first meeting asserted supremacy over my life, and formed a silent
partnership with my conscience. She was a chubby, black mule, so sleek
and rotund as distantly to suggest a pig on stilts. Upon the eye which
still remained, a cataract had begun to spread its dimming film. Her
make-up was also defective in a weak pair of hind legs, which gave way
suddenly in going up steep places. She was clumsy, and in rugged
pathways would squander much time in the selection of her foothold. At
these moments, when she deliberated, as I fancied, needlessly long, I
have very gently suggested with Spanish spur that it might be as well to
start; the serious face then turned upon me, its mild eye looking into
mine one long, earnest gaze, as much as to say, “I love and would spare
you; remember Balaam!” I yielded.
These animals are always of the opposition party; they reverse your
wishes, and from one year’s end to another defy your best judgment. Yet
I love them, and only in extreme moments “go for” them with a
fence-rail or theodolite-tripod. Nothing can be pleasanter than to ride
them through forest roads, chatting in a bright company, and catching
glimpses of far, quiet scenery framed by the long, furry ears.
So we thought on that sunny morning when we left Sisson’s, starting
ahead of wagons and pack animals, and riding out into the woodland on
our trip round Shasta; a march of a hundred miles, with many proposed
side-excursions into the mountain.
The California haze had again enveloped Shasta, this time nearly
obscuring it. In forest along the southeast base, we came upon the
stream flowing from McCloud Glacier, its cold waters milky white with
fine, sandy sediment. Such dense, impenetrable fields of chaparral cover
the south foothills that we were only able to fight our way through
limited parts, getting, however, a clear idea of lava flows and
topography. Farther east, the plains rise to seven thousand feet, and
fine wood ridges sweep down from Shasta, inviting approach.
While Munger and Watkins camped to make studies and negatives of the
peak, Fred Clark and I packed one mule with a week’s provisions, and,
mounting our saddle-animals, struck off into dark, silent forest.
It was a steep climb of eight or ten miles up tree-covered ridges and
among outcrops of gray trachyte, nearly every foot showing more or less
evidence of glacial action; long trains of morainal rocks upon which
large forest-trees seemed satisfied to grow; great, rough regions of
terminal rubbish, with enclosed patches of level earth commonly
grass-grown and picturesque. It was sunset before we came upon water,
and then it flowed a thousand feet below us in the bottom of a sharp,
narrow cañon, cut abruptly down in what seemed glacial _débris_. I
thought it unwise to take our mules down its steep wall if there were
any camp-spot high up in the opener head of the cañon, and went off on
foot to climb the wooded moraines still farther, hoping to come upon a
bit of alpine sward with icy pool, or even upon a spring. When up
between two and three hundred feet the trees became less and less
frequent, rugged trains of stone and glacier-scored rock in places
covering the spurs. I could now overlook the snow amphitheatre, which
opened vast and shadowy above. Not a sign of vegetation enlivened its
stony bed. The icy brook flowed between slopes of _débris_. At my feet a
trachyte ridge narrowed the stream with a tortuous bed, and led it to
the edge of a five-hundred-feet cliff, over which poured a graceful
cascade. Finding no camp-spot there, I turned northward and made a
detour through deep woods, by-and-by coming back to Clark. We faced the
necessity, and by dark were snugly camped in the wild cañon bottom. It
was one of the loneliest bivouacs of my life: shut in by high, dark
walls, a few clustered trees growing here and there, others which floods
had undermined lying prostrate, rough bowlders thrown about, an icy
stream hurrying by, and chilly winds coming down from the height,
against which our blankets only half defended us.
Our excursion next day was south and west, across high, scantily wooded
moraines, till we came to the deep cañon of the McCloud Glacier.
I describe this gorge, as it is one of several similar, all peculiar to
Shasta. We had climbed to a point about ten thousand feet above the sea,
and were upon the eastern edge of a cañon of eleven or twelve hundred
feet depth. From the very crest of the Shasta, with here and there a few
patches of snow, a long and remarkably even _débris_ slope swept down.
