 CHAPTER I. THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA THE SIERRA NAVADA Go where you may within the bounds of California, mountains are ever in sight, charming and glorifying every landscape. Yet so simple and massive is the topography of the state in general views that the main central portion displays only one valley and two chains of mountains which seem almost perfectly regular in trend and height. The coast range on the west side, the Sierra Nevada on the east. These two ranges coming together in curves on the north and south enclose a magnificent basin, with a level floor more than 400 miles long and from 35 to 60 miles wide. This is the grand central valley of California, the waters of which have only one outlet to the sea through the golden gate. But with this general simplicity of features there is great complexity of hidden detail. The coast range, rising as a grand green barrier against the ocean from 2,000 to 8,000 feet high is composed of innumerable forest crowned spurs, ridges and rolling hill waves which enclose a multitude of smaller valleys, some looking out through long forest-lined vistas to the sea, others with but few trees to the central valley. While a thousand others yet smaller are embosomed and concealed in mild, round-browed hills each with its own climate, soil and productions. Making your way through the mazes of the coast range to the summit of any of the inner peaks or passes opposite San Francisco in the clear springtime, the grandest and most telling of all California landscapes is outspread before you. At your feet lies the great central valley, glowing golden in the sunshine, extending north and south farther than the eye can reach, one smooth, flowery lake-like bed of fertile soil. Along its eastern margins rises the mighty Sierra, miles in height, reposing like a smooth cumulus cloud in the sunny sky, and so gloriously colored and so luminous it seems to be not clothed with light but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city. Along the top and extending a good way down you see a pale pearl-grey belt of snow, and below it a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension of the forests, and along the base of the range a broad belt of rose-purple and yellow, where lie the miners' gold fields and the foothill gardens. All these colored belts blending smoothly make a wall of light ineffably fine, and as beautiful as a rainbow, yet firm as Ottoman. When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day from the summit of Pacheco Pass, the central valley, but little trampled or plowed as yet, was one furred rich sheet of gold and composite, and the luminous wall of the mountain shone in all its glory. Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noon day radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpine glow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvellous abundance of iris'd spray, it still seems to me, above all others, the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain chains I have ever seen. The Sierra is about five hundred miles long, seventy miles wide, and from seven thousand to nearly fifteen thousand feet high. In general views no mark of man is visible on it, nor anything to suggest the richness of the life it cherishes, or the depth and grandeur of its sculpture. None of its magnificent forest-crowned ridges rises much above the general level to publish its wealth. No great valley or lake is seen, or river, or group of well-marked features of any kind, standing out in distinct pictures. Even the summit peaks, so clear and high in the sky, seem comparatively smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, glaciers are still at work in the shadows of the peaks, and thousands of lakes and meadows shine and bloom beneath them, and the whole Range is furrowed with canyons to a depth of from two thousand to five thousand feet, in which once flowed majestic glaciers, and in which now flow and sing a band of beautiful rivers. Though of such stupendous depth, these famous canyons are not raw, gloomy, jagged-walled gorges, savage and inaccessible. With rough passages here and there they still make delightful pathways for the mountaineer, conducting from the fertile lowlands to the highest icy fountains as a kind of mountain streets full of charming life and light, graded and sculptured by the ancient glaciers, and presenting throughout all their courses a rich variety of novel and attractive scenery, the most attractive that has yet been discovered in the mountain ranges of the world. In many places, especially in the middle region of the western flank of the Range, the main canyons widen into spacious valleys or parks, diversified like artificial landscape gardens with charming groves and meadows, and thickets of blooming bushes. While the lofty retiring walls infinitely varied in form and sculpture are fringed with ferns, flowering plants of many species, oaks and evergreens, which find anchorage on a thousand narrow steps and benches. While the hole is enlivened and made glorious with rejoicing streams that come dancing and foaming over the sunny brows of the cliffs to join the shining river that flows in tranquil beauty down the middle of each one of them. The walls of these park valleys of the Yosemite kind are made up of rock mountains in size, partly separated from each other by narrow gorges and side canyons, and they are so sheer in front and so compactly built together on a level floor that comprehensively seen the parks they enclose look like immense halls or temples lighted from above. Every rock seems to glow with life. Some lean back in majestic repose, others, absolutely sheer or nearly so, for thousands of feet, advance their brows and thoughtful attitudes beyond their companions, giving welcome to storms and calms alike, seemingly