CHAPTER IV 



THE RIVER OF FEATHERS 



THIS little river rose in an amateur glacier 

 on the slope of Mount Lassen once a 

 terrific volcano in northern California, but now 

 a mother of trout streams on the east slope of 

 the Sierra Nevada. You pass through Humbug 

 Valley to reach it, climb the Sierra Nevada until 

 you are on top of the world, and from ten in 

 the morning until six in the evening you are 

 staging through eternal forests ; now looking out 

 over the land, or down into abysmal chasms 

 from a pinnacle nearly eight thousand feet in 

 air; again descending some deep canon, or skirt- 

 ing an abyss from which you look into other 

 depths, deeper and farther on, but always on 

 the finest mountain road anywhere in so wild 

 a country, always in the deep black forest on 

 the very top of the world. 



The Kiver of Feathers appears very large on 

 the map, but when you climb out of Humbug 

 Valley and through the big pines, and look down 

 on Big Meadows, the fair river is really very 

 small. But then the trout are very large, and 



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