Beyond Chico, northward, the scenery becomes rapidly more rugged, until we plunge into the Siskiyou range, and apparently become tangled up, so tortuous is the way. Time and again the road overlaps itself in winding up the steeps, leaps across yawning chasms on lofty steel bridges, and dashes into tunnels that for a while appear to lead directly to the center of the under-world. But on every side, where daylight reveals the turbulent landscape, there is much to excite wonder and to lend surprise. A hundred miles before we come abreast of Mount Shasta, the sunlighted head of that mammoth peak glints and glistens with a weirdly grand effect upon the admiring eyes of approaching travelers. There it stands, apparently shifting from one side of the track to the other as we wind around among the gorges and creep up the slopes, but always a chief among mountains and commander among the clouds. Sissons is the nearest station to the giant peak, and here we stopped to make some photographs and gather information. The base of Shasta is exceedingly broad, covering as it does a circumference of seventy-five miles, and its hoary head is lifted up 11,000 feet above the surface, and 14,450 above the sea. The greatest wonder, however, is not in the mountain’s height or size, but in the fact that it is an extinct volcano, whose crater is nearly one mile in diameter and 1,500 feet deep. On one side there is a rift, resembling a broken piece from the rim of a bowl, through which the sea of lava that boiled and seethed in this devil’s caldron many centuries ago, evidently broke and poured a burning flood into the valley, and overflowed a large district of country. This may have been done in one of its expiring throes, for certainly there are no evidences that the volcano has been in activity within the past five hundred years. “There is a cold gray light upon this mountain in winter mornings, that even to look upon, sends a chill to the very marrow, especially if the snow-banner be flying; yet perhaps at evening tide, when twilight shadows have darkened the valley below, this vast pyramid of hoar frost and storm-swept ridges is transformed into a great beacon light of glory, where the warm mellow light loves to linger; where the richest halos of gold and crimson encircle it with their loving bands; where the last and best treasures of the declining sun are poured out in a wondrous profusion, until it is driven by the night lavenders and grays beyond the horizon; then, the tranquil light of the stars sends shining avenues of silver down its furrowed, hoary slopes; soon there comes out from behind the night, first a faint flash of radiant silver that gleams across the sky and dims the light of the stars, the higher peaks are aflame with St. Elmo fire, and slowly from spire to spire, and from ridge to ridge, this incandescent flood sweeps on until the whole mountain glows and gleams with a light supernatural.”