[Oscar F. Martin, The Old Lassen Trail, The Overland Monthly, July 1883]

 

74        PIONEER SKETCHES.            [July,

 

PIONEER SKETCHES.—I. THE OLD LASSEN TRAIL.

 

            WITH what vividness the imagination dwells on the terrible pictures that have been drawn of the sufferings of the Donner party, as the eye rests on a few rude cabins near the shores of Donner Lake, in a narrow valley low down on the eastern slope of the Sierras ! We can only form a very inadequate conception, however, of the difficulties of that route over the icy mountain barriers when, to-day, seated in the comfortable cars of the Central Pacific, we are whirled in a few hours from the neighborhood of the Donner tragedy to luxurious cities and a land of summer at the foot of the mountain's western declivity. A truer estimate of these difficulties may be obtained by a horseback ride over another of the routes of pioneer immigration, which traverses a region of the Sierras that has since remained in its almost primitive tracklessness—the old Lassen trail.

            The old pioneer guide and explorer, Peter Lassen—by birth a Dane, by occupation a blacksmith—came to our country in his twenty-ninth year, and after staying a few months in eastern cities, moved West and settled in Missouri. In the spring of 1839, when he had lived there about ten years, he started to cross the Rocky Mountains, and after the usual vicissitudes, arrived in October of the same year at the Dalles. He wintered in Oregon, and then came thence by water to California, where in 1842 we find him possessor of a band of mules, and ranching his stock near by, while he worked at his trade for Captain Sutter.

            In the summer of 1843, while still employed thus, Lassen, with General John Bidwell and James Bruheim, pursued a party of emigrants on their way to Oregon, to recover some stolen animals. They overtook them near Red Bluff, after a journey along the Sacramento, which gave them an opportunity to see the rich alluvial character of the country. Pleased with the region, Lassen applied, on his return, to Governor Micheltorena for a grant of land near the mouth of Deer Creek; this he obtained, and early the following spring built thereon a fort, the first white settlement in California north of Marysville. This grant, now the possession of ex-Governor Stanford, soon became the best known and most important point in northern California. It was here Fremont recruited his party for several months in the spring of 1846, before starting for Oregon. It was to this place, too, that Lieutenant Gillespie came a few days later, with the letter of secret instructions from our Government to Fremont; and he was hence conducted by Lassen to the camp of the "Pathfinder," which they reached on the night of an attack by the Modocs. In obedience to this message, Fremont returned to California; and so was begun that course of events which gave the State to our Government.

            In 1848, after the discovery of gold, wishing probably to divert a portion of the immigration to his place from the usual route by the way of the Humboldt and Truckee rivers, Lassen with one companion started to lay out a new road into the upper end of the Sacramento Valley. They reached the Humboldt, and induced a party with twelve wagons to try the new route. But instead of turning off near Rabbit Hole Springs and going through Honey Lake Valley, as they should have done, the party followed an earlier road that went to Oregon, as far as the head waters of Pitt River, and thence down a divide in the mountains until they struck their proper course near the Big Meadows in Plumas County, where, unable to proceed farther, they stopped to recruit their stock and supplies. Here they were overtaken by a party of Oregonians on their way to the gold-fields, and with their aid all reached Lassen's ranch late in the autumn in safety. In 1849-50 a large part of the immigration took this route, and many who

1883.]              PIONEER SKETCHES.            75

came late in the fall had a sad experience in the snow which blocked the mountain passes. One party was snowed in without provisions, and a government relief party was hurriedly sent to its assistance when word of its precarious condition reached the valley. They found the emigrants in the snow on Pitt River, out of food and suffering with the scurvy; and on the 1st of December fifty families were brought into Lassen's ranch, much of the latter part of their journey having been through a blinding snow-storm. With the generosity of the true frontiersman, Lassen invited them to slay and eat of his flocks, and recruit their exhausted animals in his pastures, and assisted them in every way in his power, knowing well they could make no reparation. His conduct contrasted pleasantly with that of some others, who unscrupulously fleeced the travel-worn new-comers by almost every device in their power short of a more honorable, open highway robbery.

