furnishes fuel, charcoal, and timber for the mines, and, together with
the enduring juniper, so generally associated with it, supplies the
ranches with abundance of firewood and rough fencing. Many a square
mile has already been denuded in supplying these demands, but, so
great is the area covered by it, no appreciable loss has as yet been
sustained. It is pretty generally known that this tree yields edible
nuts, but their importance and excellence as human food is infinitely
greater than is supposed. In fruitful seasons like this one, the pine
nut crop of Nevada is, perhaps, greater than the entire wheat crop of
California, concerning which so much is said and felt throughout the
food markets of the world.
The Indians alone appreciate this portion of Nature's bounty and
celebrate the harvest home with dancing and feasting. The cones,
which are a bright grass-green in color and about two inches long by
one and a half in diameter, are beaten off with poles just before the
scales open, gathered in heaps of several bushels, and lightly
scorched by burning a thin covering of brushwood over them. The
resin, with which the cones are bedraggled, is thus burned off, the
nuts slightly roasted, and the scales made to open. Then they are
allowed to dry in the sun, after which the nuts are easily thrashed
out and are ready to be stored away. They are about half an inch long
by a quarter of an inch in diameter, pointed at the upper end, rounded
at the base, light brown in general color, and handsomely dotted with
purple, like birds' eggs. The shells are thin, and may be crushed
between the thumb and finger. The kernels are white and waxy-looking,
becoming brown by roasting, sweet and delicious to every palate, and
are eaten by birds, squirrels, dogs, horses, and man. When the crop
is abundant the Indians bring in large quantities for sale; they are
eaten around every fireside in the State, and oftentimes fed to horses
instead of barley.
Looking over the whole continent, none of Nature's bounties seems to
me so great as this in the way of food, none so little appreciated.
Fortunately for the Indians and wild animals that gather around
Nature's board, this crop is not easily harvested in a monopolizing
way. If it could be gathered like wheat the whole would be carried
away and dissipated in towns, leaving the brave inhabitants of these
wilds to starve.
Long before the harvest time, which is in September and October, the
Indians examine the trees with keen discernment, and inasmuch as the
cones require two years to mature from the first appearance of the
little red rosettes of the fertile flowers, the scarcity or abundance
of the crop may be predicted more than a year in advance. Squirrels,
and worms, and Clarke crows, make haste to begin the harvest. When
the crop is ripe the Indians make ready their long beating-poles;
baskets, bags, rags, mats, are gotten together. The squaws out among
the settlers at service, washing and drudging, assemble at the family
huts; the men leave their ranch work; all, old and young, are mounted
on ponies, and set off in great glee to the nut lands, forming
cavalcades curiously picturesque. Flaming scarfs and calico skirts
stream loosely over the knotty ponies, usually two squaws astride of
each, with the small baby midgets bandaged in baskets slung on their
backs, or balanced upon the saddle-bow, while the nut baskets and
water jars project from either side, and the long beating-poles, like
old-fashioned lances, angle out in every direction.
Arrived at some central point already fixed upon, where water and
grass is found, the squaws with baskets, the men with poles, ascend
the ridges to the laden trees, followed by the children; beating
begins with loud noise and chatter; the burs fly right and left,
lodging against stones and sagebrush; the squaws and children gather
them with fine natural gladness; smoke columns speedily mark the
joyful scene of their labors as the roasting fires are kindled; and,
at night, assembled in circles, garrulous as jays, the first grand nut
feast begins. Sufficient quantities are thus obtained in a few weeks
to last all winter.
The Indians also gather several species of berries and dry them to
vary their stores, and a few deer and grouse are killed on the
mountains, besides immense numbers of rabbits and hares; but the pine-nuts are their main dependence--their staff of life, their bread.
Insects also, scarce noticed by man, come in for their share of this
fine bounty. Eggs are deposited, and the baby grubs, happy fellows,
find themselves in a sweet world of plenty, feeding their way through
the heart of the cone from one nut chamber to another, secure from
rain and wind and heat, until their wings are grown and they are ready
to launch out into the free ocean of air and light.
XIV
Nevada's Timber Belt[19]
The pine woods on the tops of the Nevada mountains are already shining
and blooming in winter snow, making a most blessedly refreshing
appearance to the weary traveler down on the gray plains. During the
fiery days of summer the whole of this vast region seems so perfectly
possessed by the sun that the very memories of pine trees and snow are
in danger of being burned away, leaving one but little more than dust
and metal. But since these first winter blessings have come, the
wealth and beauty of the landscapes have come fairly into view, and
one is rendered capable of looking and seeing.
The grand nut harvest is over, as far as the Indians are concerned,
though perhaps less than one bushel in a thousand of the whole crop
has been gathered. But the squirrels and birds are still busily
engaged, and by the time that Nature's ends are accomplished, every
nut will doubtless have been put to use.
All of the nine Nevada conifers mentioned in my last letter are also
found in California, excepting only the Rocky Mountain spruce, which I
have not observed westward of the Snake Range. So greatly, however,
have they been made to vary by differences of soil and climate, that
most of them appear as distinct species. Without seeming in any way
dwarfed or repressed in habit, they nowhere develop to anything like
California dimensions. A height of fifty feet and diameter of twelve
or fourteen inches would probably be found to be above the average
size of those cut for lumber. On the margin of the Carson and
Humboldt Sink the larger sage bushes are called "heavy timber"; and to
the settlers here any tree seems large enough for saw-logs.
Mills have been built in the most accessible canyons of the higher
ranges, and sufficient lumber of an inferior kind is made to supply
most of the local demand. The principal lumber trees of Nevada are
the white pine (Pinus flexilis), foxtail pine, and Douglas spruce, or
"red pine," as it is called here. Of these the first named is most
generally distributed, being found on all the higher ranges throughout
the State. In botanical characters it is nearly allied to the
Weymouth, or white, pine of the Eastern States, and to the sugar and
mountain pines of the Sierra. In open situations it branches near the
ground and tosses out long down-curving limbs all around, often
gaining in this way a very strikingly picturesque habit. It is seldom
found lower than nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, but
from this height it pushes upward over the roughest ledges to the
extreme limit of tree growth--about eleven thousand feet.
On the Hot Creek, White Pine, and Golden Gate ranges we find a still
hardier and more picturesque species, called the foxtail pine, from
its long dense leaf-tassels. About a foot or eighteen inches of the
ends of the branches are densely packed with stiff outstanding
needles, which radiate all around like an electric fox- or squirrel-tail. The needles are about an inch and a half long, slightly curved,
elastic, and glossily polished, so that the sunshine sifting through
them makes them burn with a fine silvery luster, while their number
and elastic temper tell delightfully in the singing winds.
This tree is pre-eminently picturesque, far surpassing not only its
companion species of the mountains in this respect, but also the most
noted of the lowland oaks and elms. Some stand firmly erect,
feathered with radiant tail tassels down to the ground, forming
slender, tapering towers of shining verdure; others with two or three
specialized branches pushed out at right angles to the trunk and
densely clad with the tasseled sprays, take the form of beautiful
ornamental crosses. Again, in the same woods you find trees that are
made up of several boles united near the ground, and spreading in easy
curves at the sides in a plane parallel to the axis of the mountain,
with the elegant tassels hung in charming order between them the whole
making a perfect harp, ranged across the main wind-lines just where
they may be most effective in the grand storm harmonies. And then
there is an infinite variety of arching forms, standing free or in
groups, leaning away from or toward each other in curious
architectural structures,--innumerable tassels drooping under the
arches and radiating above them, the outside glowing in the light,
masses of deep shade beneath, giving rise to effects marvelously
beautiful,--while on the roughest ledges of crumbling limestone are
lowly old giants, five or six feet in diameter, that have braved the
storms of more than a thousand years. But, whether old or young,
sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever found to
be irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, offering a richer and
more varied series of forms to the artist than any other species I
have yet seen.
One of the most interesting mountain excursions I have made in the
State was up through a thick spicy forest of these trees to the top of
the highest summit of the Troy Range, about ninety miles to the south
of Hamilton. The day was full of perfect Indian-summer sunshine, calm
and bracing. Jays and Clarke crows made a pleasant stir in the
foothill pines and junipers; grasshoppers danced in the hazy light,
and rattled on the wing in pure glee, reviving suddenly from the
torpor of a frosty October night to exuberant summer joy. The
squirrels were working industriously among the falling nuts; ripe
willows and aspens made gorgeous masses of color on the russet
hillsides and along the edges of the small streams that threaded the
higher ravines; and on the smooth sloping uplands, beneath the foxtail
pines and firs, the ground was covered with brown grasses, enriched
with sunflowers, columbines, and larkspurs and patches of linosyris,
mostly frost-nipped and gone to seed, yet making fine bits of yellow
and purple in the general brown.
At a height of about ninety-five hundred feet we passed through a
magnificent grove of aspens, about a hundred acres in extent, through
which the mellow sunshine sifted in ravishing splendor, showing every
leaf to be as beautiful in color as the wing of a butterfly, and
making them tell gloriously against the evergreens. These extensive
groves of aspen are a marked feature of the Nevada woods. Some of the
lower mountains are covered with them, giving rise to remarkably
beautiful masses of pale, translucent green in spring and summer,
yellow and orange in autumn, while in winter, after every leaf has
fallen, the white bark of the boles and branches seen in mass seems
like a cloud of mist that has settled close down on the mountain,
conforming to all its hollows and ridges like a mantle, yet roughened
on the surface with innumerable ascending spires.
Just above the aspens we entered a fine, close growth of foxtail pine,
the tallest and most evenly planted I had yet seen. It extended along
a waving ridge tending north and south and down both sides with but
little interruption for a distance of about five miles. The trees
were mostly straight in the bole, and their shade covered the ground
in the densest places, leaving only small openings to the sun. A few
of the tallest specimens measured over eighty feet, with a diameter of
eighteen inches; but many of the younger trees, growing in tufts, were
nearly fifty feet high, with a diameter of only five or six inches,
while their slender shafts were hidden from top to bottom by a close,
fringy growth of tasseled branchlets. A few white pines and balsam
firs occur here and there, mostly around the edges of sunny openings,
where they enrich the air with their rosiny fragrance, and bring out
the peculiar beauties of the predominating foxtails by contrast.
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 summit of the Snake Mountains, I
found all the conifers I had seen on the other ranges of the State,
excepting the foxtail pine, which I have not observed further east
than the White Pine range, but in its stead the beautiful Rocky
Mountain spruce. First, as in the other ranges, we find the juniper
and nut pine; then, higher, the white pine and balsam fir; then the
Douglas spruce and this new Rocky Mountain spruce, which is common
eastward from here, though this range is, as far as I have observed,
its western limit. It is one of the largest and most important of
Nevada conifers, attaining a height of from sixty to eighty feet and a
diameter of nearly two feet, while now and then an exceptional
specimen may be found in shady dells a hundred feet high or more.
The foliage is bright yellowish and bluish green, according to
exposure and age, growing all around the branchlets, though inclined
to turn upward from the undersides, like that of the plushy firs of
California, making remarkably handsome fernlike plumes. While yet
only mere saplings five or six inches thick at the ground, they
measure fifty or sixty feet in height and are beautifully clothed with
broad, level, fronded plumes down to the base, preserving a strict
arrowy outline, though a few of the larger branches shoot out in free
exuberance, relieving the spire from any unpicturesque stiffness of
aspect, while the conical summit is crowded with thousands of rich
brown cones to complete its beauty.
We made the ascent of the peak just after the first storm had whitened
its summit and brightened the atmosphere. The foot-slopes are like
those of the Troy range, only more evenly clad with grasses. After
tracing a long, rugged ridge of exceedingly hard quartzite, said to be
veined here and there with gold, we came to the North Dome, a noble
summit rising about a thousand feet above the timberline, its slopes
heavily tree-clad all around, but most perfectly on the north. Here
the Rocky Mountain spruce forms the bulk of the forest. The cones
were ripe; most of them had shed their winged seeds, and the shell-like scales were conspicuously spread, making rich masses of brown
from the tops of the fertile trees down halfway to the ground, cone
touching cone in lavish clusters. A single branch that might be
carried in the hand would be found to bear a hundred or more.
Some portions of the wood were almost impenetrable, but in general we
found no difficulty in mazing comfortably on over fallen logs and
under the spreading boughs, while here and there we came to an opening
sufficiently spacious for standpoints, where the trees around their
margins might be seen from top to bottom. The winter sunshine
streamed through the clustered spires, glinting and breaking into a
fine dust of spangles on the spiky leaves and beads of amber gum, and
bringing out the reds and grays and yellows of the lichened boles
which had been freshened by the late storm; while the tip of every
spire looking up through the shadows was dipped in deepest blue.
The ground was strewn with burs and needles and fallen trees; and,
down in the dells, on the north side of the dome, where strips of
aspen are imbedded in the spruces, every breeze sent the ripe leaves
flying, some lodging in the spruce boughs, making them bloom again,
while the fresh snow beneath looked like a fine painting.
Around the dome and well up toward the summit of the main peak, the
snow-shed was well marked with tracks of the mule deer and the pretty
stitching and embroidery of field mice, squirrels, and grouse; and on
the way back to camp I came across a strange track, somewhat like that
of a small bear, but more spreading at the toes. It proved to be that
of a wolverine. In my conversations with hunters, both Indians and
white men assure me that there are no bears in Nevada, notwithstanding
the abundance of pine-nuts, of which they are so fond, and the
accessibility of these basin ranges from their favorite haunts in the
Sierra Nevada and Wahsatch Mountains. The mule deer, antelope, wild
sheep, wolverine, and two species of wolves are all of the larger
animals that I have seen or heard of in the State.
XV
Glacial Phenomena in Nevada[20]
The monuments of the Ice Age in the Great Basin have been greatly
obscured and broken, many of the more ancient of them having perished
altogether, leaving scarce a mark, however faint, of their existence--a condition of things due not alone to the long-continued action of
post-glacial agents, but also in great part to the perishable
character of the rocks of which they were made. The bottoms of the
main valleys, once grooved and planished like the glacier pavements of
the Sierra, lie buried beneath sediments and detritus derived from the
adjacent mountains, and now form the arid sage plains; characteristic
U-shaped canyons have become V-shaped by the deepening of their
bottoms and straightening of their sides, and decaying glacier
headlands have been undermined and thrown down in loose taluses, while
most of the moraines and striae and scratches have been blurred or
weathered away. Nevertheless, enough remains of the more recent and
the more enduring phenomena to cast a good light well back upon the
conditions of the ancient ice sheet that covered this interesting
region, and upon the system of distinct glaciers that loaded the tops
of the mountains and filled the canyons long after the ice sheet had
been broken up.
The first glacial traces that I noticed in the basin are on the
Wassuck, Augusta, and Toyabe ranges, consisting of ridges and canyons,
whose trends, contours, and general sculpture are in great part
specifically glacial, though deeply blurred by subsequent denudation.
These discoveries were made during the summer of 1876-77. And again,
on the 17th of last August, while making the ascent of Mount
Jefferson, the dominating mountain of the Toquima range, I discovered
an exceedingly interesting group of moraines, canyons with V-shaped
cross sections, wide neve amphitheatres, moutoneed rocks, glacier
meadows, and one glacier lake, all as fresh and telling as if the
glaciers to which they belonged had scarcely vanished.
The best preserved and most regular of the moraines are two laterals
about two hundred feet in height and two miles long, extending from
the foot of a magnificent canyon valley on the north side of the
mountain and trending first in a northerly direction, then curving
around to the west, while a well-characterized terminal moraine,
formed by the glacier towards the close of its existence, unites them
near their lower extremities at a height of eighty-five hundred feet.
Another pair of older lateral moraines, belonging to a glacier of
which the one just mentioned was a tributary, extend in a general
northwesterly direction nearly to the level of Big Smoky Valley, about
fifty-five hundred feet above sea level.
Four other canyons, extending down the eastern slopes of this grand
old mountain into Monito Valley, are hardly less rich in glacial
records, while the effects of the mountain shadows in controlling and
directing the movements of the residual glaciers to which all these
phenomena belonged are everywhere delightfully apparent in the trends
of the canyons and ridges, and in the massive sculpture of the neve
wombs at their heads. This is a very marked and imposing mountain,
attracting the eye from a great distance. It presents a smooth and
gently curved outline against the sky, as observed from the plains,
and is whitened with patches of enduring snow. The summit is made up
of irregular volcanic tables, the most extensive of which is about two
and a half miles long, and like the smaller ones is broken abruptly
down on the edges by the action of the ice. Its height is
approximately eleven thousand three hundred feet above the sea.
A few days after making these interesting discoveries, I found other
well-preserved glacial traces on Arc Dome, the culminating summit of
the Toyabe Range. On its northeastern slopes there are two small
glacier lakes, and the basins of two others which have recently been
filled with down-washed detritus. One small residual glacier lingered
until quite recently beneath the coolest shadows of the dome, the
moraines and neve-fountains of which are still as fresh and unwasted
as many of those lying at the same elevation on the Sierra--ten
thousand feet--while older and more wasted specimens may be traced on
all the adjacent mountains. The sculpture, too, of all the ridges and
summits of this section of the range is recognized at once as glacial,
some of the larger characters being still easily readable from the
plains at a distance of fifteen or twenty miles.
The Hot Creek Mountains, lying to the east of the Toquima and Monito
ranges, reach the culminating point on a deeply serrate ridge at a
height of ten thousand feet above the sea. This ridge is found to be
made up of a series of imposing towers and pinnacles which have been
eroded from the solid mass of the mountain by a group of small
residual glaciers that lingered in their shadows long after the larger
ice rivers had vanished. On its western declivities are found a group
of well-characterized moraines, canyons, and roches moutonnees, all of
which are unmistakably fresh and telling. The moraines in particular
could hardly fail to attract the eye of any observer. Some of the
short laterals of the glaciers that drew their fountain snows from the
jagged recesses of the summit are from one to two hundred feet in
height, and scarce at all wasted as yet, notwithstanding the countless
storms that have fallen upon them, while cool rills flow between them,
watering charming gardens of arctic plants--saxifrages, larkspurs,
dwarf birch, ribes, and parnassia, etc.--beautiful memories of the Ice
Age, representing a once greatly extended flora.
In the course of explorations made to the eastward of here, between
the 38th and 40th parallels, I observed glacial phenomena equally
fresh and demonstrative on all the higher mountains of the White Pine,
Golden Gate, and Snake ranges, varying from those already described
only as determined by differences of elevation, relations to the snow-bearing winds, and the physical characteristics of the rock
formations.
On the Jeff Davis group of the Snake Range, the dominating summit of
which is nearly thirteen thousand feet in elevation, and the highest
ground in the basin, every marked feature is a glacier monument--peaks, valleys, ridges, meadows, and lakes. And because here the
snow-fountains lay at a greater height, while the rock, an exceedingly
hard quartzite, offered superior resistance to post-glacial agents,
the ice-characters are on a larger scale, and are more sharply defined
than any we have noticed elsewhere, and it is probably here that the
last lingering glacier of the basin was located. The summits and
connecting ridges are mere blades and points, ground sharp by the
glaciers that descended on both sides to the main valleys. From one
standpoint I counted nine of these glacial channels with their
moraines sweeping grandly out to the plains to deep sheer-walled neve-fountains at their heads, making a most vivid picture of the last days
of the Ice Period.
I have thus far directed attention only to the most recent and
appreciable of the phenomena; but it must be borne in mind that less
recent and less obvious traces of glacial action abound on ALL the
ranges throughout the entire basin, where the fine striae and grooves
have been obliterated, and most of the moraines have been washed away,
or so modified as to be no longer recognizable, and even the lakes and
meadows, so characteristic of glacial regions, have almost entirely
vanished. For there are other monuments, far more enduring than
these, remaining tens of thousands of years after the more perishable
records are lost. Such are the canyons, ridges, and peaks themselves,
the glacial peculiarities of whose trends and contours cannot be hid
from the eye of the skilled observer until changes have been wrought
upon them far more destructive than those to which these basin ranges
have yet been subjected.
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 delineated in these old records, this is
not all; for there is not wanting evidence of a still grander
glaciation extending over all the valleys now forming the sage plains
as well as the mountains. The basins of the main valleys alternating
with the mountain ranges, and which contained lakes during at least
the closing portion of the Ice Period, were eroded wholly, or in part,
from a general elevated tableland, by immense glaciers that flowed
north and south to the ocean. The mountains as well as the valleys
present abundant evidence of this grand origin.
The flanks of all the interior ranges are seen to have been heavily
abraded and ground away by the ice acting in a direction parallel with
their axes. This action is most strikingly shown upon projecting
portions where the pressure has been greatest. These are shorn off in
smooth planes and bossy outswelling curves, like the outstanding
portions of canyon walls. Moreover, the extremities of the ranges
taper out like those of dividing ridges which have been ground away by
dividing and confluent glaciers. Furthermore, the horizontal sections
of separate mountains, standing isolated in the great valleys, are
lens-shaped like those of mere rocks that rise in the channels of
ordinary canyon glaciers, and which have been overflowed or
pastflowed, while in many of the smaller valleys roches moutonnees
occur in great abundance.
Again, the mineralogical and physical characters of the two ranges
bounding the sides of many of the valleys indicate that the valleys
were formed simply by the removal of the material between the ranges.
And again, the rim of the general basin, where it is elevated, as for
example on the southwestern portion, instead of being a ridge
sculptured on the sides like a mountain range, is found to be composed
of many short ranges, parallel to one another, and to the interior
ranges, and so modeled as to resemble a row of convex lenses set on
edge and half buried beneath a general surface, without manifesting
any dependence upon synclinal or anticlinal axes--a series of forms
and relations that could have resulted only from the outflow of vast
basin glaciers on their courses to the ocean.
I cannot, however, present all the evidence here bearing upon these
interesting questions, much less discuss it in all its relations. I
will, therefore, close this letter with a few of the more important
generalizations that have grown up out of the facts that I have
observed. First, at the beginning of the glacial period the region
now known as the Great Basin was an elevated tableland, not furrowed
as at present with mountains and valleys, but comparatively bald and
featureless.
Second, this tableland, bounded on the east and west by lofty mountain
ranges, but comparatively open on the north and south, was loaded with
ice, which was discharged to the ocean northward and southward, and in
its flow brought most, if not all, the present interior ranges and
valleys into relief by erosion.
Third, as the glacial winter drew near its close the ice vanished from
the lower portions of the basin, which then became lakes, into which
separate glaciers descended from the mountains. Then these mountain
glaciers vanished in turn, after sculpturing the ranges into their
present condition.
Fourth, the few immense lakes extending over the lowlands, in the
midst of which many of the interior ranges stood as islands, became
shallow as the ice vanished from the mountains, and separated into
many distinct lakes, whose waters no longer reached the ocean. Most
of these have disappeared by the filling of their basins with detritus
from the mountains, and now form sage plains and "alkali flats."
The transition from one to the other of these various conditions was
gradual and orderly: first, a nearly simple tableland; then a grand
mer de glace shedding its crawling silver currents to the sea, and
becoming gradually more wrinkled as unequal erosion roughened its bed,
and brought the highest peaks and ridges above the surface; then a
land of lakes, an almost continuous sheet of water stretching from the
Sierra to the Wahsatch, adorned with innumerable island mountains;
then a slow desiccation and decay to present conditions of sage and
sand.
XVI
Nevada's Dead Towns[21]
Nevada is one of the very youngest and wildest of the States;
nevertheless it is already strewn with ruins that seem as gray and
silent and time-worn as if the civilization to which they belonged had
perished centuries ago. Yet, strange to say, all these ruins are
results of mining efforts made within the last few years. Wander
where you may throughout the length and breadth of this mountain-barred wilderness, you everywhere come upon these dead mining towns,
with their tall chimney stacks, standing forlorn amid broken walls and
furnaces, and machinery half buried in sand, the very names of many of
them already forgotten amid the excitements of later discoveries, and
now known only through tradition--tradition ten years old.
While exploring the mountain ranges of the State during a considerable
portion of three summers, I think that I have seen at least five of
these deserted towns and villages for every one in ordinary life.
Some of them were probably only camps built by bands of prospectors,
and inhabited for a few months or years, while some specially
interesting canyon was being explored, and then carelessly abandoned
for more promising fields. But many were real towns, regularly laid
out and incorporated, containing well-built hotels, churches,
schoolhouses, post offices, and jails, as well as the mills on which
they all depended; and whose well-graded streets were filled with
lawyers, doctors, brokers, hangmen, real estate agents, etc., the
whole population numbering several thousand.
A few years ago the population of Hamilton is said to have been nearly
eight thousand; that of Treasure Hill, six thousand; of Shermantown,
seven thousand; of Swansea, three thousand. All of these were
incorporated towns with mayors, councils, fire departments, and daily
newspapers. Hamilton has now about one hundred inhabitants, most of
whom are merely waiting in dreary inaction for something to turn up.
Treasure Hill has about half as many, Shermantown one family, and
Swansea none, while on the other hand the graveyards are far too full.
In one canyon of the Toyabe range, near Austin, I found no less than
five dead towns without a single inhabitant. The streets and blocks
of "real estate" graded on the hillsides are rapidly falling back into
the wilderness. Sagebrushes are growing up around the forges of the
blacksmith shops, and lizards bask on the crumbling walls.
While traveling southward from Austin down Big Smoky Valley, I noticed
a remarkably tall and imposing column, rising like a lone pine out of
the sagebrush on the edge of a dry gulch. This proved to be a
smokestack of solid masonry. It seemed strangely out of place in the
desert, as if it had been transported entire from the heart of some
noisy manufacturing town and left here by mistake. I learned
afterwards that it belonged to a set of furnaces that were build by a
New York company to smelt ore that never was found. The tools of the
workmen are still lying in place beside the furnaces, as if dropped in
some sudden Indian or earthquake panic and never afterwards handled.
These imposing ruins, together with the desolate town, lying a quarter
of a mile to the northward, present a most vivid picture of wasted
effort. Coyotes now wander unmolested through the brushy streets, and
of all the busy throng that so lavishly spent their time and money
here only one man remains--a lone bachelor with one suspender.
