Part 6

At the Big Trees, the first act of Horace Greeley, the celebrated editor, was to take out a pencil and figure on the lumber contents of one. These veteran trees have a higher value.

Lincoln, in his lecture on Niagara Falls, said: "The mere physical fact of Niagara Falls is a very small part of the world's wonder. _Its power to incite reflection and emotion_ is its greatest charm." Lincoln might have calculated the mule-power of the Falls if ruined--changed from the higher value of a scenic spectacle to common commercialism. Why tell how many hovels or how many feet of sewer might be constructed out of the Library of Congress; or the number of cobblestones that could be manufactured from the Washington Monument? As well tell the number of forts that might have been built with the marbles and the energy that were put into statuary and the inspiring arts, as to consider or measure Big Trees in lumber terms.

The sequoia is one of the monumental wonders of this round world. It is the oldest settler--the pioneer of pioneers. Each venerable giant numbers his years by centuries. Each was already old when nations of the present were born. Gone and forgotten are the nations that were--gone the flags that waved in the wind when these trees began to cast their shadows.

And it may be--for nations with all their pomp and pride are short-lived--that every flag that now flaunts the sky, that every nation now on earth, will pass out of existence long before these patriarchal trees lie down at last upon the mountains. Some of these trees have already out-lived more than fifty generations of mankind. Some of them are likely to look upon a score or more of passing generations of the human race. These trees might tell a thousand stirring stories to the one possessed by the Sphinx. The Sphinx is of lifeless stone. These trees are alive. They have lived through countless changing scenes. But which shall be accounted the more striking and wonderful, the passing pictures in the centuries they have looked upon, or the moving, changing scenes in the centuries that they are yet to see?

These Big Trees have endured fire, flood, lightning, landslide, gale, drought, and earthquake, but have never hauled down their evergreen banners. They have triumphed over the changes of ten thousand seasons; watched and waved through centuries of sunlight and storm. Countless times the sun has projected a silhouetted shadow of their stupendous plumes against the mountain side. They have worn monumental robes of snow flowers; they have stood silent in the light of thousands of autumn moons; and they are still upon the heights to inspire us with their steadfastness and their splendor.

The landmark and the heritage of the ages are these splendid trees, these immortal evergreens. Their historic lore and unequaled grandeur give them amplitude and poetry enough to kindle and enrich the imagination. Let them live on; they will bless those who make the sacred pilgrimage to see them, and they will be a "choir invisible" to all who simply know that upon the sublime Sierra they still wave grandly.

IV

MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK

Mount Rainier is one of the noblest and most imposing mountains in the world. It stands isolated. Around it are countless peaks, but these are so small that they but emphasize the colossal bulk and towering height of majestic Rainier. It is 14,408 feet high. The altitudinal sweep of the Park is ten thousand feet. Only Mount Rainier territory is in the Park. The area is three hundred and twenty-four square miles--about eighteen miles square. Yet so vast is this mountain that an extensive part of it is outside the Park boundaries. Its outline is intensified by the extraordinary make-up of black and white which characterizes it. The upper half of it is strangely white with masses of snow and ice. The lower slopes are purplish black with dense coniferous forests. Between the snow and the forest is a magnificent belt of wild flowers.

Mount Rainier is a sleeping volcano. Beneath its shell of stone is a heart of fire. Upon this shell are snow-fields and glaciers, rushing rivers, a stupendous forest, wild-flower gardens in which millions of "bannered blossoms open their bosoms to the sun."

Additional territory is needed to protect scenery not now in the Park, and especially for Park road development. At a number of points along the southern boundary the road winds outside the Park. A similar condition will exist on the eastern side when the eastern road-system is built. Much good would result from starting at the southeast corner of the Park and adding a six-mile strip twelve miles long on the south and another strip of equal size on the east.