            Says the late History of Plumas, Lassen, and Sierra Counties: "The experience of those who had departed from the regular trail in 1849 to try Lassen's road became generally known in the Stare; and two or three years later, when many Californians were returning again' to this State, having gone home for their families, it was almost as much as a man's life was worth to endeavor to seduce emigrants from the old route and attempt any of the new passes and cut-offs."

            The writer has often traveled Lassen's old trail. Leaving the Sacramento Valley on the south side of Mill Creek, it leads up the crest of a long, ascending ridge or spur of volcanic formation. During the tertiary period, these mountains poured forth from volcano and fissure a deluge of molten lava and volcanic mud. In flood after flood, filling every depression, it poured through gorge and defile, and spreading over the western slope, formed one vast inclined plane, extending from north of Battle Creek to Feather River. Torrent and glacier have since scored this throughout with a venation of dark, deep cañons and ravines, so that to-day it presents a succession of brown, bare, rugged ridges, shallow of soil, strewn with irregular lava fragments, and bearing a scanty growth of gnarled and twisted digger-pines, oaks, and chaparral, that have a lichen-like appearance and seem in perfect harmony with their surroundings. Consistent throughout, nature has toned all in dull, monotonous colors. The crimson is like iron rust, and the green is as though clouded with dust. There are, however, certain elements of picturesqueness. Along the water-courses grow lighter, brighter cotton-woods and balm-of-Gileads corded with convolvulus, and we often see crag, tree, and vine beautifully twisted together. Dusty and destitute of water in summer, and miry and storm-swept during the rainy season, these hills are yet, in the awakening spring, the dreamer's paradise. Then the sky is of the divinest blue, the weather is warm and pleasant, and the air is soft, with a peculiar and subtle influence toward languor. The trees are all in leaf, every bush is covered with flowers, and every plant is in bloom. This, however, is the winter pasture of thousands of sheep, and the weather-stained hovels of the herders are the only human habitations seen along the route.

            Some twenty years ago, several citizens of Tehama made an attempt at constructing a wagon road here. They were unsuccessful in opening the way to travel, and nothing has since been done in that direction. Except for the work then done, however, this lower portion of the trail would be for wheeled vehicles absolutely impassable. As it is, only hunting parties ever travel it with wagons, and they never attempt going thus farther than to Steep Hollow — a rough, rocky place, where one feels a thrill of danger as he rides along on a sure-footed horse. The ridge is, notwithstanding, well adapted for constructing, at a small expense, a good road of easy, uninterrupted ascent. Water, however, would be scarce through the summer season, for there are only three or four small brackish springs available between the valley and pine timber.

            Scattered along the way, one sees first a strap or band of iron, next a wagon-axle or

76        PIONEER SKETCHES.            [July,

tire, and finally the remains of entire wagons — mute reminders that the journey here was, for those travel-wearied land-mariners, no holiday excursion. Not so sad these, however, as the small circle of stones at Ten-mile Hollow that marks the last resting place of one whom death overtook just, it must have seemed, as he was on the brink of the realization of his golden hopes.

            A few years since, this whole region was the hunting-ground of the Mill Creek or Nosea tribe of Indians. They built their wickiups by every spring and stream, and their evening fires glared within every habitable cavern. Doubtless, the warriors fancied their tribe the most numerous, thieving, blood-thirsty, and redoubtable on earth, and the Mohalies hushed their papooses with thrilling strains on this inspiring theme. But a strange race trailed down this ridge, and settled in the valley below.

                                    "Between the white man and the red

                                                There lies no neutral, half-way ground."

