The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but of men.  Therefore we are all, in some sense, mountaineers, and going to the mountains is going home.  Yet how many are doomed to toil in town shadows while the white mountains beckon all along the horizon!  Up the canyon to Shasta would be a cure for all care.  But many on arrival seem at a loss to know what to do with themselves, and seek shelter in the hotel, as if that were the Shasta they had come for.  Others never leave the rail, content with the window views, and cling to the comforts of the sleeping car like blind mice to their mothers.  Many are sick and have been dragged to the healing wilderness unwillingly for body-good alone.  Were the parts of the human machine detachable like Yankee inventions, how strange would be the gatherings on the mountains of pieces of people out of repair!

How sadly unlike the whole-hearted ongoing of the seeker after gold is this partial, compulsory mountaineering!—­as if the mountain treasuries contained nothing better than gold!  Up the mountains they go, high-heeled and high-hatted, laden like Christian with mortifications and mortgages of divers sorts and degrees, some suffering from the sting of bad bargains, others exulting in good ones; hunters and fishermen with gun and rod and leggins; blythe and jolly troubadours to whom all Shasta is romance; poets singing their prayers; the weak and the strong, unable or unwilling to bear mental taxation.  But, whatever the motive, all will be in some measure benefited.  None may wholly escape the good of Nature, however imperfectly exposed to her blessings.  The minister will not preach a perfectly flat and sedimentary sermon after climbing a snowy peak; and the fair play and tremendous impartiality of Nature, so tellingly displayed, will surely affect the after pleadings of the lawyer.  Fresh air at least will get into everybody, and the cares of mere business will be quenched like the fires of a sinking ship.

Possibly a branch railroad may some time be built to the summit of Mount Shasta like the road on Mount Washington.  In the mean time tourists are dropped at Sisson’s, about twelve miles from the summit, whence as headquarters they radiate in every direction to the so-called “points of interest”; sauntering about the flowery fringes of the Strawberry Meadows, bathing in the balm of the woods, scrambling, fishing, hunting; riding about Castle Lake, the McCloud River, Soda Springs, Big Spring, deer pastures, and elsewhere.  Some demand bears, and make excited inquiries concerning their haunts, how many there might be altogether on the mountain, and whether they are grizzly, brown, or black.  Others shout, “Excelsior,” and make off at once for the upper snow fields.  Most, however, are content with comparatively level ground and moderate distances, gathering at the hotel every evening laden with trophies—­great sheaves of flowers, cones of various trees, cedar and fir branches covered with yellow lichens, and possibly a fish or two, or quail, or grouse.