Dense damp forests of the northern coast,
where a squirrel may travel in the branches of the thick-set trees
hundreds of miles without touching the ground. Around the upper belt
of the forest you may see gaps where the ground has been cleared by
avalanches of snow, thousands of tons in weight, which, descending
with grand rush and roar, brush the trees from their paths like so
many fragile shrubs or grasses.
At first the ascent is very gradual. The mountain begins to leave the
plain in slopes scarcely perceptible, measuring from two to three
degrees. These are continued by easy gradations mile after mile all
the way to the truncated, crumbling summit, where they attain a
steepness of twenty to twenty-five degrees. The grand simplicity of
these lines is partially interrupted on the north subordinate cone
that rises from the side of the main cone about three thousand feet
from the summit. This side cone, past which your way to the summit
lies, was active after the breaking-up of the main ice-cap of the
glacial period, as shown by the comparatively unwasted crater in which
it terminates and by streams of fresh-looking, unglaciated lava that
radiate from it as a center.
The main summit is about a mile and a half in diameter from southwest
to northeast, and is nearly covered with snow and neve, bounded by
crumbling peaks and ridges, among which we look in vain for any sure
plan of an ancient crater. The extreme summit is situated on the
southern end of a narrow ridge that bounds the general summit on the
east. Viewed from the north, it appears as an irregular blunt point
about ten feet high, and is fast disappearing before the stormy
atmospheric action to which it is subjected.
At the base of the eastern ridge, just below the extreme summit, hot
sulphurous gases and vapor escape with a hissing, bubbling noise from
a fissure in the lava. Some of the many small vents cast up a spray
of clear hot water, which falls back repeatedly until wasted in vapor.
The steam and spray seem to be produced simply by melting snow coming
in the way of the escaping gases, while the gases are evidently
derived from the heated interior of the mountain, and may be regarded
as the last feeble expression of the mighty power that lifted the
entire mass of the mountain from the volcanic depths far below the
surface of the plain.
The view from the summit in clear weather extends to an immense
distance in every direction. Southeastward, the low volcanic portion
of the Sierra is seen like a map, both flanks as well as the crater-dotted axis, as far as Lassen's Butte[6], a prominent landmark and an
old volcano like Shasta, between ten and eleven thousand feet high,
and distant about sixty miles.