Wrong begets wrong, and vengeance calls down vengeance; steel is not less hard when tempered, polished, and sharpened; nor was the white men's conduct in their dealings together ever more lenient than their red brothers. Of course the pale faces' herds would wander into these fastnesses, and nothing more likely than that the red man should kill and eat of them. Such depredations passed not unpunished. The mustering, the surprise, the fray, and the triumph but give zest to the stirring life of the border, and the rifle ever meted to these savages swift retaliation. It could not be otherwise than that the innocent suffered with the guilty. In return, the Mill Creeks, instigated partly by the worst Indians of other tribes, and at times no doubt by renegade whites, made raids along the borders of the valley, burning houses and ravishing, murdering, and mutilating women and children. After such inroads, Hi. Good, Sandy Young, and a few kindred spirits would track them to these wilds, often sleeping hid amid crags and bushes by day, and looking for their fires at night, until, with the morning light, the rifle's report and the leaden bullet gave first intimation of danger to the Indians. At one time Good destroyed sixty scalps which he had taken in these various expeditions. It was long unsafe for any but armed parties to travel through their country, and occasionally some solitary traveler who attempted to pass over this trail would never be heard of again.

            The once numerous tribe is now almost extinct. For years past, only at intervals have hunters and stock-men caught glimpses of some unkempt, half-naked, beast-like creatures hiding like wild animals from their approach. About a year ago, on several different occasions, two or three of these Indians at a time came to the home of Mr. Turner, on a tributary branch of the Antelope. Two young squaws first came, who seemed to explain by signs that they had left the Indians because one had killed a babe of the eldest girl lest its cries should discover them to the whites. Many kindly disposed persons sent these girls clothing and provisions. Others afterwards came in. They showed their camp in a rough, unfrequented part of the cañon, and it seemed they desired peaceable intercourse with the whites. Some reckless fellows who lived in these hills, learning all this, armed themselves and attempted to surprise them in their home. Failing in this, they set fire to their really comfortable quarters, and these, with their utensils, bedding, and winter store of wild oats, acorns, etc., were all consumed. Seeing no Indians, the bravoes fired a fusillade at surrounding rocks and bushes, and retired, says one, "all covered with glory."

            The two squaws at Mr. Turner's, on attempting to rejoin their people shortly afterwards, were tracked by some of the same men to a cave and captured; after being held captive some time they were taken to Red Bluff. The authorities there provided them with a prison cell over one night, and in the morning turned them loose to "shift" for themselves. The younger, a mere girl, died a few months after. The other, we believe, is now on a government reservation.

1883.]              PIONEER SKETCHES.            77

A few months since, a ragged, dirty, half-clad, very old man and woman, scarred and crippled and bent with age, their heads covered with sunburnt clay and their faces smeared with tar, along with two other younger men of somewhat similar appearance, came to Buck's Flat, and after uneasily staying a few hours, stole away. These are the last of the Mill Creeks. They had with them no weapons, and they understood no English. They gave a small sum of money to the proprietor of the place, and although apparently regarding the whites with suspicion, seemed friendly in all their intentions.

            A retributive fate scarcely less complete than this tribe's has been that of their old-time foes, nearly all of whom have met deaths by violence.

            It was at one time a popular belief that this tribe had a large treasure somewhere secreted in these hills. As it was their custom, however, to burn or bury everything of value owned by the deceased along with the body, this could never have been true. Indeed, Good and a comrade once found three twenty-dollar gold pieces in the ashes of one of their funeral pyres.

            Several of the old smoke-stained caverns once inhabited by the Indians are within sight of our course. Lying in one of these—the dark, overhanging rock coated above with smoke, a bed of bone-strewn dirt and ashes for the floor, a screen of trees and bushes in front, and Nature lowering dark, wild, untilled around—one lets fancy fly to the heart of Asia, and picture there, away back in time, a simian group similarly surrounded, clustering, half-pleased, half-terrified, around the warmth of a blazing pile of fagots which they had in some way succeeded for the first time in kindling; and there, we surmise, began to differentiate the ape and man.

