But that the whole massif or mountain mass had once been enshrouded by the ice of a late glacial epoch was proved by the existence among the farms of Strawberry Valley, some ten miles in a direct line from the summit, of two well-rounded hills or flattened domes of a supposed metamorphic rock which had evidently been regularly molded by ice.
This was further proved to our own satisfaction the next day after our descent, in riding on the stage from Berryvale to Butteville. Directly beyond the hotel is a remarkable terminal moraine evidently derived from the crater, as it is composed of small bowlders of reddish-brown lava; these are arranged in transverse, curved parallel rows on the plain, with clear grass-grown spaces between them, much as in the larger, higher ones in the "Devil's Garden" moraine, but the bowlders are very much smaller and less angular. This point is about twenty-five hundred feet above the sea, and about fifteen or twenty miles from the summit of the crater. Hence the ice seems to have extended from the snow fields of Shasta's summit down upon the plains, where it apparently abutted on the Trinity and Sacramento ranges, which were probably below the ice belt and not glaciated.
From Butteville the view of Mount Shasta is incomparably fine—one of the world's great views. Looking from this point, the cone is in line with the mother peak. The great cone or mountain mass rises as a unit from a broad, treeless plain dotted with scattered ranches and pierces the clouds. Above this plain, as the afternoon waned and the evening shades fell, the zone of black firs and pines merged into a region of dark purple, becoming more ruddy above, until the last beams of the setting sun tinged and flushed the snowy summit with an Alpine glow. As these pink and reddish tints faded away, the dark purple mass of color rose higher and higher until the darker shades of evening completely enshrouded it, and finally as the darkness fell the cone lost its height and distinctness.
