Certainly no mausoleum was ever conceived for human hero which may be compared for a moment with this glorified grave of dead Mazama! The human history of Crater Lake has its interest. The Indians feared it. John W. Hillman was the first white man to see it. Early in 1853 a party of Californian miners ascended the Rogue River to rediscover a lost gold-mine of fabulous richness. The expedition was secret, but several Oregonians who suspected its object and meant to be in at the finding, quickly organized and followed. Hillman was of this party. The Californians soon learned of the pursuit. "Then," wrote Hillman half a century later, "it was a game of hide and seek until rations on both sides got low. The Californians would push through the brush, scatter, double backward on their trail, and then camp in the most inaccessible places to be found, and it sometimes puzzled us to locate and camp near enough to watch them." Eventually the rivals united. A combination search-party was chosen which included Hillman, and this party, while it found no gold-mine, found Crater Lake. [Illustration: _From a photograph copyright by Fred H. Kiser_ APPLEGATE CLIFF, CRATER LAKE] [Illustration: _From a photograph by Fred H. Kiser_ PHANTOM SHIP FROM GARFIELD PEAK] "While riding up a long sloping mountain," Hillman continued, "we suddenly came in sight of water and were very much surprised as we did not expect to see any lakes. We did not know but what we had come in sight and close to Klamath Lake, and not until my mule stopped within a few feet of the rim of Crater Lake did I look down, and if I had been riding a blind mule I firmly believe I would have ridden over the edge to death and destruction...." "The finding of Crater Lake," he concludes, "was an accident, as we were not looking for lakes; but the fact of my being the first upon its banks was due to the fact that I was riding the best saddle mule in southern Oregon, the property of Jimmy Dobson, a miner and packer with headquarters at Jacksonville, who had furnished me the mule in consideration of a claim to be taken in his name should we be successful. Stranger to me than our discovery was the fact that after our return I could get no acknowledgment from any Indian, buck or squaw, old or young, that any such lake existed; each and every one denied any knowledge of it, or ignored the subject completely."