            Eighteen miles of dreary foot-hill travel, and the soil deepens, the stunted trees give place to a larger and more attractive growth, and the spirit gives a bound of exhilaration which seems shared even by the brutes as we shortly enter the belt of coniferous trees which cover these mountains in one great continuous wood. One who has never visited these forests gathers from description but a vague conception of their beauty, strength, and grandeur. Magnificent shafts six and eight feet thick, towering often two or three hundred feet in perfect symmetry, and decked with delicate, dark-hued drapery, interspersed with tall oaks, form a cool, deep, and silent grove. Just within the skirts of the pine timber is the humble abode of an old hunter, one of the companions of Hi. Good. The view from the cabin is inspiring. One looks over wrinkled ridges and craggy gorges, the valley with its belts of timber and breadth of plain, and the long line of the round-topped Coast Range, from snow-mantled Shasta in the north to far beyond the jagged peaks of the Marysville buttes in the south—the whole landscape outspread like an enormous chart.

            Let a man come from the ways of settled life and the sight of "man's inhumanity to man," of the poor losing all independent thought or higher feeling, and of the rich craving for more gain until "only the ledger lives," and then breathe this pure air fragrant with the breath of the pines, and drink of these cool and shaded springs that seem the realization of that fount in search of which Ponce de Leon threaded the miasmatic canebrakes of Florida in vain; let him listen to the birds and running waters, the rifle ringing through the cliff-hung forest glades, and the wind in the pines; let him watch the heaps of cloud that mold themselves to the shape of the mountains they rest on, or float like ships on a deep sea of sky, the vapor curtains that trail refreshing showers, and the storm-dragons that creep up the cañons; let him see the sun set and evening creep weirdly up out of the abysses until night and darkness reign, and only the black silhouette of a sleeping world is faintly outlined on a tintless sky, until at length the moon rises above snow-marbled mountain ranks, and streams through leafy arches, pine colonnades, and rocky galleries, down upon silvery reaches of water—a wild, transmuting luster ; —and he will cease to wonder that man is a born hunter and gravitates to this careless life of nature and freedom.

78        PIONEER SKETCHES.            [July,

            A mile beyond the cabin, in a hollow near Burnt Corral, are two old boat-gunwales that Lassen had hewn out, and close by, the remains of an old emigrant wagon. The rapping of the woodpecker, the sharp cry of the jay, and the mournful note of the dove are now the only sounds to break the stillness of the woods. Along the ridge above here are often jutting ledges of shelly rock (phonolite), looking somewhat like slate but without the fine lamination ; these are apparently of an earlier formation than most of the hills below. The rims, or edges, marking the successive stages of the later lava floods now form long lines of castellated ledges along the sides of the cañons, corresponding in height and inclination along opposite walls, and broken and cut entirely through by the side ravines.

            Here truly is "Nature's volcanic amphitheater." Piled in close juxtaposition are many varieties of igneous rock, in one place appearing firm and like granite, in another porous and like slag from a furnace; here a slightly cemented bed of ashes, mud, and scoria, and there a hard conglomeration of lava-imbedded fragments of older rocks. Now crystalline and columnar, and again viscid or wax-like, often metamorphic, graduating by insensible degrees into one another, and varying endlessly in color and superposition, they present here a fine field for the study of this branch of geology, and for much careful scientific examination.

