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From the valley of the pitt the traveller rises, continually traversing woods
covered with fair mountain-pines, until, through a notch to the northward, a
glimpse can be caught of the huge summit of Shasta, which we illustrate by a
steel-plate engraving. The tents are generally pitched at Sissons, which is
surrounded by a cluster of ranches embowered in vineyards and orchards, that
are trebly inviting to the eye after the weary tramp through the wilderness.
The ground, where not cultivated, gives only a thin sward of grass, with tufts
of the bitter-sage. Rising from the plain are hundreds of small volcanic hills,
built up out of the lava, the mud, and scoria, thrown out from the crater above
in other times. Beyond, there is what may be termed the base of the mountain,
attaining an altitude of some two thousand feet, and throwing out spurs in every
direction. Above this the cone of the mountain rises in one tremendous sweep
to a sheer height of eleven thousand feet. The stupendous proportions of this
great snow-peak would alone be sufficient to rivet the attention of every traveller.
But to these must be added a most wonderful play of color. The lava forming
the body of the mountain, which penetrates often through the snow-part, is of
a pale rosy hue, and when the sun shines on this, it has a splendor which words
are too weak to render adequately. The snow, with its pure, white, fleecy fields,
is in many places diversified by great glaciers of ice and yawning crevasses,
in whose depths are shadows of the most intense blue. Upon the veins of the
ice the sunbeams fall with refracted glory, giving forth the most wonderful
opalescent tints. Here, in some places, the hues are green as emerald; there,
in others, there is a lurid purple, interstriated with a tender pink. In other
spots, the prevailing tone is a rich cream-color, perfectly translucent. The
snow, too, has its colors, but generally glows with an incandescent fire under
the welcoming kisses of the solar rays. So beautiful, so varied, are the effects
produced by the mingling colors of lava, of snow, and of ice-enamelling, that,
for days, the beholder cannot consider other things. His eyes are ever strained
upon the peak, and bent admiringly upon its lustrous hues and the deep, violet
shadows that contrast them. He has but one thought--to watch the radiation of
color at sunrisings and settings, and see the fiery rays slant and shoot across
the great mass, working its parts up from the still white and steely gray of
night to all the splendors of the northern lights. Sometimes, when the sun is
at its greatest height, a thin, fleecy veil of vapor steals from the round rim
of the topmost crater, and one cannot but feel a sudden contraction of the heart
as the thought flashes upon the mind that Shasta is still active, and that that
light, transparent cloudlet is smoke issuing from its inmost secrets. The imagination
and the memory combine to tell how this might be, how volcanoes in Europe, notably
Vesuvious, slept calmly, as if extinct and dead, for more than a thousand years,
and then woke up to hurl death and destruction for leagues around. But, whether
Shasta is dead in reality or only sleeping, it is certain that the vapor is
not smoke, but is water collected in the crater at a sufficient depth to preserve
it from congelation, which the sun's ardor has released in the form of cloud.
It is pleasant to watch it wreathing softly around the royal giant's head, and
to note the conduct of the stratus-clouds that, far below, come in contact with
his breast. They sweep on, gliding gently in fair, straight lines, but, as soon
as they touch him, begin to break up softly, and, having done their best to
girdle him, are either converted into glittering snow-flakes, and lie softly
upon his bosom, or appear as cirri, and float away into the upper air.
When the eye has been satiated with the radiant colors of Shasta, the mind begins
to be impressed with its vast proportions. Its total elevation above the sea-line
is fourteen thousand four hundred and forty feet, nearly the same height as
Mont Blanc, the monarch of European mountains. But Mont Blanc is broken into
a succession of peaks, which the eye cannot take in at the same time, except
from, such a distance as to dwarf the grand effect. Not so with Shasta. Standing
in front of Sissons, the eye is permitted to take the whole at one glance. There
was no cumulative series of effects of Nature in building up this mountain,
for it is a gigantic peak set simply upon a broad base that sweeps out far and
wide in every direction. From the base the cone rises upward in one tremendous
sweep of lava and ice. Very sheer and precipitous is it to the north and south,
but east and west there are two grand slopes, from the plain right up to the
rim of the crater. These are the buttresses of Nature's great chimney. One of
these, being free from impediments of crevasses and glaciers, is generally chosen
by travellers who wish to make the ascent, which is not difficult. This is in
the direction of Strawberry Valley, a charming place, rightly named, belonging
to a gentleman whose peaches are yearly reckoned by the thousand bushels, and
his grapes by the ton. He has built an excellent turnpike-road outside of the
valley, on which the toll is by no means light. From the tower-house, the view
of the great Shasta is very pleasing, because one loses sight of the vulgar
little mud-hills which, from Sissons, insist on adorning the foreground, and
one gets a noble idea of the glorious girdle of forest which clothes the base.
Beyond a well-defined line the ascent toils upward without a tree or shrub to
cheer it on the way, retaining nothing save a little stunted herbage. This is
soon replaced by the pale, roseate lava, and above that comes the deep blue
of the snow in shadow. The road winds through Strawberry Valley, over a soil
entirely of pumice-stone; and it is odd to see great sugar-pines, whose roots
are firmly embedded in masses of this substance. Around Shasta this tree produces
its most enormous cones, some of them being fully eighteen inches in length.
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