644 OREGON AND NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. 
the Peak, we were already twelve or fifteen hundred feet above the sea. 
Blocks of conglomerate of various sizes up to thirty cubic feet lay 
around among the heavy hemlocks and spruces of the forest. We 
MOUNT SWALALAHOS, OR SADDLE HILL. 
ascended by a difficult path sloping between forty and _ forty-five 
degrees. Up eight hundred feet, the forests were replaced by a grassy 
surface wherever the bare rocks were not projecting ; and four hundred 
beyond, we stood under a high beetling bluff which forms the western 
brow of Swalalahos. We next followed the foot of the rocky preci- 
pice around to the northward, descending again about two hundred 
feet, and thence were finally guided to the top by a narrow gap on the 
north-northeast side. 
The summit ridge forms a narrow wall on the east, north, and west 
sides around a large crater, which appeared to be at least five hundred 
feet deep. For half the depth within, the wall was nearly vertical ; 
and then commenced a rapid slope towards the bottom. A dense 
forest covers its depths, and extending up the southern and south- 
western declivities, is continuous with the forests of the range. The 
- breadth of the crater is not less than two miles. 
The walls on the sides examined, from the west to the northeast, 
consist of a volcanic conglomerate or breccia, which was composed 
mostly of angular fragments of basalt and pitchstone, some of it of an 
ochreous colour, and other portions, especially the coarser beds, dark 
like the basalt. The fragments of basalt seldom exceeded ten inches 
in diameter; they were compact or sparingly cellular, but not scoria- 
ceous. The pitchstone was in pieces one or two inches through, and 
had nearly the lustre and colour of asphaltum. 
On the sides explored, no lava streams or beds of basalt were seen, 
as the material was the conglomerate just described. There were 
some intersecting dikes; and the gap by which we ascended was the 
course of one of them. At the summit, the basalt of the dike projected 
