feet. Asplenium, epilobium,
heuchera, hazel, dogwood, and alder make a luxurious fringe and setting;
and the forests of Douglas spruce along the banks are the finest I have
ever seen in the Sierra.

From the spring you may go with the river--a fine traveling
companion--down to the sportsman's fishing station, where, if you are
getting hungry, you may replenish your stores; or, bearing off around
the mountain by Huckleberry Valley, complete your circuit without
interruption, emerging at length from beneath the outspread arms of
the sugar pine at Strawberry Valley, with all the new wealth and health
gathered in your walk; not tired in the least, and only eager to repeat
the round.

Tracing rivers to their fountains makes the most charming of travels.
As the life-blood of the landscapes, the best of the wilderness comes
to their banks, and not one dull passage is found in all their eventful
histories. Tracing the McCloud to its highest springs, and over the
divide to the fountains of Fall River, near Fort Crook, thence down that
river to its confluence with the Pitt, on from there to the volcanic
region about Lassen's Butte, through the Big Meadows among the sources
of the Feather River, and down through forests of sugar pine to the
fertile plains of Chico--this is a glorious saunter and imposes no
hardship. Food may be had at moderate intervals, and the whole circuit
forms one ever-deepening, broadening stream of enjoyment.

Fall River is a very remarkable stream. It is only about ten miles
long, and is composed of springs, rapids, and falls--springs beautifully
shaded at one end of it, a showy fall one hundred and eighty feet
high at the other, and a rush of crystal rapids between. The banks are
fringed with rubus, rose, plum cherry, spiraea, azalea, honeysuckle,
hawthorn, ash, alder, elder, aster, goldenrod, beautiful grasses,
sedges, rushes, mosses, and ferns with fronds as large as the leaves of
palms--all in the midst of a richly forested landscape. Nowhere within
the limits of California are the forests of yellow pine so extensive and
exclusive as on the headwaters of the Pitt. They cover the mountains
and all the lower slopes that border the wide, open valleys which abound
there, pressing forward in imposing ranks, seemingly the hardiest and
most firmly established of all the northern coniferae.

The volcanic region about Lassen's Butte I have already in part
described. Miles of its flanks are dotted with hot s