Shasta, clad in ice and snow, the one grand unmistakable landmark--the
pole star of the landscape. Far to the southward Mount Whitney lifts
its granite summit four or five hundred feet higher than Shasta, but
it is nearly snowless during the late summer, and is so feebly
individualized that the traveler may search for it in vain among the
many rival peaks crowded along the axis of the range to north and
south of it, which all alike are crumbling residual masses brought
into relief in the degradation of the general mass of the range. The
highest point on Mount Shasta, as determined by the State Geological
Survey, is 14,440 feet above mean tide. That of Whitney, computed
from fewer observations, is about 14,900 feet. But inasmuch as the
average elevation of the plain out of which Shasta rises is only about
four thousand feet above the sea, while the actual base of the peak of
Mount Whitney lies at an elevation of eleven thousand feet, the
individual height of the former is about two and a half times as great
as that of the latter.

Approaching Shasta from the south, one obtains glimpses of its snowy
cone here and there through the trees from the tops of hills and
ridges; but it is not until Strawberry Valley is reached, where there
is a grand out-opening of the forests, that Shasta is seen in all its
glory. From base to crown clearly revealed with its wealth of woods
and waters and fountain snow, rejoicing in the bright mountain sky,
and radiating beauty on all the subject landscape like a sun.
Standing in a fringing thicket of purple spiraea in the immediate
foreground is a smooth expanse of green meadow with its meandering
stream, one of the smaller affluents of the Sacramento; then a zone of
dark, close forest, its countless spires of pine and fir rising above
one another on the swelling base of the mountain in glorious array;
and, over all, the great white cone sweeping far into the thin, keen