The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-05-14
WONDERS OF THE WEST.
SOME FEATURES OF AN AMERI-
CAN VOLCANIC REGION.
Recent Lava Beds and Burned Out
Cones-A Lake Raised by Lava Inva-
sion-The Glaciers of Mount Shasta
Rivers Born Full Grown.
From The Netg York. star.

sion-The Glaciers of Mount Shasta
Rivers Born Full Grown.
From the New York Star.
The explorations and surveys Of various
kinds which the government has permitted,
or directly instituted, have resulted not
only in many striking instances in forward
ing the material interests of the people, but
also in developing remarkable features in
the great West, their principal field. Some
of these features are simply of a natural
character, and appeal to the love
of the wonderful which most of
us possess; and some, under cover,
perhaps, of less striking and even dis
agreeable natural features, hide the ele-
ments of great utilities and abundant
wealth at far less than common cost. There
is still another class of "inds," as the
Western people call them, which present no
salient features to the common eye, and
promise no store of material wealth; yet
which open up to science a horizon and
landscape seemingly as old almost as time
rich with knowledge of the younger life
of our world, and of strange inhabitants
which have forever disappeared from NOR
tai view.
OF the three classes of "finds," which
stimulate the investigator and explorer, the
most interesting to men generally is that
which is presented by the natural scenery,
while the more hidden class, consisting of
the various minerals, appeals most strongly
and with the greatest tenacity to many
minds; and, finally, that class which per-
tainS to extinct animal life strongly in
terests the student of the earth's life and
history.
The great West being the wonderland of
North America, because Of its extent and
newnesS to educated man, and for what it
really contains, we always turn TO it with
interest and expectation. So a chat with
the reader about some of the finds" and
developments of government surveys, upon
some of which the writer has been engaged,
may be welcome, though it is hard to tell
where to begin. Let us first give attention
to some special features of the scenery.
In the MARCHES through Northern Cali
fornia and Southern Oregon, in 1873, both
in the vicinity of the Sierra Nevada and the
Cascade Mountains, abundant evidences of
volcanic action were found in the character
of the soil and rocks, and in n number of
extinct craters There were hundreds of
thousands of acres grown over with great
pines and smaller timber along the plains
at the foothills of these ranges, in a soil Of
disintegrated pumice, with underly-
ing and outcrOpping stone of that
class, light and porous. In lonely opening
in this vast forest, tracked in places by
families of mountain lions, we came upon
as desolate a scene as could well be inn
agined Before us stretched field of black
lava rock, lying wave upon wave in long
descending streams, and so rough and hard
as to cut our boots like knife edges This
black, iron-like mass had flowed into its
present shape and position in molten state,
thousands of years ago, from crater near
its eastern edge This crater and the
sides of the cone, to some extent, are
e /,
upon climbing to its summit, some GOO feet
above the average level of the lava, we
looked down into crater also containing
pines of large growth, whose tops were CON
siderably below us. Descending a little
way into the crater, the inner walls of
which were very steep, we found it coated
with grass down to the bottom. The life of
this volcanic cone had evidently expired
with an overflow of the melted black rock
at its foot, as there was little evidence of
light scoriR. Its extinction is supposed to
have been comparatively recent.
To the southwest of this useless plutonian
forge, and of several others near, the ridge
of the Sierra Nevadas presents succession
of similar cones, rising in the highest place
10, 400 feet above sea level. Three thousand
feet below lies clear and beautiful noun
tain lake, lonely but smiling, the outlet of
which is down fall of 1000 feet, nearly
perpendicular The stream then passes
whole surface of the ground is heated also,
and the temperature of the stream, ST.
above the springs, is increased to So.
The highest of the ridge cones is called
Lassen's Butte. From it Mount Pitt to the
north and Mount Rose to the south are
plainly visible, and Mount Shasta, seventy
miles away looks really near. OF the craters,
one, probably much more recent than those
upon the plain, is worthy of more notice 1t
was visited by the survey party on Oct. &, in
clear weather, and the sketch then made
which is here given in illustration. This
cone is very perfect, is AIS feet high and
composed of black granular cinderS. Ths
slope is about seventy-five degrees and diff
cult of ascent, but, by the winding way and
the ZigZag known tomountain climbers, the
summit was reached. The interior was
found to consist of a double funnel, the
upper one extending down about thirty feet
to an inside rim, within which the sec md
funnel sank to depth of $50 feet, appear
ing to be symmetrical in its proportions
AT the base of this cone on the south side
there is an arched opening, showing black
lava underlying the cinders The lava which
flowed from this cone extends mile and
half. and is a mile wide in places | termi-
mates in an abrupt wall 100 feet high.
The eastern side of the flow is bordered by
the lake, which it nearly divides, and which
existed before the lava was deposited. Dead
trees are standing in the lake, which was
pushed back upon them perhaps by the lava.
This being true, the latest eruption must
have been quite recent. To support the
testimony of the trees, there is also no veg
citation growing upon or about the cone
Between the dates of activity of the two
craters herein particularly mentioned there
was length of time at least as great as
that which includes American civilization
But these mountains, dead volcanoes as
they now are, although they have poured
out streams of melted rock, have also
known the other extreme. and wrapped
themselves in arctic mantles While we
have, outside of Alaska no glaciers at pres
ent equal in extent to those of the Swiss
Alps, there are several peaks of the Sierra
Nevada, Cascade and other ranges which
look over many glacial properties of their
own of comfortable dimensions and proper
characteristics Extinct glaciers are
scarcely more difficult TO trace than extinct
volcanoes, and the California Survey has
traced the limits of one forty miles in ex.
tent. Our living glaciers are more modest.
as well as more permanent.
Mount Shasta, south of the locality of the
cones spoken of herein, has five glaciers
reaching up to or near its summit, l4511
feet above the sea- These were partly ex-
amined by members of our party in 1878,
and mora fully Inv soma of tba Sa,,,a f,aptIa