entirely gone from the region. The smaller animals, such as the wolf,

the various foxes, wildcats, coon, squirrels, and the curious wood rat
that builds large brush huts, abound in all the wilder places; and the

beaver, otter, mink, etc., may still be found along the sources of the
rivers. The blue grouse and mountain quail are plentiful in the woods

and the sage-hen on the plains about the northern base of the
mountain, while innumerable smaller birds enliven and sweeten every

thicket and grove.
There are at least five classes of human inhabitants about the Shasta

region: the Indians, now scattered, few in numbers and miserably
demoralized, though still offering some rare specimens of savage

manhood; miners and prospectors, found mostly to the north and west of
the mountain, since the region about its base if overflowed with lava;

cattle-raisers, mostly on the open plains to the northeastward and
around the Klamath Lakes; hunters and trappers, where the woods and

waters are wildest; and farmers, in Shasta Valley on the north side of
the mountain, wheat, apples, melons, berries, all the best production

of farm and garden growing and ripening there at the foot of the great
white cone, which seems at times during changing storms ready to fall

upon them--the most sublime farm scenery imaginable.
The Indians of the McCloud River that have come under my observation

differ considerably in habits and features from the Diggers and other
tribes of the foothills and plains, and also from the Pah Utes and

Modocs. They live chiefly on salmon. They seem to be closely related
to the Tlingits of Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and may readily

have found their way here by passing from stream to stream in which
salmonabound. They have much better features than the Indians of the

plains, and are rather wide awake, speculative and ambitious in their
way, and garrulous, like the natives of the northern coast.

Before the Modoc War they lived in dread of the Modocs, a tribe living
about the Klamath Lake and the Lava Beds, who were in the habit of

crossing the low Sierra divide past the base of Shasta on freebooting
excursions, stealing wives, fish, and weapons from the Pitts and

McClouds. Mothers would hush their children by telling them that the
Modocs would catch them.

During my stay at the Government fish-hatching station on the McCloud
I was accompanied in my walks along the riverbank by a McCloud boy

about ten years of age, a bright, inquisitive fellow, who gave me the
Indian names of the birds and plants that we met. The water-ousel he

knew well and he seemed to like the sweet singer, which he called
"Sussinny." He showed me how strips of the stems of the beautiful

maidenhair fern were used to adorn baskets with handsome brown bands,
and pointed out several plants good to eat, particularly the large

saxifrage growing abundantly along the river margin. Once I rushed
suddenly upon him to see if he would be frightened; but he

unflinchingly held his ground, struck a grand heroic attitude, and
shouted, "Me no fraid; me Modoc!"

Mount Shasta, so far as I have seen, has never been the home of
Indians, not even their hunting ground to any great extent, above the

lower slopes of the base. They are said to be afraid of fire-mountains
and geyser basins as being the dwelling places of

dangerously powerful and unmanageable gods. However, it is food and
their relations to other tribes that mainly control the movements of

Indians; and here their food was mostly on the lower slopes, with
nothing except the wild sheep to tempt them higher. Even these were

brought within reach without excessive climbing during the storms of
winter.

On the north side of Shasta, near Sheep Rock, there is a long cavern,
sloping to the northward, nearly a mile in length, thirty or forty

feet wide, and fifty feet or more in height, regular in form and
direction like a railroad tunnel, and probably formed by the flowing

away of a current of lava after the hardening of the surface. At the
mouth of this cave, where the light and shelter is good, I found many

of the heads and horns of the wild sheep, and the remains of
campfires, no doubt those of Indian hunters who in stormy weather had

camped there and feasted after the fatigues of the chase. A wild
picture that must have formed on a dark night--the glow of the fire,

the circle of crouching savages around it seen through the smoke, the
dead game, and the weird darkness and half-darkness of the walls of

the cavern, a picture of cave-dwellers at home in the stone age!
Interest in hunting is almost universal, so deeply is it rooted as an

inherited instinct ever ready to rise and make itself know. Fine
scenery may not stir a fiber of mind or body, but how quick and how

true is the excitement of the pursuit of game! Then up flames the
slumbering volcano of ancient wildness, all that has been done by

church and school through centuries of cultivation is for the moment
destroyed, and the decent gentleman or devout saint becomes a howling,

bloodthirsty, demented savage. It is not long since we all were
cavemen and followed game for food as truly as wildcat or wolf, and

the long repression of civilization seems to make the rebound to
savage love of blood all the more violent. This frenzy, fortunately,

does not last long in its most exaggerated form, and after a season of
wildness refined gentlemen from cities are not more cruel than hunters

and trappers who kill for a living.
Dwelling apart in the depths of the woods are the various kinds of

mountaineers,--hunters, prospectors, and the like,--rare men, "queer
characters," and well worth knowing. Their cabins are located with

reference to game and the ledges to be examined, and are constructed
almost as simply as those of the wood rats made of sticks laid across

each other without compass or square. But they afford good shelter
from storms, and so are "square" with the need of their builders.

These men as a class are singularly fine in manners, though their
faces may be scarred and rough like the bark of trees. On entering

their cabins you will promptly be placed on you good behavior, and,
your wants being perceived with quick insight, complete hospitality

will be offered for body and mind to the extent of the larder.
These men know the mountains far and near, and their thousand voices,

like the leaves of a book. They can tell where the deer may be found
at any time of year or day, and what they are doing; and so of all the

other furred and feathered people they meet in their walks; and they
can send a thought to its mark as well as a bullet. The aims of such

people are not always the highest, yet how brave and manly and clean
are their lives compared with too many in crowded towns mildewed and

dwarfed in disease and crime! How fine a chance is here to begin life
anew in the free fountains and skylands of Shasta, where it is so easy

to live and to die! The future of the hunter is likely to be a good
one; no abrupt change about it, only a passing from wilderness to

wilderness, from one high place to another.
Now that the railroad has been built up the Sacramento, everybody with

money may go to Mount Shasta, the weak as well as the strong, fine-grained,
succulent people, whose legs have never ripened, as well as

sinewy mountaineers seasoned long in the weather. This, surely, is
not the best way of going to the mountains, yet it is better than

staying below. Many still small voices will not be heard in the noisy
rush and din, suggestive of going to the sky in a chariot of fire or a

whirlwind, as one is shot to the Shasta mark in a booming palace-car
cartridge; up the rocky canyon, skimming the foaming river, above the

level reaches, above the dashing spray--fine exhilarating translation,
yet a pity to go so fast in a blur, where so much might be seen and

enjoyed.
The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but

of men. Therefore we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going
to the mountains is going home. Yet how many are doomed to toil in

town shadows while the white mountains beckon all along the horizon!
Up the canyon to Shasta would be a cure for all care. But many on

arrival seem at a loss to know what to do with themselves, and seek
shelter in the hotel, as if that were the Shasta they had come for.

Others never leave the rail, content with the window views, and cling
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