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. No mountain shore
hides its loveliness. It lies wide open for many a mile, veiled in no
mystery but the mystery of light. The forest also was flooded with
sun-purple, not a spire moving, and Mount Shasta was seen towering
above it rejoicing in the ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. But
neither the glorified woods on the one hand, nor the lake on the
other, could at first hold the eye. That dark mysterious lava plain
between them compelled attention. Here you trace yawning fissures,
there clusters of somber pits; now you mark where the lava is bent and
corrugated in swelling ridges and domes, again where it breaks into a
rough mass of loose blocks. Tufts of grass grow far apart here and
there and small bushes of hardy sage, but they have a singed
appearance and can do little to hide the blackness. Deserts are
charming to those who know how to see them - all kinds of bogs,
barrens, and heathy moors; but the Modoc Lava Beds have for me an
uncanny look.
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