It seemed as if these small pieces of trachyte formed a great part of
the region, for to the very bottom our cañon walls were worked out of
it. A half mile below us the left bank was curiously eroded by side
streams, resulting in a family of pillars from one to seven hundred feet
high, each capped with some hard lava bowlder which had protected the
soft _débris_ beneath from weathering. From its lofty _névé_ the McCloud
Glacier descended over rugged slopes in one long cascade to a little
above our station, where it impinged against a great rock buttress and
turned sharply from the south wall toward us, rounding over in a great,
solid ice-dome eight or nine hundred feet high. For a mile farther a
huge accumulation looking like a river of _débris_ cumbered the bottom.
Here and there, on close scrutiny, we found it to be pierced with
caverns whose ice-walls showed that the glacier underlay all this vast
amount of stone. Bowlders rattled continually from the upper glacier
and down both cañon walls, increasing the already great burden. Along
both sides were evidences of motion in the lateral moraine embankments,
and a very perceptible rounding up of terminal ramparts, from which in
white torrent poured the sub-glacial brook.
It is instructive to consider what an amount of freighting labor this
shrunken ice-stream has to perform besides dragging its own vast weight
along. In descending Shasta we had found glacial ice which evidently for
a mile or more deeply underlaid a mass of rock similar to this. It is
one of the curiosities of Mount Shasta that such a great bulk of ice
should be buried, and in large part preserved, by loads of rock
fragments. Fine contrasts of color were afforded high up among the
_sérac_ by a combination of blue ice and red lavas. We hammered and
surveyed here for half the day, then descended to our mules, who bore us
eagerly back to their home, our weird little cañon camp.
A pleasant day’s march, altogether in woods and over glacial ridges,
during which not a half hour passed without opening views of the cone,
brought us high on the northern slope, at the upper forest limit, in a
region of barren avalanche tracks and immense moraines.
Between those great, straight ridges which jut almost parallel from the
volcano’s base are wide, shelving valleys, the pathways of extinct
glaciers; and here the forest, although it must once have obtained
foothold, has been uprooted and swept away before powerful avalanches,
crushed and up-piled trunks in sad wreck marking spots where the
snow-rush stopped.
Two brooks, separated by a wide, gently rounding zone of drift, flowed
down through the glacier valley which opened directly in front of our
camp.
Early next morning Clark and I made up a bag of lunch, shouldered our
instruments, and set out for a day on the glacier. Our slow, laborious
ascent of the valley was not altogether uninteresting. Constant views
obtained of moraines on either side gave us much pleasure and study. It
was instructive to observe that the bases of their structure were solid
floors of lava, upon which, in rude though secure masonry, were piled
embankments not less than half a mile wide and four hundred feet high.
Among the huge rocks which formed the upper structure the tree-forms
were peculiar. Apparently every tree had made an effort to fill some gap
and round out the smooth general surface. No matter how deeply twisted
between high bowlders, the branches spread themselves out in a
continuous, dense mat, stretching from stone to stone. It was only
rarely, and in the less elevated parts of the moraine, that we could see
a trunk. The whole effect was of a causeway of rock overgrown by some
dense, green vine.
Similar patches of stunted trees grew here and there over the bottom of
our broad amphitheatre. Oftentimes we threaded our way among dense
thickets of pines, never over six or eight feet in height, having
trunks often two and three feet in diameter, and more than once we
walked over their tops, our feet sinking but two or three inches into
the dense mat of foliage. Here and there, half buried in the drift, we
came across the tall, noble trunks of avalanche-killed trees. In
comparing their straight, symmetrical growth with the singularly matted
condition of the living-dwarfed trees, I find the indication of a great
climatic change. Not only are the present avalanches too great to permit
their growth, but the violent cold winds which drift over this region
bend down the young trees to such an extent that there are no longer
tall, normal specimens. Around the upper limits of aborescent vegetation
we passed some most enchanting spots; groves, not over eight feet in
height, of large trees whose white trunks and interwoven boughs formed a
colonnade, over which stretched thick, living thatch. Under these
strange galleries we walked upon soft, velvety turf and an elastic
cushion of pine-needles; nor could we resist the temptation of lying
down here to rest beneath the dense roof. As we looked back, charming
little vistas opened between the old and dwarfed stems. In one direction
we could see the moraine with its long, graded slope and variegated
green and brown surface; in another, the open pathway of the old glacier
worn deeper and deeper between lofty, forest-clad spurs; and up to the
great snow mass above us, with its slender peak in the heavens looking
down upon magnificent sweep of _névé_.
