w where it came to rest; while the floor of
the forest for miles around is so thickly strewn with loose cinders that
walking is very fatiguing. The Pitt River Indians tell of a fearful time
of darkness, probably due to this eruption, when the sky was filled with
falling cinders which, as they thought, threatened every living creature
with destruction, and say that when at length the sun appeared through
the gloom it was red like blood.

Less recent craters in great numbers dot the adjacent region, some
with lakes in their throats, some overgrown with trees, others nearly
bare--telling monuments of Nature's mountain fires so often lighted
throughout the northern Sierra. And, standing on the top of icy Shasta,
the mightiest fire-monument of them all, we can hardly fail to look
forward to the blare and glare of its next eruption and wonder whether
it is nigh. Elsewhere men have planted gardens and vineyards in the
craters of volcanoes quiescent for ages, and almost without warning have
been hurled into the sky. More than a thousand years of profound calm
have been known to intervene between two violent eruptions. Seventeen
centuries intervened between two consecutive eruptions on the island of
Ischia. Few volcanoes continue permanently in eruption. Like gigantic
geysers, spouting hot stone instead of hot water, they work and sleep,
and we have no sure means of knowing whether they are only sleeping or
dead.

IV. A Perilous Night on Shasta's Summit

Toward the end of summer, after a light, open winter, one may reach the
summit of Mount Shasta without passing over much snow, by keeping on the
crest of a long narrow ridge, mostly bare, that extends from near the
camp-ground at the timberline. But on my first excursion to the summit
the whole mountain, down to its low swelling base, was smoothly laden
with loose fresh snow, presenting a most glorious mass of winter
mountain scenery, in the midst of which I scrambled and reveled or lay
snugly snowbound, enjoying the fertile clouds and the snow-bloom in all
their growing, drifting grandeur.

I had walked from Redding, sauntering leisurely from station to station
along the old Oregon stage road, the better to see the rocks and plants,
birds and people, by the way, tracing the rushing Sacramento to its
fountains around icy Shasta. The first rains had fallen on the lowlands,
and the first snows on the mountains, and everything was fresh and
bracing, while an abundance o