lO 



THE FORESTS AND MEADOWS OF MOUNT SHASTA. 



lodgings for the saucy chipmunks, racing fearlessly 

 along their rugged highways. Through a network 

 of shifting boughs, the checkered sunlight falls upon 

 the dense underbrush, composed mainly of Manza- 

 nita drctostaphylos, or "little apple," a shrub about 

 five feet in height, with small oval leaves, red bark, 

 and numerous bunches of dwarf, apple-like green 

 berries; the buck-thorn; sage-brush; wax-berry 

 bush ; the flowering rabbit-brush ; numerous sweet 

 ferns and seedling coniferous 

 tr ees. Wandering in these syl- 

 van solitudes, with the mysteri- 

 ous voice of the restless forest- 

 spirit murmuring through the 

 tree-tops, with a s u r f ■ 1 i k e 



brook-willow, wild lilac, dog-wood, and the thorn 

 bush, white with flowers in the springtime, but laden, 

 in the autumn, with black, mealy berries. The 

 woolly clematis festoons itself 

 impartially from tree to tree ; 

 and the long untrained boughs 

 of the sweet-briar wave gently 

 in the summer breeze. The 

 saxifrage dips its broad, bright 

 leaves in the river's sparkling 

 tide, with hosts of velvety bul- 

 rushes ; while half-submerged 

 logs and boulders furnish a foot- 

 hold to dainty lichens, delicate 

 ferns and mosses. In this 

 neighborhood, too, we find the 

 pennyroyal, the bergamot, and 

 the sweet herb, or '■'■yerba 

 bncna ; " the wild forget-me-not, 

 musk, geranium,, coleus and 

 bignonia ; the American holly ; 

 wild grape-vines, and the blue 

 violet perfuming the air with 

 its sweetness. 



RNICA FROM MOUNT 

 ASTA. 



monotone, who 

 could fail to be 

 impressed with 

 "thoughts of 

 boundless power and inaccessible 

 majesty?" The mind continu- 

 ally reverts to Bryant's "Forest 

 Hymn." 



" Father, thy hand hath reared these venerable columns; 

 Thou didst weave this verdant roof. 

 Thou didst look down upon this naked earth, 

 And, forthwith, rose all these fair ranks of trees. 

 They, in thy sun, Ibudded ; and shook their green leaves in 



thy breeze. 

 And shot toward Heaven." 



On the banks of the wildly beautiful Sacramento 

 and McCloud rivers, and on the margins of clear, 

 pebble-bottomed creeks, whose sources are in the 

 huge glaciers, high up on the side of the mountain, 

 flourish in lavish profusion, the California maple, 

 the alder, the birch, laurel, hazlenut, chestnut, 



Among native fruits are the 

 elder, with its drooping clusters 

 of azure berries ; the long cur- 

 rant-like bunches of the puck- 

 ering "choke-cherry;" volun- 

 teer orchards of bushy, wild- 

 plum trees, bearing a small and 

 not unpleasantly bitter fruit ; the 

 bristling spines of the wild 

 gooseberry, thimbleberries, 

 huckleberries, trailing blackberry vines, and little 

 red strawberries, which cover the ground to so great 

 an extent, that they give their name to one of the 

 largest valleys in the surrounding country. 



Hay-raising is one of the principal industries of 

 this region; and amply does nature reward the 

 labor of the thrifty farmers dwelling in the ramb- 

 ling, unpainted houses, smothered in luxuriant hop 

 vines, and shaded by such trees as the Balm of 

 Gilead, the cottonwood and the lofty silver-poplar 

 flashing its leaves in the sunshine. One may stand 

 waist-deep in rolling billows of blossoming red- 

 clover, timothy and red-top ; or refresh the eye 

 by gazing over long stretches of emerald alfalfa. 

 Truly "the harvest is plentiful." The great barns 

 seem fairly bursting with their fragrant storage, 

 flanked by immense hay-stacks, in the adjoining 

 fields. So fertile is the soil that in the space of 

 eleven years, one pound of red-clover seed planted 

 itself over an area of sixty acres. The assistance 