conscious yet heedless of everything going on about them, awful in stern majesty, types of permanence, yet associated with beauty of the frailest and most fleeting forms. Their feet set in pine groves and gay emerald meadows, their brows in the sky, bathed in light, bathed in floods of singing water, while snow clouds, avalanches, and the winds shine and surge and read about them as the years go by. As if into these mountain mansions nature had taken pains to gather her choicest treasures to draw her lovers into close and confiding communion with her. Here too, in the middle region of deepest canyons, are the grandest forest trees, the sequoia, king of conifers, the noble sugar and yellow pines, douglas spruce, libocedrus, and the silver furs. Each a giant of its kind, assembled together in one and the same forest, surpassing all other coniferous forests in the world, both in the number of its species and in the size and beauty of its trees. The winds flow in melody through their colossal spires, and they are vocal everywhere with the songs of birds and running water. Miles of fragrant cyanothus and manzanita bushes bloom beneath them, and lily gardens and meadows, and damp, ferny glens and endless variety of fragrance and color, compelling the admiration of every observer. Sweeping on over ridge and valley these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of the range, only slightly interrupted by sheer-walled canyons at intervals of about fifteen and twenty miles. Here the great burly brown bears delight to roam, harmonizing with the brown bowls of the trees beneath which they feed. Deer also dwell here, and find food and shelter in the cyanothus tangles with a multitude of smaller people. Above this region of giants the trees grow smaller until the utmost limit of the timberline is reached on the stormy mountain slopes, at a height of from ten to twelve thousand feet above the sea. Where the dwarf pine is so lowly and hard beset by storms and heavy snow it is pressed into flat tangles over the tops of which we may easily walk. Below the main forest belt the trees likewise diminish in size, frost and burning drought repressing and blasting alike. The rose-purple zone along the base of the range comprehends nearly all the famous gold region of California. And here it was that miners from every country under the sun assembled in a wild, torrent-like rush to seek their fortunes. On the banks of every river, ravine, and gully they have left their marks. Every gravel and boulder bed has been desperately riddled over and over again. But in this region the pick and shovel, once wielded with savage enthusiasm, have been laid away, and only quartz mining is now being carried on to any considerable extent. The zone in general is made up of low, tawny, waving foothills, roughened here and there with brush and trees, and outcropping masses of slate colored gray and red with lichens. The smaller masses of slate, rising abruptly from the dry, grassy sod and leaning slabs, look like ancient tombstones in a deserted burying-ground. In early spring, say from February to April, the whole of this foothill belt is a paradise of bees and flowers. Refreshing rains then fall freely, birds are busy building their nests, and the sunshine is balmy and delightful. But by the end of May the soil, plants, and skies seem to have been baked in an oven. Most of the plants crumble to dust beneath the foot, and the ground is full of cracks, while the thirsty traveler gazes with eager longing through the burning glare to the snowy summits, looming like hazy clouds in the distance. The trees, mostly Quercus de Glace and Pinus Sabiniana, thirty to forty feet high with thin pale green foliage, stand far apart and cast but little shade. Lizards glide about on the rocks, enjoying a constitution that no drought can dry, and ants in amazing numbers, whose tiny sparks of life seem to burn the brighter with the increasing heat, ramble industriously in long trains in search of food. Crows, ravens, magpies, friends in distress, gather on the ground beneath the best shade trees, panting with drooping wings and bills wide open, scarce a note from any of them during the midday hours. Quails, too, seek the shade during the heat of the day about tepid pools and the channels of the large mid-river streams. Rabbits scurry from thicket to thicket among the seanothus bushes, and occasionally a long-eared hair is seen cantering gracefully across the wider openings. The nights are calm and douless during the summer, and a thousand voices proclaim the abundance of life, notwithstanding the desolating effect of dry sunshine on the plants and larger animals. The hylos make a delightfully pure and tranquil music after sunset, and coyotes, the little despised dogs of the wilderness, brave, hearty fellows looking like withered wisps of hay, bark and chorus for hours. In the greening-towns, most of them dead, and a few living ones with bright bits of cultivation about them, occur at long intervals along the belt, and cottages covered with climbing roses in the midst of orange and peach orchards, and sweet-scented hay-fields and fertile flats where water for irrigation may be had, but they are mostly far apart and make scarce any mark in general views. Every winter the high Sierra and the middle forest region get snow in glorious abundance, and even the foothills are at times whitened. Then all the range looks like a vast bevelled wall of purest marble. The rough places are then made smooth, the death and decay of the year is covered gently and kindly, and the ground seems as clean as the sky. And though silent in its flight from the clouds, and when it is taking its place on rock or tree or grassy meadow, how soon the gentle snow finds a voice. Slipping from the heights, gathering in avalanches, it booms and