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.
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