Mining discoveries and progress, retrogression and decay, seem to have
been crowded more closely against each other here than on any other
portion of the globe. Some one of the band of adventurous prospectors
who came from the exhausted placers of California would discover some
rich ore--how much or little mattered not at first. These specimens
fell among excited seekers after wealth like sparks in gunpowder, and
in a few days the wilderness was disturbed with the noisy clang of
miners and builders. A little town would then spring up, and before
anything like a careful survey of any particular lode would be made, a
company would be formed, and expensive mills built. Then, after all
the machinery was ready for the ore, perhaps little, or none at all,
was to be found. Meanwhile another discovery was reported, and the
young town was abandoned as completely as a camp made for a single
night; and so on, until some really valuable lode was found, such as
those of Eureka, Austin, Virginia, etc., which formed the substantial
groundwork for a thousand other excitements.
Passing through the dead town of Schellbourne last month, I asked one
of the few lingering inhabitants why the town was built. "For the
mines," he replied. "And where are the mines?" "On the mountains
back here." "And why were they abandoned?" I asked. "Are they
exhausted?" "Oh, no," he replied, "they are not exhausted; on the
contrary, they have never been worked at all, for unfortunately, just
as we were about ready to open them, the Cherry Creek mines were
discovered across the valley in the Egan range, and everybody rushed
off there, taking what they could with them--houses machinery, and
all. But we are hoping that somebody with money and speculation will
come and revive us yet."
The dead mining excitements of Nevada were far more intense and
destructive in their action than those of California, because the
prizes at stake were greater, while more skill was required to gain
them. The long trains of gold-seekers making their way to California
had ample time and means to recover from their first attacks of mining
fever while crawling laboriously across the plains, and on their
arrival on any portion of the Sierra gold belt, they at once began to
make money. No matter in what gulch or canyon they worked, some
measure of success was sure, however unskillful they might be. And
though while making ten dollars a day they might be agitated by hopes
of making twenty, or of striking their picks against hundred- or
thousand-dollar nuggets, men of ordinary nerve could still work on
with comparative steadiness, and remain rational.
But in the case of the Nevada miner, he too often spent himself in
years of weary search without gaining a dollar, traveling hundreds of
miles from mountain to mountain, burdened with wasting hopes of
discovering some hidden vein worth millions, enduring hardships of the
most destructive kind, driving innumerable tunnels into the hillsides,
while his assayed specimens again and again proved worthless. Perhaps
one in a hundred of these brave prospectors would "strike it rich,"
while ninety-nine died alone in the mountains or sank out of sight in
the corners of saloons, in a haze of whiskey and tobacco smoke.
The healthful ministry of wealth is blessed; and surely it is a fine
thing that so many are eager to find the gold and silver that lie hid
in the veins of the mountains. But in the search the seekers too
often become insane, and strike about blindly in the dark like raving
madmen. Seven hundred and fifty tons of ore from the original
Eberhardt mine on Treasure Hill yielded a million and a half dollars,
the whole of this immense sum having been obtained within two hundred
and fifty feet of the surface, the greater portion within one hundred
and forty feet. Other ore masses were scarcely less marvelously rich,
giving rise to one of the most violent excitements that ever occurred
in the history of mining. All kinds of people--shoemakers, tailors,
farmers, etc., as well as miners--left their own right work and fell
in a perfect storm of energy upon the White Pine Hills, covering the
ground like grasshoppers, and seeming determined by the very violence
of their efforts to turn every stone to silver. But with few
exceptions, these mining storms pass away about as suddenly as they
rise, leaving only ruins to tell of the tremendous energy expended, as
heaps of giant boulders in the valley tell of the spent power of the
mountain floods.
In marked contrast with this destructive unrest is the orderly
deliberation into which miners settle in developing a truly valuable
mine. At Eureka we were kindly led through the treasure chambers of
the Richmond and Eureka Consolidated, our guides leisurely leading the
way from level to level, calling attention to the precious ore masses
which the workmen were slowly breaking to pieces with their picks,
like navvies wearing away the day in a railroad cutting; while down at
the smelting works the bars of bullion were handled with less eager
haste than the farmer shows in gathering his sheaves.
The wealth Nevada has already given to the world is indeed wonderful,
but the only grand marvel is the energy expended in its development.
The amount of prospecting done in the face of so many dangers and
sacrifices, the innumerable tunnels and shafts bored into the
mountains, the mills that have been built--these would seem to require
a race of giants. But, in full view of the substantial results
achieved, the pure waste manifest in the ruins one meets never fails
to produce a saddening effect.
The dim old ruins of Europe, so eagerly sought after by travelers,
have something pleasing about them, whatever their historical
associations; for they at least lend some beauty to the landscape.
Their picturesque towers and arches seem to be kindly adopted by
nature, and planted with wild flowers and wreathed with ivy; while
their rugged angles are soothed and freshened and embossed with green
mosses, fresh life and decay mingling in pleasing measures, and the
whole vanishing softly like a ripe, tranquil day fading into night.
So, also, among the older ruins of the East there is a fitness felt.
They have served their time, and like the weather-beaten mountains are
wasting harmoniously. The same is in some degree true of the dead
mining towns of California.
But those lying to the eastward of the Sierra throughout the ranges of
the Great Basin waste in the dry wilderness like the bones of cattle
that have died of thirst. Many of them do not represent any good
accomplishment, and have no right to be. They are monuments of fraud
and ignorance--sins against science. The drifts and tunnels in the
rocks may perhaps be regarded as the prayers of the prospector,
offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves; but, like prayers of
any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered. But, after
all, effort, however misapplied, is better than stagnation. Better
toil blindly, beating every stone in turn for grains of gold, whether
they contain any or not, than lie down in apathetic decay.
The fever period is fortunately passing away. The prospector is no
longer the raving, wandering ghoul of ten years ago, rushing in random
lawlessness among the hills, hungry and footsore; but cool and
skillful, well supplied with every necessary, and clad in his right
mind. Capitalists, too, and the public in general, have become wiser,
and do not take fire so readily from mining sparks; while at the same
time a vast amount of real work is being done, and the ratio between
growth and decay is constantly becoming better.
XVII
Puget Sound
Washington Territory, recently admitted[22] into the Union as a State,
lies between latitude 46 degrees and 49 degrees and longitude 117
degrees and 125 degrees, forming the northwest shoulder of the united
States. The majestic range of the Cascade Mountains naturally divides
the State into two distinct parts, called Eastern and Western
Washington, differing greatly from each other in almost every way, the
western section being less than half as large as the eastern, and,
with its copious rains and deep fertile soil, being clothed with
forests of evergreens, while the eastern section is dry and mostly
treeless, though fertile in many parts, and producing immense
quantities of wheat and hay. Few States are more fertile and
productive in one way or another than Washington, or more strikingly
varied in natural features or resources.
Within her borders every kind of soil and climate may be found--the
densest woods and dryest plains, the smoothest levels and roughest
mountains. She is rich in square miles (some seventy thousand of
them), in coal, timber, and iron, and in sheltered inland waters that
render these resources advantageously accessible. She also is already
rich in busy workers, who work hard, though not always wisely,
hacking, burning, blasting their way deeper into the wilderness,
beneath the sky, and beneath the ground. The wedges of development
are being driven hard, and none of the obstacles or defenses of nature
can long withstand the onset of this immeasurable industry.
Puget Sound, so justly famous the world over for the surpassing size
and excellence and abundance of its timber, is a long, many-fingered
arm of the sea reaching southward from the head of the Strait of Juan
de Fuca into the heart of the grand forests of the western portion of
Washington, between the Cascade Range and the mountains of the coast.
It is less than a hundred miles in length, but so numerous are the
branches into which it divides, and so many its bays, harbors, and
islands, that its entire shoreline is said to measure more than
eighteen hundred miles. Throughout its whole vast extent ships move
in safety, and find shelter from every wind that blows, the entire
mountain-girt sea forming one grand unrivaled harbor and center for
commerce.
The forest trees press forward to the water around all the windings of
the shores in most imposing array, as if they were courting their
fate, coming down from the mountains far and near to offer themselves
to the axe, thus making the place a perfect paradise for the
lumberman. To the lover of nature the scene is enchanting. Water and
sky, mountain and forest, clad in sunshine and clouds, are composed in
landscapes sublime in magnitude, yet exquisitely fine and fresh, and
full of glad, rejoicing life. The shining waters stretch away into
the leafy wilderness, now like the reaches of some majestic river and
again expanding into broad roomy spaces like mountain lakes, their
farther edges fading gradually and blending with the pale blue of the
sky. The wooded shores with an outer fringe of flowering bushes sweep
onward in beautiful curves around bays, and capes, and jutting
promontories innumerable; while the islands, with soft, waving
outlines, lavishly adorned with spruces and cedars, thicken and enrich
the beauty of the waters; and the white spirit mountains looking down
from the sky keep watch and ward over all, faithful and changeless as
the stars.
All the way from the Strait of Juan de Fuca up to Olympia, a hopeful
town situated at the head of one of the farthest-reaching of the
fingers of the Sound, we are so completely inland and surrounded by
mountains that it is hard to realize that we are sailing on a branch
of the salt sea. We are constantly reminded of Lake Tahoe. There is
the same clearness of the water in calm weather without any trace of
the ocean swell, the same picturesque winding and sculpture of the
shoreline and flowery, leafy luxuriance; only here the trees are
taller and stand much closer together, and the backgrounds are higher
and far more extensive. Here, too, we find greater variety amid the
marvelous wealth of islands and inlets, and also in the changing views
dependent on the weather. As we double cape after cape and round the
uncounted islands, new combinations come to view in endless variety,
sufficient to fill and satisfy the lover of wild beauty through a
whole life.
Oftentimes in the stillest weather, when all the winds sleep and no
sign of storms is felt or seen, silky clouds form and settle over all
the land, leaving in sight only a circle of water with indefinite
bounds like views in mid-ocean; then, the clouds lifting, some islet
will be presented standing alone, with the topes of its trees dipping
out of sight in pearly gray fringes; or, lifting higher, and perhaps
letting in a ray of sunshine through some rift overhead, the whole
island will be set free and brought forward in vivid relief amid the
gloom, a girdle of silver light of dazzling brightness on the water
about its shores, then darkening again and vanishing back into the
general gloom. Thus island after island may be seen, singly or in
groups, coming and going from darkness to light like a scene of
enchantment, until at length the entire cloud ceiling is rolled away,
and the colossal cone of Mount Rainier is seen in spotless white
looking down over the forests from a distance of sixty miles, but so
lofty and so massive and clearly outlined as to impress itself upon us
as being just back of a strip of woods only a mile or two in breadth.
For the tourist sailing to Puget Sound from San Francisco there is but
little that is at all striking in the scenery within reach by the way
until the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca is reached. The voyage
is about four days in length and the steamers keep within sight of the
coast, but the hills fronting the sea up to Oregon are mostly bare and
uninviting, the magnificent redwood forests stretching along this
portion of the California coast seeming to keep well back, away from
the heavy winds, so that very little is seen of them; while there are
no deep inlets or lofty mountains visible to break the regular
monotony. Along the coast of Oregon the woods of spruce and fir come
down to the shore, kept fresh and vigorous by copious rains, and
become denser and taller to the northward until, rounding Cape
Flattery, we enter the Strait of Fuca, where, sheltered from the ocean
gales, the forests begin to hint the grandeur they attain in Puget
Sound. Here the scenery in general becomes exceedingly interesting;
for now we have arrived at the grand mountain-walled channel that
forms the entrance to that marvelous network of inland waters that
extends along the margin of the continent to the northward for a
thousand miles.
This magnificent inlet was named for Juan de Fuca, who discovered it
in 1592 while seeking a mythical strait, supposed to exist somewhere
in the north, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific. It is about
seventy miles long, ten or twelve miles wide, and extends to the
eastward in a nearly straight line between the south end of Vancouver
Island and the Olympic Range of mountains on the mainland.
Cape Flattery, the western termination of the Olympic Range, is
terribly rugged and jagged, and in stormy weather is utterly
inaccessible from the sea. Then the ponderous rollers of the deep
Pacific thunder amid its caverns and cliffs with the foam and uproar
of a thousand Yosemite waterfalls. The bones of many a noble ship lie
there, and many a sailor. It would seem unlikely that any living
thing should seek rest in such a place, or find it. Nevertheless,
frail and delicate flowers bloom there, flowers of both the land and
the sea; heavy, ungainly seals disport in the swelling waves, and find
grateful retreats back in the inmost bores of its storm-lashed
caverns; while in many a chink and hollow of the highest crags, not
visible from beneath, a great variety of waterfowl make homes and rear
their young.
But not always are the inhabitants safe, even in such wave-defended
castles as these, for the Indians of the neighboring shores venture
forth in the calmest summer weather in their frail canoes to spear the
seals in the narrow gorges amid the grinding, gurgling din of the
restless waters. At such times also the hunters make out to scale
many of the apparently inaccessible cliffs for the eggs and young of
the gulls and other water birds, occasionally losing their lives in
these perilous adventures, which give rise to many an exciting story
told around the campfires at night when the storms roar loudest.
Passing through the strait, we have the Olympic Mountains close at
hand on the right, Vancouver Island on the left, and the snowy peak of
Mount Baker straight ahead in the distance. During calm weather, or
when the clouds are lifting and rolling off the mountains after a
storm, all these views are truly magnificent. Mount Baker is one of
that wonderful series of old volcanoes that once flamed along the
summits of the Sierras and Cascades from Lassen to Mount St. Elias.
Its fires are sleeping now, and it is loaded with glaciers, streams of
ice having taken the place of streams of glowing lava. Vancouver
Island presents a charming variety of hill and dale, open sunny spaces
and sweeps of dark forest rising in swell beyond swell to the high
land in the distance.
But the Olympic Mountains most of all command attention, seen
tellingly near and clear in all their glory, rising from the water's
edge into the sky to a height of six or eight thousand feet. They
bound the strait on the south side throughout its whole extent,
forming a massive sustained wall, flowery and bushy at the base, a
zigzag of snowy peaks along the top, which have ragged-edged fields of
ice and snow beneath them, enclosed in wide amphitheaters opening to
the waters of the strait through spacious forest-filled valleys
enlivened with fine, dashing streams. These valleys mark the courses
of the Olympic glaciers at the period of their greatest extension,
when they poured their tribute into that portion of the great northern
ice sheet that overswept the south end of Vancouver Island and filled
the strait with flowing ice as it is now filled with ocean water.
The steamers of the Sound usually stop at Esquimalt on their way up,
thus affording tourists an opportunity to visit the interesting town
of Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. The Victoria harbor is
too narrow and difficult of access for the larger class of ships;
therefore a landing has to be made at Esquimalt. The distance,
however, is only about three miles, and the way is delightful, winding
on through a charming forest of Douglas spruce, with here and there
groves of oak and madrone, and a rich undergrowth of hazel, dogwood,
willow, alder, spiraea, rubus, huckleberry, and wild rose. Pretty
cottages occur at intervals along the road, covered with honeysuckle,
and many an upswelling rock, freshly glaciated and furred with yellow
mosses and lichen, telling interesting stories of the icy past.
Victoria is a quiet, handsome, breezy town, beautifully located on
finely modulated ground at the mouth of the Canal de Haro, with
charming views in front, of islands and mountains and far-reaching
waters, ever changing in the shifting lights and shades of the clouds
and sunshine. In the background there are a mile or two of field and
forest and sunny oak openings; then comes the forest primeval, dense
and shaggy and well-nigh impenetrable.
Notwithstanding the importance claimed for Victoria as a commercial
center and the capital of British Columbia, it has a rather young,
loose-jointed appearance. The government buildings and some of the
business blocks on the main streets are well built and imposing in
bulk and architecture. These are far less interesting and
characteristic, however, than the mansions set in the midst of
spacious pleasure grounds and the lovely home cottages embowered in
honeysuckle and climbing roses. One soon discovers that this is no
Yankee town. The English faces and the way that English is spoken
alone would tell that; while in business quarters there is a staid
dignity and moderation that is very noticeable, and a want of American
push and hurrah. Love of land and of privacy in homes is made manifest
in the residences, many of which are built in the middle of fields and
orchards or large city blocks, and in the loving care with which these
home grounds are planted. They are very beautiful. The fineness of
the climate, with its copious measure of warm moisture distilling in
dew and fog, and gentle, bathing, laving rain, give them a freshness
and floweriness that is worth going far to see.
Victoria is noted for its fine drives, and every one who can should
either walk or drive around the outskirts of the town, not only for
the fine views out over the water but to see the cascades of bloom
pouring over the gables of the cottages, and the fresh wild woods with
their flowery, fragrant underbrush. Wild roses abound almost
everywhere. One species, blooming freely along the woodland paths, is
from two to three inches in diameter, and more fragrant than any other
wild rose I ever saw excepting the sweetbriar. This rose and three
species of spiraea fairly fill the air with fragrance after a shower.
And how brightly then do the red berries of the dogwood shine out from
the warm yellow-green of leaves and mosses!
But still more interesting and significant are the glacial phenomena
displayed hereabouts. All this exuberant tree, bush, and herbaceous
vegetation, cultivated or wild, is growing upon moraine beds outspread
by waters that issued from the ancient glaciers at the time of their
recession, and scarcely at all moved or in any way modified by post-glacial agencies. The town streets and the roads are graded in
moraine material, among scratched and grooved rock bosses that are as
unweathered and telling as any to be found in the glacier channels of
Alaska. The harbor also is clearly of glacial origin. The rock
islets that rise here and there, forming so marked a feature of the
harbor, are unchanged roches moutonnees, and the shores are grooved,
scratched, and rounded, and in every way as glacial in all their
characteristics as those of a newborn glacial lake.
Most visitors to Victoria go to the stores of the Hudson's Bay
Company, presumably on account of the romantic associations, or to
purchase a bit of fur or some other wild-Indianish trinket as a
memento. At certain seasons of the year, when the hairy harvests are
gathered in, immense bales of skins may be seen in these unsavory
warehouses, the spoils of many thousand hunts over mountain and plain,
by lonely river and shore. The skins of bears, wolves, beavers,
otters, fishers, martens, lynxes, panthers, wolverine, reindeer,
moose, elk, wild goats, sheep, foxes, squirrels, and many others of
our "poor earth-born companions and fellow mortals" may here be found.
Vancouver is the southmost and the largest of the countless islands
forming the great archipelago that stretches a thousand miles to the
northward. Its shores have been known a long time, but little is
known of the lofty mountainous interior on account of the difficulties
in the way of explorations--lake, bogs, and shaggy tangled forests.
It is mostly a pure, savage wilderness, without roads or clearings,
and silent so far as man is concerned. Even the Indians keep close to
the shore, getting a living by fishing, dwelling together in villages,
and traveling almost wholly by canoes. White settlements are few and
far between. Good agricultural lands occur here and there on the edge
of the wilderness, but they are hard to clear, and have received but
little attention thus far. Gold, the grand attraction that lights the
way into all kinds of wildernesses and makes rough places smooth, has
been found, but only in small quantities, too small to make much
motion. Almost all the industry of the island is employed upon lumber
and coal, in which, so far as known, its chief wealth lies.
Leaving Victoria for Port Townsend, after we are fairly out on the
free open water, Mount Baker is seen rising solitary over a dark
breadth of forest, making a glorious show in its pure white raiment.
It is said to be about eleven thousand feet high, is loaded with
glaciers, some of which come well down into the woods, and never, so
far as I have heard, has been climbed, though in all probability it is
not inaccessible. The task of reaching its base through the dense
woods will be likely to prove of greater difficulty than the climb to
the summit.
In a direction a little to the left of Mount Baker and much nearer,
may be seen the island of San Juan, famous in the young history of the
country for the quarrels concerning its rightful ownership between the
Hudson's Bay Company and Washington Territory, quarrels which nearly
brought on war with Great Britain. Neither party showed any lack of
either pluck or gunpowder. General Scott was sent out by President
Buchanan to negotiate, which resulted in a joint occupancy of the
island. Small quarrels, however, continued to arise until the year
1874, when the peppery question was submitted to the Emperor of
Germany for arbitration. Then the whole island was given to the
United States.
San Juan is one of a thickset cluster of islands that fills the waters
between Vancouver and the mainland, a little to the north of Victoria.
In some of the intricate channels between these islands the tides run
at times like impetuous rushing rivers, rendering navigation rather
uncertain and dangerous for the small sailing vessels that ply between
Victoria and the settlements on the coast of British Columbia and the
larger islands. The water is generally deep enough everywhere, too
deep in most places for anchorage, and, the winds shifting hither and
thither or dying away altogether, the ships, getting no direction from
their helms, are carried back and forth or are caught in some eddy
where two currents meet and whirled round and round to the dismay of
the sailors, like a chip in a river whirlpool.
All the way over to Port Townsend the Olympic Mountains well maintain
their massive, imposing grandeur, and present their elaborately carved
summits in clear relief, many of which are out of sight in coming up
the strait on account of our being too near the base of the range.
Turn to them as often as we may, our admiration only grows the warmer
the longer we dwell upon them. The highest peaks are Mount Constance
and Mount Olympus, said to be about eight thousand feet high.
In two or three hours after leaving Victoria, we arrive at the
handsome little town of Port Townsend, situated at the mouth of Puget
Sound, on the west side. The residential portion of the town is set
on the level top of the bluff that bounds Port Townsend Bay, while
another nearly level space of moderate extent, reaching from the base
of the bluff to the shoreline, is occupied by the business portion,
thus making a town of two separate and distinct stories, which are
connected by long, ladder-like flights of stairs. In the streets of
the lower story, while there is no lack of animation, there is but
little business noise as compared with the amount of business
transacted. This in great part is due to the scarcity of horses and
wagons. Farms and roads back in the woods are few and far between.
Nearly all the tributary settlements are on the coast, and
communication is almost wholly by boats, canoes, and schooners. Hence
country stages and farmers' wagons and buggies, with the whir and din
that belong to them, are wanting.
This being the port of entry, all vessels have to stop here, and they
make a lively show about the wharves and in the bay. The winds stir
the flags of every civilized nation, while the Indians in their long-beaked canoes glide about from ship to ship, satisfying their
curiosity or trading with the crews. Keen traders these Indians are,
and few indeed of the sailors or merchants from any country ever get
the better of them in bargains. Curious groups of people may often be
seen in the streets and stores, made up of English, French, Spanish,
Portuguese, Scandinavians, Germans, Greeks, Moors, Japanese, and
Chinese, of every rank and station and style of dress and behavior;
settlers from many a nook and bay and island up and down the coast;
hunters from the wilderness; tourists on their way home by the Sound
and the Columbia River or to Alaska or California.
The upper story of Port Townsend is charmingly located, wide bright
waters on one side, flowing evergreen woods on the other. The streets
are well laid out and well tended, and the houses, with their
luxuriant gardens about them, have an air of taste and refinement
seldom found in towns set on the edge of a wild forest. The people
seem to have come here to make true homes, attracted by the beauty and
fresh breezy healthfulness of the place as well as by business
advantages, trusting to natural growth and advancement instead of
restless "booming" methods. They perhaps have caught some of the
spirit of calm moderation and enjoyment from their English neighbors
across the water. Of late, however, this sober tranquillity has begun
to give way, some whiffs from the whirlwind of real estate speculation
up the Sound having at length touched the town and ruffled the surface
of its calmness.
A few miles up the bay is Fort Townsend, which makes a pretty picture
with the green woods rising back of it and the calm water in front.
Across the mouth of the Sound lies the long, narrow Whidbey Island,
named by Vancouver for one of his lieutenants. It is about thirty
miles in length, and is remarkable in this region of crowded forests
and mountains as being comparatively open and low. The soil is good
and easily worked, and a considerable portion of the island has been
under cultivation for many years. Fertile fields, open, parklike
groves of oak, and thick masses of evergreens succeed one another in
charming combinations to make this "the garden spot of the Territory."
Leaving Port Townsend for Seattle and Tacoma, we enter the Sound and
sail down into the heart of the green, aspiring forests, and find,
look where we may, beauty ever changing, in lavish profusion. Puget
Sound, "the Mediterranean of America" as it is sometimes called, is in
many respects one of the most remarkable bodies of water in the world.
Vancouver, who came here nearly a hundred years ago and made a careful
survey of it, named the larger northern portion of it "Admiralty
Inlet" and one of the long, narrow branches "Hood's Canal'" applying
the name "Puget Sound" only to the comparatively small southern
portion. The latter name, however, is now applied generally to the
entire inlet, and is commonly shortened by the people hereabouts to
"The Sound." The natural wealth and commercial advantages of the
Sound region were quickly recognized, and the cause of the activity
prevailing here is not far to seek. Vancouver, long before
civilization touched these shores, spoke of it in terms of unstinted
praise. He was sent out by the British government with the principal
object in view of "acquiring accurate knowledge as to the nature and
extent of any water communication which may tend in any considerable
degree to facilitate an intercourse for the purposes of commerce
between the northwest coast and the country on the opposite side of
the continent," vague traditions having long been current concerning a
strait supposed to unite the two oceans. Vancouver reported that he
found the coast from San Francisco to Oregon and beyond to present a
nearly straight solid barrier to the sea, without openings, and we may
well guess the joy of the old navigator on the discovery of these
waters after so long and barren a search to the southward.
His descriptions of the scenery--Mounts Baker, Rainier, St. Helen's,
etc.--were as enthusiastic as those of the most eager landscape lover
of the present day, when scenery is in fashion. He says in one place:
"To describe the beauties of this region will, on some future
occasion, be a very grateful task for the pen of a skillful
panegyrist. The serenity of the climate, the immeasurable pleasing
landscapes, and the abundant fertility that unassisted nature puts
forth, require only to be enriched by the industry of man with
villages, mansions, cottages, and other buildings, to render it the
most lovely country that can be imagined. The labor of the inhabitants
would be amply rewarded in the bounties which nature seems ready to
bestow on cultivation." "A picture so pleasing could not fail to call
to our remembrance certain delightful and beloved situations in old
England." So warm, indeed, were the praises he sung that his
statements were received in England with a good deal of hesitation.
