e of the Shasta snow. For then it was my fortune to
get into the very heart of a storm, and to be held in it for a long
time.

On the 28th of April [1875] I led a party up the mountain for the
purpose of making a survey of the summit with reference to the location
of the Geodetic monument. On the 30th, accompanied by Jerome Fay, I
made another ascent to make some barometrical observations, the day
intervening between the two ascents being devoted to establishing a camp
on the extreme edge of the timberline. Here, on our red trachyte bed,
we obtained two hours of shallow sleep broken for occasional glimpses of
the keen, starry night. At two o'clock we rose, breakfasted on a warmed
tin-cupful of coffee and a piece of frozen venison broiled on the coals,
and started for the summit. Up to this time there was nothing in sight
that betokened the approach of a storm; but on gaining the summit,
we saw toward Lassen's Butte hundreds of square miles of white cumuli
boiling dreamily in the sunshine far beneath us, and causing no alarm.

The slight weariness of the ascent was soon rested away, and our
glorious morning in the sky promised nothing but enjoyment. At 9 a.m.
the dry thermometer stood at 34 degrees in the shade and rose steadily
until at 1 p.m. it stood at 50 degrees, probably influenced somewhat
by radiation from the sun-warmed cliffs. A common bumblebee, not at all
benumbed, zigzagged vigorously about our heads for a few moments, as if
unconscious of the fact that the nearest honey flower was a mile beneath
him.

In the mean time clouds were growing down in Shasta Valley--massive
swelling cumuli, displaying delicious tones of purple and gray in the
hollows of their sun-beaten bosses. Extending gradually southward around
on both sides of Shasta, these at length united with the older field
towards Lassen's Butte, thus encircling Mount Shasta in one continuous
cloud zone. Rhett and Klamath Lakes were eclipsed beneath clouds
scarcely less brilliant than their own silvery disks. The Modoc Lava
Beds, many a snow-laden peak far north in Oregon, the Scott and Trinity
and Siskiyou Mountains, the peaks of the Sierra, the blue Coast Range,
Shasta Valley, the dark forests filling the valley of the Sacramento,
all in turn were obscured or buried, leaving the lofty cone on which we
stood solitary in the sunshine between two skies--a sky of spotless
blue above, a sky of glittering cloud beneath. The creative sun shone
glorious on