f balmy sunshine filled all the noonday
hours. It was the calm afterglow that usually succeeds the first storm
of the winter. I met many of the birds that had reared their young and
spent their summer in the Shasta woods and chaparral. They were then on
their way south to their winter homes, leading their young full-fledged
and about as large and strong as the parents. Squirrels, dry and elastic
after the storms, were busy about their stores of pine nuts, and the
latest goldenrods were still in bloom, though it was now past the
middle of October. The grand color glow--the autumnal jubilee of ripe
leaves--was past prime, but, freshened by the rain, was still making a
fine show along the banks of the river and in the ravines and the dells
of the smaller streams.

At the salmon-hatching establishment on the McCloud River I halted a
week to examine the limestone belt, grandly developed there, to learn
what I could of the inhabitants of the river and its banks, and to give
time for the fresh snow that I knew had fallen on the mountain to
settle somewhat, with a view to making the ascent. A pedestrian on
these mountain roads, especially so late in the year, is sure to excite
curiosity, and many were the interrogations concerning my ramble. When I
said that I was simply taking a walk, and that icy Shasta was my mark, I
was invariably admonished that I had come on a dangerous quest. The time
was far too late, the snow was too loose and deep to climb, and I should
be lost in drifts and slides. When I hinted that new snow was beautiful
and storms not so bad as they were called, my advisers shook their heads
in token of superior knowledge and declared the ascent of "Shasta Butte"
through loose snow impossible. Nevertheless, before noon of the second
of November I was in the frosty azure of the utmost summit.

When I arrived at Sisson's everything was quiet. The last of the summer
visitors had flitted long before, and the deer and bears also were
beginning to seek their winter homes. My barometer and the sighing winds
and filmy half-transparent clouds that dimmed the sunshine gave notice
of the approach of another storm, and I was in haste to be off and get
myself established somewhere in the midst of it, whether the summit was
to be attained or not. Sisson, who is a mountaineer, speedily fitted me
out for storm or calm as only a mountaineer could, with warm blankets
and a week's provisions so generous in quantity and kind that the