But they were amply corroborated by Wilkes and others who followed
many years later. "Nothing," says Wilkes, "can exceed the beauty of
these waters and their safety. Not a shoal exists in the Straits of
Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound or Hood's Canal, that can
in any way interrupt their navigation by a 74-gun ship. I venture
nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses
waters like these." And again, quoting from the United States Coast
Survey, "For depth of water, boldness of approaches, freedom from
hidden dangers, and the immeasurable sea of gigantic timber coming
down to the very shores, these waters are unsurpassed,
unapproachable."
The Sound region has a fine, fresh, clean climate, well washed both
winter and summer with copious rains and swept with winds and clouds
that come from the mountains and the sea. Every hidden nook in the
depths of the woods is searched and refreshed, leaving no stagnant
air; beaver meadows and lake basin and low and willowy bogs, all are
kept wholesome and sweet the year round. Cloud and sunshine alternate
in bracing, cheering succession, and health and abundance follow the
storms. The outer sea margin is sublimely dashed and drenched with
ocean brine, the spicy scud sweeping at times far inland over the
bending woods, the giant trees waving and chanting in hearty accord as
if surely enjoying it all.
Heavy, long-continued rains occur in the winter months. Then every
leaf, bathed and brightened, rejoices. Filtering drops and currents
through all the shaggy undergrowth of the woods go with tribute to the
small streams, and these again to the larger. The rivers swell, but
there are no devastating floods; for the thick felt of roots and
mosses holds the abounding waters in check, stored in a thousand
thousand fountains. Neither are there any violent hurricanes here, At
least, I never have heard of any, nor have I come upon their tracks.
Most of the streams are clear and cool always, for their waters are
filtered through deep beds of mosses, and flow beneath shadows all the
way to the sea. Only the streams from the glaciers are turbid and
muddy. On the slopes of the mountains where they rush from their
crystal caves, they carry not only small particles of rock-mud, worn
off the sides and bottoms of the channels of the glaciers, but grains
of sand and pebbles and large boulders tons in weight, rolling them
forward on their way rumbling and bumping to their appointed places at
the foot of steep slopes, to be built into rough bars and beds, while
the smaller material is carried farther and outspread in flats,
perhaps for coming wheat fields and gardens, the finest of it going
out to sea, floating on the tides for weeks and months ere it finds
rest on the bottom.
Snow seldom falls to any great depth on the lowlands, though it comes
in glorious abundance on the mountains. And only on the mountains
does the temperature fall much below the freezing point. In the
warmest summer weather a temperature of eighty-five degrees or even
more occasionally is reached, but not for long at a time, as such heat
is speedily followed by a breeze from the sea. The most charming days
here are days of perfect calm, when all the winds are holding their
breath and not a leaf stirs. The surface of the Sound shines like a
silver mirror over all its vast extent, reflecting its lovely islands
and shores; and long sheets of spangles flash and dance in the wake of
every swimming seabird and boat. The sun, looking down on the
tranquil landscape, seems conscious of the presence of every living
thing on which he is pouring his blessings, while they in turn, with
perhaps the exception of man, seem conscious of the sun as a
benevolent father and stand hushed and waiting.
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 (Pseudotsuga Douglasii), named in
honor of David Douglas, an enthusiastic botanical explorer of early
Hudson's Bay times. It is not only a very large tree but a very
beautiful one, with lively bright-green drooping foliage, handsome
pendent cones, and a shaft exquisitely straight and regular. For so
large a tree it is astonishing how many find nourishment and space to
grow on any given area. The magnificent shafts push their spires into
the sky close together with as regular a growth as that of a well-tilled field of grain. And no ground has been better tilled for the
growth of trees than that on which these forests are growing. For it
has been thoroughly ploughed and rolled by the mighty glaciers from
the mountains, and sifted and mellowed and outspread in beds hundreds
of feet in depth by the broad streams that issued from their fronts at
the time of their recession, after they had long covered all the land.
The largest tree of this species that I have myself measured was
nearly twelve feet in diameter at a height of five feet from the
ground, and, as near as I could make out under the circumstances,
about three hundred feet in length. It stood near the head of the
Sound not far from Olympia. I have seen a few others, both near the
coast and thirty or forty miles back in the interior, that were from
eight to ten feet in diameter, measured above their bulging insteps;
and many from six to seven feet. I have heard of some that were said
to be three hundred and twenty-five feet in height and fifteen feet in
diameter, but none that I measured were so large, though it is not at
all unlikely that such colossal giants do exist where conditions of
soil and exposure are surpassingly favorable. The average size of all
the trees of this species found up to an elevation on the mountain
slopes of, say, two thousand feet above sea level, taking into account
only what may be called mature trees two hundred and fifty to five
hundred years of age, is perhaps, at a vague guess, not more than a
height of one hundred and seventy-five or two hundred feet and a
diameter of three feet; though, of course, throughout the richest
sections the size is much greater.
In proportion to its weight when dry, the timber from this tree is
perhaps stronger than that of any other conifer in the country. It is
tough and durable and admirably adapted in every way for shipbuilding,
piles, and heavy timbers in general. But its hardness and liability
to warp render it much inferior to white or sugar pine for fine work.
In the lumber markets of California it is known as "Oregon pine" and
is used almost exclusively for spars, bridge timbers, heavy planking,
and the framework of houses.
The same species extends northward in abundance through British
Columbia and southward through the coast and middle regions of Oregon
and California. It is also a common tree in the canyons and hollows
of the Wahsatch Mountains in Utah, where it is called "red pine" and
on portions of the Rocky Mountains and some of the short ranges of the
Great Basin. Along the coast of California it keeps company with the
redwood wherever it can find a favorable opening. On the western
slope of the Sierra, with the yellow pine and incense cedar, it forms
a pretty well-defined belt at a height of from three thousand to six
thousand feet above the sea, and extends into the San Gabriel and San
Bernardino Mountains in Southern California. But, though widely
distributed, it is only in these cool, moist northlands that it
reaches its finest development, tall, straight, elastic, and free from
limbs to an immense height, growing down to tide water, where ships of
the largest size may lie close alongside and load at the least
possible cost.
Growing with the Douglas we find the white spruce, or "Sitka pine," as
it is sometimes called. This also is a very beautiful and majestic
tree, frequently attaining a height of two hundred feet or more and a
diameter of five or six feet. It is very abundant in southeastern
Alaska, forming the greater part of the best forests there. Here it
is found mostly around the sides of beaver-dam and other meadows and
on the borders of the streams, especially where the ground is low.
One tree that I saw felled at the head of the Hop-Ranch meadows on the
upper Snoqualmie River, though far from being the largest I have seen,
measured a hundred and eighty feet in length and four and a half in
diameter, and was two hundred and fifty-seven years of age.
In habit and general appearance it resembles the Douglas spruce, but
it is somewhat less slender and the needles grow close together all
around the branchlets and are so stiff and sharp-pointed on the
younger branches that they cannot well be handled without gloves. The
timber is tough, close-grained, white, and looks more like pine than
any other of the spruces. It splits freely, makes excellent shingles
and in general use in house-building takes the place of pine. I have
seen logs of this species a hundred feet long and two feet in diameter
at the upper end. It was named in honor of the old Scotch botanist
Archibald Menzies, who came to this coast with Vancouver in 1792[23].
The beautiful hemlock spruce with its warm yellow-green foliage is
also common in some portions of these woods. It is tall and slender
and exceedingly graceful in habit before old age comes on, but the
timber is inferior and is seldom used for any other than the roughest
work, such as wharf-building.
The Western arbor-vitae[24] (Thuja gigantea) grows to a size truly
gigantic on low rich ground. Specimens ten feet in diameter and a
hundred and forty feet high are not at all rare. Some that I have
heard of are said to be fifteen and even eighteen feet thick. Clad in
rich, glossy plumes, with gray lichens covering their smooth, tapering
boles, perfect trees of this species are truly noble objects and well
worthy the place they hold in these glorious forests. It is of this
tree that the Indians make their fine canoes.
Of the other conifers that are so happy as to have place here, there
are three firs, three or four pines, two cypresses, a yew, and another
spruce, the Abies Pattoniana[25]. This last is perhaps the most
beautiful of all the spruces, but, being comparatively small and
growing only far back on the mountains, it receives but little
attention from most people. Nor is there room in a work like this for
anything like a complete description of it, or of the others I have
just mentioned. Of the three firs, one (Picea grandis)[26], grows
near the coast and is one of the largest trees in the forest,
sometimes attaining a height of two hundred and fifty feet. The
timber, however, is inferior in quality and not much sought after
while so much that is better is within reach. One of the others (P.
amabilis, var. nobilis) forms magnificent forests by itself at a
height of about three thousand to four thousand feet above the sea.
The rich plushy, plumelike branches grow in regular whorls around the
trunk, and on the topmost whorls, standing erect, are the large,
beautiful cones. This is far the most beautiful of all the firs. In
the Sierra Nevada it forms a considerable portion of the main forest
belt on the western slope, and it is there that it reaches its
greatest size and greatest beauty. The third species (P. subalpina)
forms, together with Abies Pattoniana, the upper edge of the
timberline on the portion of the Cascades opposite the Sound. A
thousand feet below the extreme limit of tree growth it occurs in
beautiful groups amid parklike openings where flowers grow in
extravagant profusion.
The pines are nowhere abundant in the State. The largest, the yellow
pine (Pinus ponderosa), occurs here and there on margins of dry
gravelly prairies, and only in such situations have I yet seen it in
this State. The others (P. monticola and P. contorta) are mostly
restricted to the upper slopes of the mountains, and though the former
of these two attains a good size and makes excellent lumber, it is
mostly beyond reach at present and is not abundant. One of the
cypresses (Cupressus Lawsoniana)[27] grows near the coast and is a
fine large tree, clothed like the arbor-vitae in a glorious wealth of
flat, feathery branches. The other is found here and there well up
toward the edge of the timberline. This is the fine Alaska cedar (C.
Nootkatensis), the lumber from which is noted for its durability,
fineness of grain, and beautiful yellow color, and for its fragrance,
which resembles that of sandalwood. The Alaska Indians make their
canoe paddles of it and weave matting and coarse cloth from the
fibrous brown bark.
Among the different kinds of hardwood trees are the oak, maple,
madrona, birch, alder, and wild apple, while large cottonwoods are
common along the rivers and shores of the numerous lakes.
The most striking of these to the traveler is the Menzies arbutus, or
madrona, as it is popularly called in California. Its curious red and
yellow bark, large thick glossy leaves, and panicles of waxy-looking
greenish-white urn-shaped flowers render it very conspicuous. On the
boles of the younger trees and on all the branches, the bark is so
smooth and seamless that it does not appear as bark at all, but rather
the naked wood. The whole tree, with the exception of the larger part
of the trunk, looks as though it had been thoroughly peeled. It is
found sparsely scattered along the shores of the Sound and back in the
forests also on open margins, where the soil is not too wet, and
extends up the coast on Vancouver Island beyond Nanaimo. But in no
part of the State does it reach anything like the size and beauty of
proportions that it attains in California, few trees here being more
than ten or twelve inches in diameter and thirty feet high. It is,
however, a very remarkable-looking object, standing there like some
lost or runaway native of the tropics, naked and painted, beside that
dark mossy ocean of northland conifers. Not even a palm tree would
seem more out of place here.
The oaks, so far as my observation has reached, seem to be most
abundant and to grow largest on the islands of the San Juan and
Whidbey Archipelago. One of the three species of maples that I have
seen is only a bush that makes tangles on the banks of the rivers. Of
the other two one is a small tree, crooked and moss-grown, holding out
its leaves to catch the light that filters down through the close-set
spires of the great spruces. It grows almost everywhere throughout
the entire extent of the forest until the higher slopes of the
mountains are reached, and produces a very picturesque and delightful
effect; relieving the bareness of the great shafts of the evergreens,
without being close enough in its growth to hide them wholly, or to
cover the bright mossy carpet that is spread beneath all the dense
parts of the woods.
The other species is also very picturesque and at the same time very
large, the largest tree of its kind that I have ever seen anywhere.
Not even in the great maple woods of Canada have I seen trees either
as large or with so much striking, picturesque character. It is
widely distributed throughout western Washington, but is never found
scattered among the conifers in the dense woods. It keeps together
mostly in magnificent groves by itself on the damp levels along the
banks of streams or lakes where the ground is subject to overflow. In
such situations it attains a height of seventy-five to a hundred feet
and a diameter of four to eight feet. The trunk sends out large limbs
toward its neighbors, laden with long drooping mosses beneath and rows
of ferns on their upper surfaces, thus making a grand series of richly
ornamented interlacing arches, with the leaves laid thick overhead,
rendering the underwood spaces delightfully cool and open. Never have
I seen a finer forest ceiling or a more picturesque one, while the
floor, covered with tall ferns and rubus and thrown into hillocks by
the bulging roots, matches it well. The largest of these maple groves
that I have yet found is on the right bank of the Snoqualmie River,
about a mile above the falls. The whole country hereabouts is
picturesque, and interesting in many ways, and well worthy a visit by
tourists passing through the Sound region, since it is now accessible
by rail from Seattle.
Looking now at the forests in a comprehensive way, we find in passing
through them again and again from the shores of the Sound to their
upper limits, that some portions are much older than others, the trees
much larger, and the ground beneath them strewn with immense trunks in
every stage of decay, representing several generations of growth,
everything about them giving the impression that these are indeed the
"forests primeval," while in the younger portions, where the elevation
of the ground is the same as to the sea level and the species of trees
are the same as well as the quality of the soil, apart from the
moisture which it holds, the trees seem to be and are mostly of the
same age, perhaps from one hundred to two or three hundred years, with
no gray-bearded, venerable patriarchs--forming tall, majestic woods
without any grandfathers.
When we examine the ground we find that it is as free from those
mounds of brown crumbling wood and mossy ancient fragments as are the
growing trees from very old ones. Then perchance, we come upon a
section farther up the slopes towards the mountains that has no trees
more than fifty years old, or even fifteen or twenty years old. These
last show plainly enough that they have been devastated by fire, as
the black, melancholy monuments rising here and there above the young
growth bear witness. Then, with this fiery, suggestive testimony, on
examining those section whose trees are a hundred years old or two
hundred, we find the same fire records, though heavily veiled with
mosses and lichens, showing that a century or two ago the forests that
stood there had been swept away in some tremendous fire at a time when
rare conditions of drouth made their burning possible. Then, the bare
ground sprinkled with the winged seed from the edges of the burned
district, a new forest sprang up, nearly every tree starting at the
same time or within a few years, thus producing the uniformity of size
we find in such places; while, on the other hand, in those sections of
ancient aspect containing very old trees both standing and fallen, we
find no traces of fire, nor from the extreme dampness of the ground
can we see any possibility of fire ever running there.
Fire, then, is the great governing agent in forest distribution and to
a great extent also in the conditions of forest growth. Where fertile
lands are very wet one half the year and very dry the other, there can
be no forests at all. Where the ground is damp, with drouth occurring
only at intervals of centuries, fine forests may be found, other
conditions being favorable. But it is only where fires never run that
truly ancient forests of pitchy coniferous trees may exist. When the
Washington forests are seen from the deck of a ship out in the middle
of the sound, or even from the top of some high, commanding mountain,
the woods seem everywhere perfectly solid. And so in fact they are in
general found to be. The largest openings are those of the lakes and
prairies, the smaller of beaver meadows, bogs, and the rivers; none of
them large enough to make a distinct mark in comprehensive views.
Of the lakes there are said to be some thirty in King's County alone;
the largest, Lake Washington, being twenty-six miles long and four
miles wide. Another, which enjoys the duckish name of Lake Squak, is
about ten miles long. Both are pure and beautiful, lying imbedded in
the green wilderness. The rivers are numerous and are but little
affected by the weather, flowing with deep, steady currents the year
round. They are short, however, none of them drawing their sources
from beyond the Cascade Range. Some are navigable for small steamers
on their lower courses, but the openings they make in the woods are
very narrow, the tall trees on their banks leaning over in some
places, making fine shady tunnels.
The largest of the prairies that I have seen lies to the south of
Tacoma on the line of the Portland and Tacoma Railroad. The ground is
dry and gravelly, a deposit of water-washed cobbles and pebbles
derived from moraines--conditions which readily explain the absence of
trees here and on other prairies adjacent to Yelm. Berries grow in
lavish abundance, enough for man and beast with thousands of tons to
spare. The woods are full of them, especially about the borders of
the waters and meadows where the sunshine may enter. Nowhere in the
north does Nature set a more bountiful table. There are huckleberries
of many species, red, blue, and black, some of them growing close to
the ground, others on bushes eight to ten feet high; also salal
berries, growing on a low, weak-stemmed bush, a species of gaultheria,
seldom more than a foot or two high. This has pale pea-green glossy
leaves two or three inches long and half an inch wide and beautiful
pink flowers, urn-shaped, that make a fine, rich show. The berries
are black when ripe, are extremely abundant, and, with the
huckleberries, form an important part of the food of the Indians, who
beat them into paste, dry them, and store them away for winter use, to
be eaten with their oily fish. The salmon-berry also is very
plentiful, growing in dense prickly tangles. The flowers are as large
as wild roses and of the same color, and the berries measure nearly an
inch in diameter. Besides these there are gooseberries, currants,
raspberries, blackberries, and, in some favored spots, strawberries.
The mass of the underbrush of the woods is made up in great part of
these berry-bearing bushes. Together with white-flowered spiraea
twenty feet high, hazel, dogwood, wild rose, honeysuckle,
symphoricarpus, etc. But in the depths of the woods, where little
sunshine can reach the ground, there is but little underbrush of any
kind, only a very light growth of huckleberry and rubus and young
maples in most places. The difficulties encountered by the explorer
in penetrating the wilderness are presented mostly by the streams and
bogs, with their tangled margins, and the fallen timber and thick
carpet of moss covering all the ground.
Notwithstanding the tremendous energy displayed in lumbering and the
grand scale on which it is being carried on, and the number of
settlers pushing into every opening in search of farmlands, the woods
of Washington are still almost entirely virgin and wild, without trace
of human touch, savage or civilized. Indians, no doubt, have ascended
most of the rivers on their way to the mountains to hunt the wild
sheep and goat to obtain wool for their clothing, but with food in
abundance on the coast they had little to tempt them into the
wilderness, and the monuments they have left in it are scarcely more
conspicuous than those of squirrels and bears; far less so than those
of the beavers, which in damming the streams have made clearings and
meadows which will continue to mark the landscape for centuries. Nor
is there much in these woods to tempt the farmer or cattle raiser. A
few settlers established homes on the prairies or open borders of the
woods and in the valleys of the Chehalis and Cowlitz before the gold
days of California. Most of the early immigrants from the Eastern
States, however, settled in the fertile and open Willamette Valley or
Oregon. Even now, when the search for land is so keen, with the
exception of the bottom lands around the Sound and on the lower
reaches of the rivers, there are comparatively few spots of
cultivation in western Washington. On every meadow or opening of any
kind some one will be found keeping cattle, planting hop vines, or
raising hay, vegetables, and patches of grain. All the large spaces
available, even back near the summits of the Cascade Mountains, were
occupied long ago. The newcomers, building their cabins where the
beavers once built theirs, keep a few cows and industriously seek to
enlarge their small meadow patches by chopping, girdling, and burning
the edge of the encircling forest, gnawing like beavers, and
scratching for a living among the blackened stumps and logs, regarding
the trees as their greatest enemies--a sort of larger pernicious weed
immensely difficult to get rid of.
But all these are as yet mere spots, making no visible scar in the
distance and leaving the grand stretches of the forest as wild as they
were before the discovery of the continent. For many years the axe
has been busy around the shores of the Sound and ships have been
falling in perpetual storm like flakes of snow. The best of the
timber has been cut for a distance of eight or ten miles from the
water and to a much greater distance along the streams deep enough to
float the logs. Railroads, too, have been built to fetch in the logs
from the best bodies of timber otherwise inaccessible except at great
cost. None of the ground, however, has been completely denuded. Most
of the young trees have been left, together with the hemlocks and
other trees undesirable in kind or in some way defective, so that the
neighboring trees appear to have closed over the gaps make by the
removal of the larger and better ones, maintaining the general
continuity of the forest and leaving no sign on the sylvan sea, at
least as seen from a distance.
In felling the trees they cut them off usually at a height of six to
twelve feet above the ground, so as to avoid cutting through the
swollen base, where the diameter is so much greater. In order to
reach this height the chopper cuts a notch about two inches wide and
three or four deep and drives a board into it, on which he stands
while at work. In case the first notch, cut as high as he can reach,
is not high enough, he stands on the board that has been driven into
the first notch and cuts another. Thus the axeman may often be seen
at work standing eight or ten feet above the ground. If the tree is
so large that with his long-handled axe the chopper is unable to reach
to the farther side of it, then a second chopper is set to work, each
cutting halfway across. And when the tree is about to fall, warned by
the faint crackling of the strained fibers, they jump to the ground,
and stand back out of danger from flying limbs, while the noble giant
that had stood erect in glorious strength and beauty century after
century, bows low at last and with gasp and groan and booming throb
falls to earth.
Then with long saws the trees are cut into logs of the required
length, peeled, loaded upon wagons capable of carrying a weight of
eight or ten tons, hauled by a long string of oxen to the nearest
available stream or railroad, and floated or carried to the Sound.
There the logs are gathered into booms and towed by steamers to the
mills, where workmen with steel spikes in their boots leap lightly
with easy poise from one to another and by means of long pike poles
push them apart and, selecting such as are at the time required, push
them to the foot of a chute and drive dogs into the ends, when they
are speedily hauled in by the mill machinery alongside the saw
carriage and placed and fixed in position. Then with sounds of greedy
hissing and growling they are rushed back and forth like enormous
shuttles, and in an incredibly short time they are lumber and are
aboard the ships lying at the mill wharves.
Many of the long, slender boles so abundant in these woods are saved
for spars, and so excellent is their quality that they are in demand
in almost every shipyard of the world. Thus these trees, felled and
stripped of their leaves and branches, are raised again, transplanted
and set firmly erect, given roots of iron and a new foliage of
flapping canvas, and sent to sea. On they speed in glad, free motion,
cheerily waving over the blue, heaving water, responsive to the same
winds that rocked them when they stood at home in the woods. After
standing in one place all their lives they now, like sight-seeing
tourists, go round the world, meeting many a relative from the old
home forest, some like themselves, wandering free, clad in broad
canvas foliage, others planted head downward in mud, holding wharf
platforms aloft to receive the wares of all nations.
The mills of Puget sound and those of the redwood region of California
are said to be the largest and most effective lumber-makers in the
world. Tacoma alone claims to have eleven sawmills, and Seattle about
as many; while at many other points on the Sound, where the conditions
are particularly favorable, there are immense lumbering
establishments, as at Ports Blakely, Madison, Discovery, Gamble,
Ludlow, etc., with a capacity all together of over three million feet
a day. Nevertheless, the observer coming up the Sound sees not nor
hears anything of this fierce storm of steel that is devouring the
forests, save perhaps the shriek of some whistle or the columns of
smoke that mark the position of the mills. All else seems as serene
and unscathed as the silent watching mountains.
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
obliging and sincere, full of knowledge concerning the bark and
sapwood and heartwood of the trees they cut, and how to fell them
without unnecessary breakage, on ground where they may be most
advantageously sawed into logs and loaded for removal. The work is
hard, and all of the older men have a tired, somewhat haggard
appearance. Their faces are doubtful in color, neither sickly nor
quite healthy-looking, and seamed with deep wrinkles like the bark of
the spruces, but with no trace of anxiety. Their clothing is full of
rosin and never wears out. A little of everything in the woods is
stuck fast to these loggers, and their trousers grow constantly
thicker with age. In all their movements and gestures they are heavy
and deliberate like the trees above them, and they walk with a
swaying, rocking gait altogether free from quick, jerky fussiness, for
chopping and log rolling have quenched all that. They are also slow
of speech, as if partly out of breath, and when one tries to draw them
out on some subject away from logs, all the fresh, leafy, outreaching
branches of the mind seem to have been withered and killed with
fatigue, leaving their lives little more than dry lumber. Many a tree
have these old axemen felled, but, round-shouldered and stooping, they
too are beginning to lean over. Many of their companions are already
beneath the moss, and among those that we see at work some are now
dead at the top (bald), leafless, so to speak, and tottering to their
fall.
A very different man, seen now and then at long intervals but usually
invisible, is the free roamer of the wilderness--hunter, prospector,
explorer, seeking he knows not what. Lithe and sinewy, he walks
erect, making his way with the skill of wild animals, all his senses
in action, watchful and alert, looking keenly at everything in sight,
his imagination well nourished in the wealth of the wilderness, coming
into contact with free nature in a thousand forms, drinking at the
fountains of things, responsive to wild influences, as trees to the
winds. Well he knows the wild animals his neighbors, what fishes are
in the streams, what birds in the forests, and where food may be
found. Hungry at times and weary, he has corresponding enjoyment in
eating and resting, and all the wilderness is home. Some of these
rare, happy rovers die alone among the leaves. Others half settle
down and change in part into farmers; each, making choice of some
fertile spot where the landscape attracts him, builds a small cabin,
where, with few wants to supply from garden or field, he hunts and
farms in turn, going perhaps once a year to the settlements, until
night begins to draw near, and, like forest shadows, thickens into
darkness and his day is done. In these Washington wilds, living
alone, all sorts of men may perchance be found--poets, philosophers,
and even full-blown transcendentalists, though you may go far to find
them.
