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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 1, 1884)
THE WEST SHORE. 45 MOUNT SHASTA. " Behold the dread Mount Shasta, where it stands Imperinl midnt the leaner height, and, like Some mlirhtY, iniivtinr.rd miuJ, Cuu.iuiuuiuM .And cold." Where the summit ridges of the rocky Coast Range and the graceful Sierra unite to hem in the Sacramento Valley on the north, stands a giant mountain, the noblest in America. This is essentially a region of mountains. Great ridges and spurs reach out in nil directions, their canyons, gorges and precipitous bluffs combining, with the green and sloping hills, to form a picture of wonder- disturbed not with profaning hand the natural ordor of things about hiiu. The door, the boar and the antelope roamed the valleys and pouetrated the i1m fnwwf fhr.t cover the mountain Bides; the simple natives, unused to toil, subsisted upon game, fish and the natural product of the soil. This was the condition a generation ago, when the magio want! of gold was waved over the moun tain tops, and a new raco came to supplant the old, to level forests and disembowel the earth, to uproot the soil and deface the brow of Nature with the crown of civiliza tion. Shasta was a familiar sight to the early settlers of - a. at. v -fvt ., Kta rr- x Tfcv -a, iT'A.w- v V'. ! MOUNT SHASTA. FKO.Nl BTItAWIIKKIIV VAM.KY. ful beauty wherever the eye may rest Here it is impos sible to withdraw from beholding the loveliness of Nature. When intervening hills obscure from view the hoary crown of Shasta and the grand but lesser peaks that lift themselves into the sky on every hand, the eye rests with pleasure upon the obstructing hills themselves. The deeper we plunge into the rocky canyons that shut us in from the great world without, the more we come into sympathy and union with their rugged grandeur. We sit in some cavernous depth or perch ourselves upon a commanding peak, and think of the long centuries that rolled by while the red man called this his home, and California long Ixifore the feet of white men presswl the green grass at it base. Standing in the Sacramento Valley, wo can see its white top lifted proudly alwe the surrounding hills of blue; from Monte Diablo it is dis tinctly visible; nnd from the dome of the capitol at Sacramento it meets the eye of many a gazer who knows not its name nor the great distance it lies to the north. The mariner on the ocean can see it, and emigrant on the parched deserts of Nevada have traveled toward it day after day, an infallible guide to lead them on to the land of gold. When the Russians settled at Bodega in 1812, they beheld this lofty peak from the mountains of