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twg_000000040400 | over from bank to bank, embowering the stream with their leafy branches; and drooping plumes, kept in motion by the current, fringe the brow of the cascade in front. From this leafy covert the stream leaps out into the light in a fluted curve thick sown with sparkling crystals, and falls into a pool filled with brown boulders, out of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040401 | which it creeps gray with foam-bells and disappears in a tangle of verdure like that from which it came. Hence, to the foot of the caon, the metamorphic slates give place to granite, whose nobler sculpture calls forth expressions of corresponding beauty from the stream in passing over it,bright trills of rapids, booming notes of falls, solemn hushes of smooth-gliding | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040402 | sheets, all chanting and blending in glorious harmony. When, at length, its impetuous alpine life is done, it slips through a meadow with scarce an audible whisper, and falls asleep in Moraine Lake. This water-bed is one of the finest I ever saw. Evergreens wave soothingly about it, and the breath of flowers floats over it like incense. Here our | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040403 | blessed stream rests from its rocky wanderings, all its mountaineering done,no more foaming rock-leaping, no more wild, exulting song. It falls into a smooth, glassy sleep, stirred only by the night-wind, which, coming down the caon, makes it croon and mutter in ripples along its broidered shores. Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the rushes, destined never more to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040404 | touch the living rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient moraines and reaches of ashy sage-plain, which nowhere afford rocks suitable for the development of cascades or sheer falls. Yet this beauty of maturity, though less striking, is of a still higher order, enticing us lovingly on through gentian meadows and groves of rustling aspen to Lake Mono, where, spirit-like, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040405 | our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and floats free again in the sky. Bloody Caon, like every other in the Sierra, was recently occupied by a glacier, which derived its fountain snows from the adjacent summits, and descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its waters stood at a much higher level than now. The principal characters in which | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040406 | the history of the ancient glaciers is preserved are displayed here in marvelous freshness and simplicity, furnishing the student with extraordinary advantages for the acquisition of knowledge of this sort. The most striking passages are polished and striated surfaces, which in many places reflect the rays of the sun like smooth water. The dam of Red Lake is an elegantly | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040407 | modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought into relief because of its superior strength, and because of the greater intensity of the glacial erosion of the rock immediately above it, caused by a steeply inclined tributary glacier, which entered the main trunk with a heavy down-thrust at the head of the lake. Moraine Lake furnishes an equally interesting example of a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040408 | basin formed wholly, or in part, by a terminal moraine dam curved across the path of a stream between two lateral moraines. At Moraine Lake the caon proper terminates, although apparently continued by the two lateral moraines of the vanished glacier. These moraines are about feet high, and extend unbrokenly from the sides of the caon into the plain, a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040409 | distance of about five miles, curving and tapering in beautiful lines. Their sunward sides are gardens, their shady sides are groves; the former devoted chiefly to eriogonae, compositae, and graminae; a square rod containing five or six profusely flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of bahia and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040410 | trimly apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially. My first visit to Bloody Caon was made in the summer of , under circumstances well calculated to heighten the impressions that are the peculiar offspring of mountains. I came from the blooming tangles of Florida, and waded out into the plant-gold of the great valley of California, when its | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040411 | flora was as yet untrodden. Never before had I beheld congregations of social flowers half so extensive or half so glorious. Golden composite covered all the ground from the Coast Range to the Sierra like a stratum of curdled sunshine, in which I reveled for weeks, watching the rising and setting of their innumerable suns; then I gave myself up | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040412 | to be borne forward on the crest of the summer wave that sweeps annually up the Sierra and spends itself on the snowy summits. At the Big Tuolumne Meadows I remained more than a month, sketching, botanizing, and climbing among the surrounding mountains. The mountaineer with whom I then happened to be camping was one of those remarkable men one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040413 | so frequently meets in California, the hard angles and bosses of whose characters have been brought into relief by the grinding excitements of the gold period, until they resemble glacial landscapes. But at this late day, my friends activities had subsided, and his craving for rest caused him to become a gentle shepherd and literally to