Indians are seldom to be met with away from the Sound, excepting about
the few outlying hop ranches, to which they resort in great numbers
during the picking season. Nor in your walks in the woods will you be
likely to see many of the wild animals, however far you may go, with
the exception of the Douglas squirrel and the mountain goat. The
squirrel is everywhere, and the goat you can hardly fail to find if
you climb any of the high mountains. The deer, once very abundant,
may still be found on the islands and along the shores of the Sound,
but the large gray wolves render their existence next to impossible at
any considerable distance back in the woods of the mainland, as they
can easily run them down unless they are near enough to the coast to
make their escape by plunging into the water and swimming to the
islands off shore. The elk and perhaps also the moose still exist in
the most remote and inaccessible solitudes of the forest, but their
numbers have been greatly reduced of late, and even the most
experienced hunters have difficulty in finding them. Of bears there
are two species, the black and the large brown, the former by far the
more common of the two. On the shaggy bottom-lands where berries are
plentiful, and along the rivers while salmon are going up to spawn,
the black bear may be found, fat and at home. Many are killed every
year, both for their flesh and skins. The large brown species likes
higher and opener ground. He is a dangerous animal, a near relative
of the famous grizzly, and wise hunters are very fond of letting him
alone.
The towns of Puget Sound are of a very lively, progressive, and
aspiring kind, fortunately with abundance of substance about them to
warrant their ambition and make them grow. Like young sapling
sequoias, they are sending out their roots far and near for
nourishment, counting confidently on longevity and grandeur of
stature. Seattle and Tacoma are at present far in the lead of all
others in the race for supremacy, and these two are keen, active
rivals, to all appearances well matched. Tacoma occupies near the
head of the Sound a site of great natural beauty. It is the terminus
of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and calls itself the "City of
Destiny." Seattle is also charmingly located about twenty miles down
the Sound from Tacoma, on Elliott Bay. It is the terminus of the
Seattle, Lake Shore, and Eastern Railroad, now in process of
construction, and calls itself the "Queen City of the Sound" and the
"Metropolis of Washington." What the populations of these towns
number I am not able to say with anything like exactness. They are
probably about the same size and they each claim to have about twenty
thousand people; but their figures are so rapidly changing, and so
often mixed up with counts that refer to the future that exact
measurements of either of these places are about as hard to obtain as
measurements of the clouds of a growing storm. Their edges run back
for miles into the woods among the trees and stumps and brush which
hide a good many of the houses and the stakes which mark the lots; so
that, without being as yet very large towns, they seem to fade away
into the distance.
But, though young and loose-jointed, they are fast taking on the forms
and manners of old cities, putting on airs, as some would say, like
boys in haste to be men. They are already towns "with all modern
improvements, first-class in every particular," as is said of hotels.
They have electric motors and lights, paved broadways and boulevards,
substantial business blocks, schools, churches, factories, and
foundries. The lusty, titanic clang of boiler making may be heard
there, and plenty of the languid music of pianos mingling with the
babel noises of commerce carried on in a hundred tongues. The main
streets are crowded with bright, wide-awake lawyers, ministers,
merchants, agents for everything under the sun; ox drivers and loggers
in stiff, gummy overalls; back-slanting dudes, well-tailored and
shiny; and fashions and bonnets of every feather and color bloom gayly
in the noisy throng and advertise London and Paris. Vigorous life and
strife are to be seen everywhere. The spirit of progress is in the
air. Still it is hard to realize how much good work is being done
here of a kind that makes for civilization--the enthusiastic, exulting
energy displayed in the building of new towns, railroads, and mills,
in the opening of mines of coal and iron and the development of
natural resources in general. To many, especially in the Atlantic
States, Washington is hardly known at all. It is regarded as being
yet a far wild west--a dim, nebulous expanse of woods--by those who do
not know that railroads and steamers have brought the country out of
the wilderness and abolished the old distances. It is now near to all
the world and is in possession of a share of the best of all that
civilization has to offer, while on some of the lines of advancement
it is at the front.
Notwithstanding the sharp rivalry between different sections and
towns, the leading men mostly pull together for the general good and
glory,--building, buying, borrowing, to push the country to its place;
keeping arithmetic busy in counting population present and to come,
ships, towns, factories, tons of coal and iron, feet of lumber, miles
of railroad,--Americans, Scandinavians, Irish, Scotch, and Germans
being joined together in the white heat of work like religious crowds
in time of revival who have forgotten sectarianism. It is a fine
thing to see people in hot earnest about anything; therefore, however
extravagant and high the brag ascending from Puget Sound, in most
cases it is likely to appear pardonable and more.
Seattle was named after an old Indian chief who lived in this part of
the Sound. He was very proud of the honor and lived long enough to
lead his grandchildren about the streets. The greater part of the
lower business portion of the town, including a long stretch of
wharves and warehouses built on piles, was destroyed by fire a few
months ago[28], with immense loss. The people, however, are in no
wise discouraged, and ere long the loss will be gain, inasmuch as a
better class of buildings, chiefly of brick, are being erected in
place of the inflammable wooden ones, which, with comparatively few
exceptions, were built of pitchy spruce.
With their own scenery so glorious ever on show, one would at first
thought suppose that these happy Puget Sound people would never go
sightseeing from home like less favored mortals. But they do all the
same. Some go boating on the Sound or on the lakes and rivers, or
with their families make excursions at small cost on the steamers.
Others will take the train to the Franklin and Newcastle or Carbon
River coal mines for the sake of the thirty- or forty-mile rides
through the woods, and a look into the black depths of the underworld.
Others again take the steamers for Victoria, Fraser River, or
Vancouver, the new ambitious town at the terminus of the Canadian
Railroad, thus getting views of the outer world in a near foreign
country. One of the regular summer resorts of this region where
people go for fishing, hunting, and the healing of diseases, is the
Green River Hot Springs, in the Cascade Mountains, sixty-one miles
east of Tacoma, on the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Green
River is a small rocky stream with picturesque banks, and derives its
name from the beautiful pale-green hue of its waters.
Among the most interesting of all the summer rest and pleasure places
is the famous "Hop Ranch" on the upper Snoqualmie River, thirty or
forty miles eastward from Seattle. Here the dense forest opens,
allowing fine free views of the adjacent mountains from a long stretch
of ground which is half meadow, half prairie, level and fertile, and
beautifully diversified with outstanding groves of spruces and alders
and rich flowery fringes of spiraea and wild roses, the river
meandering deep and tranquil through the midst of it. On the portions
most easily cleared some three hundred acres of hop vines have been
planted and are now in full bearing, yielding, it is said, at the rate
of about a ton of hops to the acre. They are a beautiful crop, these
vines of the north, pillars of verdure in regular rows, seven feet
apart and eight or ten feet in height; the long, vigorous shoots
sweeping round in fine, wild freedom, and the light, leafy cones
hanging in loose, handsome clusters.
Perhaps enough of hops might be raised in Washington for the wants of
all the world, but it would be impossible to find pickers to handle
the crop. Most of the picking is done by Indians, and to this fine,
clean, profitable work they come in great numbers in their canoes, old
and young, of many different tribes, bringing wives and children and
household goods, in some cases from a distance of five or six hundred
miles, even from far Alaska. Then they too grow rich and spend their
money on red cloth and trinkets. About a thousand Indians are
required as pickers at the Snoqualmie ranch alone, and a lively and
merry picture they make in the field, arrayed in bright, showy
calicoes, lowering the rustling vine pillars with incessant song-singing and fun. Still more striking are their queer camps on the
edges of the fields or over on the river bank, with the firelight
shining on their wild jolly faces. But woe to the ranch should fire-water get there!
But the chief attractions here are not found in the hops, but in
trout-fishing and bear-hunting, and in the two fine falls on the
river. Formerly the trip from Seattle was a hard one, over corduroy
roads; now it is reached in a few hours by rail along the shores of
Lake Washington and Lake Squak, through a fine sample section of the
forest and past the brow of the main Snoqualmie Fall. From the hotel
at the ranch village the road to the fall leads down the right bank of
the river through the magnificent maple woods I have mentioned
elsewhere, and fine views of the fall may be had on that side, both
from above and below. It is situated on the main river, where it
plunges over a sheer precipice, about two hundred and forty feet high,
in leaving the level meadows of the ancient lake basin. In a general
way it resembles the well-known Nevada Fall in Yosemite, having the
same twisted appearance at the top and the free plunge in numberless
comet-shaped masses into a deep pool seventy-five or eighty yards in
diameter. The pool is of considerable depth, as is shown by the
radiating well-beaten foam and mist, which is of a beautiful rose
color at times, of exquisite fineness of tone, and by the heavy waves
that lash the rocks in front of it.
Though to a Californian the height of this fall would not seem great,
the volume of water is heavy, and all the surroundings are delightful.
The maple forest, of itself worth a long journey, the beauty of the
river-reaches above and below, and the views down the valley afar over
the mighty forests, with all its lovely trimmings of ferns and
flowers, make this one of the most interesting falls I have ever seen.
The upper fall is about seventy-five feet high, with bouncing rapids
at head and foot, set in a romantic dell thatched with dripping mosses
and ferns and embowered in dense evergreens and blooming bushes, the
distance to it from the upper end of the meadows being about eight
miles. The road leads through majestic woods with ferns ten feet high
beneath some of the thickets, and across a gravelly plain deforested
by fire many years ago. Orange lilies are plentiful, and handsome
shining mats of the kinnikinic, sprinkled with bright scarlet berries.
From a place called "Hunt's," at the end of the wagon road, a trail
leads through lush, dripping woods (never dry) to Thuja and Mertens,
Menzies, and Douglas spruces. The ground is covered with the best
moss-work of the moist lands of the north, made up mostly of the
various species of hypnum, with some liverworts, marchantia,
jungermannia, etc., in broad sheets and bosses, where never a dust
particle floated, and where all the flowers, fresh with mist and
spray, are wetter than water lilies. The pool at the foot of the fall
is a place surpassingly lovely to look at, with the enthusiastic rush
and song of the falls, the majestic trees overhead leaning over the
brink like listeners eager to catch every word of the white refreshing
waters, the delicate maidenhairs and aspleniums with fronds outspread
gathering the rainbow sprays, and the myriads of hooded mosses, every
cup fresh and shining.
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 make hereabouts is
to Mount Rainier, to climb to the top of its icy crown. The mountain
is very high[29], fourteen thousand four hundred feet, and laden with
glaciers that are terribly roughened and interrupted by crevasses and
ice cliffs. Only good climbers should attempt to gain the summit, led
by a guide of proved nerve and endurance. A good trail has been cut
through the woods to the base of the mountain on the north; but the
summit of the mountain never has been reached from this side, though
many brave attempts have been made upon it.
Last summer I gained the summit from the south side, in a day and a
half from the timberline, without encountering any desperate obstacles
that could not in some way be passed in good weather. I was
accompanied by Keith, the artist, Professor Ingraham, and five
ambitious young climbers from Seattle. We were led by the veteran
mountaineer and guide Van Trump, of Yelm, who many years before guided
General Stevens in his memorable ascent, and later Mr. Bailey, of
Oakland. With a cumbersome abundance of campstools and blankets we
set out from Seattle, traveling by rail as far as Yelm Prairie, on the
Tacoma and Oregon road. Here we made our first camp and arranged with
Mr. Longmire, a farmer in the neighborhood, for pack and saddle
animals. The noble King Mountain was in full view from here,
glorifying the bright, sunny day with his presence, rising in godlike
majesty over the woods, with the magnificent prairie as a foreground.
The distance to the mountain from Yelm in a straight line is perhaps
fifty miles; but by the mule and yellowjacket trail we had to follow
it is a hundred miles. For, notwithstanding a portion of this trail
runs in the air, where the wasps work hardest, it is far from being an
air line as commonly understood.
By night of the third day we reached the Soda Springs on the right
bank of the Nisqually, which goes roaring by, gray with mud, gravel,
and boulders from the caves of the glaciers of Rainier, now close at
hand. The distance from the Soda Springs to the Camp of the Clouds is
about ten miles. The first part of the way lies up the Nisqually
Canyon, the bottom of which is flat in some places and the walls very
high and precipitous, like those of the Yosemite Valley. The upper
part of the canyon is still occupied by one of the Nisqually glaciers,
from which this branch of the river draws its source, issuing from a
cave in the gray, rock-strewn snout. About a mile below the glacier
we had to ford the river, which caused some anxiety, for the current
is very rapid and carried forward large boulders as well as lighter
material, while its savage roar is bewildering.
At this point we left the canyon, climbing out of it by a steep zigzag
up the old lateral moraine of the glacier, which was deposited when
the present glacier flowed past at this height, and is about eight
hundred feet high. It is now covered with a superb growth of Picea
amabilis[30]; so also is the corresponding portion of the right
lateral. From the top of the moraine, still ascending, we passed for
a mile or two through a forest of mixed growth, mainly silver fir,
Patton spruce, and mountain pine, and then came to the charming park
region, at an elevation of about five thousand feet above sea level.
Here the vast continuous woods at length begin to give way under the
dominion of climate, though still at this height retaining their
beauty and giving no sign of stress of storm, sweeping upward in belts
of varying width, composed mainly of one species of fir, sharp and
spiry in form, leaving smooth, spacious parks, with here and there
separate groups of trees standing out in the midst of the openings
like islands in a lake. Every one of these parks, great and small, is
a garden filled knee-deep with fresh, lovely flowers of every hue, the
most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine
gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings.
We arrived at the Cloud Camp at noon, but no clouds were in sight,
save a few gauzy ornamental wreaths adrift in the sunshine. Out of
the forest at last there stood the mountain, wholly unveiled, awful in
bulk and majesty, filling all the view like a separate, new-born
world, yet withal so fine and so beautiful it might well fire the
dullest observer to desperate enthusiasm. Long we gazed in silent
admiration, buried in tall daisies and anemones by the side of a
snowbank. Higher we could not go with the animals and find food for
them and wood for our own campfires, for just beyond this lies the
region of ice, with only here and there an open spot on the ridges in
the midst of the ice, with dwarf alpine plants, such as saxifrages and
drabas, which reach far up between the glaciers, and low mats of the
beautiful bryanthus, while back of us were the gardens and abundance
of everything that heart could wish. Here we lay all the afternoon,
considering the lilies and the lines of the mountains with reference
to a way to the summit.
At noon next day we left camp and began our long climb. We were in
light marching order, save one who pluckily determined to carry his
camera to the summit. At night, after a long easy climb over wide and
smooth fields of ice, we reached a narrow ridge, at an elevation of
about ten thousand feet above the sea, on the divide between the
glaciers of the Nisqually and the Cowlitz. Here we lay as best we
could, waiting for another day, without fire of course, as we were now
many miles beyond the timberline and without much to cover us. After
eating a little hardtack, each of us leveled a spot to lie on among
lava-blocks and cinders. The night was cold, and the wind coming down
upon us in stormy surges drove gritty ashes and fragments of pumice
about our ears while chilling to the bone. Very short and shallow was
our sleep that night; but day dawned at last, early rising was easy,
and there was nothing about breakfast to cause any delay. About four
o'clock we were off, and climbing began in earnest. We followed up
the ridge on which we had spent the night, now along its crest, now on
either side, or on the ice leaning against it, until we came to where
it becomes massive and precipitous. Then we were compelled to crawl
along a seam or narrow shelf, on its face, which we traced to its
termination in the base of the great ice cap. From this point all the
climbing was over ice, which was here desperately steep but
fortunately was at the same time carved into innumerable spikes and
pillars which afforded good footholds, and we crawled cautiously on,
warm with ambition and exercise.
At length, after gaining the upper extreme of our guiding ridge, we
found a good place to rest and prepare ourselves to scale the
dangerous upper curves of the dome. The surface almost everywhere was
bare, hard, snowless ice, extremely slippery; and, though smooth in
general, it was interrupted by a network of yawning crevasses,
outspread like lines of defense against any attempt to win the summit.
Here every one of the party took off his shoes and drove stout steel
caulks about half an inch long into them, having brought tools along
for the purpose, and not having made use of them until now so that the
points might not get dulled on the rocks ere the smooth, dangerous ice
was reached. Besides being well shod each carried an alpenstock, and
for special difficulties we had a hundred feet of rope and an axe,
Thus prepared, we stepped forth afresh, slowly groping our way through
tangled lines of crevasses, crossing on snow bridges here and there
after cautiously testing them, jumping at narrow places, or crawling
around the ends of the largest, bracing well at every point with our
alpenstocks and setting our spiked shoes squarely down on the
dangerous slopes. It was nerve-trying work, most of it, but we made
good speed nevertheless, and by noon all stood together on the utmost
summit, save one who, his strength failing for a time, came up later.
We remained on the summit nearly two hours, looking about us at the
vast maplike views, comprehending hundreds of miles of the Cascade
Range, with their black interminable forests and white volcanic cones
in glorious array reaching far into Oregon; the Sound region also, and
the great plains of eastern Washington, hazy and vague in the
distance. Clouds began to gather. Soon of all the land only the
summits of the mountains, St. Helen's, Adams, and Hood, were left in
sight, forming islands in the sky. We found two well-formed and well-preserved craters on the summit, lying close together like two plates
on a table with their rims touching. The highest point of the
mountain is located between the craters, where their edges come in
contact. Sulphurous fumes and steam issue from several vents, giving
out a sickening smell that can be detected at a considerable distance.
The unwasted condition of these craters, and, indeed, to a great
extent, of the entire mountain, would tend to show that Rainier is
still a comparatively young mountain. With the exception of the
projecting lips of the craters and the top of a subordinate summit a
short distance to the northward, the mountains is solidly capped with
ice all around; and it is this ice cap which forms the grand central
fountain whence all the twenty glaciers of Rainier flow, radiating in
every direction.
The descent was accomplished without disaster, though several of the
party had narrow escapes. One slipped and fell, and as he shot past
me seemed to be going to certain death. So steep was the ice slope no
one could move to help him, but fortunately, keeping his presence of
mine, he threw himself on his face and digging his alpenstock into the
ice, gradually retarded his motion until he came to rest. Another
broke through a slim bridge over a crevasse, but his momentum at the
time carried him against the lower edge and only his alpenstock was
lost in the abyss. Thus crippled by the loss of his staff, we had to
lower him the rest of the way down the dome by means of the rope we
carried. Falling rocks from the upper precipitous part of the ridge
were also a source of danger, as they came whizzing past in successive
volleys; but none told on us, and when we at length gained the gentle
slopes of the lower ice fields, we ran and slid at our ease, making
fast, glad time, all care and danger past, and arrived at our beloved
Cloud Camp before sundown.
We were rather weak from want of nourishment, and some suffered from
sunburn, notwithstanding the partial protection of glasses and veils;
otherwise, all were unscathed and well. The view we enjoyed from the
summit could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and grandeur; but one
feels far from home so high in the sky, so much so that one is
inclined to guess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and
the exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot
of the mountains than on their tops. Doubly happy, however, is the
man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that
shine there illumine all that lies below.
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, fertile valleys, icy mountains, and high, rolling
wind-swept plains, watered by the majestic Columbia River and its
countless branches. It is bounded on the north by Washington, on the
east by Idaho, on the south by California and Nevada, and on the west
by the Pacific Ocean. It is a grand, hearty, wholesome, foodful
wilderness and, like Washington, once a part of the Oregon Territory,
abounds in bold, far-reaching contrasts as to scenery, climate, soil,
and productions. Side by side there is drouth on a grand scale and
overflowing moisture; flinty, sharply cut lava beds, gloomy and
forbidding, and smooth, flowery lawns; cool bogs, exquisitely plushy
and soft, overshadowed by jagged crags barren as icebergs; forests
seemingly boundless and plains with no tree in sight; presenting a
wide range of conditions, but as a whole favorable to industry.
Natural wealth of an available kind abounds nearly everywhere,
inviting the farmer, the stock-raiser, the lumberman, the fisherman,
the manufacturer, and the miner, as well as the free walker in search
of knowledge and wildness. The scenery is mostly of a comfortable,
assuring kind, grand and inspiring without too much of that dreadful
overpowering sublimity and exuberance which tend to discourage effort
and cast people into inaction and superstition.
Ever since Oregon was first heard of in the romantic, adventurous,
hunting, trapping Wild West days, it seems to have been regarded as
the most attractive and promising of all the Pacific countries for
farmers. While yet the whole region as well as the way to it was
wild, ere a single road or bridge was built, undaunted by the
trackless thousand-mile distances and scalping, cattle-stealing
Indians, long trains of covered wagons began to crawl wearily
westward, crossing how many plains, rivers, ridges, and mountains,
fighting the painted savages and weariness and famine. Setting out
from the frontier of the old West in the spring as soon as the grass
would support their cattle, they pushed on up the Platte, making haste
slowly, however, that they might not be caught in the storms of winter
ere they reached the promised land. They crossed the Rocky Mountains
to Fort Hall; thence followed down the Snake River for three or four
hundred miles, their cattle limping and failing on the rough lava
plains; swimming the streams too deep to be forded, making boats out
of wagon-boxes for the women and children and goods, or where trees
could be had, lashing together logs for rafts. Thence, crossing the
Blue Mountains and the plains of the Columbia, they followed the river
to the Dalles. Here winter would be upon them, and before a wagon
road was built across the Cascade Mountains the toil-worn emigrants
would be compelled to leave their cattle and wagons until the
following summer, and, in the mean time, with the assistance of the
Hudson's Bay Company, make their way to the Willamette Valley on the
river with rafts and boats.
How strange and remote these trying times have already become! They
are now dim as if a thousand years had passed over them. Steamships
and locomotives with magical influence have well-nigh abolished the
old distances and dangers, and brought forward the New West into near
and familiar companionship with the rest of the world.
Purely wild for unnumbered centuries, a paradise of oily, salmon-fed
Indians, Oregon is now roughly settled in part and surveyed, its
rivers and mountain ranges, lakes, valleys, and plains have been
traced and mapped in a general way, civilization is beginning to take
root, towns are springing up and flourishing vigorously like a crop
adapted to the soil, and the whole kindly wilderness lies invitingly
near with all its wealth open and ripe for use.
In sailing along the Oregon coast one sees but few more signs of human
occupation than did Juan de Fuca three centuries ago. The shore
bluffs rise abruptly from the waves, forming a wall apparently
unbroken, though many short rivers from the coast range of mountains
and two from the interior have made narrow openings on their way to
the sea. At the mouths of these rivers good harbors have been
discovered for coasting vessels, which are of great importance to the
lumbermen, dairymen, and farmers of the coast region. But little or
nothing of these appear in general views, only a simple gray wall
nearly straight, green along the top, and the forest stretching back
into the mountains as far as the eye can reach.
Going ashore, we find few long reaches of sand where one may saunter,
or meadows, save the brown and purple meadows of the sea, overgrown
with slippery kelp, swashed and swirled in the restless breakers. The
abruptness of the shore allows the massive waves that have come from
far over the broad Pacific to get close to the bluffs ere they break,
and the thundering shock shakes the rocks to their foundations. No
calm comes to these shores. Even in the finest weather, when the
ships off shore are becalmed and their sails hang loose against the
mast, there is always a wreath of foam at the base of these bluffs.
The breakers are ever in bloom and crystal brine is ever in the air.
A scramble along the Oregon sea bluffs proves as richly exciting to
lovers of wild beauty as heart could wish. Here are three hundred
miles of pictures of rock and water in black and white, or gray and
white, with more or less of green and yellow, purple and blue. The
rocks, glistening in sunshine and foam, are never wholly dry--many of
them marvels of wave-sculpture and most imposing in bulk and bearing,
standing boldly forward, monuments of a thousand storms, types of
permanence, holding the homes and places of refuge of multitudes of
seafaring animals in their keeping, yet ever wasting away. How grand
the songs of the waves about them, every wave a fine, hearty storm in
itself, taking its rise on the breezy plains of the sea, perhaps
thousands of miles away, traveling with majestic, slow-heaving
deliberation, reaching the end of its journey, striking its blow,
bursting into a mass of white and pink bloom, then falling spent and
withered to give place to the next in the endless procession, thus
keeping up the glorious show and glorious song through all times and
seasons forever!
Terribly impressive as is this cliff and wave scenery when the skies
are bright and kindly sunshine makes rainbows in the spray, it is
doubly so in dark, stormy nights, when, crouching in some hollow on
the top of some jutting headland, we may gaze and listen undisturbed
in the heart of it. Perhaps now and then we may dimly see the tops of
the highest breakers, looking ghostly in the gloom; but when the water
happens to be phosphorescent, as it oftentimes is, then both the sea
and the rocks are visible, and the wild, exulting, up-dashing spray
burns, every particle of it, and is combined into one glowing mass of
white fire; while back in the woods and along the bluffs and crags of
the shore the storm wind roars, and the rain-floods, gathering
strength and coming from far and near, rush wildly down every gulch to
the sea, as if eager to join the waves in their grand, savage harmony;
deep calling unto deep in the heart of the great, dark night, making a
sight and a song unspeakable sublime and glorious.
In the pleasant weather of summer, after the rainy season is past and
only occasional refreshing showers fall, washing the sky and bringing
out the fragrance of the flowers and the evergreens, then one may
enjoy a fine, free walk all the way across the State from the sea to
the eastern boundary on the Snake River. Many a beautiful stream we
should cross in such a walk, singing through forest and meadow and
deep rocky gorge, and many a broad prairie and plain, mountain and
valley, wild garden and desert, presenting landscape beauty on a grand
scale and in a thousand forms, and new lessons without number,
delightful to learn. Oregon has three mountain ranges which run
nearly parallel with the coast, the most influential of which, in
every way, is the Cascade Range. It is about six thousand to seven
thousand feet in average height, and divides the State into two main
sections called Eastern and Western Oregon, corresponding with the
main divisions of Washington; while these are again divided, but less
perfectly, by the Blue Mountains and the Coast Range. The eastern
section is about two hundred and thirty miles wide, and is made up in
great part of the treeless plains of the Columbia, which are green and
flowery in spring, but gray, dusty, hot, and forbidding in summer.
Considerable areas, however, on these plains, as well as some of the
valleys countersunk below the general surface along the banks of the
streams, have proved fertile and produce large crops of wheat, barley,
hay, and other products.
In general views the western section seems to be covered with one
vast, evenly planted forest, with the exception of the few snow-clad
peaks of the Cascade Range, these peaks being the only points in the
landscape that rise above the timberline. Nevertheless, embosomed in
this forest and lying in the great trough between the Cascades and
coast mountains, there are some of the best bread-bearing valleys to
be found in the world. The largest of these are the Willamette,
Umpqua, and Rogue River Valleys. Inasmuch as a considerable portion
of these main valleys was treeless, or nearly so, as well as
surpassingly fertile, they were the first to attract settlers; and the
Willamette, being at once the largest and nearest to tide water, was
settled first of all, and now contains the greater portion of the
population and wealth of the State.
