I had walked from Redding, sauntering leisurely from station to station along the old Oregon stage road, the better to see the rocks and plants, birds and people, by the way, tracing the rushing Sacramento to its fountains around icy Shasta.  The first rains had fallen on the lowlands, and the first snows on the mountains, and everything was fresh and bracing, while an abundance of balmy sunshine filled all the noonday hours.  It was the calm afterglow that usually succeeds the first storm of the winter.  I met many of the birds that had reared their young and spent their summer in the Shasta woods and chaparral.  They were then on their way south to their winter homes, leading their young full-fledged and about as large and strong as the parents.  Squirrels, dry and elastic after the storms, were busy about their stores of pine nuts, and the latest goldenrods were still in bloom, though it was now past the middle of October.  The grand color glow—­the autumnal jubilee of ripe leaves—­was past prime, but, freshened by the rain, was still making a fine show along the banks of the river and in the ravines and the dells of the smaller streams.

At the salmon-hatching establishment on the McCloud River I halted a week to examine the limestone belt, grandly developed there, to learn what I could of the inhabitants of the river and its banks, and to give time for the fresh snow that I knew had fallen on the mountain to settle somewhat, with a view to making the ascent.  A pedestrian on these mountain roads, especially so late in the year, is sure to excite curiosity, and many were the interrogations concerning my ramble.  When I said that I was simply taking a walk, and that icy Shasta was my mark, I was invariably admonished that I had come on a dangerous quest.  The time was far too late, the snow was too loose and deep to climb, and I should be lost in drifts and slides.  When I hinted that new snow was beautiful and storms not so bad as they were called, my advisers shook their heads in token of superior knowledge and declared the ascent of “Shasta Butte” through loose snow impossible.  Nevertheless, before noon of the second of November I was in the frosty azure of the utmost summit.

When I arrived at Sisson’s everything was quiet.  The last of the summer visitors had flitted long before, and the deer and bears also were beginning to seek their winter homes.  My barometer and the sighing winds and filmy half-transparent clouds that dimmed the sunshine gave notice of the approach of another storm, and I was in haste to be off and get myself established somewhere in the midst of it, whether the summit was to be attained or not.  Sisson, who is a mountaineer, speedily fitted me out for storm or calm as only a mountaineer could, with warm blankets and a week’s provisions so generous in quantity and kind that they easily might have been made to last a month in case of my being closely snowbound.  Well I knew the weariness of snow-climbing, and the frosts, and the dangers of mountaineering so late in the year; therefore I could not ask a guide to go with me, even had one been willing.  All I wanted was to have blankets and provisions deposited as far up in the timber as the snow would permit a pack animal to go.  There I could build a storm nest and lie warm, and make raids up and around the mountain in accordance with the weather.