lie down with the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040414 | lamb. Recognizing the unsatisfiable longings of my Scotch Highland instincts, he threw out some hints concerning Bloody Caon, and advised me to explore it. I have never seen it myself, he said, for I never was so unfortunate as to pass that way. But I have heard many a strange story about it, and I warrant you will at least | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040415 | find it wild enough. Then of course I made haste to see it. Early next morning I made up a bundle of bread, tied my note-book to my belt, and strode away in the bracing air, full of eager, indefinite hope. The plushy lawns that lay in my path served to soothe my morning haste. The sod in many places | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040416 | was starred with daisies and blue gentians, over which I lingered. I traced the paths of the ancient glaciers over many a shining pavement, and marked the gaps in the upper forests that told the power of the winter avalanches. Climbing higher, I saw for the first time the gradual dwarfing of the pines in compliance with climate, and on | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040417 | the summit discovered creeping mats of the arctic willow overgrown with silky catkins, and patches of the dwarf vaccinium with its round flowers sprinkled in the grass like purple hail; while in every direction the landscape stretched sublimely away in fresh wildnessa manuscript written by the hand of Nature alone. At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040418 | began to close around in all their wild, mysterious impressiveness, when suddenly, as I was gazing eagerly about me, a drove of gray hairy beings came in sight, lumbering toward me with a kind of boneless, wallowing motion like bears. I never turn back, though often so inclined, and in this particular instance, amid such surroundings, everything seemed singularly unfavorable | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040419 | for the calm acceptance of so grim a company. Suppressing my fears, I soon discovered that although as hairy as bears and as crooked as summit pines, the strange creatures were sufficiently erect to belong to our own species. They proved to be nothing more formidable than Mono Indians dressed in the skins of sage-rabbits. Both the men and the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040420 | women begged persistently for whisky and tobacco, and seemed so accustomed to denials that I found it impossible to convince them that I had none to give. Excepting the names of these two products of civilization, they seemed to understand not a word of English; but I afterward learned that they were on their way to Yosemite Valley to feast | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040421 | awhile on trout and procure a load of acorns to carry back through the pass to their huts on the shore of Mono Lake. Occasionally a good countenance may be seen among the Mono Indians, but these, the first specimens I had seen, were mostly ugly, and some of them altogether hideous. The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040422 | and seemed so ancient and so undisturbed it might almost possess a geological significance. The older faces were, moreover, strangely blurred and divided into sections by furrows that looked like the cleavage-joints of rocks, suggesting exposure on the mountains in a castaway condition for ages. Somehow they seemed to have no right place in the landscape, and I was glad | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040423 | to see them fading out of sight down the pass. Then came evening, and the somber cliffs were inspired with the ineffable beauty of the alpenglow. A solemn calm fell upon everything. All the lower portion of the caon was in gloaming shadow, and I crept into a hollow near one of the upper lakelets to smooth the ground in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040424 | a sheltered nook for a bed. When the short twilight faded, I kindled a sunny fire, made a cup of tea, and lay down to rest and look at the stars. Soon the night-wind began to flow and pour in torrents among the jagged peaks, mingling strange tones with those of the waterfalls sounding far below; and as I drifted | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040425 | toward sleep I began to experience an uncomfortable feeling of nearness to the furred Monos. Then the full moon looked down over the edge of the caon wall, her countenance seemingly filled with intense concern, and apparently so near as to produce a startling effect as if she had entered my bedroom, forgetting all the world, to gaze on me | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040426 | alone. The night was full of strange sounds, and I gladly welcomed the morning. Breakfast was soon done, and I set forth in the exhilarating freshness of the new day, rejoicing in the abundance of pure wildness so close about me. The stupendous rocks, hacked and scarred with centuries of storms, stood sharply out in the thin early light, while | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040427 | down in the bottom of the caon grooved and polished bosses heaved and glistened like swelling sea-waves, telling a grand old story of the ancient glacier that poured its crushing floods above them. Here for the first time I met the arctic daisies in all their perfection of purity and spirituality,gentle mountaineers face to face with the stormy sky, kept | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040428 | safe and warm by a thousand miracles. I leaped lightly from rock to rock, glorying in the eternal freshness and sufficiency of Nature, and in the ineffable tenderness with which she nurtures her mountain darlings in the very fountains of storms. Fresh beauty