The climate of this section, like the corresponding portion of
Washington, is rather damp and sloppy throughout the winter months,
but the summers are bright, ripening the wheat and allowing it to be
garnered in good condition. Taken as a whole, the weather is bland
and kindly, and like the forest trees the crops and cattle grow plump
and sound in it. So also do the people; children ripen well and grow
up with limbs of good size and fiber and, unless overworked in the
woods, live to a good old age, hale and hearty.
But, like every other happy valley in the world, the sunshine of this
one is not without its shadows. Malarial fevers are not unknown in
some places, and untimely frosts and rains may at long intervals in
some measure disappoint the hopes of the husbandman. Many a tale,
good-natured or otherwise, is told concerning the overflowing
abundance of the Oregon rains. Once an English traveler, as the story
goes, went to a store to make some purchases and on leaving found that
rain was falling; therefore, not liking to get wet, he stepped back to
wait till the shower was over. Seeing no signs of clearing, he soon
became impatient and inquired of the storekeeper how long he thought
the shower would be likely to last. Going to the door and looking
wisely into the gray sky and noting the direction of the wind, the
latter replied that he thought the shower would probably last about
six months, an opinion that of course disgusted the fault-finding
Briton with the "blawsted country," though in fact it is but little if
at all wetter or cloudier than his own.
No climate seems the best for everybody. Many there be who waste
their lives in a vain search for weather with which no fault may be
found, keeping themselves and their families in constant motion, like
floating seaweeds that never strike root, yielding compliance to every
current of news concerning countries yet untried, believing that
everywhere, anywhere, the sky is fairer and the grass grows greener
than where they happen to be. Before the Oregon and California
railroad was built, the overland journey between these States across
the Siskiyou Mountains in the old-fashioned emigrant wagon was a long
and tedious one. Nevertheless, every season dissatisfied climate-seekers, too wet and too dry, might be seen plodding along through the
dust in the old " 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, and it was curious to
hear those perpetual pioneers comparing notes and seeking information
around the campfires.
"Where are you from?" some Oregonian would ask.
"The Joaquin."
"It's dry 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 while, like 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 will. I've just come from there, plumb
drownded out, and I told my wife to jump into the wagon and we should
start out and see if we couldn't find a dry day somewhere. Last fall
the hay was out and the wood was out, and the cabin leaked, and I made
up my mind to try California the first chance."
"Well, if you be a horned toad or coyote," the seeker of moisture
would reply, "then maybe you can stand it. Just keep right on by the
Alabama Settlement to Tulare and you can have my place on Big Dry
Creek and welcome. You'll be drowned there mighty seldom. The wagon
spokes and tires will rattle and tell you when you come to it."
"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 Willamette Falls, and I told him:
Young man, just wait a little and you'll find falls enough without
going to Oregon City after them. The whole dog-gone Noah's flood of a
country will 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 eastern Oregon and Washington on the upper Columbia
plains is dry enough and dusty enough more than half the year. The
truth is, most of these wanderers enjoy the freedom of gypsy life and
seek not homes but camps. Having crossed the plains and reached the
ocean, they can find no farther west within reach of wagons, and are
therefore compelled now to go north and south between Mexico and
Alaska, always glad to find an excuse for moving, stopping a few
months or weeks here and there, the time being measured by the size of
the camp-meadow, conditions of the grass, game, and other indications.
Even their so-called settlements of a year or two, when they take up
land and build cabins, are only another kind of camp, in no common
sense homes. Never a tree is planted, nor do they plant themselves,
but like good soldiers in time of war are ever ready to march. Their
journey of life is indeed a journey with very matter-of-fact thorns in
the way, though not wholly wanting in compensation.
One of the most influential of the motives that brought the early
settlers to these shores, apart from that natural instinct to scatter
and multiply which urges even sober salmon to climb the Rocky
Mountains, was their desire to find a country at once fertile and
winterless, where their flocks and herds could find pasture all the
year, thus doing away with the long and tiresome period of haying and
feeding necessary in the eastern and old western States and
Territories. Cheap land and good land there was in abundance in
Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa; but there the labor of
providing for animals of the farm was very great, and much of that
labor was crowded together into a few summer months, while to keep
cool in summers and warm in the icy winters was well-nigh impossible
to poor farmers.
Along the coast and throughout the greater part of western Oregon in
general, snow seldom falls on the lowlands to a greater depth than a
few inches, and never lies long. Grass is green all winter. The
average temperature for the year in the Willamette Valley is about 52
degrees, the highest and lowest being about 100 degrees and 20
degrees, though occasionally a much lower temperature is reached.
The average rainfall is about fifty or fifty-five inches in the
Willamette Valley, and along the coast seventy-five inches, or even
more at some points--figures that bring many a dreary night and day to
mind, however fine the effect on the great evergreen woods and the
fields of the farmers. The rainy season begins in September or
October and lasts until April or May. Then the whole country is
solemnly soaked and poulticed with the gray, streaming clouds and
fogs, night and day, with marvelous constancy. Towards the beginning
and end of the season a good many bright days occur to break the
pouring gloom, but whole months of rain, continuous, or nearly so, are
not at all rare. Astronomers beneath these Oregon skies would have a
dull time of it. Of all the year only about one fourth of the days
are clear, while three fourths have more or less of fogs, clouds, or
rain.
The fogs occur mostly in the fall and spring. They are grand, far-reaching affairs of two kinds, the black and the white, some of the
latter being very beautiful, and the infinite delicacy and tenderness
of their touch as they linger to caress the tall evergreens is most
exquisite. On farms and highways and in the streets of towns, where
work has to be done, there is nothing picturesque or attractive in any
obvious way about the gray, serious-faced rainstorms. Mud abounds.
The rain seems dismal and heedless and gets in everybody's way. Every
face is turned from it, and it has but few friends who recognize its
boundless beneficence. But back in the untrodden woods where no axe
has been lifted, where a deep, rich carpet of brown and golden mosses
covers all the ground like a garment, pressing warmly about the feet
of the trees and rising in thick folds softly and kindly over every
fallen trunk, leaving no spot naked or uncared-for, there the rain is
welcomed, and every drop that falls finds a place and use as sweet and
pure as itself. An excursion into the woods when the rain harvest is
at its height is a noble pleasure, and may be safely enjoyed at small
expense, though very few care to seek it. Shelter is easily found
beneath the great trees in some hollow out of the wind, and one need
carry but little provision, none at all of a kind that a wetting would
spoil. The colors of the woods are then at their best, and the mighty
hosts of the forest, every needle tingling in the blast, wave and sing
in glorious harmony.
" 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 coming through the trees in large, feathery tufts, loading
the branches of the firs and spruces and cedars and weighing them down
against the trunks until they look slender and sharp as arrows, while
a strange, muffled silence prevails, giving a peculiar solemnity to
everything. But these lowland snowstorms and their effects quickly
vanish; every crystal melts in a day or two, the bent branches rise
again, and the rain resumes its sway.
While these gracious rains are searching the roots of the lowlands,
corresponding snows are busy along the heights of the Cascade
Mountains. Month after month, day and night the heavens shed their
icy bloom in stormy, measureless abundance, filling the grand upper
fountains of the rivers to last through the summer. Awful then is the
silence that presses down over the mountain forests. All the smaller
streams vanish from sight, hushed and obliterated. Young groves of
spruce and pine are bowed down as by a gentle hand and put to rest,
not again to see the light or move leaf or limb until the grand
awakening of the springtime, while the larger animals and most of the
birds seek food and shelter in the foothills on the borders of the
valleys and plains.
The lofty volcanic peaks are yet more heavily snow-laden. To their
upper zones no summer comes. They are white always. From the steep
slopes of the summit the new-fallen snow, while yet dry and loose,
descends in magnificent avalanches to feed the glaciers, making
meanwhile the most glorious manifestations of power. Happy is the man
who may get near them to see and hear. In some sheltered camp nest on
the edge of the timberline one may lie snug and warm, but after the
long shuffle on snowshoes we may have to wait more than a month ere
the heavens open and the grand show is unveiled. In the mean time,
bread may be scarce, unless with careful forecast a sufficient supply
has been provided and securely placed during the summer.
Nevertheless, to be thus deeply snowbound high in the sky is not
without generous compensation for all the cost. And when we at length
go down the long white slopes to the levels of civilization, the pains
vanish like snow in sunshine, while the noble and exalting pleasures
we have gained remain with us to enrich our lives forever.
The fate of the high-flying mountain snow-flowers is a fascinating
study, though little may we see of their works and ways while their
storms go on. The glinting, swirling swarms fairly thicken the blast,
and all the air, as well as the rocks and trees, is as one smothering
mass of bloom, through the midst of which at close intervals come the
low, intense thunder-tones of the avalanches as they speed on their
way to fill the vast fountain hollows. Here they seem at last to have
found rest. But this rest is only apparent. Gradually the loose
crystals by the pressure of their own weight are welded together into
clear ice, and, as glaciers, march steadily, silently on, with
invisible motion, in broad, deep currents, grinding their way with
irresistible energy to the warmer lowlands, where they vanish in glad,
rejoicing streams.
In the sober weather of Oregon lightning makes but little show. Those
magnificent thunderstorms that so frequently adorn and glorify the sky
of the Mississippi Valley are wanting here. Dull thunder and
lightning may occasionally be seen and heard, but the imposing
grandeur of great storms marching over the landscape with streaming
banners and a network of fire is almost wholly unknown.
Crossing the Cascade Range, we pass from a green to a gray country,
from a wilderness of trees to a wilderness of open plains, level or
rolling or rising here and there into hills and short mountain spurs.
Though well supplied with rivers in most of its main sections, it is
generally dry. The annual rainfall is only from about five to fifteen
inches, and the thin winter garment of snow seldom lasts more than a
month or two, though the temperature in many places falls from five to
twenty-five degrees below zero for a short time. That the snow is
light over eastern Oregon, and the average temperature not intolerably
severe, is shown by the fact that large droves of sheep, cattle, and
horses live there through the winter without other food or shelter
than they find for themselves on the open plains or down in the sunken
valleys and gorges along the streams.
When we read of the mountain ranges of Oregon and Washington with
detailed descriptions of their old volcanoes towering snow-laden and
glacier-laden above the clouds, one may be led to imagine that the
country is far icier and whiter and more mountainous than it is. Only
in winter are the Coast and Cascade Mountains covered with snow. Then
as seen from the main interior valleys they appear as comparatively
low, bossy walls stretching along the horizon and making a magnificent
display of their white wealth. The Coast Range in Oregon does not
perhaps average more than three thousand feet in height. Its snow
does not last long, most of its soil is fertile all the way to the
summits, and the greater part of the range may at some time be brought
under cultivation. The immense deposits on the great central uplift
of the Cascade Range are mostly melted off before the middle of summer
by the comparatively warm winds and rains from the coast, leaving only
a few white spots on the highest ridges, where the depth from drifting
has been greatest, or where the rate of waste has been diminished by
specially favorable conditions as to exposure. Only the great
volcanic cones are truly snow-clad all the year, and these are not
numerous and make but a small portion of the general landscape.
As we approach Oregon from the coast in summer, no hint of snowy
mountains can be seen, and it is only after we have sailed into the
country by the Columbia, or climbed some one of the commanding
summits, that the great white peaks send us greeting and make telling
advertisements of themselves and of the country over which they rule.
So, also, in coming to Oregon from the east the country by no means
impresses one as being surpassingly mountainous, the abode of peaks
and glaciers. Descending the spurs of the Rocky Mountains into the
basin of the Columbia, we see hot, hundred-mile plains, roughened here
the there by hills and ridges that look hazy and blue in the distance,
until we have pushed well to the westward. Then one white point after
another comes into sight to refresh the eye and the imagination; but
they are yet a long way off, and have much to say only to those who
know them or others of their kind. How grand they are, though
insignificant-looking on the edge of the vast landscape! What noble
woods they nourish, and emerald meadows and gardens! What springs and
streams and waterfalls sing about them and to what a multitude of
happy creatures they give homes and food!
The principal mountains of the range are Mounts Pitt, Scott, and
Thielson, Diamond Peak, the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St.
Helen's, Adams, Rainier, Aix, and Baker. Of these the seven first
named belong to Oregon, the others to Washington. They rise singly at
irregular distances from one another along the main axis of the range
or near it, with an elevation of from about eight thousand to fourteen
thousand four hundred feet above the level of the sea. From few
points in the valleys may more than three or four of them be seen, and
of the more distant ones of these only the tops appear. Therefore,
speaking generally, each of the lowland landscapes of the State
contains only one grand snowy mountain.
The heights back of Portland command one of the best general views of
the forests and also of the most famous of the great mountains both of
Oregon and Washington. Mount Hood is in full view, with the summits
of Mounts Jefferson, St. Helen's, Adams, and Rainier in the distance.
The city of Portland is at our feet, covering a large area along both
banks of the Willamette, and, with its fine streets, schools,
churches, mills, shipping, parks, and gardens, makes a telling picture
of busy, aspiring civilization in the midst of the green wilderness in
which it is planted. The river is displayed to fine advantage in the
foreground of our main view, sweeping in beautiful curves around rich,
leafy islands, its banks fringed with willows.
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[31] to Mount Baker, a
distance of about six hundred miles, which once flamed like gigantic
watch-fires along the coast. Some of them have been active in recent
times, but no considerable addition to the bulk of Mount Hood has been
made for several centuries, as is shown by the amount of glacial
denudation it has suffered. Its summit has been ground to a point,
which gives it a rather thin, pinched appearance. It has a wide-flowing base, however, and is fairly well proportioned. Though it is
eleven thousand feet high, it is too far off to make much show under
ordinary conditions in so extensive a landscape. Through a great part
of the summer it is invisible on account of smoke poured into the sky
from burning woods, logging camps, mills, etc., and in winter for
weeks at a time, or even months, it is in the clouds. Only in spring
and early summer and in what there may chance to be of bright weather
in winter is it or any of its companions at all clear or telling.
From the Cascades on the Columbia it may be seen at a distance of
twenty miles or thereabouts, or from other points up and down the
river, and with the magnificent foreground it is very impressive. It
gives the supreme touch of grandeur to all the main Columbia views,
rising at every turn, solitary, majestic, awe-inspiring, the ruling
spirit of the landscape. But, like mountains everywhere, it varies
greatly in impressiveness and apparent height at different times and
seasons, not alone from differences as to the dimness or transparency
of the air. Clear, or arrayed in clouds, it changes both in size and
general expression. Now it looms up to an immense height and seems to
draw near in tremendous grandeur and beauty, holding the eyes of every
beholder in devout and awful interest. Next year or next day, or even
in the same day, you return to the same point of view, perhaps to find
that the glory has departed, as if the mountain had died and the poor
dull, shrunken mass of rocks and ice had lost all power to charm.
Never shall I forget my first glorious view of Mount Hood one calm
evening in July, though I had seen it many times before this. I was
then sauntering with a friend across the new Willamette bridge between
Portland and East Portland for the sake of the river views, which are
here very fine in the tranquil summer weather. The scene on the water
was a lively one. Boats of every description were gliding, glinting,
drifting about at work or play, and we leaned over the rail from time
to time, contemplating the gay throng. Several lines of ferry boats
were making regular trips at intervals of a few minutes, and river
steamers were coming and going from the wharves, laden with all sorts
of merchandise, raising long diverging swells that make all the light
pleasure craft bow and nod in hearty salutation as they passed. The
crowd was being constantly increased by new arrivals from both shores,
sailboats, rowboats, racing shells, rafts, were loaded with gayly
dressed people, and here and there some adventurous man or boy might
be seen as a merry sailor on a single plank or spar, apparently as
deep in enjoyment as were any on the water. It seemed as if all the
town were coming to the river, renouncing the cares and toils of the
day, determined to take the evening breeze into their pulses, and be
cool and tranquil ere going to bed.
Absorbed in the happy scene, given up to dreamy, random observation of
what lay immediately before me, I was not conscious of anything
occurring on the outer rim of the landscape. Forest, mountain, and
sky were forgotten, when my companion suddenly directed my attention
to the eastward, shouting, "Oh, look! look!" in so loud and excited a
tone of voice that passers-by, saunterers like ourselves, were
startled and looked over the bridge as if expecting to see some boat
upset. Looking across the forest, over which the mellow light of the
sunset was streaming, I soon discovered the source of my friend's
excitement. There stood Mount Hood in all the glory of the alpenglow,
looming immensely high, beaming with intelligence, and so impressive
that one was overawed as if suddenly brought before some superior
being newly arrived from the sky.
The atmosphere was somewhat hazy, but the mountain seemed neither near
nor far. Its glaciers flashed in the divine light. The rugged,
storm-worn ridges between them and the snowfields of the summit, these
perhaps might have been traced as far as they were in sight, and the
blending zones of color about the base. But so profound was the
general impression, partial analysis did not come into play. The
whole mountain appeared as one glorious manifestation of divine power,
enthusiastic and benevolent, glowing like a countenance with ineffable
repose and beauty, before which we could only gaze in devout and lowly
admiration.
The far-famed Oregon forests cover all the western section of the
State, the mountains as well as the lowlands, with the exception of a
few gravelly spots and open spaces in the central portions of the
great cultivated valleys. Beginning on the coast, where their outer
ranks are drenched and buffeted by wind-driven scud from the sea, they
press on in close, majestic ranks over the coast mountains, across the
broad central valleys, and over the Cascade Range, broken and halted
only by the few great peaks that rise like islands above the sea of
evergreens.
In descending the eastern slopes of the Cascades the rich, abounding,
triumphant exuberance of the trees is quickly subdued; they become
smaller, grow wide apart, leaving dry spaces without moss covering or
underbrush, and before the foot of the range is reached, fail
altogether, stayed by the drouth of the interior almost as suddenly as
on the western margin they are stayed by the sea. Here and there at
wide intervals on the eastern plains patches of a small pine (Pinus
contorta) are found, and a scattering growth of juniper, used by the
settlers mostly for fence posts and firewood. Along the stream
bottoms there is usually more or less of cottonwood and willow, which,
though yielding inferior timber, is yet highly prized in this bare
region. On the Blue Mountains there is pine, spruce, fir, and larch
in abundance for every use, but beyond this range there is nothing
that may be called a forest in the Columbia River basin, until we
reach the spurs of the Rocky Mountains; and these Rocky Mountain
forests are made up of trees which, compared with the giants of the
Pacific Slope, are mere saplings.
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[32], or Oregon pine (Abies
Douglasii). A large number of mills are at work upon this species,
especially along the Columbia, but these as yet have made but little
impression upon its dense masses, the mills here being small as
compared with those of the Puget Sound region. The white cedar, or
Port Orford cedar (Cupressus Lawsoniana, or Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana),
is one of the most beautiful of the evergreens, and produces excellent
lumber, considerable quantities of which are shipped to the San
Francisco market. It is found mostly about Coos Bay, along the
Coquille River, and on the northern slopes of the Siskiyou Mountains,
and extends down the coast into California. The silver firs, the
spruces, and the colossal arbor-vitae, or white cedar[33](Thuja
gigantea), described in the chapter on Washington, are also found here
in great beauty and perfection, the largest of these (Picea grandis,
Loud.; Abies grandis, Lindl.) being confined mostly to the coast
region, where it attains a height of three hundred feet, and a
diameter of ten or twelve feet. Five or six species of pines are
found in the State, the most important of which, both as to lumber and
as to the part they play in the general wealth and beauty of the
forests, are the yellow and sugar pines (Pinus ponderosa and P.
Lambertiana). The yellow pine is most abundant on the eastern slopes
of the Cascades, forming there the main bulk of the forest in many
places. It is also common along the borders of the open spaces in
Willamette Valley. In the southern portion of the State the sugar
pine, which is the king of all the pines and the glory of the Sierra
forests, occurs in considerable abundance in the basins of the Umpqua
and Rogue Rivers, and it was in the Umpqua Hills that this noble tree
was first discovered by the enthusiastic botanical explorer David
Douglas, in the year 1826.
This is the Douglas for whom the noble Douglas spruce is named, and
many a fair blooming plant also, which will serve to keep his memory
fresh and sweet as long as beautiful trees and flowers are loved. The
Indians of the lower Columbia River watched him with lively curiosity
as he wandered about in the woods day after day, gazing intently on
the ground or at the great trees, collecting specimens of everything
he saw, but, unlike all the eager fur-gathering strangers they had
hitherto seen, caring nothing about trade. And when at length they
came to know him better, and saw that from year to year the growing
things of the woods and prairies, meadows and plains, were his only
object of pursuit, they called him the "Man of Grass," a title of
which he was proud.
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 the Columbia after
a long, dismal voyage of eight months and fourteen days. During this
first season he chose Fort Vancouver, belonging to the Hudson's Bay
Company, as his headquarters, and from there made excursions into the
glorious wilderness in every direction, discovering many new species
among the trees as well as among the rich underbrush and smaller
herbaceous vegetation. It was while making a trip to Mount Hood this
year that he discovered the two largest and most beautiful firs in the
world (Picea amabilis and P. nobilis--now called Abies), and from the
seeds which he then collected and sent home tall trees are now growing
in Scotland.
In one of his trips that summer, in the lower Willamette Valley, he
saw in an Indian's tobacco pouch some of the seeds and scales of a new
species of pine, which he learned were gathered from a large tree that
grew far to the southward. Most of the following season was spent on
the upper waters of the Columbia, and it was not until September that
he returned to Fort Vancouver, about the time of the setting-in of the
winter rains. Nevertheless, bearing in mind the great pine he had
heard of, and the seeds of which he had seen, he made haste to set out
on an excursion to the headwaters of the Willamette in search of it;
and how he fared on this excursion and what dangers and hardships he
endured is best told in his own journal, part of which I quote as
follows:--
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 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 seldom fail
to make strong impressions and are therefore 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, seventeen feet five inches; the
extreme length two hundred 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, 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 knife 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 myself 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 perhaps 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 immediately 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 possible
retreat, hurrying back to my camp, which I reached before dusk.
The Indian who last undertook 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 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 all others not only
in size but in beauty and majesty. Oregon may well be proud that its
discovery was made within her borders, and that, though it is far more
abundant in California, she has the largest known specimens. In the
Sierra the finest sugar pine forests lie at an elevation of about five
thousand feet. In Oregon they occupy much lower ground, some of the
trees being found but little above tide-water.
No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the sugar
pine. In most coniferous trees there is a sameness of form and
expression which at length becomes wearisome to most people who travel
far in the woods. But the sugar pines are as free from conventional
forms as any of the oaks. No two are so much alike as to hide their
individuality from any observer. Every tree is appreciated as a study
in itself and proclaims in no uncertain terms the surpassing grandeur
of the species. The branches, mostly near the summit, are sometimes
nearly forty feet long, feathered richly all around with short, leafy
branchlets, and tasseled with cones a foot and a half long. And when
these superb arms are outspread, radiating in every direction, an
immense crownlike mass is formed which, poised on the noble shaft and
filled with sunshine, is one of the grandest forest objects
conceivable. But though so wild and unconventional when full-grown,
the sugar pine is a remarkably regular tree in youth, a strict
follower of coniferous fashions, slim, erect, tapering, symmetrical,
every branch in place. At the age of fifty or sixty years this shy,
fashionable form begins to give way. Special branches are thrust out
away from the general outlines of the trees and bent down with cones.
Henceforth it becomes more and more original and independent in style,
pushes boldly aloft into the winds and sunshine, growing ever more
stately and beautiful, a joy and inspiration to every beholder.
Unfortunately, the sugar pine makes excellent lumber. It is too good
to live, and is already passing rapidly away before the woodman's axe.
Surely out of all of the abounding forest wealth of Oregon a few
specimens might be spared to the world, not as dead lumber, but as
living trees. A park of moderate extent might be set apart and
protected for public use forever, containing at least a few hundreds
of each of these noble pines, spruces, and firs. Happy will be the
men who, having the power and the love and benevolent forecast to do
this, will do it. They will not be forgotten. The trees and their
lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet unborn will rise
up and call them blessed.
Dotting the prairies and fringing the edges of the great evergreen
forests we find a considerable number of hardwood trees, such as the
oak, maple, ash, alder, laurel, madrone, flowering dogwood, wild
cherry, and wild apple. The white oak (Quercus Garryana) is the most
important of the Oregon oaks as a timber tree, but not nearly so
beautiful as Kellogg's oak (Q. Kelloggii). The former is found mostly
along the Columbia River, particularly about the Dalles, and a
considerable quantity of useful lumber is made from it and sold,
sometimes for eastern white oak, to wagon makers. Kellogg's oak is a
magnificent tree and does much for the picturesque beauty of the
Umpqua and Rogue River Valleys where it abounds. It is also found in
all the Yosemite valleys of the Sierra, and its acorns form an
important part of the food of the Digger Indians. In the Siskiyou
Mountains there is a live oak (Q. chrysolepis), wide-spreading and
very picturesque in form, but not very common. It extends southward
along the western flank of the Sierra and is there more abundant and
much larger than in Oregon, oftentimes five to eight feet in diameter.
The maples are the same as those in Washington, already described, but
I have not seen any maple groves here equal in extent or in the size
of the trees to those on the Snoqualmie River.
The Oregon ash is now rare along the stream banks of western Oregon,
and it grows to a good size and furnishes lumber that is for some
purposes equal to the white ash of the Western States.
Nuttall's flowering dogwood makes a brave display with its wealth of
show involucres in the spring along cool streams. Specimens of the
flowers may be found measuring eight inches in diameter.
The wild cherry (Prunus emarginata, var. mollis) is a small, handsome
tree seldom more than a foot in diameter at the base. It makes
valuable lumber and its black, astringent fruit furnishes a rich
resource as food for the birds. A smaller form is common in the
Sierra, the fruit of which is eagerly eaten by the Indians and hunters
in time of need.