Mount Rainier lies about sixty miles eastward from Seattle and Tacoma. An excellent automobile road enters the southern boundary and extends into the Park, passing the snout of the Nisqually Glacier. The road-plan of the Park embraces an encircling scenic highway around the mountain on the lower slopes. This road is to be united with entrance roads from the north, south, east, and west. A trail about fifty miles long circles this peak near timber-line. It penetrates fifty miles of unexcelled beauty and splendor. It touches a thousand different scenes and ever commands the world of light and shade that lies far below and far away.

Small inns are to be built along this wilderness way. What a poetic, scene-crowded way to travel! Every boy and girl might well plan to walk round mighty Rainier on this commanding circle pathway.

[Illustration: STAGE ROAD, MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK]

The uppermost edge of Rainier's dark primeval forest ends at timber-line in peninsulas, bays, and islands. Between the ragged edges of the forest and the broken edges of the ice and snow is a magnificent wild-flower scenic belt, or zone, a mile or two in width. Mingling are ice, snow, broken groves, brilliant wild flowers, streams, crags, meadows, and a thousand cascades. Through this scenic zone lies the timber-line trail.

Steam is constantly issuing from the craters in the summit. During the last century, there were a number of slight eruptions, the most recent one occurring in 1870. Indian legends tell of a great cataclysm during which the summit of the mountain was blown to pieces and scattered afar. Apparently the peak, before this explosion, was about two thousand feet higher than at present. The shattered summit indicates the reality of this traditionary explosion and previous height. It is three miles across the summit. A part of the great crater-rim still remains, and Liberty Cap and Peak Success strongly testify to former elevation and grandeur.

Often this splendid peak wears a vast wreath or belt of clouds or mists. Visitors to the middle slopes frequently have the delightful experience of being above the clouds. François E. Matthes, the well-known geologist, thinks this mountain a wonderful source of inspiration and wishes that it were possible for all people to share it. He says, "No doubt the time will come when a pilgrimage to Mount Rainier shall be esteemed among the most precious joys, the most coveted privileges which a citizen of this country may hope to realize for himself or for his fellows."

George Vancouver, the explorer, discovered Mount Rainier in 1792. It was named in honor of Peter Rainier, an English admiral. Theodore Winthrop, author of that classic book of travel, "Canoe and Saddle," visited the region in 1853. He was an ardent advocate of the original Indian names of conspicuous objects of interest. The Indian name for this peak was Tahoma. It is encouraging that the people of Seattle and Tacoma may early unite to ask that this name be adopted. Said Mr. Winthrop in "Canoe and Saddle":--

Let us, therefore, develop our own world. It has taken us two centuries to discover our proper West across the Mississippi, and to know by indefinite hearsay that among the groups of the Rockies are heights worth notice.

Farthest away in the West, as near the western sea as mountains can stand, are the Cascades. Sailors can descry their landmarked summits firmer than a cloud, a hundred miles away.... Kulshan, misnamed Mount Baker by the vulgar, is an irregular, massive, mound-shaped peak.... South of Kulshan the range continues dark, rough and somewhat unmeaning to the eye, until it is relieved by Tahoma.

Mount Tahoma was first climbed in 1870 by General Hazard Stevens and P. B. Van Trump. The first woman to climb it was Miss Fay Fuller, who went to the summit in 1890. The Indians appear not to have climbed above the snow-line. They had little occasion to go higher, and they believed that the god of the mountain forbade their ascending farther.

In 1883, Henry Villard, president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, sent a large party to enjoy the scenes on the slopes of Mount Rainier. Among those in the party were James Bryce, afterward British Ambassador to the United States, and Bailey Willis. These two gentlemen appear to have discussed the importance of having this peak set aside as a National Park. On the completion of this excursion, James Bryce and others recommended to Henry Villard that efforts be made to have this Park created. Later, similar requests were made by individuals and organizations, and a recommendation to this effect was made in writing by the National Academy of Sciences. In 1899 the Park was established.

