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Page 17
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.
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