            Throughout this section, north of Butte Creek and its tributaries, no gold mines that pay for the working appear to have yet been discovered. The bottoms of the cañons in most places are not yet worn through the layer of lava, and where they are, generally only sandstone has been reached. Now, it is well known to geologists that the quartz veins of California never come up through either sandstone or lava. It is further known that placer mines are only found over those surfaces where there are quartz outcroppings, except in locations to which gold has been washed by river channels sometimes now extinct. Thus, while the cañon of Butte Creek next to the Sacramento Valley is only through the volcanic rocks down to an underlying stratum of sandstone, higher up it is through slate and other rocks of the period of quartz veins, the outcroppings of which thereabouts abound. From this higher and earlier formation the gold has been carried over the sandstone by the rivers of the present period and of a period preceding the lava, and deposited by the sorting power of water in their channels. I am somewhat extensively acquainted with the water basins of Deer Creek, Mill Creek, and Battle Creek, and where the lava blanket of the country has been cut through, the top of ancient hills destitute of any old river-beds usually appears to have been reached. Towards the sources of these streams I have never seen any quartz outcroppings bearing gold, and not one well-defined lead has ever been thereabout discovered. Gold collects so that in all new mining districts almost fabulous sums are at first obtained. And surely, in a country like this, so cut up by ravines, if gold were present there would at least be some in the channels; yet here localities are scarce where any "prospects" can be found, not to speak of extensive diggings worth the working; and the wonder is, that if they exist here in a district so accessible, those "dragons of the prime," the old miners, should have left them so long undiscovered. Still, parties are frequently endeavoring to create mining excitements in these localities, since it is one of the respectable pursuits of citizens of our country to involve eastern or other capital in schemes for the opening of worthless mines—all for the purpose, no doubt, that the successful schemers may ennoble their characters by resisting every temptation thereby presented to fatten and enrich themselves on the spoil. This is one of the modes of mining on which our courts have never placed an injunction, and there is no efficient moral tone to censure it. We forget that our State everywhere offers openings for the profitable employment of labor and capital, and that such proceedings will eventually discourage investment in honest enterprise. The public often knowingly countenances and furthers these operations,

1883.]              PIONEER SKETCHES.            79

usually from some such consideration as that it is only outside capital that will thus become distributed in their neighborhood, and that it is better that ninety-nine of these victimizing schemes should be successful than that one legitimate industry should suffer. It is trite to speak of the excitement of mining; that it possesses the fascination without the evil of gambling; that it is a species of lottery in which tickets are bought to draw on the earth's hidden treasures, and the like. We will presume, too, every person's money is his own to invest as he pleases; but our eastern brothers and English cousins may rest assured that in stock-jobbing operations the dice are always loaded.

            The Deer Creek mines in the cañon of that name are two or three miles from Burnt Corral. Here an ancient ridge, or perhaps rather a succession of ridges, of slate, running about parallel with the general course of the present mountain chain, has been crossed by the trough of the cañon. Quartz seams and decomposed quartz are found to some extent here, and several beds of gravel project from beneath the volcanic rock. In one mining excavation here the lava plate has been undermined and its edge broken off in blocks as large as a cabin. Below the slate ridges, the creek flows a short distance over a bed of sandstone, and then continues again over the lava until it reaches the valley. Above, it is uninterruptedly over lava to the very source. Here a Boston company has constructed ten or twelve miles of road to connect with the Humboldt road. They have built a water-power sawmill, and sawed lumber and constructed nearly four miles of flume to bring the waters of Deer Creek on to the mines. The flume is six feet wide by four high, and winds through one of the roughest portions of the cañon. Now it runs in the cool shadow of rocks and trees, and now is carried above their tops. In one place it crosses a ravine one hundred and fifty feet above its bed. In another it rounds a crag overhanging the torrent boiling two hundred feet below ; while above, a precipitous ascent of bare cliffs and talus of nearly a thousand feet is crowned by a long,  black, perpendicular ledge of columnar basalt two or three hundred feet high. At the head of the flume, between two lava ledges, not more than forty feet apart, a very substantial dam, perhaps twenty feet high, has been constructed across the stream. Above this dam, in a dark setting of rocks, is a little clear, placid, gem-like mirror of water. The work all seems done in good faith, and much method is shown throughout. It is a question whether the mines warrant being opened in this manner. But were the cañon located in the lavaless East, it would as a tourists' resort outrival Niagara or the White Mountains.

