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Page 13
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 is overflowed with lava;
cattle-raisers, mostly on the open plains to the northeastward and
around the Klamath Lakes; hunters and trappers, where the woods and
waters are wildest; and farmers, in Shasta Valley on the north side of
the mountain, wheat, apples, melons, berries, all the best production
of farm and garden growing and ripening there at the foot of the great
white cone, which seems at times during changing storms ready to fall
upon them--the most sublime farm scenery imaginable.
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.
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