Only the strong desire for glaciers led us away from these delightful
groves. A short tramp over sand and bowlders brought us to the foot of a
broad, irregular, terminal moraine. Two or three milky cascades poured
out from under the great bowlder region and united to form two important
streams. We followed one of these in our climb up the moraine, and after
an hour’s hard work found ourselves upon an immense pile of lava blocks,
from which we could overlook the whole.
In irregular curve it continues not less than three miles around the end
of the glacier, and in no place that I saw was less than a half mile in
width. Where we had attacked it the width cannot be less than a mile,
and the portion over which we had climbed must reach a thickness of five
or six hundred feet.
About a half mile above us, though but little lifted from our level,
undulating hillocks of ice marked the division between glacier and
moraine; above that, it stretched in uninterrupted white fields. The
moraine in every direction extended in singularly abrupt hills,
separated by deep, irregular pits and basins of a hundred and more feet
deep.
As we climbed on, the footing became more and more insecure, piles of
rock giving way under our weight. Before long we came to a region of
circular, funnel-shaped craters, where evidently the underlying glacier
had melted out and a whole freight of bowlders fallen in with a rush.
Around the edges of these horrible traps we threaded our way with
extreme caution; now and then a bowlder, dislodging under our feet,
rolled down into these pits, and many tons would settle out of sight.
Altogether it was the most dangerous kind of climbing I have ever seen.
You were never sure of your foothold. More than once, when crossing a
comparatively smooth, level bowlder-field, the rocks began to sink under
us, and we sprang on from stone to stone while the great mass caved and
sank slowly behind us. At times, while making our way over solid-seeming
stretches, the sound of a deep, sub-glacial stream flowing far beneath
us came up faint and muffled through the chinks of the rock. This sort
of music is not encouraging to the nerves. To the siren babble of
mountain brook is added all the tragic nearness of death.
We looked far and wide in hope of some solid region which should lead us
up to the ice, but it was all alike, and we hurried on, the rocks
settling and sinking beneath our tread, until we made our way to the
edge, and climbed with relief upon the hard, white surface. After we had
gained the height of a hundred feet, climbing up a comparatively smooth
slope between brooks which flowed over it, a look back gave a more
correct idea of the general billowy character of our moraine; and here
and there in its deeper indentations we could detect the underlying ice.
It is, then, here as upon the McCloud Glacier. For at least a mile’s
width the whole lower zone is buried under accumulation of morainal
matter. Instead of ending like most Swiss glaciers, this ice wastes
chiefly in contact with the ground, and when considerable caverns are
formed the overlying moraine crushes its way through the rotten roof,
making the funnels we had seen.
Thankful that we had not assisted at one of these engulfments, we
scrambled on up the smooth, roof-like slope, steadying our ascent by the
tripod legs used as alpine stock. When we had climbed perhaps a thousand
feet the surface angle became somewhat gentler, and we were able to
overlook before us the whole broad incline up to the very peak. For a
mile or a mile and a half the sharp, blue edges of crevasses were
apparent here and there, yawning widely for the length of a thousand
feet, and at other places intersecting each other confusedly, resulting
in piled-up masses of shattered ice.
We were charmed to enter this wild region, and hurried to the edge of an
immense chasm. It could hardly have been less than a thousand or twelve
hundred feet in length. The solid, white wall of the opposite
side--sixty feet over--fell smooth and vertical for a hundred feet or
more, where rough wedged blocks and bridges of clear blue ice stretched
from wall to wall. From these and from numerous overhanging shelves hung
the long, crystal threads of icicles, and beyond, dark and impenetrable,
opened ice-caverns of unknown limit. We cautiously walked along this
brink, examining with deep interest all the lines of stratification and
veining, and the strange succession of views down into the fractured
regions below.
I had the greatest desire to be let down with a line and make my way
among these pillars and bridges of ice, but our little twenty feet of
slender rope forbade the attempt. Farther up, the crevasses walled us
about more and more. At last we got into a region where they cut into
one another, breaking the whole glacier body into a confused pile of ice
blocks. Here we had great difficulty in seeing our way for more than a
very few feet, and were constantly obliged to climb to the top of some
dangerous block to get an outlook, and before long, instead of a plain
with here and there a crevasse, we were in a mass of crevasses separated
only by thin and dangerous blades of ice.