appeared at every step, delicate rock-ferns, and groups of the fairest flowers. Now another lake came to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040429 | view, now a waterfall. Never fell light in brighter spangles, never fell water in whiter foam. I seemed to float through the caon enchanted, feeling nothing of its roughness, and was out in the Mono levels before I was aware. Looking back from the shore of Moraine Lake, my morning ramble seemed all a dream. There curved Bloody Caon, a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040430 | mere glacial furrow feet deep, with smooth rocks projecting from the sides and braided together in the middle, like bulging, swelling muscles. Here the lilies were higher than my head, and the sunshine was warm enough for palms. Yet the snow around the arctic willows was plainly visible only four miles away, and between were narrow specimen zones of all | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040431 | the principal climates of the globe. On the bank of a small brook that comes gurgling down the side of the left lateral moraine, I found a camp-fire still burning, which no doubt belonged to the gray Indians I had met on the summit, and I listened instinctively and moved cautiously forward, half expecting to see some of their grim | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040432 | faces peering out of the bushes. Passing on toward the open plain, I noticed three well-defined terminal moraines curved gracefully across the caon stream, and joined by long splices to the two noble laterals. These mark the halting-places of the vanished glacier when it was retreating into its summit shadows on the breaking-up of the glacial winter. Five miles below | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040433 | the foot of Moraine Lake, just where the lateral moraines lose themselves in the plain, there was a field of wild rye, growing in magnificent waving bunches six to eight feet high, bearing heads from six to twelve inches long. Rubbing out some of the grains, I found them about five eighths of an inch long, dark-colored, and sweet. Indian | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040434 | women were gathering it in baskets, bending down large handfuls, beating it out, and fanning it in the wind. They were quite picturesque, coming through the rye, as one caught glimpses of them here and there, in winding lanes and openings, with splendid tufts arching above their heads, while their incessant chat and laughter showed their heedless joy. Like the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040435 | rye-field, I found the so-called desert of Mono blooming in a high state of natural cultivation with the wild rose, cherry, aster, and the delicate abronia; also innumerable gilias, phloxes, poppies, and bush-compositae. I observed their gestures and the various expressions of their corollas, inquiring how they could be so fresh and beautiful out in this volcanic desert. They told | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040436 | as happy a life as any plant-company I ever met, and seemed to enjoy even the hot sand and the wind. But the vegetation of the pass has been in great part destroyed, and the same may be said of all the more accessible passes throughout the range. Immense numbers of starving sheep and cattle have been driven through them | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040437 | into Nevada, trampling the wild gardens and meadows almost out of existence. The lofty walls are untouched by any foot, and the falls sing on unchanged; but the sight of crushed flowers and stripped, bitten bushes goes far toward destroying the charm of wildness. The caon should be seen in winter. A good, strong traveler, who knows the way and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040438 | the weather, might easily make a safe excursion through it from Yosemite Valley on snow-shoes during some tranquil time, when the storms are hushed. The lakes and falls would be buried then; but so, also, would be the traces of destructive feet, while the views of the mountains in their winter garb, and the ride at lightning speed down the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040439 | pass between the snowy walls, would be truly glorious. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE MONO PLAIN FROM THE FOOT OF BLOODY CAON.] THE GLACIER LAKES Among the many unlooked-for treasures that are bound up and hidden away in the depths of Sierra solitudes, none more surely charm and surprise all kinds of travelers than the glacier lakes. The forests and the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040440 | glaciers and the snowy fountains of the streams advertise their wealth in a more or less telling manner even in the distance, but nothing is seen of the lakes until we have climbed above them. All the upper branches of the rivers are fairly laden with lakes, like orchard trees with fruit. They lie embosomed in the deep woods, down | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040441 | in the grovy bottoms of caons, high on bald tablelands, and around the feet of the icy peaks, mirroring back their wild beauty over and over again. Some conception of their lavish abundance may be made from the fact that, from one standpoint on the summit of Red Mountain, a days journey to the east of Yosemite Valley, no fewer | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040442 | than forty-two are displayed within a radius of ten miles. The whole number in the Sierra can hardly be less than fifteen hundred, not counting the smaller pools and tarns, which are innumerable. Perhaps two thirds or more lie on the western flank of the range, and all are restricted to the alpine and subalpine regions. At the close of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040443 | the last glacial period, the middle and foot-hill regions also abounded in lakes, all of which have long since vanished as completely as the magnificent ancient glaciers that brought them into existence. Though the eastern flank of the range is excessively steep, we find lakes pretty regularly distributed throughout even the most precipitous portions. They are mostly found in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040444 | upper branches of the caons, and in the glacial amphitheaters around the peaks. Occasionally long, narrow specimens occur upon the steep sides of dividing ridges, their basins swung lengthwise like hammocks, and very rarely one is found lying so exactly on the summit of the range at the head of some pass that its waters are discharged down both flanks | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040445 | when the snow is melting fast. But, however situated, they soon cease to form surprises to the studious mountaineer; for, like all the love-work of Nature, they are harmoniously related to one another, and to all the other features of the mountains. It is easy, therefore, to find the bright lake-eyes in the roughest and most ungovernable-looking topography of any | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040446 | landscape countenance. Even in the lower regions, where they have been closed for many a century, their rocky orbits are still discernible, filled in with the detritus of flood and avalanche. A beautiful system of grouping in correspondence with the glacial fountains is soon perceived; also their extension in the direction of the trends of the ancient glaciers; and in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040447 | general their dependence as to form, size, and position upon the character of the rocks in which their basins have been eroded, and the quantity and direction of application of the glacial force expended upon each basin. In the upper caons we usually find them in pretty regular succession, strung together like beads on the bright ribbons of their feeding-streams, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040448 | which pour, white and gray with foam and spray, from one to the other, their perfect mirror stillness making impressive contrasts with the grand blare and glare of the connecting cataracts. In Lake Hollow, on the north side of the Hoffman spur, immediately above the great Tuolumne caon, there are ten lovely lakelets lying near together in one general hollow, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040449 | like eggs in a nest. Seen from above, in a general view, feathered with Hemlock Spruce, and fringed with sedge, they seem to me the most singularly beautiful and interestingly located lake-cluster I have ever yet discovered. Lake Tahoe, miles long by about wide, and from to over feet in depth, is the largest of all the Sierra lakes. It | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040450 | lies just beyond the northern limit of the higher portion of the range between the main axis and a spur that puts out on the east side from near the head of the Carson River. Its forested shores go curving in and out around many an emerald bay and pine-crowned promontory, and its waters are everywhere as keenly pure as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040451 | any to be found among the highest mountains. Donner Lake, rendered memorable by the terrible fate of the Donner party, is about three miles long, and lies about ten miles to the north of Tahoe, at the head of one of the tributaries of the Truckee. A few miles farther north lies Lake Independence, about the same size as Donner. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040452 | But far the greater number of the lakes lie much higher and are quite small, few of them exceeding a mile in length, most of them less than half a mile. Along the lower edge of the lake-belt, the smallest have disappeared by the filling-in of their basins, leaving only those of considerable size. But all along the upper freshly | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040453 | glaciated margin of the lake-bearing zone, every hollow, however small, lying within reach of any portion of the close network of streams, contains a bright, brimming pool; so that the landscape viewed from the mountain-tops seems to be sown broadcast with them. Many of the larger lakes are encircled with smaller ones like central gems girdled with sparkling brilliants. In | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040454 | general, however, there is no marked dividing line as to size. In order, therefore, to prevent confusion, I would state here that in giving numbers, I include none less than yards in circumference. In the basin of the Merced River, I counted , of which are upon the tributaries that fall so grandly into Yosemite Valley. Pohono Creek, which forms | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040455 | the fall of that name, takes its rise in a beautiful lake, lying beneath the shadow of a lofty granite spur that puts out from Buena Vista peak. This is now the only lake left in the whole Pohono Basin. The Illilouette has sixteen, the Nevada no fewer than sixty-seven, the Tenaya eight, Hoffmann Creek five, and Yosemite Creek fourteen. