The Mountain that was 'God' Part 1

The Mountain that was 'G.o.d'

by John H. Williams.

FOREWORD.

Every summer there is demand for ill.u.s.trated literature describing the mountain variously called "Rainier" or "Tacoma." Hitherto, we have had only small collections of pictures, without text, and confined to the familiar south and southwest sides.

The little book which I now offer aims to show the grandest and most accessible of our extinct volcanoes from all points of view. Like the glacial rivers, its text will be found a narrow stream flowing swiftly amidst great mountain scenery. Its abundant ill.u.s.trations cover not only the giants' fairyland south of the peak, but also the equally stupendous scenes that await the adventurer who penetrates the harder trails and climbs the greater glaciers of the north and east slopes.

The t.i.tle adopted for the book has reference, of course, to the Indian nature wors.h.i.+p, of which something is said in the opening chapter.

Both the t.i.tle and a small part of the matter are reprinted from an article which I contributed last year to the _New York Evening Post_.

Attention is called to the tangle in the names of glaciers and the need of a definitive nomenclature. As to the name of the Mountain itself, that famous bone of contention between two cities, I greatly prefer "Tacoma," one of the several authentic forms of the Indian name used by different tribes; but I believe that "Tahoma," proposed by the Rotary Club of Seattle, would be a justifiable compromise, and satisfy nearly everybody. Its adoption would free our national map from one more of its meaningless names--the name, in this case, of an undistinguished foreign naval officer whose only connection with our history is the fact that he fought against us during the American Revolution. Incidentally, it would also free me from the need of an apology for using the hybrid "Rainier-Tacoma"! * * * Many of the ill.u.s.trations show wide reaches of wonderful country, and their details may well be studied with a reading gla.s.s.

I am much indebted to the librarians and their courteous a.s.sistants at the Seattle and Tacoma public libraries; also to Prof. Flett for his interesting account of the flora of the National Park; to Mr. Eugene Ricksecker, of the United States Engineer Corps, for permission to reproduce his new map of the Park, now printed for the first time; and, most of all, to the photographers, both professional and amateur.

In the table of ill.u.s.trations, credit is given the maker of each photograph. The book is sent out in the hope of promoting a wider knowledge of our country's n.o.blest landmark. May it lead many of its readers to delightful days of recreation and adventure.

Tacoma, June 1, 1910. J. H. W.

Second Edition.--The text has been carefully revised, much new matter added, and the information for tourists brought to date. The ill.u.s.trations have been rearranged, and more {p.008} than fifty new ones included. Views of the west and south sides, mainly, occupy the first half of the book, while the later pages carry the reader east and north from the Nisqually country.

Nearly five thousand negatives and photographs have now been examined in selecting copy for the engravers. In the table of ill.u.s.trations I am glad to place the names of several expert photographers in Portland, San Francisco, Pasadena and Boston. Their pictures, with other new ones obtained from photographers already represented, make this edition much more complete. For the convenience of tourists, as well as of persons unable to visit the Mountain but wis.h.i.+ng to know its features, I have numbered the landmarks on three of the larger views, giving a key in the underlines. If this somewhat mars the beauty of these pictures, it gives them added value as maps of the areas shown. In renewing my acknowledgments to the photographers, I must mention especially Mr. Asahel Curtis of Seattle. The help and counsel of this intrepid and public-spirited mountaineer have been invaluable. Mr. A. H. Barnes, our Tacoma artist with camera and brush, whose fine pictures fill many of the following pages, is about to publish a book of his mountain views, for which I bespeak liberal patronage.

My readers will join me in welcoming the beautiful verses written for this edition by a gracious and brilliant woman whose poems have delighted two generations of her countrymen.

Thanks are also due to Senator Wesley L. Jones, Superintendent E. S.

Hall of the Rainier National Park and the Secretary of the Interior for official information; to Director George Otis Smith of the U. S.

Geological Survey for such elevations as have thus far been established by the new survey of the Park; to A. C. McClurg & Co. of Chicago, for permission to quote from Miss Judson's "_Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest_"; to Mr. Wallace Rice, literary executor of the late Francis Brooks, for leave to use Mr. Brooks's fine poem on the Mountain; to the librarians at the Public Library, the John Crerar Library and the Newberry Library in Chicago, and to many others who have aided me in obtaining photographs or data for this edition.

Lovers of the mountains, in all parts of our country, will learn with regret that Congress, remains apparently indifferent to the conservation of the Rainier National Park and its complete opening to the public. At the last session, a small appropriation was asked for much-needed trails through the forests and to the high interglacial plateaus, now inaccessible save to the toughest mountaineer; it being the plan of the government engineers to build such trails on grades that would permit their ultimate widening into permanent roads. Even this was denied. The Idaho catastrophe last year again proved the necessity of trails to the protection of great forests. With the loggers pus.h.i.+ng their operations closer to the Park, its danger calls for prompt action. Further, American tourists, it is said, annually spend $200,000,000 abroad, largely to view scenery surpa.s.sed in their own country. But Congress refuses the $50,000 asked, even refuses $25,000, toward making the grandest of our National Parks safe from forest fires and accessible to students and lovers of nature!

