MOUNT RAINIER 



the ground listening with bated breath for the re- 

 port which may foretell the fall of yonder tall decay- 

 ing shaft, whose thick, deep cleft bark blazed so brightly 

 on the now dying camp fire. The effect of one such 

 storm is seen in Carbon River Valley, above and be- 

 low where the trail crosses. The blast followed the 

 stream and the mountain slope on the south side ; over 

 an area eight miles long and a half a mile to a mile 

 wide the forest is prostrate. Single trees stand gaunt 

 and charred by a recent fire, but their comrades are 

 piled like jackstraws, the toys of the tornado. Over 

 and under each other they lie, bent and interlaced, 

 twenty, thirty feet deep. Pigmy man strained his 

 eyes to see their tops, when they stood erect ; now he 

 vainly stands on tiptoe to look over them in their fallen 

 majesty. 



To the head of Carbon River from the bridge, on 

 which the trail crosses it, is about sixteen miles. The 

 rocky bed of the river is 100 to 200 yards wide, a gray 

 strip of polished boulders between sombre mountain 

 slopes, that rise sharply from it. The stream winds in 

 ever-shifting channels among the stones. About six 

 milts above the bridge Milk Creek dashes down from 

 its narrow gorge into the river. The high pinnacles 

 of the spur from which it springs are hidden by the 

 nearer fir-clad ridges. Between their outlines shines 

 the northern peak of Mount Tacoma, framed in dark 

 evergreen spires. Its snow fields are only three miles 

 distant, but Carbon River has come a long way round. 

 For six miles eastward the undulating lines of the 

 mountains converge, then those on the north suddenly 

 cross the view, where the river canon turns sharply 

 southward. 



Three miles from this turn is Crescent Mountain, its 

 summit a semi-circular gray wall a thousand feet high. 1 

 At sunset the light from the west streams across the 



1 The amphitheaters which the young geologist mistook for craters are now 

 known to be glacier basins eroded by ice. 



146 