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040456 | There are but two other lake-bearing affluents of the Merced, viz., the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five, both of which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite. [Illustration: LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS.] The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like an elm-tree, and it requires but little effort on the part of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040457 | the imagination to picture it standing upright, with all its lakes hanging upon its spreading branches, the topmost eighty miles in height. Now add all the other lake-bearing rivers of the Sierra, each in its place, and you will have a truly glorious spectacle,an avenue the length and width of the range; the long, slender, gray shafts of the main | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040458 | trunks, the milky way of arching branches, and the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and shining on the sky. How excitedly such an addition to the scenery would be gazed at! Yet these lakeful rivers are still more excitingly beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to those who have the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040459 | their meadows and forests and glacier-sculptured rocks. When a mountain lake is born,when, like a young eye, it first opens to the light,it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in banks of rock and ice,bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it remains for many a year, until | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040460 | at length, toward the end of some auspicious cluster of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the basin, leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time, thousands of years after its conception beneath the glacier that excavated its basin. The landscape, cold and bare, is reflected in its pure depths; the winds ruffle its | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040461 | glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles, while its waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores,sun-spangles during the day and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040462 | and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds come many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow warmer, and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons, violets, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040463 | honeyworts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten in time to the new gardens,kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple flowers, the arctic willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the heathy bryanthus and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects now enrich the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the ouzel, which | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040464 | is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is the first of plants. So the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly lovable from century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy pines, and the Hemlock Spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and embowered. But while its shores are being enriched, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040465 | the soil-beds creep out with incessant growth, contracting its area, while the lighter mud-particles deposited on the bottom cause it to grow constantly shallower, until at length the last remnant of the lake vanishes,closed forever in ripe and natural old age. And now its feeding-stream goes winding on without halting through the new gardens and groves that have taken its | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040466 | place. The length of the life of any lake depends ordinarily upon the capacity of its basin, as compared with the carrying power of the streams that flow into it, the character of the rocks over which these streams flow, and the relative position of the lake toward other lakes. In a series whose basins lie in the same caon, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040467 | and are fed by one and the same main stream, the uppermost will, of course, vanish first unless some other lake-filling agent comes in to modify the result; because at first it receives nearly all of the sediments that the stream brings down, only the finest of the mud-particles being carried through the highest of the series to the next | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040468 | below. Then the next higher, and the next would be successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to vanish. But this simplicity as to duration is broken in upon in various ways, chiefly through the action of side-streams that enter the lower lakes direct. For, notwithstanding many of these side tributaries are quite short, and, during late summer, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040469 | feeble, they all become powerful torrents in springtime when the snow is melting, and carry not only sand and pine-needles, but large trunks and boulders tons in weight, sweeping them down their steeply inclined channels and into the lake basins with astounding energy. Many of these side affluents also have the advantage of access to the main lateral moraines of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040470 | the vanished glacier that occupied the caon, and upon these they draw for lake-filling material, while the main trunk stream flows mostly over clean glacier pavements, where but little moraine matter is ever left for them to carry. Thus a small rapid stream with abundance of loose transportable material within its reach may fill up an extensive basin in a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040471 | few centuries, while a large perennial trunk stream, flowing over clean, enduring pavements, though ordinarily a hundred times larger, may not fill a smaller basin in thousands of years. The comparative influence of great and small streams as lake-fillers is strikingly illustrated in Yosemite Valley, through which the Merced flows. The bottom of the valley is now composed of level | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040472 | meadow-lands and dry, sloping soil-beds planted with oak and pine, but it was once a lake stretching