prings, many of them
so sulphurous and boisterous and noisy in their boiling that they seem
inclined to become geysers like those of the Yellowstone.

The ascent of Lassen's Butte is an easy walk, and the views from the
summit are extremely telling. Innumerable lakes and craters surround the
base; forests of the charming Williamson spruce fringe lake and crater
alike; the sunbeaten plains to east and west make a striking show, and
the wilderness of peaks and ridges stretch indefinitely away on either
hand. The lofty, icy Shasta, towering high above all, seems but an
hour's walk from you, though the distance in an air-line is about sixty
miles.

The "Big Meadows" lie near the foot of Lassen's Butte, a beautiful
spacious basin set in the heart of the richly forested mountains,
scarcely surpassed in the grandeur of its surroundings by Tahoe. During
the Glacial Period it was a mer de glace, then a lake, and now a level
meadow shining with bountiful springs and streams. In the number and
size of its big spring fountains it excels even Shasta. One of the
largest that I measured forms a lakelet nearly a hundred yards in
diameter, and, in the generous flood it sends forth offers one of the
most telling symbols of Nature's affluence to be found in the mountains.

The great wilds of our country, once held to be boundless and
inexhaustible, are being rapidly invaded and overrun in every direction,
and everything destructible in them is being destroyed. How far
destruction may go it is not easy to guess. Every landscape, low and
high, seems doomed to be trampled and harried. Even the sky is not safe
from scath--blurred and blackened whole summers together with the smoke
of fires that devour the woods.

The Shasta region is still a fresh unspoiled wilderness, accessible and
available for travelers of every kind and degree. Would it not then be
a fine thing to set it apart like the Yellowstone and Yosemite as a
National Park for the welfare and benefit of all mankind, preserving
its fountains and forests and all its glad life in primeval beauty?
Very little of the region can ever be more valuable for any other
use--certainly not for gold nor for grain. No private right or interest
need suffer, and thousands yet unborn would come from far and near and
bless the country for its wise and benevolent forethought.

VI. The City of the Saints [8]

The mountains rise grandly round about this curious city, the Zion of
the new S