ASHLAND TOWN
page: [4][View Page [4]] page: [5][View Page [5]] page: [6][View Page [6]] page: [7][View Page [7]] page: [8][View Page [8]]- Thou art, O God, the life and light
- Of all this wondrous world we see,
- Its glow by day, its smile by night,
- Are but reflections caught from Thee:
- Where'er we turn, Thy glories shine,
- And all things fair and bright are Thine
A Day in the Siskiyous
AN OREGON EXTRAVAGANZA
By
J. FRANK HANLY
When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dew-drop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
--JOHN MUIR : Travels in Alaska.
- Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part
- Of me and of my soul, as I of them?
- Is not the love of these deep in my heart
- With a pure passion?
-LORD BYRON : Childe Harold.
Copyrighted, 1916
J. Frank Hanly
-
The Art PressIndianapolis
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"Beyond the Over-Hanging Rock: Every Step a Revelation".
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.
--THOMAS GRAY : Elegy in a Country Churchyard. page: [13][View Page [13]]CONTENTS
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- Once more, O Mountains of the North, unveil
- Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by!
- And once more, ere these eyes that seek ye fail,
- Uplift against the blue walls of the sky
- Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave
- Its golden net-work in your belting woods,
- Smile down in rainbows in your falling floods
- And on your kingly brows at morn and eve
- Set crowns of fire!
--JOHN G. WHITTIER : Mountain Pictures.
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- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page 19
- INTRODUCTION Page 25
- FOREWORD Page 33
- ASHLAND TOWN Page 43
- ASHLAND WAY Page 51
- SUNSET Page 73
- TWILIGHT Page 89
- NIGHT Page 99
- BEFORE THE DAWN Page 119
- SUNRISE Page 135
- I climbed the canyon to a river-head,
- And looking backward saw a splendor spread,
- Miles beyond miles, of every sovereign hue
- And trembling tint the looms of Arras knew--
- A flowery pomp as of the dying day,
- A splendor where a god might take his way.
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"Where Shifting Waters Moil and Play".
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams.
--JOHN MILTON: Paradise Lost. page: [19][View Page [19]]LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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- Tax not my sloth that I
- Fold my arms beside the brook;
- Each cloud that floated in the sky
- Writes a letter in my book.
--RALPH WALDO EMERSON : Apology.
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- ASHLAND TOWN Frontispiece
- BEYOND THE OVER-HANGING ROCK Page 11
- WHERE SHIFTING WATERS MOIL AND PLAYPage 17
- FROM ASHLAND'S FLOWER-EMBROIDERED STREETS Page 23
- A WIND-BUFFETED SENTINEL Page 27
- BRAVE RAPIDS THAT SURGE IN SWIFT RELEASE Page 31
- FASCINATIONS OF LIGHT AND SHADE Page 35
- THE BLUE BLOOM OF THE MOUNTAIN LUPINE Page 40
- A BANK OF WHITE HEATHER Page 41
- MERRY-HEARTED CHILDREN Page 45
- MT. ASHLAND'S HUNDRED-FOOTED-DEPTH OF
WIND-PILED
SNOW Page 49 - A ROAD OF DREAMS Page 53
- VOLUPTUOUS DELLS Page 57
- HIDDEN, FAR-AWAY FALLS Page 62
- FOREST TEMPLES Page 63
- GARNERED-UP EXCESSES OF SPILLED BEAUTY Page 67
- McLOUGHLIN'S SUNLIT CONE Page 71
- A CLOUD OF PINE AND FIR Page 75
- MT. SHASTA: EVERY CLIFF AND CRAG Page 79
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- CHANGING FORMS AND PHANTOMS Page 83
- STREAMING THROUGH A PERIPHERY OF CLOUD Page 87
- SYLVAN NOOKS Page 91
- MT. SHASTA: A FAR-FLUNG, SPACE-THRONED WONDER Page 96
- MT. SHASTA: DEPTH, HEIGHTH, SPACE,
COLOR, MYSTERY
AND CALM Page 97 - THE MOON-CHANGEFUL NURSELING Page 101
- MOUNTAIN PINES Page 105
- A WHITE UP-STRETCHED WASTE Page 109
- UNBRIDGEABLE IMMENSITIES Page 113
- MT. ASHLAND'S ETHERED PEAKS Page 117
- CLIFFS AND PINNACLES OF THE SUMMIT Page 121
- TRIAL FIRES Page 125
- TUMULT OF ON-COMING WATERS Page 129
- STEEP AND ROCKY DESOLATIONS Page 133
- GRANITE-FOUNDED, CLOUD-WRAPPED SHASTA Page 137
- FORESTS PRIMEVAL Page 142
- HOARY MONARCHS Page 143
- HAUNTING VOICES OF INNUMERABLE WATERS Page 147
- BETWEEN THE CANYON'S WALLS Page 151
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"From Ashland's Flower-Embroidered Streets".