from wall to wall and nearly from one end of the valley to the other, forming one of the most beautiful cliff-bound sheets of water that ever existed in the Sierra. And though never perhaps seen by human eye, it was but yesterday, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040473 | geologically speaking, since it disappeared, and the traces of its existence are still so fresh, it may easily be restored to the eye of imagination and viewed in all its grandeur, about as truly and vividly as if actually before us. Now we find that the detritus which fills this magnificent basin was not brought down from the distant mountains | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040474 | by the main streams that converge here to form the river, however powerful and available for the purpose at first sight they appear; but almost wholly by the small local tributaries, such as those of Indian Caon, the Sentinel, and the Three Brothers, and by a few small residual glaciers which lingered in the shadows of the walls long after | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040475 | the main trunk glacier had receded beyond the head of the valley. Had the glaciers that once covered the range been melted at once, leaving the entire surface bare from top to bottom simultaneously, then of course all the lakes would have come into existence at the same time, and the highest, other circumstances being equal, would, as we have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040476 | seen, be the first to vanish. But because they melted gradually from the foot of the range upward, the lower lakes were the first to see the light and the first to be obliterated. Therefore, instead of finding the lakes of the present day at the foot of the range, we find them at the top. Most of the lower | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040477 | lakes vanished thousands of years before those now brightening the alpine landscapes were born. And in general, owing to the deliberation of the upward retreat of the glaciers, the lowest of the existing lakes are also the oldest, a gradual transition being apparent throughout the entire belt, from the older, forested, meadow-rimmed and contracted forms all the way up to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040478 | those that are new born, lying bare and meadowless among the highest peaks. [Illustration: THE DEATH OF A LAKE.] A few small lakes unfortunately situated are extinguished suddenly by a single swoop of an avalanche, carrying down immense numbers of trees, together with the soil they were growing upon. Others are obliterated by land-slips, earthquake taluses, etc., but these lake-deaths | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040479 | compared with those resulting from the deliberate and incessant deposition of sediments, may be termed accidental. Their fate is like that of trees struck by lightning. The lake-line is of course still rising, its present elevation being about feet above sea-level; somewhat higher than this toward the southern extremity of the range, lower toward the northern, on account of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040480 | difference in time of the withdrawal of the glaciers, due to difference in climate. Specimens occur here and there considerably below this limit, in basins specially protected from inwashing detritus, or exceptional in size. These, however, are not sufficiently numerous to make any marked irregularity in the line. The highest I have yet found lies at an elevation of about | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040481 | , feet, in a glacier womb, at the foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few miles to the north of Mount Hitter. The basins of perhaps twenty-five or thirty are still in process of formation beneath the few lingering glaciers, but by the time they are born, an equal or greater number will probably have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040482 | died. Since the beginning of the close of the ice-period the whole number in the range has perhaps never been greater than at present. A rough approximation to the average duration of these mountain lakes may be made from data already suggested, but I cannot stop here to present the subject in detail. I must also forego, in the mean | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040483 | time, the pleasure of a full discussion of the interesting question of lake-basin formation, for which fine, clear, demonstrative material abounds in these mountains. In addition to what has been already given on the subject, I will only make this one statement. Every lake in the Sierra is a glacier lake. Their basins were not merely remodeled and scoured out | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040484 | by this mighty agent, but in the first place were eroded from the solid. I must now make haste to give some nearer views of representative specimens lying at different elevations on the main lake-belt, confining myself to descriptions of the features most characteristic of each. SHADOW LAKE This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040485 | existing lakes. It lies about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on the main branch of the Merced, at an elevation of about feet above the sea; and is everywhere so securely cliff-bound that without artificial trails only wild animals can get down to its rocky shores from any direction. Its original length was about a mile and a half; now | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040486 | it is only half a mile in length by about a fourth of a mile in width, and over the lowest portion of the basin ninety-eight feet deep. Its crystal waters are clasped around on the north and south by majestic granite walls sculptured in true Yosemitic style into