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.
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