We still pushed on, tied together with our short line, jumping over pits
and chasms, holding our breath over slender snow-ridges, and beginning
to think the work serious. We climbed an ice-crag together; all around
rose strange, sharp forms; below, in every direction, yawned narrow
cuts, caves trimmed with long stalactites of ice, walls ornamented with
crystal pilasters, and dark-blue grottoes opening down into deeper and
more gloomy chambers, as silent and cold as graves.
Far above, the summit rose white and symmetrical, its sky line sweeping
down sharp against the blue. Below, over ice-wreck and frozen waves,
opened the deep valley of our camp, leading our vision down to distant
forest slopes.
We were in the middle of a vast, convex glacier surface which embraced
the curve of Shasta for four miles around, and at least five on the
slope line, ice stretching in every direction and actually bounding the
view on all sides except where we looked down.
The idea of a mountain glacier formed from Swiss or Indian views is
always of a stream of ice walled in by more or less lofty ridges. Here a
great, curved cover of ice flows down the conical surface of a volcano
without lateral walls, a few lava pinnacles and inconspicuous piles of
_débris_ separating it from the next glacier, but they were unseen from
our point. Sharp, white profiles met the sky. It became evident we could
go no farther in the old direction, and we at once set about retracing
our steps, but in the labyrinth soon lost the barely discernible tracks
and never refound them. Whichever way we turned, impassable gulfs opened
before us, but just a little way to the right or left it seemed safe and
traversable.
At last I got provoked at the ill-luck, and suggested to Clark that we
might with advantage take a brief intermission for lunch, feeling that a
lately quieted stomach is the best defence for nerves. So when we got
into a pleasant, open spot, where the glacier became for a little way
smooth and level, we sat down, leisurely enjoying our repast. We saw a
possible way out of our difficulty, and sat some time chatting
pleasantly. When there was no more lunch we started again, and only
three steps away came upon a narrow crack edged by sharp ice-jaws. There
was something noticeable in the hollow, bottomless darkness seen through
it which arrested us, and when we had jumped across to the other side,
both knelt and looked into its depths. We saw a large, domed grotto
walled in with shattered ice and arched over by a roof of frozen snow so
thin that the light came through quite easily. The middle of this dome
overhung a terrible abyss. A block of ice thrown in fell from ledge to
ledge, echoing back its stroke fainter and fainter. We had unconsciously
sat for twenty minutes lunching and laughing on the thin roof, with only
a few inches of frozen snow to hold us up over that still, deep grave; a
noonday sun rapidly melting its surface, the warmth of our persons
slowly thawing it, and both of us playfully drumming the frail crest
with our tripod legs. We looked at one another, and agreed that we had
lost confidence in glaciers.
Splendid rifts now opened to north of us, with slant sunshine lighting
up one side in vivid contrast with the cold, shadowed wall. We greatly
enjoyed a tall precipice with a gaping crevasse at its base, and found
real pleasure in the north edge of the great ice-field, whither we now
turned. A low moraine, with here and there a mass of rock which might be
solid, flanked the glacier, but was separated from it by a deeply melted
crevasse, opening irregular caverns along the wall down under the very
glacier body. We were some time searching a point where this gulf might
be safely crossed. A thin tongue of ice, sharpened by melting to a mere
blade, jutted from the solid glacier over to the moraine, offering us a
passage of some danger and much interest. We edged our way along astride
its crest, until a good spring carried us over a final crevasse and up
upon the moraine, which we found to be dangerously built up of
honeycombed ice and bowlders. The same perilous sinks and holes
surrounded us, and alternated with hollow archways over subterranean
streams. It was a relief, after an hour’s labor, to find ourselves on
solid lava, although the ridge, which proved to be a chain of old
craters, was one of the most dreary reaches I have ever seen.
