Angling in a Crater 25 



dropped, piled up in vast heaps, scattered over 

 the surface like great sponges, shot from no 

 one knows where, possibly from volcanoes twenty 

 or more miles distant from Mazama, Pitt, Shasta, 

 or some of the numerous pits or craters that 

 make up this marvellous region, one of the 

 wonders of the world, sleeping beneath the great 

 pine and fir forests of the Cascade and Siskiyou 

 ranges. 



Little wonder that the angler forests his mis- 

 sion, and is fascinated by the sight of folded and 

 flowing lava, frozen, as it were, in the very act. 

 Pushing on into the Cascades or climbing the 

 Sierra Nevada, he sees it on every side. At 

 Chico and Sterling, the same awe-inspiring spec- 

 tacle of lava beds tells a story of bombardment 

 and out-pouring that has no prototype, at least 

 in modern times. 



The finest trout-fishing in America lies in 

 the streams and rivers which have cut their 

 way down through these masses of hardened 

 lava, and the strangest place in all the world 

 in which to cast a fly, and one of the most 

 beautiful, is in the crater of one of these old 

 volcanoes, known as Mount Mazama. This 

 mountain was once fourteen or fifteen thousand 

 feet high; but something happened, the top was 

 blown off, doubtless after the fashion of Pelee, 

 and for twenty or thirty miles about, it rained 

 lava; and Mazama dropped into itself; dropped 