roars like thunder, and makes a glorious show as it sweeps down the mountainside, arrayed in long silken streamers and wreathing swirling films of crystal dust. The north half of the range is mostly covered with floods of lava, and dotted with volcanoes and craters, some of them recent and perfect in form, others in various stages of decay. The south half is composed of granite nearly from base to summit, while a considerable number of peaks in the middle of the range are capped with metamorphic slates, among which are Mount Sdena and Gibbs to the east of Yosemite Valley. Mount Whitney, the culminating point of the range near its southern extremity, lifts its helmet-shaped crest to a height of nearly 14,700 feet. Mount Shasta, a colossal volcanic cone, rises to a height 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. Residual masses of volcanic rocks occur throughout most of the granitic southern portion also, and a considerable number of old volcanoes on the flanks, especially along the eastern base of the range near Mono Lake and southward. But it is only to the northward that the entire range from base to summit is covered with lava. From the summit of Mount Whitney only granite is seen. Enumerable peaks inspire, but little lower than its own storm-beaten crags rise in groups like forest trees, in full view, segregated by canyons of tremendous depth and ruggedness. On Shasta, nearly every feature in the vast views speaks of the old volcanic fires. Far to the northward, in Oregon, the icy volcanoes of Mount Pitt and the Three Sisters rise above the dark evergreen woods. Southward, enumerable smaller craters and cones are distributed along the axis of the range and on each flank. Of these, Lassen's Butte is the highest, being nearly eleven thousand feet above sea level. Miles of its flanks are reeking and bubbling with hot springs, many of them so boisterous and sulfurous they seem over-ready to become spouting geysers like those of the Yellowstone. The Cinder Cone, nearer, marks the most recent volcanic eruption in the Sierra. It is a symmetrical truncated cone about seven hundred feet high, covered with gray cinders and ashes, and has a regular unchanged crater on its summit, in which a few small two-leaved pines are growing. These show that the age of the cone is not less than eighty years. It stands between two lakes, which a short time ago were one. Before the cone was built, a flood of rough vesicular lava was poured into the lake, flooding it into, and, overflowing its banks, the fiery flood advanced into the pine woods, overwhelming the trees in its way, the charred ends of some of which may still be seen projecting from beneath the snout of the lava stream where it came to rest. Later still there was an eruption of ashes and loose obsidian cinders, probably from the same vent, which, besides forming the Cinder Cone, scattered a heavy shower over the surrounding woods for miles to a depth of from six inches to several feet. The history of this last Sierra eruption is also preserved in the traditions of the Pit River Indians. They tell of a fearful time of darkness, when the sky was black with ashes and smoke that threatened every living thing with death, and that when it lengthed the sun appeared once more it was red like blood. Less recent craters and great numbers roughened the adjacent region, some of them with lakes in their throats, others overgrown with trees and flowers, nature in these old hearths and firesides having literally given beauty for ashes. On the northwest side of Mount Shasta there is a subordinate cone about three thousand feet below the summit, which has been active subsequent to the breaking up of the main ice cap that once covered the mountain, as is shown by its comparatively unwasted crater and the streams of unglaciated lava radiating from it. The main summit is about a mile and a half in diameter, bounded by small crumbling peaks and ridges, among which we seek in vain for the outlines of the ancient crater. These ruinous masses and the deep glacial grooves that flute the sides of the mountain show that it has been considerably lowered and wasted by ice. How much we have no sure means of knowing. Just below the extreme summit hot sulfurous gases and vapor issue from irregular fissures mixed with spray derived from melting snow, the last feeble expression of the mighty force that built the mountain. Not in one great convulsion was Shasta given birth. The crags of the summit and the sections exposed by the glaciers down the sides display enough of its internal framework to prove that comparatively long periods of quiescence intervened between many distinct eruptions, during which the cooling lavas ceased to flow and became permanent additions to the bulk of the growing mountain. With alternate haste and deliberation, eruption succeeded eruption till the old volcanoes surpassed even its present sublime height. Standing on the icy top of this, the grandest of all the fire mountains of the Sierra, we can hardly fail to look forward to its next eruption. Gardens, vineyards, homes have been planted confidingly on the flanks of volcanoes which, after remaining steadfast for ages, have suddenly blazed into violent action and poured forth overwhelming floods of fire. It is known that more than a thousand years of cool calm have intervened between violent eruptions. Like gigantic geysers spouting molten rock instead of water, volcanoes work and rest, and we have no sure means of knowing whether they are dead when still or only sleeping. Along the western base of the range a telling series of sedimentary rocks containing the early history of the Sierra are now being studied. But leaving for the present these first chapters, we see that only a very short geological time ago, just before the coming on of that winter of winters called the