The lofty, icy Shasta, towering high above all, seems
but an hour's walk from you, though the distance in an air-line is
about sixty miles.
The "Big Meadows" lie near the foot of Lassen's Butte, a beautiful
spacious basin set in the heart of the richly forested mountains,
scarcely surpassed in the grandeur of its surroundings by Tahoe.
During the Glacial Period it was a mer de glace, then a lake, and now
a level meadow shining with bountiful springs and streams. In the
number and size of its big spring fountains it excels even Shasta.
One of the largest that I measured forms a lakelet nearly a hundred
yards in diameter, and, in the generous flood it sends forth offers
one of the most telling symbols of Nature's affluence to be found in
the mountains.
The great wilds of our country, once held to be boundless and
inexhaustible, are being rapidly invaded and overrun in every
direction, and everything destructible in them is being destroyed.
How far destruction may go it is not easy to guess. Every landscape,
low and high, seems doomed to be trampled and harried. Even the sky
is not safe from scath - blurred and blackened whole summers together
with the smoke of fires that devour the woods.
The Shasta region is still a fresh unspoiled wilderness, accessible
and available for travelers of every kind and degree. Would it not
then be a fine thing to set it apart like the Yellowstone and Yosemite
as a National Park for the welfare and benefit of all mankind,
preserving its fountains and forests and all its glad life in primeval
beauty? Very little of the region can ever be more valuable for any
other use - certainly not for gold nor for grain. No private right or
interest need suffer, and thousands yet unborn would come from far and
near and bless the country for its wise and benevolent forethought.
VI
The City of the Saints[8]
The mountains rise grandly round about this curious city, the Zion of
the new Saints, so grandly that the city itself is hardly visible.
The Wahsatch Range, snow-laden and adorned with glacier-sculpted
peaks, stretches continuously along the eastern horizon, forming the
boundary of the Great Salt Lake Basin; while across the valley of the
Jordan southwestward from here, you behold the Oquirrh Range, about as
snowy and lofty as the Wahsatch. To the northwest your eye skims the
blue levels of the great lake, out of the midst of which rise island
mountains, and beyond, at a distance of fifty miles, is seen the
picturesque wall of the lakeside mountains blending with the lake and
the sky.