            Very beautiful are the mountain waters. Conifers, mountain-maple, balm-of-Gilead, wild nutmeg, bayou, black and live oak, commingle, and with huge crags form a lordly avenue for the wildly winding stream below. This, cold, clear, and capricious, with a thousand lights and shadows, now moves dreamily along beneath mossy ledges and green gloom of wood, with circling pool and eddy, and now dashes off among rocks and bowlders a fierce, white, tumultuous torrent. Everywhere, too, rills hid by ferns and rushes come stealing in like baby Undines.

            Along the trail above Burnt Corral, the forests grow denser, and our horses' footsteps are muffled by mountain carpet and a cushion of pine leaves. There is at times something peculiarly mournful in wandering alone in these silent woods. I know not whether it is the stillness broken only by the calls of the wild creatures, or the vastness and unchangeableness of nature in contrast with the ephemeral littleness of man, or the associations of the past; perhaps it is only the pain that always tinges our most intense pleasures the ominous misgiving that the happy moments are going fast and never will return.

            The ridge is for the most part narrower than some others that have already been nearly stripped of timber. There are here, however, no bald, chemisal summits rising above the forest zone, as elsewhere, but all is wooded to the very peak with the finest of timber. Many excellent sawmill sites

80        PIONEER SKETCHES.            [July,

abound, but I have been told the Sierra Flume and Lumber Company have secured titles to the most desirable. We pass successively Bluff Camp, The Narrows, and Lost Camp, about a mile between each, and count the remains of four entire wagons beside the way, within a distance of as many miles. At Lost Camp, in 1849, a Mr. Burrows and wife, and one other man, doubtful of their way, left their outfit in camp while they went ahead to find the route. Returning, they found the Indians had visited the camp and robbed them of their little all. Taking their tracks in the snow, they followed them into Deer Creek cañon and killed two, not only recovering their own provisions, but capturing more. How the savages probably looked on this may be inferred from an observation once made to me by a Big Meadow Indian. He said that, while the members of a train that in an early day were encamped near the big springs in that valley were all out fishing, a kinsman of his, passing the wagons, saw a plate of biscuits and took a few. Some of the members of the train, shortly after returning and missing them, followed and shot the Indian; and he pathetically concluded, "It was a pretty small thing to kill a man for—just for taking a little bread." Yet, although the Indians could not know it, in both instances doubtless that little was well-nigh their all.

            Apropos of the appellation " Lost"—it has been bestowed upon more than one locality along the route, as Lost Corral, Lost Creek, and so on, each recurringly suggestive of that hideous terror that shadowed the way. To immigrants delayed by the circuitous course until after the winter storms had commenced, the mountain passes were at times a veiled wilderness of wooded ridges. Sun, moon, and surrounding landmarks were shut out by a mottled screen that dropped a white folding over brush, rocks, fallen timber, and all the markings of their then miry course; and the snow-cumbered forest became an intricate maze, overspreading oozy marshes, rough ridges, and wild ravines that lay between them and the El Dorado of their hopes—the valley of the Sacramento. I was myself once so bewildered here in a winter storm, that after wandering in a circle until I came upon my own tracks, I took them for those of some other traveler until long and careful scrutiny showed my mistake.

            Lassen once narrowly escaped being hung by emigrants for leading them astray. Many versions are given of this story. It appears that when he went out to meet the emigrants, he passed through Big Meadows, but did not see the valley of Mountain Meadows. On his return, he discovered this valley, mistook it for Big Meadows, and turned west, which would have been the proper course from Big Meadows; and thus he became utterly lost in the region of the Black Buttes. Suspecting him of treachery, the emigrants placed him under guard. They had even run two wagons together so that their tongues were raised, like the letter A without its cross, thus forming a rude gallows; but fortunately proceedings were here stayed by the return of two of the party who had been exploring the country, and who reported having seen the Big Meadows from a neighboring elevation.

