To Find The Big Spring Of The McCloud, Or "Mud Glacier," Which You
Will Know By Its Size (It Being
The largest on the east side), you
make your way through sunny, parklike woods of yellow pine, and a
shaggy
Growth of chaparral, and come in a few hours to the river
flowing in a gorge of moderate depth, cut abruptly down into the lava
plain. Should the volume of the stream where you strike it seem
small, then you will know that you are above the spring; if large,
nearly equal to its volume at its confluence with the Pitt River, then
you are below it; and in either case have only to follow the river up
or down until you come to it.
Under certain conditions you may hear the roar of the water rushing
from the rock at a distance of half a mile, or even more; or you may
not hear it until within a few rods. It comes in a grand, eager gush
from a horizontal seam in the face of the wall of the river gorge in
the form of a partially interrupted sheet nearly seventy-five yards in
width, and at a height above the riverbed of about forty feet, as
nearly as I could make out without the means of exact measurement.
For about fifty yards this flat current is in one unbroken sheet, and
flows in a lacework of plashing, upleaping spray over boulders that
are clad in green silky algae and water mosses to meet the smaller
part of the river, which takes its rise farther up.
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