Glacial Period, a vast deluge of molten rocks poured from many a chasm and crater on the flanks and summit of the range, filling lake basins and river channels and obliterating nearly every existing feature on the northern portion. At length these all-destroying floods ceased to flow. But while the great volcanic cones built up along the axis still burned and smoked, the whole Sierra passed under the domain of ice and snow. Then over the bald, featureless fire-blackened mountains glaciers began to crawl, covering them from the summits to the sea with a mantle of ice. And then with infinite deliberation the work went on of sculpturing the range anew. These mighty agents of erosion, halting never through unnumbered centuries, crushed in ground the flinty labas and granites beneath their crystal folds, wasting and building until in the fullness of time the Sierra was born again, brought to light nearly as we behold it today, with glaciers and snow-crushed pines at the top of the range, wheat fields and orange groves at the foot of it. This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as we count time, and is still going on north and south over all the world wherever glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers as in Switzerland, Norway, the mountains of Asia and the Pacific coast, or in continuous mantling folds as in portions of Alaska, Greenland, Franz Josephland, Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen, and the lands about the South Pole. But in no country, as far as I know, may these majestic changes be studied to better advantage than in the plains and mountains of California. After the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became less fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the lower folds of the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of icebergs into the sea, began to shallow and recede from the low lands, and then moved slowly up the flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the changes of climate. The great white mantle of the mountains broke up into a series of glaciers more or less distinct and river-like, with many tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into still smaller glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost branches of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit peaks. Plants and animals, biting their time, closely followed the retiring ice, bestowing quick and joyous animation on the newborn landscapes. Pine trees marched up the sun-warmed moraines in long hopeful files, taking the ground and establishing themselves as soon as it was ready for them. Brown-spiked sedges fringed the shores of the newborn lakes. Young rivers roared in the abandoned channels of the glaciers. Flowers bloomed around the feet of the great burnished domes. Well with quick fertility, mellow beds of soil, settling and warming, offered food to the multitudes of nature's waiting children, great and small, animals as well as plants, mice, squirrels, marmots, deers, bears, elephants, etc. The ground burst into bloom with magical rapidity, and the young forests into birdsong. Life in every form, warming and sweetening and growing richer as the years passed away over the mighty Sierra, so lately suggestive of death and consummate desolation only. It is hard, without long and loving study, to realize the magnitude of the work done on these mountains during the last glacial period by glaciers, which are only streams of closely compacted snow crystals. Several study of the phenomena presented goes to show that the pre-glacial condition of the range was comparatively simple, one vast wave of stone in which a thousand mountains, domes, canyons, ridges, etc., lay concealed. And in the development of these nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake, or lightning to rend and split asunder, nor the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea. Laboring harmoniously in united strength, they crushed and ground and wore away the rocks in their march, making vast beds of soil, and at the same time developed and fashioned the landscapes into the delightful variety of hill and dale and lordly mountain that mortals call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile in average depth has the range been thus degraded during the last glacial period. A quantity of mechanical work almost inconceivably great. And our admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and study and learn that this vast job of rock work, so far reaching in its influences, was done by agents so fragile and small as are these flowers of the mountain clouds. Among only by force of numbers they carried away entire mountains, particle by particle, block by block, and cast them into the sea, sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the range and developed its predestined beauty. All these new Sierra landscapes were evidently predestined, for the physical structure of the rocks on which the features of the scenery depended was acquired while they lay at least a mile deep below the preglacial surface. And it was while these features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of the rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference to the coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky marching to the same music assembled to bring them to the light. Then after their grand task was done, these bands of snow-flowers, these mighty glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more importance than due destined to last but an hour. Few, however, of nature's agents have left monuments so noble and enduring as they. The great granite domes a mile high, the canyons is deep, the noble peaks, the Yosemite valleys, these and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra scenery, are glacier monuments. Having