ing to the comforts of the sleeping
car like blind mice to their mothers. Many are sick and have been
dragged to the healing wilderness unwillingly for body-good alone. Were
the parts of the human machine detachable like Yankee inventions, how
strange would be the gatherings on the mountains of pieces of people out
of repair!

How sadly unlike the whole-hearted ongoing of the seeker after gold is
this partial, compulsory mountaineering!--as if the mountain treasuries
contained nothing better than gold! Up the mountains they go,
high-heeled and high-hatted, laden like Christian with mortifications
and mortgages of divers sorts and degrees, some suffering from the sting
of bad bargains, others exulting in good ones; hunters and fishermen
with gun and rod and leggins; blythe and jolly troubadours to whom all
Shasta is romance; poets singing their prayers; the weak and the strong,
unable or unwilling to bear mental taxation. But, whatever the motive,
all will be in some measure benefited. None may wholly escape the good
of Nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings. The minister
will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a
snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature,
so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the
lawyer. Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of
mere business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.

Possibly a branch railroad may some time be built to the summit of Mount
Shasta like the road on Mount Washington. In the mean time tourists
are dropped at Sisson's, about twelve miles from the summit, whence as
headquarters they radiate in every direction to the so-called "points
of interest"; sauntering about the flowery fringes of the Strawberry
Meadows, bathing in the balm of the woods, scrambling, fishing, hunting;
riding about Castle Lake, the McCloud River, Soda Springs, Big Spring,
deer pastures, and elsewhere. Some demand bears, and make excited
inquiries concerning their haunts, how many there might be altogether
on the mountain, and whether they are grizzly, brown, or black. Others
shout, "Excelsior," and make off at once for the upper snow fields.
Most, however, are content with comparatively level ground and
moderate distances, gathering at the hotel every evening laden with
trophies--great sheaves of flowers, cones of various trees, cedar and
fir branches covered with yellow lichens,