May 3, 1911.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Winthrop Glacier and St. Elmo Pa.s.s, with Ruth Mountain (the Wedge) on right and Sour-Dough Mountains on left.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: White Glacier and Little Tahoma, with eastern end of the Tatoosh Range in distance.]

THE MOUNTAIN SPEAKS.

I am Tacoma, Monarch of the Coast!

Uncounted ages heaped my s.h.i.+ning snows; The sun by day, by night the starry host, Crown me with splendor; every breeze that blows Wafts incense to my altars; never wanes The glory my adoring children boast, For one with sun and sea Tacoma reigns.

Tacoma--the Great Snow Peak--mighty name My dusky tribes revered when time was young!

Their G.o.d was I in avalanche and flame-- In grove and mead and songs my rivers sung, As blithe they ran to make the valleys fair-- Their Shrine of Peace where no avenger came To vex Tacoma, lord of earth and air.

Ah! when at morn above the mists I tower And see my cities gleam by slope and strand, What joy have I in this transcendent dower-- The strength and beauty of my sea-girt land That holds the future royally in fee!

And lest some danger, undescried, should lower, From my far height I watch o'er wave and lea.

And cloudless eves when calm in heaven I rest, All rose-bloom with a glow of paradise, And through my firs the balm-wind of the west, Blown over ocean islands, softly sighs, While placid lakes my radiant image frame-- And know my wors.h.i.+ppers, in loving quest, Will mark my brow and fond lips breathe my name:

Enraptured from my valleys to my snows, I charm my glow to crimson--soothe to gray; And when the encircling shadow deeper grows, Poise, a lone cloud, beside the starry way.

Then, while my realm is hushed from steep to sh.o.r.e, I yield my grandeur to divine repose, And know Tacoma reigns forevermore!

South Framingham, Ma.s.s.

March, 1911. Edna Dean Proctor

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.016}: Copyright, 1906, By Romans Photographic Co.

The most kingly of American mountains, seen from beautiful Lake Was.h.i.+ngton, Seattle, distance sixty miles.]

{p.017} [Ill.u.s.tration: A party of climbers on Winthrop Glacier.]

THE MOUNTAIN THAT WAS "G.o.d."

I.

MOUNT "BIG SNOW" AND INDIAN TRADITION.

Long hours we toiled up through the solemn wood, Beneath moss-banners stretched from tree to tree; At last upon a barren hill we stood, And, lo, above loomed Majesty.

--_Herbert Bashford: "Mount Rainier."_

The great Mountain fascinates us by its diversity. It is an inspiration and yet a riddle to all who are drawn to the mysterious or who love the sublime. Every view which the breaking clouds vouchsafe to us is a surprise. It never becomes commonplace, save to the commonplace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ice Terraces on South Tahoma Glacier. These vast steps are often seen where a glacier moves down a steep and irregular slope.]

Old Virgil's gibe at mankind's better half--"varium et mutabile semper femina"--might have been written of this fickle shape of rock and ice and vapor. One tries vainly, year after year, to define it in his own mind. The daily, hourly change of distance, size and aspect, tricks which the Indian's mountain {p.018} G.o.d plays with the puny creatures swarming more and more about his foot; his days of frank neighborliness, his swift transformations from smiles to anger, his fits of sullenness and withdrawal, all baffle study. Even though we live at its base, it is impossible to say we know the Mountain, so various are the spells the sun casts over this huge dome which it is slowly chiseling away with its tools of ice, and which, in coming centuries, it will level with the plain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mineral Lake and the Mountain. Distance, eighteen miles.]

We are lovers of the water as well as the hills, out here in this northwestern corner of the Republic. We spend many days--and should spend more--in cruising among the hidden bays and park-like islands which make Puget Sound the most interesting body of water in America.

We grow a bit boastful about the lakes that cl.u.s.ter around our cities.

Nowhere better than from sea level, or from the lakes raised but little above it, does one realize the bulk, the dominance, and yet the grace, of this n.o.ble peak. Its impressiveness, indeed, arises in part from the fact that it is one of the few great volcanic mountains whose entire height may be seen from tide level. Many of us can recall views of it from Lake Was.h.i.+ngton at Seattle, or from American or Spanaway Lake at Tacoma, or from the Sound, which will always haunt the memory.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Storm King Peak and Mineral Lake, viewed from near Mineral Lake Inn.]

Early one evening, last summer, I went with a friend to Point Defiance, Tacoma's fine park at the {p.021} end of the promontory on which the city is built. We drank in refreshment from the picture there unrolled of broad channels and evergreen sh.o.r.es. As sunset approached, we watched the western clouds building range upon range of golden mountains above the black, Alp-like crags of the Olympics.

Then, entering a small boat, we rowed far out northward into the Sound. Overhead, and about us, the scenes of the great panorama were swiftly s.h.i.+fted. The western sky became a conflagration. Twilight settled upon the bay. The lights of the distant town came out, one by one, and those of the big smelter, near by, grew brilliant. No Turner ever dreamed so glorious a composition of sunlight and shade. But we were held by one vision.

[Ill.u.s.tration {p.019}: View from Electron, showing west side of the mountain, with a vast intervening country of forested ranges and deep canyons.]