STEEP TRAILS 



these dark ways of the underworld whenever 

 opportunity offers, if for no other reason to 

 see with new appreciation on returning to the 

 sunshine the beauties that lie so thick about us. 



Sheep Rock is about twenty miles from 

 Sisson's, and is one of the principal winter 

 pasture-grounds of the wild sheep, from which 

 it takes its name. It is a mass of lava present- 

 ing to the gray sage plain of Shasta Valley a 

 bold craggy front two thousand feet high. Its 

 summit lies at an elevation of five thousand 

 five hundred feet above the sea, and has sev- 

 eral square miles of comparatively level sur- 

 face, where bunch-grass grows and the snow 

 does not lie deep, thus allowing the hardy 

 sheep to pick up a living through the winter 

 months when deep snows have driven them 

 down from the lofty ridges of Shasta. 



From here it might be well to leave the im- 

 mediate base of the mountain for a few days 

 and visit the Lava Beds made famous by the 

 Modoc War. They lie about forty miles to the 

 northeastward, on the south shore of Rhett or 

 Tule 1 Lake, at an elevation above sea-level of 

 about forty-five hundred feet. They are a por- 

 tion of a flow of dense black vesicular lava, 

 dipping northeastward at a low angle, but 

 little changed as yet by the weather, and about 



1 Pronounced Too'-lay. 

 90 



