The Color Is Chiefly Due To A Species Of Algae Which Seems
Common In Springs Of This Sort.
That any kind of plant can hold on
and grow beneath the wear of so boisterous a current seems truly
wonderful, even after taking into consideration the freedom of the
water from cutting drift, and the constance of its volume and
temperature throughout the year.
The temperature is about 45 degrees,
and the height of the river above the sea is here about three thousand
feet. Asplenium, epilobium, heuchera, hazel, dogwood, and alder make
a luxurious fringe and setting; and the forests of Douglas spruce
along the banks are the finest I have ever seen in the Sierra.
From the spring you may go with the river - a fine traveling companion - down to the sportsman's fishing station, where, if you are getting
hungry, you may replenish your stores; or, bearing off around the
mountain by Huckleberry Valley, complete your circuit without
interruption, emerging at length from beneath the outspread arms of
the sugar pine at Strawberry Valley, with all the new wealth and
health gathered in your walk; not tired in the least, and only eager
to repeat the round.
Tracing rivers to their fountains makes the most charming of travels.
As the life-blood of the landscapes, the best of the wilderness comes
to their banks, and not one dull passage is found in all their
eventful histories. Tracing the McCloud to its highest springs, and
over the divide to the fountains of Fall River, near Fort Crook,
thence down that river to its confluence with the Pitt, on from there
to the volcanic region about Lassen's Butte, through the Big Meadows
among the sources of the Feather River, and down through forests of
sugar pine to the fertile plains of Chico - this is a glorious saunter
and imposes no hardship. Food may be had at moderate intervals, and
the whole circuit forms one ever-deepening, broadening stream of
enjoyment.
Fall River is a very remarkable stream. It is only about ten miles
long, and is composed of springs, rapids, and falls - springs
beautifully shaded at one end of it, a showy fall one hundred and
eighty feet high at the other, and a rush of crystal rapids between.
The banks are fringed with rubus, rose, plum cherry, spiraea, azalea,
honeysuckle, hawthorn, ash, alder, elder, aster, goldenrod, beautiful
grasses, sedges, rushes, mosses, and ferns with fronds as large as the
leaves of palms - all in the midst of a richly forested landscape.
Nowhere within the limits of California are the forests of yellow pine
so extensive and exclusive as on the headwaters of the Pitt. They
cover the mountains and all the lower slopes that border the wide,
open valleys which abound there, pressing forward in imposing ranks,
seemingly the hardiest and most firmly established of all the northern
coniferae.
The volcanic region about Lassen's Butte I have already in part
described. Miles of its flanks are dotted with hot springs, many of
them so sulphurous and boisterous and noisy in their boiling that they
seem inclined to become geysers like those of the Yellowstone.
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