The wild apple (Pyrus rivularis) is a fine, hearty, handsome little
tree that grows well in rich, cool soil along streams and on the edges
of beaver meadows from California through Oregon and Washington to
southeastern Alaska. In Oregon it forms dense, tangled thickets, some
of them almost impenetrable. The largest trunks are nearly a foot in
diameter. When in bloom it makes a fine show with its abundant
clusters of flowers, which are white and fragrant. The fruit is very
small and savagely acid. It is wholesome, however, and is eaten by
birds, bears, Indians, and many other adventurers, great and small.
Passing from beneath the shadows of the woods where the trees grow
close and high, we step into charming wild gardens full of lilies,
orchids, heathworts, roses, etc., with colors so gay and forming such
sumptuous masses of bloom, they make the gardens of civilization,
however lovingly cared for, seem pathetic and silly. Around the great
fire-mountains, above the forests and beneath the snow, there is a
flowery zone of marvelous beauty planted with anemones, erythroniums,
daisies, bryanthus, kalmia, vaccinium, cassiope, saxifrages, etc.,
forming one continuous garden fifty or sixty miles in circumference,
and so deep and luxuriant and closely woven it seems as if Nature,
glad to find an opening, were economizing space and trying to see how
may of her bright-eyed darlings she can get together in one mountain
wreath.
Along the slopes of the Cascades, where the woods are less dense,
especially about the headwaters of the Willamette, there are miles of
rhododendron, making glorious outbursts of purple bloom, and down on
the prairies in rich, damp hollows the blue-flowered camassia grows in
such profusion that at a little distance its dense masses appear as
beautiful blue lakes imbedded in the green, flowery plains; while all
about the streams and the lakes and the beaver meadows and the margins
of the deep woods there is a magnificent tangle of gaultheria and
huckleberry bushes with their myriads of pink bells, reinforced with
hazel, cornel, rubus of many species, wild plum, cherry, and crab
apple; besides thousands of charming bloomers to be found in all sorts
of places throughout the wilderness whose mere names are refreshing,
such as linnaea, menziesia, pyrola, chimaphila, brodiaea, smilacina,
fritillaria, calochortus, trillium, clintonia, veratrum, cypripedium,
goodyera, spiranthes, habenaria, and the rare and lovely "Hider of the
North," Calypso borealis, to find which is alone a sufficient object
for a journey into the wilderness. And besides these there is a
charming underworld of ferns and mosses flourishing gloriously beneath
all the woods.
Everybody loves wild woods and flowers more or less. Seeds of all
these Oregon evergreens and of many of the flowering shrubs and plants
have been sent to almost every country under the sun, and they are now
growing in carefully tended parks and gardens. And now that the ways
of approach are open one would expect to find these woods and gardens
full of admiring visitors reveling in their beauty like bees in a
clover field. Yet few care to visit them. A portion of the bark of
one of the California trees, the mere dead skin, excited the wondering
attention of thousands when it was set up in the Crystal Palace in
London, as did also a few peeled spars, the shafts of mere saplings
from Oregon or Washington. Could one of these great silver firs or
sugar pines three hundred feet high have been transplanted entire to
that exhibition, how enthusiastic would have been the praises accorded
to it!
Nevertheless, the countless hosts waving at home beneath their own
sky, beside their own noble rivers and mountains, and standing on a
flower-enameled carpet of mosses thousands of square miles in extent,
attract but little attention. Most travelers content themselves with
what they may chance to see from car windows, hotel verandas, or the
deck of a steamer on the lower Columbia--clinging to the battered
highways like drowning sailors to a life raft. When an excursion into
the woods is proposed, all sorts of exaggerated or imaginary dangers
are conjured up, filling the kindly, soothing wilderness with colds,
fevers, Indians, bears, snakes, bugs, impassable rivers, and jungles
of brush, to which is always added quick and sure starvation.
As to starvation, the woods are full of food, and a supply of bread
may easily be carried for habit's sake, and replenished now and then
at outlying farms and camps. The Indians are seldom found in the
woods, being confined mainly to the banks of the rivers, where the
greater part of their food is obtained. Moreover, the most of them
have been either buried since the settlement of the country or
civilized into comparative innocence, industry, or harmless laziness.
There are bears in the woods, but not in such numbers nor of such
unspeakable ferocity as town-dwellers imagine, nor do bears spend
their lives in going about the country like the devil, seeking whom
they may devour. Oregon bears, like most others, have no liking for
man either as meat or as society; and while some may be curious at
times to see what manner of creature he is, most of them have learned
to shun people as deadly enemies. They have been poisoned, trapped,
and shot at until they have become shy, and it is no longer easy to
make their acquaintance. Indeed, since the settlement of the country,
notwithstanding far the greater portion is yet wild, it is difficult
to find any of the larger animals that once were numerous and
comparatively familiar, such as the bear, wolf, panther, lynx, deer,
elk, and antelope.
As early as 1843, while the settlers numbered only a few thousands,
and before any sort of government had been organized, they came
together and held what they called "a wolf meeting," at which a
committee was appointed to devise means for the destruction of wild
animals destructive to tame ones, which committee in due time begged
to report as follows:--
It being admitted by all that bears, wolves, panthers, etc., are
destructive to the useful animals owned by the settlers of this
colony, your committee would submit the following resolutions as
the sense of this meeting, by which the community may be governed
in carrying on a defensive and destructive war on all such
animals:--
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 destructive 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 Willamette Valley. But for many
years prior to the beginning of the operations of the "Wolf
Organization" the Hudson's Bay Company had established forts and
trading stations over all the country, wherever fur-gathering Indians
could be found, and vast numbers of these animals were killed. Their
destruction has since gone on at an accelerated rate from year to year
as the settlements have been extended, so that in some cases it is
difficult to obtain specimens enough for the use of naturalists. But
even before any of these settlements were made, and before the coming
of the Hudson's Bay Company, there was very little danger to be met in
passing through this wilderness as far as animals were concerned, and
but little of any kind as compared with the dangers encountered in
crowded houses and streets.
When Lewis and Clark made their famous trip across the continent in
1804-05, when all the Rocky Mountain region was wild, as well as the
Pacific Slope, they did not lose a single man by wild animals, nor,
though frequently attacked, especially by the grizzlies of the Rocky
Mountains, were any of them wounded seriously. Captain Clark was
bitten on the hand by a wolf as he lay asleep; that was one bite among
more than a hundred men while traveling through eight to nine thousand
miles of savage wilderness. They could hardly have been so fortunate
had they stayed at home. They wintered on the edge of the Clatsop
plains, on the south side of the Columbia River near its mouth. In
the woods on that side they found game abundant, especially elk, and
with the aid of the friendly Indians who furnished salmon and
"wapatoo" (the tubers of Sagittaria variabilis), they were in no
danger of starving.
But on the return trip in the spring they reached the base of the
Rocky Mountains when the range was yet too heavily snow-laden to be
crossed with horses. Therefore they had to wait some weeks. This was
at the head of one of the northern branches of the Snake River, and,
their scanty stock of provisions being nearly exhausted, the whole
party was compelled to live mostly on bears and dogs; deer, antelope,
and elk, usually abundant, were now scarce because the region had been
closely hunted over by the Indians before their arrival.
Lewis and Clark had killed a number of bears and saved the skins of
the more interesting specimens, and the variations they found in size,
color of the hair, etc., made great difficulty in classification.
Wishing to get the opinion of the Chopumish Indians, near one of whose
villages they were encamped, concerning the various species, the
explorers unpacked their bundles and spread out for examination all
the skins they had taken. The Indian hunters immediately classed the
white, the deep and the pale grizzly red, the grizzly dark-brown--in
short, all those with the extremities of the hair of a white or frosty
color without regard to the color of the ground or foil--under the
name of hoh-host. The Indians assured them that these were all of the
same species as the white bear, that they associated together, had
longer nails than the others, and never climbed trees. On the other
hand, the black skins, those that were black with white hairs
intermixed or with a white breast, the uniform bay, the brown, and the
light reddish-brown, were classed under the name yack-ah, and were
said to resemble each other in being smaller and having shorter nails,
in climbing trees, and being so little vicious that they could be
pursued with safety.
Lewis and Clark came to the conclusion that all those with white-tipped hair found by them in the basin of the Columbia belonged to the
same species as the grizzlies of the upper Missouri; and that the
black and reddish-brown, etc., of the Rocky Mountains belong to a
second species equally distinct from the grizzly and the black bear of
the Pacific Coast and the East, which never vary in color.
As much as possible should be made by the ordinary traveler of these
descriptions, for he will be likely to see very little of any species
for himself; not that bears no longer exist here, but because, being
shy, they keep out of the way. In order to see them and learn their
habits one must go softly and alone, lingering long in the fringing
woods on the banks of the salmon streams, and in the small openings in
the midst of thickets where berries are most abundant.
As for rattlesnakes, the other grand dread of town dwellers when they
leave beaten roads, there are two, or perhaps three, species of them
in Oregon. But they are nowhere to be found in great numbers. In
western Oregon they are hardly known at all. In all my walks in the
Oregon forest I have never met a single specimen, though a few have
been seen at long intervals.
When the country was first settled by the whites, fifty years ago, the
elk roamed through the woods and over the plains to the east of the
Cascades in immense numbers; now they are rarely seen except by
experienced hunters who know their haunts in the deepest and most
inaccessible solitudes to which they have been driven. So majestic an
animal forms a tempting mark for the sportsman's rifle. Countless
thousands have been killed for mere amusement and they already seem to
be nearing extinction as rapidly as the buffalo. The antelope also is
vanishing from the Columbia plains before the farmers and cattlemen.
Whether the moose still lingers in Oregon or Washington I am unable to
say.
On the highest mountains of the Cascade Range the wild goat roams in
comparative security, few of his enemies caring to go so far in
pursuit and to hunt on ground so high and dangerous. He is a brave,
sturdy shaggy mountaineer of an animal, enjoying the freedom and
security of crumbling ridges and overhanging cliffs above the
glaciers, oftentimes beyond the reach of the most daring hunter. They
seem to be as much at home on the ice and snowfields as on the crags,
making their way in flocks from ridge to ridge on the great volcanic
mountains by crossing the glaciers that lie between them, traveling in
single file guided by an old experienced leader, like a party of
climbers on the Alps. On these ice-journeys they pick their way
through networks of crevasses and over bridges of snow with admirable
skill, and the mountaineer may seldom do better in such places than to
follow their trail, if he can. In the rich alpine gardens and meadows
they find abundance of food, venturing sometimes well down in the
prairie openings on the edge of the timberline, but holding themselves
ever alert and watchful, ready to flee to their highland castles at
the faintest alarm. When their summer pastures are buried beneath the
winter snows, they make haste to the lower ridges, seeking the wind-beaten crags and slopes where the snow cannot lie at any great depth,
feeding at times on the leaves and twigs of bushes when grass is
beyond reach.
The wild sheep is another admirable alpine rover, but comparatively
rare in the Oregon mountains, choosing rather the drier ridges to the
southward on the Cascades and to the eastward among the spurs of the
Rocky Mountain chain.
Deer give beautiful animation to the forests, harmonizing finely in
their color and movements with the gray and brown shafts of the trees
and the swaying of the branches as they stand in groups at rest, or
move gracefully and noiselessly over the mossy ground about the edges
of beaver meadows and flowery glades, daintily culling the leaves and
tips of the mints and aromatic bushes on which they feed. There are
three species, the black-tailed, white-tailed, and mule deer; the last
being restricted in its range to the open woods and plains to the
eastward of the Cascades. They are nowhere very numerous now, killing
for food, for hides, or for mere wanton sport, having well-nigh
exterminated them in the more accessible regions, while elsewhere they
are too often at the mercy of the wolves.
Gliding about in their shady forest homes, keeping well out of sight,
there is a multitude of sleek fur-clad animals living and enjoying
their clean, beautiful lives. How beautiful and interesting they are
is about as difficult for busy mortals to find out as if their homes
were beyond sight in the sky. Hence the stories of every wild hunter
and trapper are eagerly listened to as being possibly true, or partly
so, however thickly clothed in successive folds of exaggeration and
fancy. Unsatisfying as these accounts must be, a tourist's frightened
rush and scramble through the woods yields far less than the hunter's
wildest stories, while in writing we can do but little more than to
give a few names, as they come to mind,--beaver, squirrel, coon, fox,
marten, fisher, otter, ermine, wildcat,--only this instead of full
descriptions of the bright-eyed furry throng, their snug home nests,
their fears and fights and loves, how they get their food, rear their
young, escape their enemies, and keep themselves warm and well and
exquisitely clean through all the pitiless weather.
For many years before the settlement of the country the fur of the
beaver brought a high price, and therefore it was pursued with
weariless ardor. Not even in the quest for gold has a more ruthless,
desperate energy been developed. It was in those early beaver-days
that the striking class of adventurers called "free trappers" made
their appearance. Bold, enterprising men, eager to make money, and
inclined at the same time to relish the license of a savage life,
would set forth with a few traps and a gun and a hunting knife,
content at first to venture only a short distance up the beaver
streams nearest to the settlements, and where the Indians were not
likely to molest them. There they would set their traps, while the
buffalo, antelope, deer, etc., furnished a royal supply of food. In a
few months their pack animals would be laden with thousands of
dollars' worth of fur.
Next season they would venture farther, and again farther, meanwhile
growing rapidly wilder, getting acquainted with the Indian tribes, and
usually marrying among them. Thenceforward no danger could stay them
in their exciting pursuit. Wherever there were beaver they would go,
however far or wild,--the wilder the better, provided their scalps
could be saved. Oftentimes they were compelled to set their traps and
visit them by night and lie hid during the day, when operating in the
neighborhood of hostile Indians. Not then venturing to make a fire or
shoot game, they lived on the raw flesh of the beaver, perhaps
seasoned with wild cresses or berries. Then, returning to the trading
stations, they would spend their hard earnings in a few weeks of
dissipation and "good time," and go again to the bears and beavers,
until at length a bullet or arrow would end all. One after another
would be missed by some friend or trader at the autumn rendezvous,
reported killed by the Indians, and--forgotten. Some men of this
class have, from superior skill or fortune, escaped every danger,
lived to a good old age, and earned fame, and, by their knowledge of
the topography of the vast West then unexplored, have been able to
render important service to the country; but most of them laid their
bones in the wilderness after a few short, keen seasons. So great
were the perils that beset them, the average length of the life of a
"free trapper" has been estimated at less than five years. From the
Columbia waters beaver and beaver men have almost wholly passed away,
and the men once so striking a part of the view have left scarcely the
faintest sign of their existence. On the other hand, a thousand
meadows on the mountains tell the story of the beavers, to remain
fresh and green for many a century, monuments of their happy,
industrious lives.
But there is a little airy, elfin animal in these woods, and in all
the evergreen woods of the Pacific Coast, that is more influential and
interesting than even the beaver. This is the Douglas squirrel
(Sciurus Douglasi). Go where you will throughout all these noble
forests, you everywhere find this little squirrel the master-existence. Though only a few inches long, so intense is his fiery
vigor and restlessness, he stirs every grove with wild life, and makes
himself more important than the great bears that shuffle through the
berry tangles beneath him. Every tree feels the sting of his sharp
feet. Nature has made him master-forester, and committed the greater
part of the coniferous crops to his management. Probably over half of
all the ripe cones of the spruces, firs, and pines are cut off and
handled by this busy harvester. Most of them are stored away for food
through the winter and spring, but a part are pushed into shallow pits
and covered loosely, where some of the seeds are no doubt left to
germinate and grow up. All the tree squirrels are more or less
birdlike in voice and movements, but the Douglas is pre-eminently so,
possessing every squirrelish attribute, fully developed and
concentrated. He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch
to branch of his favorite evergreens, crisp and glossy and sound as a
sunbeam. He stirs the leaves like a rustling breeze, darting across
openings in arrowy lines, launching in curves, glinting deftly from
side to side in sudden zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and
spirals around the trunks, now on his haunches, now on his head, yet
ever graceful and performing all his feats of strength and skill
without apparent effort. One never tires of this bright spark of
life, the brave little voice crying in the wilderness. His varied,
piney gossip is as savory to the air as balsam to the palate. Some of
his notes are almost flutelike in softness, while other prick and
tingle like thistles. He is the mockingbird of squirrels, barking
like a dog, screaming like a hawk, whistling like a blackbird or
linnet, while in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a jay. A small
thing, but filling and animating all the woods.
Nor is there any lack of wings, notwithstanding few are to be seen on
short, noisy rambles. The ousel sweetens the shady glens and canyons
where waterfalls abound, and every grove or forest, however silent it
may seem when we chance to pay it a hasty visit, has its singers,--thrushes, linnets, warblers,--while hummingbirds glint and hover about
the fringing masses of bloom around stream and meadow openings. But
few of these will show themselves or sing their songs to those who are
ever in haste and getting lost, going in gangs formidable in color and
accoutrements, laughing, hallooing, breaking limbs off the trees as
they pass, awkwardly struggling through briery thickets, entangled
like blue-bottles in spider webs, and stopping from time to time to
fire off their guns and pistols for the sake of the echoes, thus
frightening all the life about them for miles. It is this class of
hunters and travelers who report that there are "no birds in the woods
or game animals of any kind larger than mosquitoes."
Besides the singing birds mentioned above, the handsome Oregon grouse
may be found in the thick woods, also the dusky grouse and Franklin's
grouse, and in some places the beautiful mountain partridge, or quail.
The white-tailed ptarmigan lives on the lofty snow peaks above the
timber, and the prairie chicken and sage cock on the broad Columbia
plains from the Cascade Range back to the foothills of the Rocky
Mountains. The bald eagle is very common along the Columbia River, or
wherever fish, especially salmon, are plentiful, while swans, herons,
cranes, pelicans, geese, ducks of many species, and water birds in
general abound in the lake region, on the main streams, and along the
coast, stirring the waters and sky into fine, lively pictures, greatly
to the delight of wandering lovers of wildness.
XXIII
The Rivers of Oregon
Turning from the woods and their inhabitants to the rivers, we find
that while the former are rarely seen by travelers beyond the
immediate borders of the settlements, the great river of Oregon draws
crowds of enthusiastic admirers to sound its praises. Every summer
since the completion of the first overland railroad, tourists have
been coming to it in ever increasing numbers, showing that in general
estimation the Columbia is one of the chief attractions of the Pacific
Coast. And well it deserves the admiration so heartily bestowed upon
it. The beauty and majesty of its waters, and the variety and
grandeur of the scenery through which it flows, lead many to regard it
as the most interesting of all the great rivers of the continent,
notwithstanding the claims of the other members of the family to which
it belongs and which nobody can measure--the Fraser, McKenzie,
Saskatchewan, the Missouri, Yellowstone, Platte, and the Colorado,
with their glacier and geyser fountains, their famous canyons, lakes,
forests, and vast flowery prairies and plains. These great rivers and
the Columbia are intimately related. All draw their upper waters from
the same high fountains on the broad, rugged uplift of the Rocky
Mountains, their branches interlacing like the branches of trees.
They sing their first songs together on the heights; then, collecting
their tributaries, they set out on their grand journey to the
Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Ocean.
The Columbia, viewed as one from the sea to the mountains, is like a
rugged, broad-topped, picturesque old oak about six hundred miles long
and nearly a thousand miles wide measured across the spread of its
upper branches, the main limbs gnarled and swollen with lakes and
lakelike expansions, while innumerable smaller lakes shine like fruit
among the smaller branches. The main trunk extends back through the
Coast and Cascade Mountains in a general easterly direction for three
hundred miles, when it divides abruptly into two grand branches which
bend off to the northeastward and southeastward.
The south branch, the longer of the two, called the Snake, or Lewis,
River, extends into the Rocky Mountains as far as the Yellowstone
National Park, where its head tributaries interlace with those of the
Colorado, Missouri, and Yellowstone. The north branch, still called
the Columbia, extends through Washington far into British territory,
its highest tributaries reaching back through long parallel spurs of
the Rockies between and beyond the headwaters of the Fraser,
Athabasca, and Saskatchewan. Each of these main branches, dividing
again and again, spreads a network of channels over the vast
complicated mass of the great range throughout a section nearly a
thousand miles in length, searching every fountain, however small or
great, and gathering a glorious harvest of crystal water to be rolled
through forest and plain in one majestic flood to the sea, reinforced
on the way by tributaries that drain the Blue Mountains and more than
two hundred miles of the Cascade and Coast Ranges. Though less than
half as long as the Mississippi, it is said to carry as much water.
The amount of its discharge at different seasons, however, has never
been exactly measured, but in time of flood its current is
sufficiently massive and powerful to penetrate the sea to a distance
of fifty or sixty miles from shore, its waters being easily recognized
by the difference in color and by the drift of leaves, berries, pine
cones, branches, and trunks of trees that they carry.
That so large a river as the Columbia, making a telling current so far
from shore, should remain undiscovered while one exploring expedition
after another sailed past seems remarkable, even after due allowance
is made for the cloudy weather that prevails hereabouts and the broad
fence of breakers drawn across the bar. During the last few
centuries, when the maps of the world were in great part blank, the
search for new worlds was fashionable business, and when such large
game was no longer to be found, islands lying unclaimed in the great
oceans, inhabited by useful and profitable people to be converted or
enslaved, became attractive objects; also new ways to India, seas,
straits, El Dorados, fountains of youth, and rivers that flowed over
golden sands.
Those early explorers and adventurers were mostly brave, enterprising,
and, after their fashion, pious men. In their clumsy sailing vessels
they dared to go where no chart or lighthouse showed the way, where
the set of the currents, the location of sunken outlying rocks and
shoals, were all unknown, facing fate and weather, undaunted however
dark the signs, heaving the lead and thrashing the men to their duty
and trusting to Providence. When a new shore was found on which they
could land, they said their prayers with superb audacity, fought the
natives if they cared to fight, erected crosses, and took possession
in the names of their sovereigns, establishing claims, such as they
were, to everything in sight and beyond, to be quarreled for and
battled for, and passed from hand to hand in treaties and settlements
made during the intermissions of war.
The branch of the river that bears the name of Columbia all the way to
its head takes its rise in two lakes about ten miles in length that
lie between the Selkirk and main ranges of the Rocky Mountains in
British Columbia, about eighty miles beyond the boundary line. They
are called the Upper and Lower Columbia Lakes. Issuing from these,
the young river holds a nearly straight course for a hundred and
seventy miles in a northwesterly direction to a plain called "Boat
Encampment," receiving many beautiful affluents by the way from the
Selkirk and main ranges, among which are the Beaver-Foot, Blackberry,
Spill-e-Mee-Chene, and Gold Rivers. At Boat Encampment it receives
two large tributaries, the Canoe River from the northwest, a stream
about a hundred and twenty miles long; and the Whirlpool River from
the north, about a hundred and forty miles in length.
The Whirlpool River takes its rise near the summit of the main axis of
the range on the fifty-fourth parallel, and is the northmost of all
the Columbia waters. About thirty miles above its confluence with the
Columbia it flows through a lake called the Punch-Bowl, and thence it
passes between Mounts Hooker and Brown, said to be fifteen thousand
and sixteen thousand feet high, making magnificent scenery; though the
height of the mountains thereabouts has been considerably
overestimated. From Boat Encampment the river, now a large, clear
stream, said to be nearly a third of a mile in width, doubles back on
its original course and flows southward as far as its confluence with
the Spokane in Washington, a distance of nearly three hundred miles in
a direct line, most of the way through a wild, rocky, picturesque mass
of mountains, charmingly forested with pine and spruce--though the
trees seem strangely small, like second growth saplings, to one
familiar with the western forests of Washington, Oregon, and
California.
About forty-five miles below Boat Encampment are the Upper Dalles, or
Dalles de Mort, and thirty miles farther the Lower Dalles, where the
river makes a magnificent uproar and interrupts navigation. About
thirty miles below the Lower Dalles the river expands into Upper Arrow
Lake, a beautiful sheet of water forty miles long and five miles wide,
straight as an arrow and with the beautiful forests of the Selkirk
range rising from its east shore, and those of the Gold range from the
west. At the foot of the lake are the Narrows, a few miles in length,
and after these rapids are passed, the river enters Lower Arrow Lake,
which is like the Upper Arrow, but is even longer and not so straight.
A short distance below the Lower Arrow the Columbia receives the
Kootenay River, the largest affluent thus far on its course and said
to be navigable for small steamers for a hundred and fifty miles. It
is an exceedingly crooked stream, heading beyond the upper Columbia
lakes, and, in its mazy course, flowing to all points of the compass,
it seems lost and baffled in the tangle of mountain spurs and ridges
it drains. Measured around its loops and bends, it is probably more
than five hundred miles in length. It is also rich in lakes, the
largest, Kootenay Lake, being upwards of seventy miles in length with
an average width of five miles. A short distance below the confluence
of the Kootenay, near the boundary line between Washington and British
Columbia, another large stream comes in from the east, Clarke's Fork,
or the Flathead River. Its upper sources are near those of the
Missouri and South Saskatchewan, and in its course it flows through
two large and beautiful lakes, the Flathead and the Pend d'Oreille.
All the lakes we have noticed thus far would make charming places of
summer resort; but Pend d'Oreille, besides being surpassingly
beautiful, has the advantage of being easily accessible, since it is
on the main line of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the Territory of
Idaho. In the purity of its waters it reminds one of Tahoe, while its
many picturesque islands crowned with evergreens, and its winding
shores forming an endless variety of bays and promontories lavishly
crowded with spiry spruce and cedar, recall some of the best of the
island scenery of Alaska.
About thirty-five miles below the mouth of Clark's Fork the Columbia
is joined by the Ne-whoi-al-pit-ku River from the northwest. Here too
are the great Chaudiere, or Kettle, Falls on the main river, with a
total descent of about fifty feet. Fifty miles farther down, the
Spokane River, a clear, dashing stream, comes in from the east. It is
about one hundred and twenty miles long, and takes its rise in the
beautiful Lake Coeur d'Alene, in Idaho, which receives the drainage of
nearly a hundred miles of the western slopes of the Bitter Root
Mountains, through the St. Joseph and Coeur d'Alene Rivers. The lake
is about twenty miles long, set in the midst of charming scenery, and,
like Pend d'Oreille, is easy of access and is already attracting
attention as a summer place for enjoyment, rest, and health.
