360 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFOENIA 



these bloom freely in the late summer, the zone as 

 a whole is almost as honeyless as the icy summit, 

 and its lower edge may be taken as the honey-line. 

 Immediately below this comes the forest zone, cov 

 ered with a rich growth of conifers, chiefly Silver 

 Firs, rich in pollen and honey-dew, and diversified 

 with countless garden openings, many of them less 

 than a hundred yards across. Next, in orderly suc 

 cession, comes the great bee zone. Its area far sur 

 passes that of the icy summit and both the other 

 zones combined, for it goes sweeping majestically 

 around the entire mountain, with a breadth of six 

 or seven miles and a circumference of nearly a 

 hundred miles. 



Shasta, as we have already seen, is a fire-moun 

 tain created by a succession of eruptions of ashes 

 and molten lava, which, flowing over the lips of its 

 several craters, grew outward and upward like the 

 trunk of a knotty exogenous tree. Then followed 

 a strange contrast. The glacial winter came on, 

 loading the cooling mountain with ice, which 

 flowed slowly outward in every direction, radiating 

 from the summit in the form of one vast conical 

 glacier a down-crawling mantle of ice upon a 

 fountain of smoldering fire, crushing and grinding 

 for centuries its brown, flinty lavas with incessant 

 activity, and thus degrading and remodeling the 

 entire mountain. When, at length, the glacial 

 period began to draw near its close, the ice-mantle 

 was gradually melted off around the bottom, and, 

 in receding and breaking into its present fragmen 

 tary condition, irregular rings and heaps of mo 

 raine matter were stored upon its flanks. The 