the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily fancy them endowed with life. Messengers sent down to work in the mountain mines on errands of divine love. Silently flying through the darkened air, swirling, glinting to their appointed places, they seemed to have taken counsel together, saying, Come, we are feeble, let us help one another. We are many, and together we will be strong. Marching in close deep ranks, let us roll away the stones from these mountains of polkers and set the landscapes free. Let us uncover these clustering domes. Here let us carve a lake basin, there a Yosemite valley, here a channel for a river with fluted steps and brows for the plunge of songful cataracts. Here let us spread broad sheets of soil that man and beast may be fed, and here pile trains of boulders for pines and giant sequoias. Here make ground for a meadow, there for a garden and grove, making it smooth and fine for small daisies and violets and beds of healthy bryanthus, spicing it well with crystals garnet feldspar and zircon. Yes and so on it has often time seemed to me sang and planned and labored the hearty snow-flower crusaders, and nothing that I can write can possibly exaggerate the grandeur and beauty of their work. Like morning mist they have vanished in sunshine, all save the few small companies that still linger on the coolest mountainsides, and, as residual glaciers, are still busily at work completing the last of the lake basins, the last beds of soil, and the sculpture of some of the highest peaks. CHAPTER II THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please contact LibriVox.org. Recording by Robert Garrison. For more information on this reader, please visit Climer53.com. THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA BY JOHN MUIR 1894 CHAPTER II THE GLACIERS Of the small residual glaciers mentioned in the preceding chapter, I have found sixty-five in that portion of the range lying between latitude thirty-six degrees, thirty-minutes, and thirty-nine degrees. They occur singly or in small groups on the north sides of the peaks of the high Sierra, sheltered beneath broad frosty shadows, in amphitheaters of their own making, where the snow shooting down from the surrounding heights and avalanches is most abundant. Over two-thirds of the entire number lie between latitude thirty-seven degrees and thirty-eight degrees, and form the highest fountains of the San Joaquin, Merced, Tuolmi, and Owens rivers. The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting remnants of mighty ice floods that once filled the great valleys and poured into the sea. So also are those of Norway, Asia, and South America. Even the grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover Greenland, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Franz Josefland, parts of Alaska, and the South Polar region are shallowing and shrinking. Every glacier in the world is smaller than it once was. All the world is growing warmer, or the crop of snow flowers is diminishing. But in contemplating the conditions of the glaciers of the world, we must bear in mind while trying to account for the changes going on that the same sunshine that wastes them builds them. Every glacier records the expenditure of an enormous amount of sun-heat in lifting the vapor for the snow of which it is made from the ocean to the mountains, as Tyndall strikingly shows. The number of glaciers in the Alps, according to the Schlaganthwaite brothers, is 1,100, of which 100 may be regarded as primary, and the total area of ice, snow, and neve is estimated at 1,177 square miles, or an average for each glacier of little more than one square mile. On the same authority, the average height above sea level at which they melt is about 7,414 feet. The Grindelwald Glacier descends below 4,000 feet, and one of the Mont Blanc glaciers reaches nearly as low a point. One of the largest of the Himalaya glaciers on the headwaters of the Ganges does not, according to Captain Hodgson, descend below 12,914 feet. The largest of the Sierra glaciers on Mount Shasta descends to within 9,500 feet of the level of the sea, which, as far as I have observed, is the lowest point reached by any glacier within the bounds of California, the average height of all being not far from 11,000 feet. The changes that have taken place in the glacial conditions of the Sierra from the time of greatest extension is well illustrated by the series of glaciers of every size and form extending along the mountains of the coast to Alaska. A general exploration of this instructive region shows that to the north of California, through Oregon and Washington, groups of active glaciers still exist on all the high volcanic cones of the Cascade Range. Mount Pitt, the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, Baker, and others, some of them of considerable size, though none of them approach the sea. Of these mountains, Rainier, in Washington, is the highest and iciest. Its dome-like summit, between 14,000 and 15,000 feet high, is capped with ice, and eight glaciers, seven to twelve miles long, radiate from it as a center, and form the sources of the principal streams of the state. The lowest descending of this fine group flows through beautiful forests to within 3,500 feet of the sea level and sends forth a river laden with glacier mud and sand. On through British Columbia and southeastern Alaska, the broad sustained mountain chain extending along the coast is generally glacier-bearing. The upper branches of nearly all the main canyons and fjords are occupied by glaciers, which gradually increase in size and descend lower until the high region between Mount Fairweather and Mount St. Elias is reached, where a considerable number discharge into the waters of the ocean. This is preeminently the ice-land of Alaska and the entire