ut 700 feet high, covered
with gray cinders and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its
summit, in which a few small Two-leaved Pines are growing. These show
that the age of the cone is not less than eighty years. It stands
between two lakes, which a short time ago were one. Before the cone was
built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured into the lake, cutting
it in two, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood advanced into the
pine-woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred ends of some
of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the snout of the
lava-stream where it came to rest. Later still there was an eruption of
ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same vent, which,
besides forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower over the
surrounding woods for miles to a depth of from six inches to several
feet.

The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the
traditions of the Pitt River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of
darkness, when the sky was black with ashes and smoke that threatened
every living thing with death, and that when at length the sun appeared
once more it was red like blood.

Less recent craters in great numbers roughen the adjacent region; some
of them with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and
flowers, Nature in these old hearths and firesides having literally
given beauty for ashes. On the northwest side of Mount Shasta there is a
subordinate cone about 3000 feet below the summit, which, has been
active subsequent to the breaking up of the main ice-cap that once
covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively unwasted crater
and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main summit
is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling peaks
and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the ancient
crater.

These ruinous masses, and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides
of the mountain, show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted
by ice; how much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the
extreme summit hot sulphurous gases and vapor issue from irregular
fissures, mixed with spray derived from melting snow, the last feeble
expression of the mighty force that built the mountain. Not in one great
convulsion was Shasta given birth. The crags of the summit and the
sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides display enough of its
inter