In the evidence of glacier motion there had seemed a form of life, but
here among silent, rigid crater rims and stark fields of volcanic sand
we walked upon ground lifeless and lonely beyond description: a frozen
desert at nine thousand feet altitude. Among the huge, rude forms of
lava we tramped along, happy when the tracks of mountain sheep suggested
former explorers, and pleased if a snow-bank under rock shadow gave
birth to spring or pool. But the severe impression of arctic dreariness
passed off when, reaching a rim, we looked over and down upon the
volcano’s north foot, a superb sweep of forest country waved with ridgy
flow of lava and gracefully curved moraines.
Afar off, the wide, sunny Shasta Valley, dotted with miniature
volcanoes, and checked with the yellow and green of grain and garden,
spread pleasantly away to the north, bounded by Clamath hills and
horizoned by the blue rank of Siskiyou Mountains. To our left the cone
slope stretched away to Sisson’s, the sharp form of the Black Cone
rising in the gap between Shasta and Scott Mountain.
Here again the tremendous contrast between lava and ice about us and
that lovely expanse of ranches and verdure impressed anew its peculiar
force.
We tramped on along the glacier edge, over rough ridges and slopes of
old moraine, rounding at last the ice terminus, and crossing the valley
to camp, where our three mules welcomed us with friendly discord.
A day’s march over forest-covered moraines and through open glades
brought us to the main camp at Sheep Rock, uniting us with our friends.
The heavier air of this lower level soothed us into a pleasant laziness
which lasted over Sunday, resting our strained muscles and opening the
heart anew to human and sacred influence. If we are sometimes at pain
when realizing within what narrow range of latitude mankind reaches
finer development, how short a step it is from tropical absence of
spiritual life to dull, boreal stupidity, it is added humiliation to
experience our marked limitation in altitude. At fourteen thousand feet
little is left me but bodily appetite and impression of sense. The habit
of scientific observation, which in time becomes one of the involuntary
processes, goes on as do heart-beat and breathing; a certain general awe
overshadows the mind; but on descending again to lowlands one after
another the whole riches of the human organization come back with
delicious freshness. Something of this must account for my delight in
finding the family of Preuxtemps (a half-Cherokee mountaineer known
hereabouts as Pro-tem) camped near us. Pro-tem was a barbarian by
choice, and united all the wilder instincts with a domestic passion
worthy his Caucasian ancestor, and quite charming in its childlike
manifestation.
Protem _mère_, an obese Digger squaw, so evidently avoided us that I
respected her feelings and never once visited their bivouac, although
the flutter of gaudy rags and that picturesque squalor of which she and
the camp-fire were centre and soul, sorely tempted me.
The old man and his four little barefoot girls, if not actually
familiar, were more than sociable, and spent much time with us. The
elder three, ranging from eight to twelve, were shy and timid as little
quails, dodging about and scampering off to some hiding-place when I
strove to introduce myself through the medium of such massive
sweet-cakes as our William produced. Not so the little six-year-old
Clarissa, who in all frankness met my advances and repaid me for the
cookies she silently devoured by gentlest and most fascinating smiles.
A stained and earth-hued flour-sack rudely gathered into a band was her
skirt, and confined the little, long-sleeved, pink calico sack. From out
a voluminous sun-bonnet with long cape shone the chubby face of my
little friend. For all she was so young and charmingly small, Clarissa
was woman rather than child. She took entire care of herself, and
prowled about in a self-contained way, making studies and observations
with ludicrous gravity. Early mornings she came with slow, matronly gait
down to the horse-trough, and, rolling up her sleeves, laid aside the
huge sun-bonnet, washed her face and hands, wiping them on her
petticoat, and arranged her jetty Indian hair with the quiet
unconsciousness of fifty years.
Her good-morning nod, with the reserved yet affectionate smile, put me
in happiness for the day, and when as I strolled about she overtook me
and placed her little hand in mine, looking up with fearless, quiet
confidence, I measured step with her, and we held sweet chats about
squirrels and field-mice. But I thought her most charming when she
brought her father down to our camp-fire after supper, and, alternately
on his knee or mine, listened to our stories and wound a soft little arm
about our necks. The twilight passed agreeably thus, Clarissa gradually
paying less and less attention to our yarns, till she pulled the skirts
of my cavalry coat over her, and curling up on my lap laid her dear
little head on my breast, smiled, gaped, rubbed with plump knuckles the
blinking eyes, dozed, and at last sank into a deep sleep.