HOW TO CLIMB SHASTA make steps with an ax on the smooth ice for three miles. In this record book we entered our names with the fact that we started at 2:15 and reached the summit at 10:30, a trifle over eight hours. The descent was begun at 11 o'clock and occupied only three hours. Just below the monument we stopped to inspect the hot sulphur springs which burst from several vents in the mountain side. The steam rises six feet and the water boils in the small cupshaped depression formed by the action of the water. The water is strongly impregnated with sulphur, and the fumes are particularly powerful in this thin air. It is a marvelous thing-this boiling spring 14,200 feet above sea level, surrounded by fields of everlasting snow. The descent was uneventful, but it included the exhilarating experience 535 of shooting rapidly down over smooth stretches of snow and of sliding on one's feet for several miles. At Horse Camp we ate lunch, the first food we had had for twelve hours, and then made our way back to Sisson, which was reached in time for dinner. It may be well here to give a few hints to those who purpose climbing Shasta this season. After the first rains, should no heavy snow fall, is the best time. Then the climber will be assured of a clear view of one of the finest prospects to be seen on this coast. Fairly heavy clothing should be worn, with an extra sweater to put on before beginning the ascent. Leggings are useful and stout shoes with cleats on the soles and long steel nails in the heels. Shoes are fixed for the trip by a Sisson cobbler, who does not try to overcharge the tourist. An alpenstock is absolutely necessary, as Passing of the Nations Wonderful Series of Indian Paintings upon Embossed Leather; Executed by Alexander F. Harmer of Santa Barbara, for United States Attorney-General Philander F. Knox By S. E. A. HIGGINS A Californian artist, Alexander F. Harmer of Santa Barbara, has painted recently for the library of United States Attorney-General Knox at Pittsburg a remarkable frieze, typifying the various tribes of North American Indians. Following are the first authorized illustrations and description of this notable accomplish structors and their teaching only intensified his choice of a profession, and he left the academy and entered the cavalry. of the United States Army afar in the southwest for special study in frontier life. While in the army, on the plains, on the Pacific coast, afterward in Arizona and Mexico, he was with scouting parties as well as in other lines of the regular service, scaling the mountains, exploring canyons that had never before felt the tread of the white man. Impressed by Nature's panorama, as it was unrolled, but still more keenly alive to the Indians themselves, he allowed no detail to escape the vigilance of his eyes, for these were the people it had been the purpose of his life to know and through his brush to make known to others. Drifting to Santa Barbara other fascinations aside from its delightful climate and world-renowned scenery enthralled him, and he married Miss Felicie Abadie from one of the historic families of Santa Barbara and has since lived in that city. At different periods artists and historians have desired to produce a series of paintings commemorative of the Indian races, but it remained for Mr. Harmer to carry out the thought, and for the Attorney-General of the United States to make it possible for him to do so. There is no hint of the massacre Of course, Mr. Harmer was obliged at the outset to go to Pittsburg and study the needs and possibilities of the room as well as to secure exact measurement, for it required his personal consideration to give to every nook, alcove, niche and projection its appropriate panel, complete in itself and yet in light, shade and proportion in unity with the entire design. He found in the library a moosehead from far northern wilds and made it the center of a panel in which it appears at home in the forest having four companion hunting scenes. There, too, was the exquisite screen which General Knox, as a passing tourist through Santa Barbara, had discovered in Mr. Harmer's studio and which was the real suggestion of the order given of human beings in these portraits "to make the room American and symbolic of the early American races." This collection of paintings-entirely unlike any in the world-contains three hundred and fifty square feet distributed in fifty panels, and required eighteen months of continuous labor all day and every day. It is not the result of inspiration, though there be genius directed through long years of patient, persistent endeavor in obedience to a fixed purpose. In the progress of time this achievement of Mr. Harmer will be more and more apparent as to its historic value, while as a work of art the frieze will stand upon its own merits. The details of his effort were no sineIt was difficult to secure leather of the requisite size and in sufficient cure. quantity. Every kipskin was stretched and restretched to dry before being placed on the easel. Think, too, of the enforced accuracy of every stroke of the engraving tool, which unlike that of the brush, could not be effaced. When necessity compelled the enlargement of a panel, the addition was dexterously concealed by making the defect serve as a part of the landscape, either in dense foliage, the branch of a tree or the cleft of a rock. As his work progressed from the study of tawny savages on the embossed leather, making good the artist's rule of prevailing tints throughout a picture, still farther possibilities suggested themselves ry gleam stole in; bright a' in personal adornment |