The famous Spokane Falls are in Washington, about thirty miles below
the lake, where the river is outspread and divided and makes a grand
descent from a level basaltic plateau, giving rise to one of the most
beautiful as well as one of the greatest and most available of water-powers in the State. The city of the same name is built on the
plateau along both sides of the series of cascades and falls, which,
rushing and sounding through the midst, give singular beauty and
animation. The young city is also rushing and booming. It is founded
on a rock, leveled and prepared for it, and its streets require no
grading or paving. As a power to whirl the machinery of a great city
and at the same time to train the people to a love of the sublime and
beautiful as displayed in living water, the Spokane Falls are
unrivaled, at least as far as my observation has reached. Nowhere
else have I seen such lessons given by a river in the streets of a
city, such a glad, exulting, abounding outgush, crisp and clear from
the mountains, dividing, falling, displaying its wealth, calling aloud
in the midst of the busy throng, and making glorious offerings for
every use of utility or adornment.
From the mouth of the Spokane the Columbia, now out of the woods,
flows to the westward with a broad, stately current for a hundred and
twenty miles to receive the Okinagan, a large, generous tributary a
hundred and sixty miles long, coming from the north and drawing some
of its waters from the Cascade Range. More than half its course is
through a chain of lakes, the largest of which at the head of the
river is over sixty miles in length. From its confluence with the
Okinagan the river pursues a southerly course for a hundred and fifty
miles, most of the way through a dreary, treeless, parched plain to
meet the great south fork. The Lewis, or Snake, River is nearly a
thousand miles long and drains nearly the whole of Idaho, a territory
rich in scenery, gold mines, flowery, grassy valleys, and deserts,
while some of the highest tributaries reach into Wyoming, Utah, and
Nevada. Throughout a great part of its course it is countersunk in a
black lava plain and shut in by mural precipices a thousand feet high,
gloomy, forbidding, and unapproachable, although the gloominess of its
canyon is relieved in some manner by its many falls and springs, some
of the springs being large enough to appear as the outlets of
subterranean rivers. They gush out from the faces of the sheer black
walls and descend foaming with brave roar and beauty to swell the
flood below.
From where the river skirts the base of the Blue Mountains its
surroundings are less forbidding. Much of the country is fertile, but
its canyon is everywhere deep and almost inaccessible. Steamers make
their way up as far as Lewiston, a hundred and fifty miles, and
receive cargoes of wheat at different points through chutes that
extend down from the tops of the bluffs. But though the Hudson's Bay
Company navigated the north fork to its sources, they depended
altogether on pack animals for the transportation of supplies and furs
between the Columbia and Fort Hall on the head of the south fork,
which shows how desperately unmanageable a river it must be.
A few miles above the mouth of the Snake the Yakima, which drains a
considerable portion of the Cascade Range, enters from the northwest.
It is about a hundred and fifty miles long, but carries comparatively
little water, a great part of what it sets out with from the base of
the mountains being consumed in irrigated fields and meadows in
passing through the settlements along its course, and by evaporation
on the parched desert plains. The grand flood of the Columbia, now
from half a mile to a mile wide, sweeps on to the westward, holding a
nearly direct course until it reaches the mouth of the Willamette,
where it turns to the northward and flows fifty miles along the main
valley between the Coast and Cascade Ranges ere it again resumes its
westward course to the sea. In all its course from the mouth of the
Yakima to the sea, a distance of three hundred miles, the only
considerable affluent from the northward is the Cowlitz, which heads
in the glaciers of Mount Rainier.
From the south and east it receives the Walla-Walla and Umatilla,
rather short and dreary-looking streams, though the plains they pass
through have proved fertile, and their upper tributaries in the Blue
Mountains, shaded with tall pines, firs, spruces, and the beautiful
Oregon larch (Larix brevifolia), lead into a delightful region. The
John Day River also heads in the Blue Mountains, and flows into the
Columbia sixty miles below the mouth of the Umatilla. Its valley is
in great part fertile, and is noted for the interesting fossils
discovered in it by Professor Condon in sections cut by the river
through the overlying lava beds.
The Deschutes River comes in from the south about twenty miles below
the John Day. It is a large, boisterous stream, draining the eastern
slope of the Cascade Range for nearly two hundred miles, and from the
great number of falls on the main trunk, as well as on its many
mountain tributaries, well deserves its name. It enters the Columbia
with a grand roar of falls and rapids, and at times seems almost to
rival the main stream in the volume of water it carries. Near the
mouth of the Deschutes are the Falls of the Columbia, where the river
passes a rough bar of lava. The descent is not great, but the immense
volume of water makes a grand display. During the flood season the
falls are obliterated and skillful boatmen pass over them is safety;
while the Dalles, some six or eight miles below, may be passed during
low water but are utterly impassable in flood time. At the Dalles the
vast river is jammed together into a long, narrow slot of unknown
depth cut sheer down in the basalt.
This slot, or trough, is about a mile and a half long and about sixty
yards wide at the narrowest place. At ordinary times the river seems
to be set on edge and runs swiftly but without much noisy surging with
a descent of about twenty feet to the mile. But when the snow is
melting on the mountains the river rises here sixty feet, or even more
during extraordinary freshets, and spreads out over a great breadth of
massive rocks through which have been cut several other gorges running
parallel with the one usually occupied. All these inferior gorges now
come into use, and the huge, roaring torrent, still rising and
spreading, at length overwhelms the high jagged rock walls between
them, making a tremendous display of chafing, surging, shattered
currents, counter-currents, and hollow whirls that no words can be
made to describe. A few miles below the Dalles the storm-tossed river
gets itself together again, looks like water, becomes silent, and with
stately, tranquil deliberation goes on its way, out of the gray region
of sage and sand into the Oregon woods. Thirty-five or forty miles
below the Dalles are the Cascades of the Columbia, where the river in
passing through the mountains makes another magnificent display of
foaming, surging rapids, which form the first obstruction to
navigation from the ocean, a hundred and twenty miles distant. This
obstruction is to be overcome by locks, which are now being made.
Between the Dalles and the Cascades the river is like a lake a mile or
two wide, lying in a valley, or canyon, about three thousand feet
deep. The walls of the canyon lean well back in most places, and
leave here and there small strips, or bays, of level ground along the
water's edge. But towards the Cascades, and for some distance below
the, the immediate banks are guarded by walls of columnar basalt,
which are worn in many places into a great variety of bold and
picturesque forms, such as the Castle Rock, the Rooster Rock, the
Pillars of Hercules, Cape Horn, etc., while back of these rise the
sublime mountain walls, forest-crowned and fringed more or less from
top to base with pine, spruce, and shaggy underbrush, especially in
the narrow gorges and ravines, where innumerable small streams come
dancing and drifting down, misty and white, to join the mighty river.
Many of these falls on both sides of the canyon of the Columbia are
far larger and more interesting in every way than would be guessed
from the slight glimpses one gets of them while sailing past on the
river, or from the car windows. The Multnomah Falls are particularly
interesting, and occupy fern-lined gorges of marvelous beauty in the
basalt. They are said to be about eight hundred feet in height and,
at times of high water when the mountain snows are melting, are well
worthy of a place beside the famous falls of Yosemite Valley.
According to an Indian tradition, the river of the Cascades once
flowed through the basalt beneath a natural bridge that was broken
down during a mountain war, when the old volcanoes, Hood and St.
Helen's, on opposite sides of the river, hurled rocks at each other,
thus forming a dam. That the river has been dammed here to some
extent, and within a comparatively short period, seems probable, to
say the least, since great numbers of submerged trees standing erect
may be found along both shores, while, as we have seen, the whole
river for thirty miles above the Cascades looks like a lake or mill-pond. On the other hand, it is held by some that the submerged groves
were carried into their places by immense landslides.
Much of interest in the connection must necessarily be omitted for
want of space. About forty miles below the Cascades the river
receives the Willamette, the last of its great tributaries. It is
navigable for ocean vessels as far as Portland, ten miles above its
mouth, and for river steamers a hundred miles farther. The Falls of
the Willamette are fifteen miles above Portland, where the river,
coming out of dense woods, breaks its way across a bar of black basalt
and falls forty feet in a passion of snowy foam, showing to fine
advantage against its background of evergreens.
Of the fertility and beauty of the Willamette all the world has heard.
It lies between the Cascade and Coast Ranges, and is bounded on the
south by the Calapooya Mountains, a cross-spur that separates it from
the valley of the Umpqua.
It was here the first settlements for agriculture were made and a
provisional government organized, while the settlers, isolated in the
far wilderness, numbered only a few thousand and were laboring under
the opposition of the British Government and the Hudson's Bay Company.
Eager desire in the acquisition of territory on the part of these
pioneer state-builders was more truly boundless than the wilderness
they were in, and their unconscionable patriotism was equaled only by
their belligerence. For here, while negotiations were pending for the
location of the northern boundary, originated the celebrated "Fifty-four forty or fight," about as reasonable a war-cry as the "North Pole
or fight." Yet sad was the day that brought the news of the signing
of the treaty fixing their boundary along the forty-ninth parallel,
thus leaving the little land-hungry settlement only a mere quarter-million of miles!
As the Willamette is one of the most foodful of valleys, so is the
Columbia one of the most foodful of rivers. During the fisher's
harvest time salmon from the sea come in countless millions, urging
their way against falls, rapids, and shallows, up into the very heart
of the Rocky Mountains, supplying everybody by the way with most
bountiful masses of delicious food, weighing from twenty to eighty
pounds each, plump and smooth like loaves of bread ready for the oven.
The supply seems inexhaustible, as well it might. Large quantities
were used by the Indians as fuel, and by the Hudson's Bay people as
manure for their gardens at the forts. Used, wasted, canned and sent
in shiploads to all the world, a grand harvest was reaped every year
while nobody sowed. Of late, however, the salmon crop has begun to
fail, and millions of young fry are now sown like wheat in the river
every year, from hatching establishments belonging to the Government.
All of the Oregon waters that win their way to the sea are a tributary
to the Columbia, save the short streams of the immediate coast, and
the Umpqua and Rogue Rivers in southern Oregon. These both head in
the Cascade Mountains and find their way to the sea through gaps in
the Coast Range, and both drain large and fertile and beautiful
valleys. Rogue River Valley is peculiarly attractive. With a fine
climate, and kindly, productive soil, the scenery is delightful.
About the main, central open portion of the basin, dotted with
picturesque groves of oak, there are many smaller valleys charmingly
environed, the whole surrounded in the distance by the Siskiyou,
Coast, Umpqua, and Cascade Mountains. Besides the cereals nearly
every sort of fruit flourishes here, and large areas are being devoted
to peach, apricot, nectarine, and vine culture. To me it seems above
all others the garden valley of Oregon and the most delightful place
for a home. On the eastern rim of the valley, in the Cascade
Mountains, about sixty miles from Medford in a direct line, is the
remarkable Crater Lake, usually regarded as the one grand wonder of
the region. It lies in a deep, sheer-walled basin about seven
thousand feet above the level of the sea, supposed to be the crater of
an extinct volcano.
Oregon as it is today is a very young country, though most of it seems
old. Contemplating the Columbia sweeping from forest to forest,
across plain and desert, one is led to say of it, as did Byron of the
ocean, --
"Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."
How ancient appear the crumbling basaltic monuments along its banks,
and the gray plains to the east of the Cascades! Nevertheless, the
river as well as its basin in anything like their present condition
are comparatively but of yesterday. Looming no further back in the
geological records than the Tertiary Period, the Oregon of that time
looks altogether strange in the few suggestive glimpses we may get of
it--forests in which palm trees wave their royal crowns, and strange
animals roaming beneath them or about the reedy margins of lakes, the
oreodon, the lophiodon, and several extinct species of the horse, the
camel, and other animals.
Then came the fire period with its darkening showers of ashes and
cinders and its vast floods of molten lava, making quite another
Oregon from the fair and fertile land of the preceding era. And
again, while yet the volcanic fires show signs of action in the smoke
and flame of the higher mountains, the whole region passes under the
dominion of ice, and from the frost and darkness and death of the
Glacial Period, Oregon has but recently emerged to the kindly warmth
and life of today.
XXIV
The Grand Canyon 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 hills out of his way, eager, like the
Devil, to show him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and
foolishness, spiritualizing travel for him with lightning and steam,
abolishing space and time and almost everything else. Little children
and tender, pulpy people, as well as storm-seasoned explorers, may now
go almost everywhere in smooth comfort, cross oceans and deserts
scarce accessible to fishes and birds, and, dragged by steel horses,
go up high mountains, riding gloriously beneath starry showers of
sparks, ascending like Elijah in a whirlwind and chariot of fire.
First of the wonders of the great West to be brought within reach of
the tourist were the Yosemite and the Big Trees, on the completion of
the first transcontinental railway; next came the Yellowstone and icy
Alaska, by the northern roads; and last the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado, which, naturally the hardest to reach, has now become, by a
branch of the Santa Fe, the most accessible of all.
Of course, with this wonderful extension of steel ways through our
wildness there is loss as well as gain. Nearly all railroads are
bordered by belts of desolation. The finest wilderness perishes as if
stricken with pestilence. Bird and beast people, if not the dryads,
are frightened from the groves. Too often the groves also vanish,
leaving nothing but ashes. Fortunately, nature has a few big places
beyond man's power to spoil--the ocean, the two icy ends of the globe,
and the Grand Canyon.
When I first heard of the Santa Fe trains running to the edge of the
Grand Canyon of Arizona, I was troubled with thoughts of the
disenchantment likely to follow. But last winter, when I saw those
trains crawling along through the pines of the Coconino Forest and
close up to the brink of the chasm at Bright Angel, I was glad to
discover that in the presence of such stupendous scenery they are
nothing. The locomotives and trains are mere beetles and
caterpillars, and the noise they make is as little disturbing as the
hooting of an owl in the lonely woods.
In a dry, hot, monotonous forested plateau, seemingly boundless, you
come suddenly and without warning upon the abrupt edge of a gigantic
sunken landscape of the wildest, most multitudinous features, and
those features, sharp and angular, are made out of flat beds of
limestone and sandstone forming a spiry, jagged, gloriously colored
mountain range countersunk in a level gray plain. It is a hard job to
sketch it even in scrawniest outline; and, try as I may, not in the
least sparing myself, I cannot tell the hundredth part of the wonders
of its features--the side canyons, gorges, alcoves, cloisters, and
amphitheaters of vast sweep and depth, carved in its magnificent
walls; the throng of great architectural rocks it contains resembling
castles, cathedrals, temples, and palaces, towered and spired and
painted, some of them nearly a mile high, yet beneath one's feet. All
this, however, is less difficult than to give any idea of the
impression of wild, primeval beauty and power one receives in merely
gazing from its brink. The view down the gulf of color and over the
rim of its wonderful wall, more than any other view I know, leads us
to think of our earth as a star with stars swimming in light, every
radiant spire pointing the way to the heavens.
But it is impossible to conceive what the canyon is, or what
impression it makes, from descriptions or pictures, however good.
Naturally it is untellable even to those who have seen something
perhaps a little like it on a small scale in this same plateau region.
One's most extravagant expectations are indefinitely surpassed, though
one expects much from what is said of it as "the biggest chasm on
earth"--"so big is it that all other big things--Yosemite, the
Yellowstone, the Pyramids, Chicago--all would be lost if tumbled into
it." Naturally enough, illustrations as to size are sought for among
other canyons like or unlike it, with the common result of worse
confounding confusion. The prudent keep silence. It was once said
that the "Grand Canyon could put a dozen Yosemites in its vest
pocket."
The justly famous Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is, like the
Colorado, gorgeously colored and abruptly countersunk in a plateau,
and both are mainly the work of water. But the Colorado's canyon is
more than a thousand times larger, and as a score or two of new
buildings of ordinary size would not appreciably change the general
view of a great city, so hundreds of Yellowstones might be eroded in
the sides of the Colorado Canyon without noticeably augmenting its
size or the richness of its sculpture.
But it is not true that the great Yosemite rocks would be thus lost or
hidden. Nothing of their kind in the world, so far as I know, rivals
El Capitan and Tissiack, much less dwarfs or in any way belittles
them. None of the sandstone or limestone precipices of the canyon
that I have seen or heard of approaches in smooth, flawless strength
and grandeur the granite face of El Capitan or the Tenaya side of
Cloud's Rest. These colossal cliffs, types of permanence, are about
three thousand and six thousand feet high; those of the canyon that
are sheer are about half as high, and are types of fleeting change;
while glorious-domed Tissiack, noblest of mountain buildings, far from
being overshadowed or lost in this rosy, spiry canyon company, would
draw every eye, and, in serene majesty, "aboon them a'" she would take
her place--castle, temple, palace, or tower. Nevertheless a noted
writer, comparing the Grand Canyon in a general way with the glacial
Yosemite, says: "And the Yosemite--ah, the lovely Yosemite! Dumped
down into the wilderness of gorges and mountains, it would take a
guide who knew of its existence a long time to find it." This is
striking, and shows up well above the levels of commonplace
description, but it is confusing, and has the fatal fault of not being
true. As well try to describe an eagle by putting a lark in it. "And
the lark--ah, the lovely lark! Dumped down the red, royal gorge of
the eagle, it would be hard to find." Each in its own place is
better, singing at heaven's gate, and sailing the sky with the clouds.
Every feature of Nature's big face is beautiful,--height and hollow,
wrinkle, furrow, and line,--and this is the main master-furrow of its
kind on our continent, incomparably greater and more impressive than
any other yet discovered, or likely to be discovered, now that all the
great rivers have been traced to their heads.
The Colorado River rises in the heart of the continent on the dividing
ranges and ridges between the two oceans, drains thousands of snowy
mountains through narrow or spacious valleys, and thence through
canyons of every color, sheer-walled and deep, all of which seem to be
represented in this one grand canyon of canyons.
It is very hard to give anything like an adequate conception of its
size; much more of its color, its vast wall-sculpture, the wealth of
ornate architectural buildings that fill it, or, most of all, the
tremendous impression it makes. According to Major Powell, it is
about two hundred and seventeen miles long, from five to fifteen miles
wide from rim to rim, and from about five thousand to six thousand
feet deep. So tremendous a chasm would be one of the world's greatest
wonders even if, like ordinary canyons cut in sedimentary rocks, it
were empty and its walls were simple. But instead of being plain, the
walls are so deeply and elaborately carved into all sorts of recesses--alcoves, cirques, amphitheaters, and side canyons--that, were you to
trace the rim closely around on both sides, your journey would be
nearly a thousand miles long. Into all these recesses the level,
continuous beds of rock in ledges and benches, with their various
colors, run like broad ribbons, marvelously beautiful and effective
even at a distance of ten or twelve miles. And the vast space these
glorious walls inclose, instead of being empty, is crowded with
gigantic architectural rock forms gorgeously colored and adorned with
towers and spires like works of art.
Looking down from this level plateau, we are more impressed with a
feeling of being on the top of everything than when looking from the
summit of a mountain. From side to side of the vast gulf, temples,
palaces, towers, and spires come soaring up in thick array half a mile
or nearly a mile above their sunken, hidden bases, some to a level
with our standpoint, but none higher. And in the inspiring morning
light all are so fresh and rosy-looking that they seem new-born; as
if, like the quick-growing crimson snowplants of the California woods,
they had just sprung up, hatched by the warm, brooding, motherly
weather.
In trying to describe the great pines and sequoias of the Sierra, I
have often thought that if one of these trees could be set by itself
in some city park, its grandeur might there be impressively realized;
while in its home forests, where all magnitudes are great, the weary,
satiated traveler sees none of them truly. It is so with these
majestic rock structures.
Though mere residual masses of the plateau, they are dowered with the
grandeur and repose of mountains, together with the finely chiseled
carving and modeling of man's temples and palaces, and often, to a
considerable extent, with their symmetry. Some, closely observed,
look like ruins; but even these stand plumb and true, and show
architectural forms loaded with lines strictly regular and decorative,
and all are arrayed in colors that storms and time seem only to
brighten. They are not placed in regular rows in line with the river,
but "a' through ither," as the Scotch say, in lavish, exuberant
crowds, as if nature in wildest extravagance held her bravest
structures as common as gravel-piles. Yonder stands a spiry cathedral
nearly five thousand feet in height, nobly symmetrical, with sheer
buttressed walls and arched doors and windows, as richly finished and
decorated with sculptures as the great rock temples of India or Egypt.
Beside it rises a huge castle with arched gateway, turrets, watch-towers, ramparts, etc., and to right and left palaces, obelisks, and
pyramids fairly fill the gulf, all colossal and all lavishly painted
and carved. Here and there a flat-topped structure may be seen, or
one imperfectly domed; but the prevailing style is ornate Gothic, with
many hints of Egyptian and Indian.
Throughout this vast extent of wild architecture--nature's own capital
city--there seem to be no ordinary dwellings. All look like grand and
important public structures, except perhaps some of the lower
pyramids, broad-based and sharp-pointed, covered with down-flowing
talus like loosely set tents with hollow, sagging sides. The roofs
often have disintegrated rocks heaped and draggled over them, but in
the main the masonry is firm and laid in regular courses, as if done
by square and rule.
Nevertheless they are ever changing; their tops are now a dome, now a
flat table or a spire, as harder or softer strata are reached in their
slow degradation, while the sides, with all their fine moldings, are
being steadily undermined and eaten away. But no essential change in
style or color is thus effected. From century to century they stand
the same. What seems confusion among the rough earthquake-shaken
crags nearest one comes to order as soon as the main plan of the
various structures appears. Every building, however complicated and
laden with ornamental lines, is at one with itself and every one of
its neighbors, for the same characteristic controlling belts of color
and solid strata extend with wonderful constancy for very great
distances, and pass through and give style to thousands of separate
structures, however their smaller characters may vary.
Of all the various kinds of ornamental work displayed--carving,
tracery on cliff faces, moldings, arches, pinnacles--none is more
admirably effective or charms more than the webs of rain-channeled
taluses. Marvelously extensive, without the slightest appearance of
waste or excess, they cover roofs and dome tops and the base of every
cliff, belt each spire and pyramid and massy, towering temple, and in
beautiful continuous lines go sweeping along the great walls in and
out around all the intricate system of side canyons, amphitheaters,
cirques, and scallops into which they are sculptured. From one point
hundreds of miles of the fairy embroidery may be traced. It is all so
fine and orderly that it would seem that not only had the clouds and
streams been kept harmoniously busy in the making of it, but that
every raindrop sent like a bullet to a mark had been the subject of a
separate thought, so sure is the outcome of beauty through the stormy
centuries. Surely nowhere else are there illustrations so striking of
the natural beauty of desolation and death, so many of nature's own
mountain buildings wasting in glory of high desert air--going to dust.
See how steadfast in beauty they all are in their going. Look again
and again how the rough, dusty boulders and sand of disintegration
from the upper ledges wreathe in beauty for ashes--as in the flowers
of a prairie after fires--but here the very dust and ashes are
beautiful.
Gazing across the mighty chasm, we at last discover that it is not its
great depth nor length, nor yet these wonderful buildings, that most
impresses us. It is its immense width, sharply defined by precipitous
walls plunging suddenly down from a flat plain, declaring in terms
instantly apprehended that the vast gulf is a gash in the once
unbroken plateau, made by slow, orderly erosion and removal of huge
beds of rocks. Other valleys of erosion are as great--in all their
dimensions some are greater--but none of these produces an effect on
the imagination at once so quick and profound, coming without study,
given at a glance. Therefore by far the greatest and most influential
feature of this view from Bright Angel or any other of the canyon
views is the opposite wall. Of the one beneath our feet we see only
fragmentary sections in cirques and amphitheaters and on the sides of
the out-jutting promontories between them, while the other, though far
distant, is beheld in all its glory of color and noble proportions--the one supreme beauty and wonder to which the eye is ever turning.
For while charming with its beauty it tells the story of the
stupendous erosion of the canyon--the foundation of the unspeakable
impression made on everybody. It seems a gigantic statement for even
nature to make, all in one mighty stone word, apprehended at once like
a burst of light, celestial color its natural vesture, coming in glory
to mind and heart as to a home prepared for it from the very
beginning. Wildness so godful, cosmic, primeval, bestows a new sense
of earth's beauty and size. Not even from high mountains does the
world seem so wide, so like a star in glory of light on its way
through the heavens.
I have observed scenery-hunters of all sorts getting first views of
yosemites, glaciers, White Mountain ranges, etc. Mixed with the
enthusiasm which such scenery naturally excites, there is often weak
gushing, and many splutter aloud like little waterfalls. Here, for a
few moments at least, there is silence, and all are in dead earnest,
as if awed and hushed by an earthquake--perhaps until the cook cries
"Breakfast!" or the stable-boy "Horses are ready!" Then the poor
unfortunates, slaves of regular habits, turn quickly away, gasping and
muttering as if wondering where they had been and what had enchanted
them.
Roads have been made from Bright Angel Hotel through the Coconino
Forest to the ends of outstanding promontories, commanding extensive
views up and down the canyon. The nearest of them, three or four
miles east and west, are O'Neill's Point and Rowe's Point; the latter,
besides commanding the eternally interesting canyon, gives wide-sweeping views southeast and west over the dark forest roof to the San
Francisco and Mount Trumbull volcanoes--the bluest of mountains over
the blackest of level woods.
Instead of thus riding in dust with the crowd, more will be gained by
going quietly afoot along the rim at different times of day and night,
free to observe the vegetation, the fossils in the rocks, the seams
beneath overhanging ledges once inhabited by Indians, and to watch the
stupendous scenery in the changing lights and shadows, clouds,
showers, and storms. One need not go hunting the so-called "points of
interest." The verge anywhere, everywhere, is a point of interest
beyond one's wildest dreams.
