p. 509 | A BIG CINDER HEAP

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 18, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 32.

A BIG CINDER HEAP.

Of the remaining 1,500 feet the most part is easy traveling. About 800, however, are occupied by the Black Mountain, which in appearance and consistency reminds one of the cinder heap cast outside a blacksmith's forge. The stuff yields provokingly to the footsteps. And this, coupled with the great rarity of the atmosphere, makes progress to be tediously slow. Only a few steps at a time, in a panting way, with long halts at the end. This 800 feet seems to be full 1,800 before its completion. Then a narrow plateau of snow, and the extreme pinnacle stands before us. On this snow plateau a few years since lay exposed the blanched skeleton of an antelope, which perished at some time in the past while trying to make this lofty pass. The poor creature was most likely overtaken in a snow-storm. The final summit consists of a cleft peak, the two points of which are some 300 or 400 feet apart, severed by a notch of 217 feet. And here, banked in by eternal snows, lie the hot springs of Shasta butte. Over an area of a quarter of an acre they bubble and hiss and snort and snore, and send forth their diabolical fumes of sulphureted hydrogen and all other unimaginable, ill-assorted odors. The temperature of these springs is very high—about 184 degrees. An egg can be cooked or the tea-kettle boiled over them in short order. Uncomfortable as this ground is to the olfactories and all the other senses, it proved a welcome spot a few years ago to an adventurous geologist and his guide. They were caught up here by a heavy snow-storm and obliged to spend the night. Only the hot earth about these springs kept them alive. Literally scalding upon the one side and freezing upon the other, they rolled the heavy hours away, until welcome morning dawned and a clear sun released them from their lofty but foul-aired dungeon. Two hundred feet remain still to be conquered. It is the most nerve-trying part of all. At first it is like climbing up the gutter of a hip-roofed house. Then the gutter abruptly ends, and the climber finds himself on the ridge-pole of the mountain. Down the one side the outlook is not so bad. It is only the height of a church steeple that he has to look down that way; but if he shall crane his neck out in the other direction he will draw himself back aghast. He is looking down a sheer, unbroken descent of 500 to 10,000 feet. He flattens himself to the all too narrow ridge like a lizard, and wishes he could sink his fingers and his toes two inches deep into this crumbling rock. Vicious little puffs of wind whirl themselves up out of the rock eddies beneath. As harmless as playful little kittens are they. But he considers this no suitable place for frivolity of any kind, and responds to their caresses only by clutching still closer to his knife blade of rock. But in a few moments this final difficulty is safely passed, and the shaken climber rears himself in a conservative way alongside of the terminal cliff, exultive over achieved success, but at the same time half under conviction for his folly in having thrust himself into this terrific spot. By and by, however, he grows reassured, and can proceed to take in at his leisure the all but boundless view afforded from the summit of Mount Shasta.