28 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



ON THE CRATER OF MOUNT SHASTA. 



By Peof. a. S. PACKARD. 



AT one o'clock on an August morning in 1877 I found myself on 

 -^^ the stage bound for Sissons, in Strawberry Valley, a bit of 

 civilization nestled among the pines and redwoods twenty miles 

 from the summit of Mount Shasta. The stage road wound through 

 mountain passes and interminable forests of pines, following up 

 the Sacramento River, here a torrential stream. A turn in the 

 road once gave us a magnificent view of the Shasta cone, rising 

 in a sugar-loaf shape, white as Carrara marble, and seeming to 

 lift itself out of the forest on the right, though it was fifty miles 

 distant. 



At Sissons both the cone, which rises to an elevation of 14,440 

 feet above the Pacific, and its crater to the northwestward, which 

 is about two thousand feet lower, were very distinct. The cone 

 rises about four thousand feet above the timber line, and we couM 

 see the rough lava flows and ash fields lying between the summit 

 and the upper edge of the timber belt. 



Throughout the woods on the sides of the volcano bears and 

 mountain lions abounded ; our driver told me he saw one of the 

 latter walking by the roadside a month previous. We saw deer 

 far up in the woods ; antelope range near the summit, and Rocky 

 Mountain sheep, or bighorn, herd in the less accessible cliffs; 

 while some time previous one of that rare and very shy mammal, 

 the Rocky Mountain goat, which inhabits the more inaccessible 

 ranges above the timber line, had been shot. 



The view of the mountain that evening by moonlight was very 

 fine. A light, silvery- edged cloud rested on the summit, while the 

 mountain mass below, lighted up by the moonbeams, contrasted 

 with the vast expanse of dark, somber forests in the foreground. 



The next day was not favorable for the ascent, but it passed 

 quickly. The forest scenes, enlivened by an encampment of In- 

 dians, in the rear of the inn, the rushing mountain torrents, the 

 volcanic cones, or Black Buttes, to the northward, with their lavas, 

 the old moraines, the insect life, all were novel features to an 

 Eastern eye. 



It cleared off at sunset; the clouds disappeared, leaving a thin 

 veil of fresh snow on Shasta's peak and crater, now bathed in a 

 ruddy glow, which, as the evening wore on, was replaced by the 

 silvery light of the full-orbed moon. 



The 25th was a glorious day, and in the bracing northerly 

 breeze we started on our ride of twenty miles to the camping 

 ground above the timber line. A distance of five or six miles 

 through forests of magnificent oaks, pines, and redwoods brought 