1. THE SPLENDID WILD-FLOWER GARDEN

The triumphant glory of Mount Rainier National Park is seen in its wild flowers. It is doubtful whether anywhere else on earth is to be found so extensive and luxuriant a growth of such brightly colored flowers amid such scenes of supreme wildness and grandeur.

A vast broken flower-belt encircles the peak between the ragged lower edge of the large ice-fields and the ragged upper limits of tree growth. A flower-belt fifty miles long, covered and crowded with flowers, mile after mile! It is most showy and splendid at and just above the limits of tree growth. Masses of color; myriads of blossoms, each of clean and vivid hue! This vast and splendid garden is crossed with streams and cañons, adorned with crags, green meadows, forested peninsulas, and islands of groves. This encircling flower carnival expands into numerous connected and disconnected alpine parks. Each park is a superb flower-garden with a splendid precipitous alpine back- and sky-ground. Among the more striking of these are Paradise Park, Indian Henry's Hunting Grounds, Spray Park, and Summerland.

In the open upper reaches of the forest, the fragrant twin-flower covers and crowds wide places. There are thousands of cream-white mountain lilies--bear-grass--with tall, slender blooms. The shooting-star, a near relative of the cyclamen, is as thick upon the earth as stars up in the sky. Thousands of purple asters are found upon stalks two feet high. A dogtooth violet, commonly called avalanche lily, is abundant. The western anemone, with its exquisite leaves, its purple bloom and decorative seed plumes, adorns many a wild garden. Many of the plants in the high altitude grow rapidly, bloom briefly, and seed quickly. Summer is short.

Acres of valerian with four-foot stalks thrust their pungent blooms beneath one's nose. The blue mertensia crowds moist places with a thicket of stalks three feet high. A lavender-colored arctic lupine grows in decorative masses. The white dock, sometimes called wild buckwheat, nods on its slender stalks two feet above the earth. The wild hellebore carries its greenish-white flowers upon stalks as high as one's head.

[Illustration: MOUNT RAINIER FROM PARADISE VALLEY]

Many of the yellow or golden flowers bloom close to the earth. There are golden asters and golden-rods, a mountain dandelion, a low-growing yellow buttercup called the monkey-flower, the gold-touched arnica, and yellow potentilla. These fill many wide, ragged places with a blaze of yellow glory.

Low-growing lavender-colored phlox appears in masses, and Cusick's speedwell forms large patches of low-lying blue. Epilobiums cover acres of earth with pink petals.

A species of blue gentian grows in showy clusters, and meadows are filled with the brightest painted-cups in red and crimson. The heather, the heather! There are rich, deep masses of red, white, and yellow heather. The white heather is the lovely cassiope that adorns the snow edges of thousands of mountains from Mexico to the Arctic regions.

Endless are the ranks of the saxifrage family in white; countless the numbers of the pink family. Here the spring beauty blooms in summer and the rose-crimson _Pentstemon rupicola_ makes a showy appearance.

Also above the limits of tree growth are other little plant people: the ever-cheerful kinnikinnick; a dainty, tiny fern; numerous members of the figwort family; Lyall's lupine, with its brilliant bloom of purple flowers; the evening-primrose; and a most pungent polemonium.

Growing far up the slopes is an attractive member of the dock family that is tufted with purplish-yellow bloom. A yellow mustard (_Draba aureola_) and another member of the mustard family with creamy-white flowers carry and maintain this wonderful wild-flower garden farthest above the clouds, highest up into the snow-fields and the sky.

One day I found a tiny tuft of bloom in a bit of soil on the very summit of Rainier. It was in a niche of lava, surrounded with ice and snow, but warmed by the steadily escaping steam. Brave, cheerful little fellow creature! In a steamy, ice-rimmed volcano's throat on a desolate top of the world!

Of all the fire-mountains which, like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest in form.... Its massive white dome rises out of its forests, like a world by itself.... Above the forests there is a zone of the loveliest flowers, fifty miles in circuit and nearly two miles wide, so closely planted and luxuriant that it seems as if Nature, glad to make an open space between woods so dense and ice so deep, were economizing the precious ground, and trying to see how many of her darlings she can get together in one mountain wreath.... We wade knee-deep and waist-deep, the bright corollas in myriads touching petal to petal.... Altogether this is the richest subalpine garden I ever found, a perfect floral elysium. (John Muir, in "Our National Parks.")

