We tramped on along the glacier edge, over rough ridges and slopes of old moraine, rounding at last the ice terminus, and crossing the valley to camp, where our three mules welcomed us with friendly discord.
A day’s march over forest-covered moraines and through open glades brought us to the main camp at Sheep Rock, uniting us with our friends. The heavier air of this lower level soothed us into a pleasant laziness which lasted over Sunday, resting our strained muscles and opening the heart anew to human and sacred influence. If we are sometimes at pain when realizing within what narrow range of latitude mankind reaches finer development, how short a step it is from tropical absence of spiritual life to dull, boreal stupidity, it is added humiliation to experience our marked limitation in altitude. At fourteen thousand feet little is left me but bodily appetite and impression of sense. The habit of scientific observation, which in time becomes one of the involuntary processes, goes on as do heart-beat and breathing; a certain general awe overshadows the mind; but on descending again to lowlands one after another the whole riches of the human organization come back with delicious freshness. Something of this must account for my delight in finding the family of Preuxtemps (a half-Cherokee mountaineer known hereabouts as Pro-tem) camped near us. Pro-tem was a barbarian by choice, and united all the wilder instincts with a domestic passion worthy his Caucasian ancestor, and quite charming in its childlike manifestation.
Protem mère, an obese Digger squaw, so evidently avoided us that I respected her feelings and never once visited their bivouac, although the flutter of gaudy rags and that picturesque squalor of which she and the camp-fire were centre and soul, sorely tempted me.
The old man and his four little barefoot girls, if not actually familiar, were more than sociable, and spent much time with us. The elder three, ranging from eight to twelve, were shy and timid as little quails, dodging about and scampering off to some hiding-place when I strove to introduce myself through the medium of such massive sweet-cakes as our William produced. Not so the little six-year-old Clarissa, who in all frankness met my advances and repaid me for the cookies she silently devoured by gentlest and most fascinating smiles.
A stained and earth-hued flour-sack rudely gathered into a band was her skirt, and confined the little, long-sleeved, pink calico sack. From out a voluminous sun-bonnet with long cape shone the chubby face of my little friend. For all she was so young and charmingly small, Clarissa was woman rather than child. She took entire care of herself, and prowled about in a self-contained way, making studies and observations with ludicrous gravity. Early mornings she came with slow, matronly gait down to the horse-trough, and, rolling up her sleeves, laid aside the huge sun-bonnet, washed her face and hands, wiping them on her petticoat, and arranged her jetty Indian hair with the quiet unconsciousness of fifty years.
Her good-morning nod, with the reserved yet affectionate smile, put me in happiness for the day, and when as I strolled about she overtook me and placed her little hand in mine, looking up with fearless, quiet confidence, I measured step with her, and we held sweet chats about squirrels and field-mice. But I thought her most charming when she brought her father down to our camp-fire after supper, and, alternately on his knee or mine, listened to our stories and wound a soft little arm about our necks. The twilight passed agreeably thus, Clarissa gradually paying less and less attention to our yarns, till she pulled the skirts of my cavalry coat over her, and curling up on my lap laid her dear little head on my breast, smiled, gaped, rubbed with plump knuckles the blinking eyes, dozed, and at last sank into a deep sleep.
I can even now see old Protem draw an explanatory map on the ground his moccasin had smoothed, and go on with his story of bear fight or wolf trap, illustrating by singularly apt gesture every trait and motion of the animal he described, while firelight warmed the brown skin and ruddy cheek of my little charge and flickered on her soft, black hair.
The last bear story of an evening being ended, Protem took from me Clarissa, whose single yawn and pretty bewilderment subsided in a second, leaving her sound asleep on the buckskin shoulder of her father.
About half way between Sheep Rock and the snow-line extensive eruptions of basalt have occurred, deluging the lower slopes, and flowing in gently inclined fields and streams down through Shasta Valley for many miles. The surface of this basalt country is singularly diversified. Rising above its general level are numerous domes, some of them smoothly arched over with rock, others perforated at the top, and more broken in circular parapets. The origin of these singular blisters is probably simple. Overflowing former trachyte fields, the basalt swept down, covering a series of pools and brooks. The water converted into steam blew up the viscous rock in such forms as we find. Here and there the basalt surface opens in circular orifices, into which you may look a hundred feet or more.
In 1863, in company with Professor Brewer, I visited this very region, and we were then shown an interesting tubular cavern lying directly under the surface of a lava plain.