uilders. These men
as a class are singularly fine in manners, though their faces may be
scarred and rough like the bark of trees. On entering their cabins you
will promptly be placed on your good behavior, and, your wants being
perceived with quick insight, complete hospitality will be offered for
body and mind to the extent of the larder.

These men know the mountains far and near, and their thousand voices,
like the leaves of a book. They can tell where the deer may be found
at any time of year or day, and what they are doing; and so of all the
other furred and feathered people they meet in their walks; and they can
send a thought to its mark as well as a bullet. The aims of such people
are not always the highest, yet how brave and manly and clean are their
lives compared with too many in crowded towns mildewed and dwarfed in
disease and crime! How fine a chance is here to begin life anew in the
free fountains and skylands of Shasta, where it is so easy to live and
to die! The future of the hunter is likely to be a good one; no abrupt
change about it, only a passing from wilderness to wilderness, from one
high place to another.

Now that the railroad has been built up the Sacramento, everybody
with money may go to Mount Shasta, the weak as well as the strong,
fine-grained, succulent people, whose legs have never ripened, as well
as sinewy mountaineers seasoned long in the weather. This, surely,
is not the best way of going to the mountains, yet it is better than
staying below. Many still small voices will not be heard in the noisy
rush and din, suggestive of going to the sky in a chariot of fire or
a whirlwind, as one is shot to the Shasta mark in a booming palace-car
cartridge; up the rocky canyon, skimming the foaming river, above the
level reaches, above the dashing spray--fine exhilarating translation,
yet a pity to go so fast in a blur, where so much might be seen and
enjoyed.

The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but of
men. Therefore we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going to the
mountains is going home. Yet how many are doomed to toil in town shadows
while the white mountains beckon all along the horizon! Up the canyon to
Shasta would be a cure for all care. But many on arrival seem at a loss
to know what to do with themselves, and seek shelter in the hotel, as
if that were the Shasta they had come for. Others never leave the rail,
content with the window views, and cl