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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 84 of 304
Words from 22478 to 22747
of 82482