As yet, few of the promontories or throng of mountain buildings in the
canyon are named. Nor among such exuberance of forms are names
thought of by the bewildered, hurried tourist. He would be as likely
to think of names for waves in a storm. The Eastern and Western
Cloisters, Hindu Amphitheater, Cape Royal, Powell's Plateau, Grand
View Point, Point Sublime, Bissell and Moran Points, the Temple of
Set, Vishnu's Temple, Shiva's Temple, Twin Temples, Tower of Babel,
Hance's Column--these fairly good names given by Dutton, Holmes,
Moran, and others are scattered over a large stretch of the canyon
wilderness.
All the canyon rock-beds are lavishly painted, except a few neutral
bars and the granite notch at the bottom occupied by the river, which
makes but little sign. It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of
light, colored and glowing like oak and maple woods in autumn, when
the sun-gold is richest. I have just said that it is impossible to
learn what the canyon is like from descriptions and pictures.
Powell's and Dutton's descriptions present magnificent views not only
of the canyon but of all the grand region round about it; and Holmes's
drawings, accompanying Dutton's report, are wonderfully good. Surely
faithful and loving skill can go no farther in putting the
multitudinous decorated forms on paper. But the COLORS, the living
rejoicing COLORS, chanting morning and evening in chorus to heaven!
Whose brush or pencil, however lovingly inspired, can give us these?
And if paint is of no effect, what hope lies in pen-work? Only this:
some may be incited by it to go and see for themselves.
No other range of mountainous rock-work of anything like the same
extent have I seen that is so strangely, boldly, lavishly colored.
The famous Yellowstone Canyon below the falls comes to mind; but,
wonderful as it is, and well deserved as is its fame, compared with
this it is only a bright rainbow ribbon at the roots of the pines.
Each of the series of level, continuous beds of carboniferous rocks of
the canyon has, as we have seen, its own characteristic color. The
summit limestone beds are pale yellow; next below these are the
beautiful rose-colored cross-bedded sandstones; next there are a
thousand feet of brilliant red sandstones; and below these the red
wall limestones, over two thousand feet thick, rich massy red, the
greatest and most influential of the series, and forming the main
color-fountain. Between these are many neutral-tinted beds. The
prevailing colors are wonderfully deep and clear, changing and
blending with varying intensity from hour to hour, day to day, season
to season; throbbing, wavering, glowing, responding to every passing
cloud or storm, a world of color in itself, now burning in separate
rainbow bars streaked and blotched with shade, now glowing in one
smooth, all-pervading ethereal radiance like the alpenglow, uniting
the rocky world with the heavens.
The dawn, as in all the pure, dry desert country is ineffably
beautiful; and when the first level sunbeams sting the domes and
spires, with what a burst of power the big, wild days begin! The dead
and the living, rocks and hears alike, awake and sing the new-old song
of creation. All the massy headlands and salient angles of the walls,
and the multitudinous temples and palaces, seem to catch the light at
once, and cast thick black shadows athwart hollow and gorge, bringing
out details as well as the main massive features of the architecture;
while all the rocks, as if wild with life, throb and quiver and glow
in the glorious sunburst, rejoicing. Every rock temple then becomes a
temple of music; every spire and pinnacle an angel of light and song,
shouting color hallelujahs.
As the day draws to a close, shadows, wondrous, black, and thick, like
those of the morning, fill up the wall hollows, while the glowing
rocks, their rough angles burned off, seem soft and hot to the heart
as they stand submerged in purple haze, which now fills the canyon
like a sea. Still deeper, richer, more divine grow the great walls
and temples, until in the supreme flaming glory of sunset the whole
canyon is transfigured, as if all the life and light of centuries of
sunshine stored up and condensed in the rocks was now being poured
forth as from one glorious fountain, flooding both earth and sky.
Strange to say, in the full white effulgence of the midday hours the
bright colors grow dim and terrestrial in common gray haze; and the
rocks, after the manner of mountains, seem to crouch and drowse and
shrink to less than half their real stature, and have nothing to say
to one, as if not at home. But it is fine to see how quickly they
come to life and grow radiant and communicative as soon as a band of
white clouds come floating by. As if shouting for joy, they seem to
spring up to meet them in hearty salutation, eager to touch them and
beg their blessings. It is just in the midst of these dull midday
hours that the canyon clouds are born.
A good storm cloud full of lightning and rain on its way to its work
on a sunny desert day is a glorious object. Across the canyon,
opposite the hotel, is a little tributary of the Colorado called
Bright Angel Creek. A fountain-cloud still better deserves the name
"Angel of the Desert Wells"--clad in bright plumage, carrying cool
shade and living water to countless animals and plants ready to
perish, noble in form and gesture, seeming able for anything, pouring
life-giving, wonder-working floods from its alabaster fountains, as if
some sky-lake had broken. To every gulch and gorge on its favorite
ground is given a passionate torrent, roaring, replying to the
rejoicing lightning--stones, tons in weight, hurrying away as if
frightened, showing something of the way Grand Canyon work is done.
Most of the fertile summer clouds of the canyon are of this sort,
massive, swelling cumuli, growing rapidly, displaying delicious tones
of purple and gray in the hollows of their sun-beaten houses,
showering favored areas of the heated landscape, and vanishing in an
hour or two. Some, busy and thoughtful-looking, glide with beautiful
motion along the middle of the canyon in flocks, turning aside here
and there, lingering as if studying the needs of particular spots,
exploring side canyons, peering into hollows like birds seeding nest-places, or hovering aloft on outspread wings. They scan all the red
wilderness, dispensing their blessings of cool shadows and rain where
the need is the greatest, refreshing the rocks, their offspring as
well as the vegetation, continuing their sculpture, deepening gorges
and sharpening peaks. Sometimes, blending all together, they weave a
ceiling from rim to rim, perhaps opening a window here and there for
sunshine to stream through, suddenly lighting some palace or temple
and making it flare in the rain as if on fire.
Sometimes, as one sits gazing from a high, jutting promontory, the sky
all clear, showing not the slightest wisp or penciling, a bright band
of cumuli will appear suddenly, coming up the canyon in single file,
as if tracing a well-known trail, passing in review, each in turn
darting its lances and dropping its shower, making a row of little
vertical rivers in the air above the big brown one. Others seem to
grow from mere points, and fly high above the canyon, yet following
its course for a long time, noiseless, as if hunting, then suddenly
darting lightning at unseen marks, and hurrying on. Or they loiter
here and there as if idle, like laborers out of work, waiting to be
hired.
Half a dozen or more showers may oftentimes be seen falling at once,
while far the greater part of the sky is in sunshine, and not a
raindrop comes nigh one. These thundershowers from as many separate
clouds, looking like wisps of long hair, may vary greatly in effects.
The pale, faint streaks are showers that fail to reach the ground,
being evaporated on the way down through the dry, thirsty air, like
streams in deserts. Many, on the other hand, which in the distance
seem insignificant, are really heavy rain, however local; these are
the gray wisps well zigzagged with lightning. The darker ones are
torrent rain, which on broad, steep slopes of favorable conformation
give rise to so-called "cloudbursts"; and wonderful is the commotion
they cause. The gorges and gulches below them, usually dry, break out
in loud uproar, with a sudden downrush of muddy, boulder-laden floods.
Down they all go in one simultaneous gush, roaring like lions rudely
awakened, each of the tawny brood actually kicking up a dust at the
first onset.
During the winter months snow falls over all the high plateau, usually
to a considerable depth, whitening the rim and the roofs of the canyon
buildings. But last winter, when I arrived at Bright Angel in the
middle of January, there was no snow in sight, and the ground was dry,
greatly to my disappointment, for I had made the trip mainly to see
the canyon in its winter garb. Soothingly I was informed that this
was an exceptional season, and that the good snow might arrive at any
time. After waiting a few days, I gladly hailed a broad-browed cloud
coming grandly on from the west in big promising blackness, very
unlike the white sailors of the summer skies. Under the lee of a rim-ledge, with another snow-lover, I watched its movements as it took
possession of the canyon and all the adjacent region in sight.
Trailing its gray fringes over the spiry tops of the great temples and
towers, it gradually settled lower, embracing them all with ineffable
kindness and gentleness of touch, and fondled the little cedars and
pines as they quivered eagerly in the wind like young birds begging
their mothers to feed them. The first flakes and crystals began to
fly about noon, sweeping straight up the middle of the canyon, and
swirling in magnificent eddies along the sides. Gradually the hearty
swarms closed their ranks, and all the canyon was lost in gray bloom
except a short section of the wall and a few trees beside us, which
looked glad with snow in their needles and about their feet as they
leaned out over the gulf. Suddenly the storm opened with magical
effect to the north over the canyon of Bright Angel Creek, inclosing a
sunlit mass of the canyon architecture, spanned by great white
concentric arches of cloud like the bows of a silvery aurora. Above
these and a little back of them was a series of upboiling purple
clouds, and high above all, in the background, a range of noble cumuli
towered aloft like snow-laden mountains, their pure pearl bosses
flooded with sunshine. The whole noble picture, calmly glowing, was
framed in thick gray gloom, which soon closed over it; and the storm
went on, opening and closing until night covered all.
Two days later, when we were on a jutting point about eighteen miles
east of Bright Angel and one thousand feet higher, we enjoyed another
storm of equal glory as to cloud effects, though only a few inches of
snow fell. Before the storm began we had a magnificent view of this
grander upper part of the canyon and also of the Coconino Forest and
the Painted Desert. The march of the clouds with their storm banners
flying over this sublime landscape was unspeakable glorious, and so
also was the breaking up of the storm next morning--the mingling of
silver-capped rock, sunshine, 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
canyons attract like high mountains; the deeper they are, the more
surely are we drawn into them. On foot, of course, there is no danger
whatever, and, with ordinary precautions, but little on animals. In
comfortable tourist faith, unthinking, unfearing, down go men, women,
and children on whatever is offered, horse, mule, or burro, as if
saying with Jean Paul, "fear nothing but fear"--not without reason,
for these canyon trails down the stairways of the gods are less
dangerous than they seem, less dangerous than home stairs. The guides
are cautious, and so are the experienced, much-enduring beasts. The
scrawniest Rosinantes and wizened-rat mules cling hard to the rocks
endwise or sidewise, like lizards or ants. From terrace to terrace,
climate to climate, down one creeps in sun and shade, through gorge
and gully and grassy ravine, and, after a long scramble on foot, at
last beneath the mighty cliffs one comes to the grand, roaring river.
To the mountaineer the depth of the canyon, from five thousand to six
thousand feet, will not seem so very wonderful, for he has often
explored others that are about as deep. But the most experienced will
be awestruck by the vast extent of huge rock monuments of pointed
masonry built up in regular courses towering above, beneath, and round
about him. By the Bright Angel Trail the last fifteen hundred feet of
the descent to the river has to be made afoot down the gorge of Indian
Garden Creek. Most of the visitors do not like this part, and are
content to stop at the end of the horse trail and look down on the
dull-brown flood from the edge of the Indian Garden Plateau. By the
new Hance Trail, excepting a few daringly steep spots, you can ride
all the way to the river, where there is a good spacious camp-ground
in a mesquite grove. This trail, built by brave Hance, begins on the
highest part of the rim, eight thousand feet above the sea, a thousand
feet higher than the head of Bright Angel Trail, and the descent is a
little over six thousand feet, through a wonderful variety of climate
and life. Often late in the fall, when frosty winds are blowing and
snow is flying at one end of the trail, tender plants are blooming in
balmy summer weather at the other. The trip down and up can be made
afoot easily in a day. In this way one is free to observe the scenery
and vegetation, instead of merely clinging to his animal and watching
its steps. But all who have time should go prepared to camp awhile on
the riverbank, to rest and learn something about the plants and
animals and the mighty flood roaring past. In cool, shady
amphitheaters at the head of the trail there are groves of white
silver fir and Douglas spruce, with ferns and saxifrages that recall
snowy mountains; below these, yellow pine, nut pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam, ash, maple, holly-leaved berberis, cowania, spiraea, dwarf
oak, and other small shrubs and trees. In dry gulches and on taluses
and sun-beaten crags are sparsely scattered yuccas, cactuses, agave,
etc. Where springs gush from the rocks there are willow thickets,
grassy flats, and bright, flowery gardens, and in the hottest recesses
the delicate abronia, mesquite, woody compositae, and arborescent
cactuses.
The most striking and characteristic part of this widely varied
vegetation are the cactaceae--strange, leafless, old-fashioned plants
with beautiful flowers and fruit, in every way able and admirable.
While grimly defending themselves with innumerable barbed spears, they
offer both food and drink to man and beast. Their juicy globes and
disks and fluted cylindrical columns are almost the only desert wells
that never go dry, and they always seem to rejoice the more and grow
plumper and juicier the hotter the sunshine and sand. Some are
spherical, like rolled-up porcupines, crouching in rock-hollows
beneath a mist of gray lances, unmoved by the wildest winds. Others,
standing as erect as bushes and trees or tall branchless pillars
crowned with magnificent flowers, their prickly armor sparkling, look
boldly abroad over the glaring desert, making the strangest forests
ever seen or dreamed of. Cereus giganteus, the grim chief of the
desert tribe, is often thirty or forty feet high in southern Arizona.
Several species of tree yuccas in the same desert, laden in early
spring with superb white lilies, form forests hardly less wonderful,
though here they grow singly or in small lonely groves. The low,
almost stemless Yucca baccata, with beautiful lily flowers and sweet
banana-like fruit, prized by the Indians, is common along the canyon
rim, growing on lean, rocky soil beneath mountain mahogany, nut pines,
and junipers, beside dense flowery mats of Spiraea caespitosa and the
beautiful pinnate-leaved Spiraea millefolia. The nut pine (Pinus
edulis) scattered along the upper slopes and roofs of the canyon
buildings, is the principal tree of the strange dwarf Coconino Forest.
It is a picturesque stub of a pine about twenty-five feet high,
usually with dead, lichened limbs thrust through its rounded head, and
grows on crags and fissured rock tables, braving heat and frost, snow
and drought, and continuing patiently, faithfully fruitful for
centuries. Indians and insects and almost every desert bird and beast
come to it to be fed.
To civilized people from corn and cattle and wheat-field countries the
canyon at first sight seems as uninhabitable as a glacier crevasse,
utterly silent and barren. Nevertheless it is the home of the
multitude of our fellow-mortals, men as well as animals and plants.
Centuries ago it was inhabited by tribes of Indians, who, long before
Columbus saw America, built thousands of stone houses in its crags,
and large ones, some of them several stories high, with hundreds of
rooms, on the mesas of the adjacent regions. Their cliff-dwellings,
almost numberless, are still to be seen in the canyon, scattered along
both sides from top to bottom and throughout its entire length, built
of stone and mortar in seams and fissures like swallows' nests, or on
isolated ridges and peaks. The ruins of larger buildings are found on
open spots by the river, but most of them aloft on the brink of the
wildest, giddiest precipices, sites evidently chosen for safety from
enemies, and seemingly accessible only to the birds of the air. Many
caves were also used as dwelling-places, as were mere seams on cliff-fronts formed by unequal weathering and with or without outer or side
walls; and some of them were covered with colored pictures of animals.
The most interesting of these cliff-dwellings had pathetic little
ribbon-like strips of garden on narrow terraces, where irrigating
water could be carried to them--most romantic of sky-gardens, but
eloquent of hard times.
In recesses along the river and on the first plateau flats above its
gorge were fields and gardens of considerable size, where irrigating
ditches may still be traced. Some of these ancient gardens are still
cultivated by Indians, descendants of cliff-dwellers, who raise corn,
squashes, melons, potatoes, etc., to reinforce the produce of the many
wild food-furnishing plants--nuts, beans, berries, yucca and cactus
fruits, grass and sunflower seeds, etc.--and the flesh of animals--deer, rabbits, lizards, etc. The canyon Indians I have met here seem
to be living much as did their ancestors, though not now driven into
rock-dens. They are able, erect men, with commanding eyes, which
nothing that they wish to see can escape. They are never in a hurry,
have a strikingly measured, deliberate, bearish manner of moving the
limbs and turning the head, are capable of enduring weather, thirst,
hunger, and over-abundance, and are blessed with stomachs which
triumph over everything the wilderness may offer. Evidently their
lives are not bitter.
The largest of the canyon animals one is likely to see is the wild
sheep, or Rocky Mountain bighorn, a most admirable beast, with limbs
that never fail, at home on the most nerve-trying precipices,
acquainted with all the springs and passes and broken-down jumpable
places in the sheer ribbon cliffs, bounding from crag to crag in easy
grace and confidence of strength, his great horns held high above his
shoulders, wild red blood beating and hissing through every fiber of
him like the wind through a quivering mountain pine.
Deer also are occasionally met in the canyon, making their way to the
river when the wells of the plateau are dry. Along the short spring
streams beavers are still busy, as is shown by the cottonwood and
willow timber they have cut and peeled, found in all the river drift-heaps. In the most barren cliffs and gulches there dwell a multitude
of lesser animals, well-dressed, clear-eyed, happy little beasts--wood
rats, kangaroo rats, gophers, wood mice, skunks, rabbits, bobcats, and
many others, gathering food, or dozing in their sun-warmed dens.
Lizards, too, of every kind and color are here enjoying life on the
hot cliffs, and making the brightest of them brighter.
Nor is there any lack of feathered people. The golden eagle may be
seen, and the osprey, hawks, jays, hummingbirds, the mourning dove,
and cheery familiar singers--the black-headed grosbeak, robin,
bluebird, Townsend's thrush, and many warblers, sailing the sky and
enlivening the rocks and bushes through all the canyon wilderness.
Here at Hance's river camp or a few miles above it brave Powell and
his brave men passed their first night in the canyon on the
adventurous voyage of discovery thirty-three[34] years ago. They
faced a thousand dangers, open or hidden, now in their boats gladly
sliding down swift, smooth reaches, now rolled over and over in back-combing surges of rough, roaring cataracts, sucked under in eddies,
swimming like beavers, tossed and beaten like castaway drift--stout-hearted, undaunted, doing their work through it all. After a month of
this they floated smoothly out of the dark, gloomy, roaring abyss into
light and safety two hundred miles below. As the flood rushes past
us, heavy-laden with desert mud, we naturally think of its sources,
its countless silvery branches outspread on thousands of snowy
mountains along the crest of the continent, and the life of the, the
beauty of the, their history and romance. Its topmost springs are far
north and east in Wyoming and Colorado, on the snowy Wind River,
Front, Park, and Sawatch Ranges, dividing the two ocean waters, and
the Elk, Wahsatch, Uinta, and innumerable spurs streaked with streams,
made famous by early explorers and hunters. It is a river of rivers--the Du Chesne, San Rafael, Yampa, Dolores, Gunnison, Cochetopa,
Uncompahgre, Eagle, and Roaring Rivers, the Green and the Grand, and
scores of others with branches innumerable, as mad and glad a band as
ever sang on mountains, descending in glory of foam and spray from
snow-banks and glaciers through their rocky moraine-dammed, beaver-dammed channels. Then, all emerging from dark balsam and pine woods
and coming together, they meander through wide, sunny park valleys,
and at length enter the great plateau and flow in deep canyons, the
beginning of the system culminating in this grand canyon of canyons.
Our warm canyon camp is also a good place to give a thought to the
glaciers which still exist at the heads of the highest tributaries.
Some of them are of considerable size, especially those on the Wind
River and Sawatch ranges in Wyoming and Colorado. They are remnants
of a vast system of glaciers which recently covered the upper part of
the Colorado basin, sculptured its peaks, ridges, and valleys to their
present forms, and extended far out over the plateau region--how far I
cannot now say. It appears, therefore, that, however old the main
trunk of the Colorado may be, all its widespread upper branches and
the landscapes they flow through are new-born, scarce at all changed
as yet in any important feature since they first came to light at the
close of the Glacial Period.
The so-called Grand Colorado Plateau, of which the Grand Canyon is
only one of the well-proportioned features, extends with a breadth of
hundreds of miles from the flanks of the Wahsatch and Park Mountains
to the south of the San Francisco Peaks. Immediately to the north of
the deepest part of the canyon it rises in a series of subordinate
plateaus, diversified with green meadows, marshes, bogs, ponds,
forests, and grovy park valleys, a favorite Indian hunting ground,
inhabited by elk, deer, beaver, etc. But far the greater part of the
plateau is good sound desert, rocky, sandy, or fluffy with loose ashes
and dust, dissected in some places into a labyrinth of stream-channel
chasms like cracks in a dry clay-bed, or the narrow slit crevasses of
glaciers--blackened with lava flows, dotted with volcanoes and
beautiful buttes, and lined with long continuous escarpments--a vast
bed of sediments of an ancient sea-bottom, still nearly as level as
when first laid down after being heaved into the sky a mile or two
high.
Walking quietly about in the alleys and byways of the Grand Canyon
city, we learn something of the way it was made; and all must admire
effects so great from means apparently so simple; rain striking light
hammer blows or heavier in streams, with many rest Sundays; soft air
and light, gentle sappers and miners, toiling forever; the big river
sawing the plateau asunder, carrying away the eroded and ground waste,
and exposing the edges of the strata to the weather; rain torrents
sawing cross-streets and alleys, exposing the strata in the same way
in hundreds of sections, the softer, less resisting beds weathering
and receding faster, thus undermining the harder beds, which fall, not
only in small weathered particles, but in heavy sheer-cleaving masses,
assisted down from time to time by kindly earthquakes, rain torrents
rushing the fallen material to the river, keeping the wall rocks
constantly exposed. Thus the canyon grows wider and deeper. So also
do the side canyons and amphitheaters, while secondary gorges and
cirques gradually isolate masses of the promontories, forming new
buildings, all of which are being weathered and pulled and shaken down
while being built, showing destruction and creation as one. We see
the proudest temples and palaces in stateliest attitudes, wearing
their sheets of detritus as royal robes, shedding off showers of red
and yellow stones like trees in autumn shedding their leaves, going to
dust like beautiful days to night, proclaiming as with the tongues of
angels the natural beauty of death.
Every building is seen to be a remnant of once continuous beds of
sediments,--sand and slime on the floor of an ancient sea, and filled
with the remains of animals,--and every particle of the sandstones and
limestones of these wonderful structures to be derived from other
landscapes, weathered and rolled and ground in the storms and streams
of other ages. And when we examine the escarpments, hills, buttes,
and other monumental masses of the plateau on either side of the
canyon, we discover that an amount of material has been carried off in
the general denudation of the region compared with which even that
carried away in the making of the Grand Canyon is as nothing. Thus
each wonder in sight becomes a window through which other wonders come
to view. In no other part of this continent are the wonders of
geology, the records of the world's auld lang syne, more widely
opened, or displayed in higher piles. The whole canyon is a mine of
fossils, in which five thousand feet of horizontal strata are exposed
in regular succession over more than a thousand square miles of wall-space, and on the adjacent plateau region there is another series of
beds twice as thick, forming a grand geological library--a collection
of stone books covering thousands of miles of shelving, tier on tier,
conveniently arranged for the student. And with what wonderful
scriptures are their pages filled--myriad forms of successive floras
and faunas, lavishly illustrated with colored drawings, carrying us
back into the midst of the life of a past infinitely remote. And as
we go on and on, studying this old, old life in the light of the life
beating warmly about us, we enrich and lengthen our own.
THE END
Footnotes [by the editor of the 1918 original of this text]:
[1] This essay was written early in 1875.
[2] 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.
[3] An excerpt from a letter to a friend, written in 1873.
[4] Muir at this time was making Yosemite Valley his home.
[5] An obsolete genus of plants now replaced in the main by
Chrysothamnus and Ericameria.
[6] An early local name for what is now known as Lassen Peak, or Mt.
Lassen. In 1914 its volcanic activity was resumed with spectacular
eruptions of ashes, steam, and gas.
[7] Pronounced Too'-lay.
[8] Letter dated "Salt Lake City, Utah, May 15, 1877."
[9] Letter dated "Salt Lake City, Utah, May 19, 1877."
[10] Letter dated "Lake Point, Utah, May 20, 1877."
[11] Letter dated "Salt Lake, July, 1877."
[12] Letter dated "September 1, 1877."
[13] Letter written during the first week of September, 1877.
[14] The spruce, or hemlock, then known as Abies Douglasii var.
macrocarpa is now called Pseudotsuga macrocarpa.
[15] Written at Ward, Nevada, in September, 1878.
[16] See footnote 5.
[17] Written at Eureka, Nevada, in October, 1878.
[18] Now called Pinus monophylla, or one-leaf pinyon.
[19] Written at Pioche, Nevada, in October, 1878.
[20] Written at Eureka, Nevada, in November, 1878.
[21] Date and place of writing not given. Published in the San
Francisco Evening Bulletin, January 15, 1879.
[22] November 11, 1889; Muir's description probably was written toward
the end of the same year.
[23] This tree, now known to botanists as Picea sitchensis, was named
Abies Menziesii by Lindley in 1833.
[24] Also known as "canoe cedar," and described in Jepson's Silva of
California under the more recent specific name Thuja plicata.
[25] Now classified as Tsuga mertensiana Sarg.
[26] Now Abies grandis Lindley.
[27] Chamaecyparis lawsoniana Parl. (Port Orford cedar) in Jepson's
Silva.
[28] 1889.
[29] A careful re-determination of the height of Rainier, made by
Professor A. G. McAdie in 1905, gave an altitude of 14,394 feet. The
Standard Dictionary wrongly describes it is "the highest peak (14,363
feet) within the United States." The United States Baedeker and
railroad literature overstate its altitude by more than a hundred
feet.
[30] Doubtless the red silver fir, now classified as Abies amabilis.
[31] Lassen Peak on recent maps.
[32] Pseudotsuga taxifolia Brit.
[33] Thuja plicata Don.
[34] Muir wrote this description in 1902; Major J. W. Powell made his
descent through the canyon, with small boats, in 1869.
Note from the transcriber:
A phrase Muir uses that readers might doubt: "fountain range," by
which he means a mountainous area where rain or snow fall that is the
source of water for a river or stream downslope. So it is not a
typographical error for "mountain range"! Another odd phrase is
"(something) is well worthy (something else)" rather than "well worth"
or "well worthy of." He uses this at least twice in this work. --jg
End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Steep Trails by John Muir