- O isles of calm! O dark, still wood!
- And stiller skies that overbrood
- Your rest with deeper quietude!
INTRODUCTION
page: 26[View Page 26]Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a heighth of 14,440 feet at the northern extremity, and forms a noble landmark for all the surrounding region within a radius of a hundred miles.
On Shasta nearly every feature in the vast view speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in Oregon, the ice volcanoes of Mount Pitt, and the Three Sisters, rise out of the dark evergreen woods.
-JOHN MUIR : The Mountains of California.
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- O'er these mountain wilds
- The insatiate eye with ever new delight
- Roams raptured, marking now where to the wind
- The tall tree bends its many-tinted boughs
- With soft, accordant sound.
--ROBERT SOUTHEY : Joan of Arc.
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What land under the skies has that perfect abandon of beauty and wonder and variety of scenery that America possesses? The home of my forebears-the long-ago called Mona, the Isle of Beauty. And knowing the Isle of Man happily well, and knowing America--the Republic --happily well, I call America, Mona, the Land of Prevailing Beauty.
I have worn foot-paths through much of this beloved America, desert, mountain, lake region, far-goings of far streams and fair, plunge of cataract, torture of canyons born when the world was in travail, prairies leaning from the winds, supreme forests where night slumbered softly at high noon, gentle forests where the asters glowed along the edge and strange blue flowers sprung unawares through the swaying shadows of the woods--all these wheres are footprints of mine. Upon long mountains tired of the earth, along their aspiring peaks which watch the eastern horizon to take on their shining foreheads the muezzin call, "The day is come", there are my foot-prints.
America, dear land of loveliness, I love thee well! My heart roams thy unaccustomed wastes what time my feet are fettered to many tasks. I exult in thee as the eagle exults in the toppling mountain crag.
"Where rolls the Oregon!" That phrase had alway to my ears Miltonic music. It gave the sense of distance, of urgency irresistible, and of mountain origin. From that melodious poet-phrase I think Oregon has been to me a land of wonder, of awaking poetry, though I knew not the land and scenes; and since, I have trodden many of its valleys and mountains, and have camped on its cascade page: 30[View Page 30] summits pinnacled with pine, and have watched for days the ever shifting, never-tiring coigne of vantage and beauty of meadow-silence and river-music and mountain- solace.
I remember so vividly the golden day I first came to Ashland. On one side, a wide valley, and great summer meadows smelling like hay in harvest-time, and on its other side, a nearby-mountain shadow,--an invitation, and stream at song. The mountain and the stream and the long winding ravine receding upward called me, "When are you coming?", and my glad feet answered, "Now", and my heart said to my feet, "Hurry up and on".
Up and on where the mountain led whose shadows held the stream-sources in their cool hiding places, and the mountain now and then would flash a look upon me vigilantly and then vanish as it were a coquette woman- mountain. Ah, but that day was sweet to my heart, and all these years increasingly sweet to my memory.
And now comes a man of affairs, a reformer, and as far wandering a traveler, who has spoken at this mountain's foot, and who has listened to this mountain's stream a- murmuring in its wanderings to the sunlight and subdued shadow, and the mountain has clambered into his heart, and the stream is found winding away across the meadow of his dream.