domes, gables, and battlemented headlands, which on the south come plunging | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040487 | down sheer into deep water, from a height of from to feet. The South Lyell glacier eroded this magnificent basin out of solid porphyritic granite while forcing its way westward from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the exposed rocks around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the walls, ground and burnished beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040488 | silvery radiance, notwithstanding the innumerable corroding storms that have fallen upon them. The general conformation of the basin, as well as the moraines laid along the top of the walls, and the grooves and scratches on the bottom and sides, indicate in the most unmistakable manner the direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its great depth, and the tremendous energy | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040489 | it exerted in thrusting itself into and out of the basin; bearing down with superior pressure upon this portion of its channel, because of the greater declivity, consequently eroding it deeper than the other portions about it, and producing the lake-bowl as the necessary result. With these magnificent ice-characters so vividly before us it is not easy to realize that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040490 | the old glacier that made them vanished tens of centuries ago; for, excepting the vegetation that has sprung up, and the changes effected by an earthquake that hurled rock-avalanches from the weaker headlands, the basin as a whole presents the same appearance that it did when first brought to light. The lake itself, however, has undergone marked changes; one sees | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040491 | at a glance that it is growing old. More than two thirds of its original area is now dry land, covered with meadow-grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level bed of alluvium stretching across from wall to wall at the head is evidently growing out all along its lakeward margin, and will at length close the lake | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040492 | forever. [Illustration: SHADOW LAKE (MERCED LAKE), YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK.] Every lover of fine wildness would delight to saunter on a summer day through the flowery groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the basin. The curving shore is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand upon which the ripples play; then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges, interrupted here | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040493 | and there by impenetrable tangles of willows; beyond this there are groves of trembling aspen; then a dark, shadowy belt of Two-leaved Pine, with here and there a round carex meadow ensconced nest-like in its midst; and lastly, a narrow outer margin of majestic Silver Fir feet high. The ground beneath the trees is covered with a luxuriant crop of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040494 | grasses, chiefly triticum, bromus, and calamagrostis, with purple spikes and panicles arching to ones shoulders; while the open meadow patches glow throughout the summer with showy flowers,heleniums, goldenrods, erigerons, lupines, castilleias, and lilies, and form favorite hiding and feeding-grounds for bears and deer. The rugged south wall is feathered darkly along the top with an imposing array of spirey Silver | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040495 | Firs, while the rifted precipices all the way down to the waters edge are adorned with picturesque old junipers, their cinnamon-colored bark showing finely upon the neutral gray of the granite. These, with a few venturesome Dwarf Pines and Spruces, lean out over fissured ribs and tablets, or stand erect back in shadowy niches, in an indescribably wild and fearless | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040496 | manner. Moreover, the white-flowered Douglas spiraea and dwarf evergreen oak form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the slightest hold can be effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as allosorus, pellaea, and cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier fissures; and the delicate maidenhair, cistoperis, and woodsia hide back in mossy grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill; and then | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040497 | the orange wall-flower holds up its showy panicles here and there in the sunshine, and bahia makes bosses of gold. But, notwithstanding all this plant beauty, the general impression in looking across the lake is of stern, unflinching rockiness; the ferns and flowers are scarcely seen, and not one fiftieth of the whole surface is screened with plant life. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040498 | sunnier north wall is more varied in sculpture, but the general tone is the same. A few headlands, flat-topped and soil-covered, support clumps of cedar and pine; and up-curving tangles of chinquapin and live-oak, growing on rough earthquake taluses, girdle their bases. Small streams come cascading down between them, their foaming margins brightened with gay primulas, gilias, and mimuluses. And | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000000040499 | close along the shore on this side there is a strip of rocky meadow enameled with buttercups, daisies, and white violets, and the purple-topped grasses out on its beveled border dip their leaves into the water. The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell of solid granite, heavily abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut | 60 | gutenberg |
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