Tradition says their wild shrieks and groans may be heard therein at all times; and no Indians are known ever to have gone any great distance up Mount Rainier, as they call it. White men have tried to employ the native red men as guides and packers for the ascent, but no amount of money can tempt them to invade the mysterious cañons and cliffs with which the marvelous pile is surrounded. They say that all attempts to do so, by either white or red men, must result in certain destruction. Undoubtedly the first ascent was made about thirty years ago, by General (then Lieutenant) Kautz, and Lieutenant Slaughter, of the United States Army, who were then stationed at Steilacoom, Washington Territory. They took pack animals, and with an escort of several men ascended as far as the animals could go. There they left them and continued the climb on foot. They were gone nine days, from the time of leaving their mules until they returned to the animals, and claimed, no doubt justly, to have gone to the top of Liberty Cap, the highest of the three distinct summits that form the triplex corona; the others being known as the Summit and the Dome. The next ascent, so far as known, was made in 1876 by Mr. Hazard Stevens, who gave an account of his experiences in the Atlantic Monthly for November, of that year. In 1882, Messrs. Van Trump and Smith, of San Francisco, made a successful ascent, and in the same year an Austrian tourist who attempted to ascend the mountain, got within three hundred feet of the top, when his progress was arrested by an avalanche, and he came very near losing his life. Mr. L. L. Holden, of Boston, went to within about six hundred feet of the summit in 1883, and Mr. J. R. Hitchcock claims to have reached it in 1885.
From the point gained by the trail above mentioned, the tourist may look down upon the glaciers of the North Fork of the Puyallup River, 3,000 feet below, while on the other hand, the glaciers of the cañon of the Carbon may be seen 4,000 feet beneath him. Away to the north, glimmering and glinting under the effulgent rays of the noonday sun, stretches that labyrinth of waters known as Puget Sound—
"Whose breezy waves toss up their silvery spray;"
while the many islands therein, draped in their evergreen foliage, look like emeralds set in a sheet of silver. Many prominent landmarks in British Columbia are seen, while to the north and south stretches the Cascade Range, to the west the Olympic, and to the southwest the Coast Range. All these are spread out before the eye of the tourist in a grand panorama unsurpassed for loveliness. Crater Lake forms one of the mysteries of Mount Tacoma. About its ragged, ice-bound and rock-ribbed shores are many dark caverns, from which the Indians conceived their superstitious fears of this mysterious pile. An explorer says of one of these chambers:
"Its roof is a dome of brilliant green, with long icicles pendant therefrom; while its floor is composed of the rocks and débris that formed the side of the crater, worn smooth by the action of water and heated by a natural register, from which issue clouds of steam."
The grand cañon of the Puyallup is two and a half miles wide, and from its head may be seen the great glacier, 300 feet in thickness, which supplies the great volume of water that flows through the Puyallup river. From here no less than nine different waterfalls, varying in height from 500 to 1,500 feet, are visible; and visitors are sometimes thrilled with the magnificent spectacle of an avalanche of thousands of tons of overhanging ice falling with an overwhelming crash into the cañon, roaring and reverberating in a way that almost makes the great mountain tremble. Fed by the lake, torrents pour over the edge of the cliff, and the foaming waters, forming a perpetual veil of seemingly silver lace, fall with a fearful leap into the arms of the surging waves below. Mount Tacoma will be the future resort of the continent, and many of its wondrous beauties yet remain to be explored.
VIEW ON GREEN RIVER NEAR MOUNT TACOMA.