May he make them fling shadows and music through mystic years across the dreams of the lovers of loveliness who are yet to be.
--WILLIAM A. QUAYLE.
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- His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
- The silence that is in the starry sky,
- The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
--WILLIAM WORDSWORTH : Song at the Feast of
Brougham Castle.
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FOREWORD
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- To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
- To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
- Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
- And mortal foot hath ne'er, or rarely been;
- To climb the trackless mountain all unseen;
- With the wild flock that never needs a fold:
- Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
- This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold
- Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores
unroll'd.--LORD BRYON : Childe Harold.
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- A blessed spot! Oh, how my soul enjoy'd
- Its holy quietness, with what delight
- Escaping from mankind I hasten'd there
- To solitude and freedom!
--ROBERT SOUTHEY : Joan of Arc.
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God's out-of-doors! How I love it! The trees, the mountains and the sea! They possess the very soul of me--the majesty, the glory and the sublimity of them all.
The beauty, the silence and the far-zoned splendor of the night; the effulgence of the full-orbed day; the still, enchanting tenderness of the twilight--these are wonders anywhere, but seen and experienced among the Siskiyous they transcend description, lift me out of myself, and link me with the Infinite.
Here is the story of such a day, such a twilight, such a night, and such a morning--a day and a night in the Siskiyous!
If in the following pages I have conveyed even a little of what I saw and felt, there is justification for this book. It has been written in the midst of a busy life, through a period of four years, as the mood would seize me, in hotels, in railroad trains and in the still small hours. I am conscious of its imperfections, but its writing has beem a joy, and I give it to the public with the hope that others may catch at least a glimpse of what I saw, and share with me the exaltation and the rapture of an elate and Godful hour.
The photographs for the illustrations were not taken by me. For these I am indebted above all others to Mr. Homer Billings, who was my companion on the trip up Ashland Way to Ashland Mountain, and who, with Mr. L. W. Marble, both of Ashland, made two trips to obtain for me the necessary views. Their work was largely a labor of love and of friendship.
Other illustrations were furnished by Mr. F. L. Camps, of Ashland ; by Mr. C. R. Miller, of Klamath Falls; the Commercial Club of Ashland, and the Commercial Club of Medford. The illustration of the "hidden far-away falls" page: 38[View Page 38] was furnished by the Commercial Club of Medford, and is a photograph of a waterfall near that city, and is not found on Ashland Way.
"A Bank of White Heather" is by Mr. Asahel Curtis, of Seattle, Wash. ; "Lupines" is the work of Mr. Herbert W. Gleason, of Boston, Mass.; "Mountain Pine" was furnished by Miss Elizabeth S. Curtis, of Seattle, Wash. These three are from Mr. John H. Williams' book, "The Mountain That Was God."
"A Wind-Buffeted Sentinel" is by Mrs. H. A. Towne, of Harvard, Illinois, and is from a scene on Mt. Tacoma. The plates for the multi-colored illustrations were made by the Stafford Engraving Company, of Indianapolis, Indiana. Their excellence is due to the care and skill of Mr. E. E. Stafford.
The book itself is done by the Art Press, of Indianapolis, Indiana, to the President of which, Mr. Ray D. Barnes, I am under special obligation for many helpful suggestions.
The introduction is by Bishop William A. Quayle, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, poet, orator and churchman, who himself has taken much of the same journey and who in a peculiar sense is a child of the out-of-doors.
I would not be just if I were to omit from this foreword, recognition of my obligation to my Secretary, Miss Hallie McNeil, whose thoughtful, discriminating care in the preparation of the text and in the selection of the quotations used has been constant and unremitting.
To all of these friends I make grateful acknowledgment.
J. FRANK HANLY,
Indianapolis, Indiana.
May 1, 1916.
page: 39[View Page 39]... Bright spots of color, where beds of wild flowers swing their sweet bells noiselessly.
--JOHN L. STODDARD : California.
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- Bright on the mountain's heathy slope,
- The day's last splendors shine.
--ROBERT SOUTHEY : Rudiger.
