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.