The forests of this park are a splendid attraction. The trees are tall and of noble proportions. The forest floor has a tangled undergrowth of vines and shrubbery, a luxuriant carpet of ferns, mosses, and flowers. Many areas are crowded with trees from two to eight feet in diameter, from one hundred to two hundred and fifty feet high. Cedars, spruces, and hemlocks number their years by centuries. A few are perhaps a thousand years of age. Theodore Winthrop wrote of these forests:--

Long years of labor by artists the most unconscious of their skill had been given to modelling these columnar firs. Unlike the pillars of human architecture, chipped and chiselled in bustling, dusty quarries, and hoisted to their site by sweat of brow and creak of pulley, these rose to fairest proportions by the life that was in them and blossomed into foliated capitals three hundred feet overhead.

The forest is gloomy with luxuriant greenness. Many trees are shrouded with a pendent lichen, _Usnea_. This hangs in long, threadlike tufts, while beneath it, mingling with the flowers among the towering trees, are forests of far-spreading ferns.

Around the foot of the mountain are the Indian-pipe and the pyrola, of the wintergreen family; and there is still another delightful member of this family, whose generic name means "delight." The dogwood (_Cornus canadensis_), the forest anemone, the dainty calypso are also here. All these and numbers of other brilliantly colored species brighten and in places illuminate the somber forest floor like touches and dashes of sunlight.

On the lower slopes Douglas spruce and Western hemlock predominate, with red cedar along the streams. Above the altitude of three thousand feet, noble and silver firs are found singly and in solid groves. Ascending, we find a scattered growth of lodge-pole, growths of Engelmann spruce, and a few white-bark pines.

The timber-line may be given as about sixty-five hundred feet, or at the same altitude as in the Alps. The extreme height of the tree growth is about one thousand feet greater. Most of the timber-line growth is crushed, flattened, and oppressed. The timber-line grouping is most poetical and picturesque. In places the trees are both dwarfed and distorted with wind and snow. The trees are mountain hemlock, alpine fir, Engelmann spruce, and white-bark pine. These stand singly, in groups, and in ragged groves. Commonly they stand in green meadows or brilliant wild-flower gardens. Here and there they are separated with the green tracks of permanent snowslides.

The Mount Rainier National Park has its full share of bird and animal life. Here are numerous warblers and woodpeckers; chickadees, black-hooded jays, dainty hummingbirds, ptarmigans, thrushes, and trustful water-ouzels.

Among the animals is that audacious climber, the mountain goat. There also are deer, elk, bears, and other alert wild folk.

2. GLACIERS OF MOUNT RAINIER

Mount Rainier has the largest and the longest glacier in the United States. This is the Emmons. It is about six miles long and has an area of about eight square miles. It is on the eastern slope of the peak. The ice-area on Rainier covers one seventh of the Park, or about fifty square miles.

Rainier has a magnificent glacial system. There are a dozen large and twice as many small glaciers. The peak is an enormous cone with a blunt, broken top. A majority of the large glaciers begin two thousand or more feet below the summit and extend in a comparatively straight line toward the bottom. Though a number unite in continuous ice-fields well up the slope, down the slope each generally is separated from its neighbors. The glaciers are separated by narrow ledges called cleavers, or by each occupying its own deep cañon. Near the terminus many are separated by moraines or flowering meadows.

The Nisqually Glacier, which ends just below the altitude of four thousand feet in Paradise Park, is five miles long. In the summer-time it moves forward at the rate of about sixteen inches per day. This, and in fact all glaciers, have periods of advance and retreat. During the last twenty-five years this glacier has retreated about one thousand feet. That is to say, the present point where it melts entirely away is one thousand feet farther up the slope than it was twenty-five years ago. In comparatively recent times, as the cirques, lakes, and moraines far down the slopes show, the glaciers on this peak were deeper and larger, and reached much farther down the slope than at present.