            In some five miles' travel from Lost Camp, at an elevation of about six thousand feet, we reach the summit. The ascent is so gradual that a stranger might be unable to tell where the crest was passed. The trail winds at times along the verge of Mill Creek Cañon, and again is deep hidden in timbered flats and hollows. Some old blazes, sticks set occasionally against the trunks of trees, a few small piles of rocks, and the broken parts of old emigrant wagons placed so as to attract attention, are the only markings of the path. For the first time along the trail, we have from the summit a magnificent view of the dark form of Mt. Lassen, that, flecked with great patches of eternal snow, towers above a billowy sea of surrounding mountains in cold and silent sublimity.

            Most savages avoid wintry peaks, and look upon them with a kind of mystery and dread. In a sort of vague way they, like the Greeks, relegate to the cloud-capped pinnacles the habitation of their god. And

1883.]              PIONEER SKETCHES.            81

do not mountain wilds and barrens retain a sway over enlightened man also? The Titanic forces, here more than elsewhere displayed, inspire a terror and a sense of nature's peculiar indifference here to human welfare or suffering. Yet it is not merely terror, but a sublimer awe, that the mountains inspire in him; on the silent summits still linger the footprints of Deity—not in rock or snow, but in the beauty, grandeur, and eternity there enthroned. There with his poets he stands, "enrapt, transfused," until the mighty vision outrolled, though still visible, vanishes, and he bows to the invisible alone. The mountains and the unmeasurable enter the soul and abide there. Intuition may be simply an inability to understand but the one view; our best knowledge of the existence of a God may be our utter powerlessness to conceive how all beauty and order and our conscious selves sprang into being except through his agency. Yet, reflecting on the terrible convulsions through which these glorious mountains have been ultimately wrought out, it seems easier to discern something like a parallel toward a higher destiny of our race; and often amid the sentinel peaks a more subtle influence "whispers to the worlds of space, in the deep night, that all is well."

            About the summit a great variety of trappean rocks are noticed, phonolite, perhaps, being predominant; but this gives place, some six miles farther along, to a ridge of volcanic ash and cinders. The eastern slope is no more precipitous than that on the west. The trail leads along a terrace of the ridge dividing Mill Creek and Deer Creek, on the side next the latter. It crosses a succession of flat ridges and ravines with sparkling streams. Many excellent sawmill sites abound. The time cannot be far distant when long "V" flumes will carry lumber through the mountain gorges from here to the valley, and the noise of the lumber manufactories will resound throughout these woods. We pass several little grassy spots, and twelve miles from the summit reach Deer Creek Meadows, the property of the Sierra Flume and Lumber Company.

            Here a really romantic valley, with fresh grassy meads pleasantly diversified with clumps of tamarack, balm-of-Gilead, and quaking aspen, and encircled by deep evergreen forests, nestles in the embrace of the snowy mountains. Deer Creek forks in the lower part, and the branches wind through the valley, their banks fringed with sedge and willows, and their waters alive with trout. The early emigrants here encamped and mowed hay to feed their stock on their journey across the summit. Their old wagon-tracks over the sward are still plainly visible. An old log cabin is the only habitation of the place.

            It is customary with stock-men to range their flocks and herds in the Sacramento Valley and along the foothills during the winter, and to drive them into the mountains for summer pasturage. In some little valley they build a cabin, stable, and corral, and fence a small pasture for their work-horses ; and here, with rifle and fishing-tackle, and a few magazines, sensational journals, and some local paper for reading matter, they lounge the summer away, occasionally moistening their crust of existence by "getting on a tear" at some country groggery.

            A passable wagon road leads from here to the Big Meadows, fourteen miles distant. This follows the old Lassen trail only part of the way, but both cross a volcanic table made up of a series of flat, heavily timbered ridges, and lead into that valley.

            The Big Meadows form one of the most delightful valleys throughout the Sierra Nevada range of mountains. It is situated along the west branch of the north fork of Feather River, has an elevation of four thousand five hundred feet, and is about twenty miles in length by four or five in breadth. The chief industry is dairying, and here are some of the best dairy farms in California. It is also one of the favorite pleasure resorts of our State, and is visited every summer by large numbers of people who come for health and for the many advantages the neighborhood affords for recreation. A local climate has here vouchsafed throughout the long, hot, hazy, and sickly

82        PIONEER SKETCHES.            [July,

summer of the lower valleys a season soft, balmy, and healthy, like the pleasantest part of spring ; and a richer largess of colors is given to the fields and foliage. Monotones are an excellent foil in music, but they soon tire. Yet we must account in part for the lively charm of these mountain valleys, with their pied meadows and deciduous vegetation, by concluding that the evergreens are the monotones in this grand refrain of nature. The conifers have nevertheless a vast range, many varieties, and manifold adaptations: growing now about the temperate middle zone in noble polystyles stately and beautiful; then, in sheltered higher localities, crowding straight, tall, slender shafts into dense, damp canebrakes; again, at still greater altitudes, clinging scattered over the bleak mountain sides, with rock-grasping roots and uncouth, blast-wrenched trunks and branches; and at last, on the edge of vegetation, in little, dwarfed, running shrubs of centuries' growth, they hide amid moss and lichens.

            The way the mountain valleys were formed is apparent. They are always along some stream, so situated as to arrest part of the material brought from the highlands above. The lake beneath impending cliffs, the lakelet with surrounding interval of marsh and meadow, and the meadow marsh represent three different stages in their growth.

            Several wagon roads enter the Big Meadows from different parts of the Sacramento Valley, and as many more leave it for various points in the mountains beyond. One of these very nearly follows Lassen's old route from Pitt River; but as my intention was only to view the abandoned portion of this trail, I will stop here.

            I may glance, however, at the differences the trail might have made in the early development of the State. To do so the more readily, I shall again refer to the history before mentioned. In 1852 Cyrus Noble laid out a new route connecting with this near the Big Meadows, thence leading through the pass called after him, crossing Honey Lake Valley, and connecting again with the Old Lassen or Oregon trail at Black Rock. He induced a small party of emigrants to try this route, and clearly demonstrated that it possessed superior advantages in the matter of feed and water, as well as being shorter than any other. For a number of years thereafter, the road was traveled quite extensively. Had Lassen followed this route instead of the circuitous one by Pitt River, and thus its advantages been shown at that time instead of the disadvantages of the long, difficult trail he selected, the great bulk of overland travel to California would have passed this way instead of following the Truckee and Carson trails; and a considerable town must have sprung up somewhere near where Vina now stands. "As it was, however, the experience of those who trusted themselves to the Lassen road in 1849 had the effect of throwing all so-called cut-offs into disfavor, and the great tide of immigration still surged along the old trails." In 1853, the War Department sent out several exploring expeditions to examine the various routes across the continent, for the purpose of ascertaining which was the most feasible for a transcontinental railroad. One of these, under Lieutenant E. G. Beckwith, in 1854, passed down the Lassen trail, and his report, embodying his observations and conclusions, was submitted to Congress by the Secretary of War, and is to be found in the "Pacific Railroad Reports, Volume 2." When the railroad was built the interests of invested capital dictated that it should be another route than this ; and through the building by like interests of other wagon roads, this soon came into disuse.

            But has the route a future ? The great expense of keeping in repair the snow-sheds along the Central Pacific, which would to a great extent be obviated by a railroad through this pass, would seem to imply that such a road may eventually be built; while the comparatively small expense with which the old wagon road might be reopened and kept up, the great timber interests along the route that would be thus served, the advantages such a road would be to stock-men, and the far greater availability of this route than any other for winter communication across the mountains, all seem to reply in the affirmative.

Oscar F. Martin