The Nisqually Glacier has continuous connection with the snow deposits upon the summit of the peak. At one point this snow comes down a precipitous cascade and tumbles perhaps two thousand feet. This and all other glaciers are clean and snowy at the upper end, but the lower end is greatly darkened with rock-débris and earthy material that have mixed with it. The last half-mile of the Nisqually Glacier has the appearance more of a rock glacier than an ice glacier. Its front is a dark chocolate color.

The Paradise Glacier is one of several on the southerly slope. It is formed by the union of a number of ice-streams which originate at about nine thousand feet. They do not receive snow from the slopes above, but quantities of snow are brought to them by the wind. Near the lower end, this glacier divides into a number of lobes or streams.

The Carbon Glacier descends the northerly slope. It originates in the large cirque or ice-made cañon on the peak. This is a mile and a half across, and its terminal wall rises precipitously thirty-six hundred feet. Its snow supplies fall upon it from the clouds, are swept to it by the winds, and rushed to it by avalanches.

The Winthrop Glacier is on the northern slope. Among its interesting features are ice-cascades, glacier tablets, and the ice flowing over high mounds in its main channel.

The Tahoma glaciers on the southwest slope exhibit a glacier island.

The Kautz Glacier on the southern slope is long, narrow, and winding. It has an enormous medial moraine. Pyramid Rock commands an excellent view of this and other scenes.

Many admirable names have been selected for the objects of interest on Rainier. In this connection, some one is to be thanked for substituting "cleaver" and "wedge" for "arrête."

The snowfall on the peak is heaviest on the lower slopes. This diminishes with altitude and is lightest on the upper slopes and the summit. This is typical of mountain snowfalls. From long experience in the Rocky Mountains, I am able to say that the snowfall there is much less on the high peaks than on their middle slopes. The same fact applies to the Sierra Nevada of California, to the Andes of South America, and to the Himalayas and the Alps. It is common for a storm-cloud to be comparatively close to the earth. The height of it is determined more by the height of near-by plateaus and passes than by that of the peaks. It is certain that during many of the lowland storms the mountain peaks thrust up into the sunshine through the silver lining of the clouds.

Wind is an interesting factor in the distribution of the snowfall. It sweeps snow off exposed ridges and accumulates it in vast quantities at places where a glacier starts or where the snow avalanches to a glacier. Columbia's Crest--the summit--appears to be in a large measure formed by snow that the wind carries up to it from the slopes far below. Thus, to snows that fell on these slopes the height of the peak and its white top are in a measure due.

A score of turbulent streams radiate from this mountain. Apparently its volcanic material is easily eroded. The streams are heavily laden with gravel and sediment. Though the peak is comparatively young, the cañons made by ice and water are large. Vast portions of the mountain have already been carried away by the erosive forces of ice and running water.

V

CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK

The supreme attraction in Crater Lake National Park is the vivid blue lake that sleeps in the rugged and magnificent crater of a dead volcano--Mount Mazama.

One golden September afternoon I climbed alone upon the rim of the crater near Eagle Point. There was no wind, and everything lay broodingly silent in the sunshine. In an instant the scene became unreal. The lake, mysteriously blue--indigo blue--lay below. Barren, desolate mountain walls of a desert strangely surrounded it. Was I exploring the topography of the moon?

A second look at most new scenes, and there comes to me a feeling of acquaintance--of having been there before. But this scene made no advance; if it had known me, it desired to forget. I had not seen it; it was as indifferent to my presence as though I existed not. But it was enchanting and it was eloquent. In common with all other visitors to Crater Lake, I received profound and lasting impressions.

The splendid ruin of the ashen-gray walls, the intense and refined blue of the lake, arouse the imagination. What graphic, dramatic, world-building story is locked in these bold scenes?