Pacific Coast. Northward from here the glaciers gradually diminish in size and thickness and melt at higher levels. In Prince William's sound and Cook's inlet many fine glaciers are displayed, pouring from the surrounding mountains, but to the north of latitude sixty-two degrees few, if any, glaciers remain, the ground being mostly low and the snowfall light. Between latitude fifty-six degrees and sixty degrees there are probably more than five thousand glaciers, not counting the smallest. Hundreds of the largest size descend through the forest to the level of the sea, or near it, though as far as my own observations have reached, after a pretty thorough examination of the region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs into the sea. All the long high-walled fjords into which these great glaciers of the first class flow are of course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable form, which are detached with thundering noise at intervals of a few minutes from an imposing ice wall that is thrust forward into deep water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are small as compared with those of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a few of them escape from the intricate system of channels, with which this portion of the coast is fringed into the open sea. Nearly all of them are swashed and drifted by wind and tide back and forth in the fjords until finally melted by the ocean water, the sunshine, the warm winds, and the copious rains of summer. Only one glacier on the coast, observed by Professor Russell, discharges its bergs directly into the open sea at Icy Cape opposite Mount St. Elias. The southernmost of the glaciers that reach the sea occupies a narrow picturesque fjord about twenty miles to the northwest of the mouth of the Stickyne River in latitude fifty-six degrees fifty minutes. The fjord is called by the natives Huttley or Thunder Bay from the noise made by the discharge of the icebergs. About one degree farther north there are four of these complete glaciers, discharging at the heads of the long arms of Holcomb Bay. At the head of Takku Inlet, still farther north, there is one, and at the head and around the sides of Glacier Bay, trending in a general northerly direction from Cross Sound in latitude fifty-eight degrees to fifty-nine degrees, there are seven of these complete glaciers pouring bergs into the bay and its branches and keeping up an eternal thundering. The largest of this group, the Muir, has upward of two hundred tributaries, and a width below the confluence of the main tributaries of about twenty-five miles. Between the west side of this icy bay and the ocean, all the ground, high and low, accepting the peaks of the fair weather range, is covered with a mantle of ice from one thousand to probably three thousand feet thick, which discharges by many distinct mouths. This fragmentary ice sheet and the immense glaciers about Mount St. Elias, together with the multitude of separate river-like glaciers that load the slopes of the coast mountains, evidently once formed part of a continuous ice sheet that flowed over all the region hereabouts, and only a comparatively short time ago it extended as far southward as the mouth of the Strait of Wanda Fuca, probably farther. All the islands of the Alexander archipelago, as well as the headlands and the promontories of the mainland, display telling traces of this great mantle that are still fresh and unmistakable. They all have the forms of the greatest strength with reference to the action of a vast rigid press of oversweeping ice from the north and northwest, and their surfaces have a smooth, rounded, over-rubbed appearance, generally free from angles. The intricate labyrinth of canals, channels, straits, passages, sounds, narrows, etc., between the islands and extending into the mainland, of course manifest in their forms and trends and general characteristics the same subordination to the grinding action of universal glaciation as to their origin, and differ from the islands and banks of the fjords, only in being portions of the pre-glacial margin of the continent more deeply eroded, and therefore covered by the ocean waters which flowed into them as the ice was melted out of them. The formation and extension of fjords in this manner is still going on, and may be witnessed in many places in Glacier Bay, Yakutat Bay, and adjacent regions. That the domain of the sea is being extended over the land by the wearing away of its shores is well known, but in these icy regions of Alaska, and even as far south as Vancouver Island, the coast rocks have been so short a time exposed to wave-action they are but little wasted as yet. In these regions the extension of the sea affected by its own action in post-glacial time is scarcely appreciable as compared with that affected by ice action. Traces of the vanished glaciers made during the period of greater extension abound on the Sierra as far south as latitude thirty-six degrees. Even the polished rock surfaces, the most evanescent of glacial records, are still found in a wonderfully perfect state of preservation on the upper half of the middle portion of the range and form the most striking of all the glacial phenomena. They occur in large irregular patches in the summit and middle regions, and though they have been subjected to the action of the weather with its corroding storms for thousands of years, their mechanical excellence is such that they still reflect the sunbeams like glass and attract the attention of every observer. The attention of the mountaineers seldom arrested by moraines, however regular and high they may be, or by canyons, however deep, or by rocks, however noble in form and sculpture, but he stoops and rubs his hands admiringly on the shining surfaces and tries hard to account for their mysterious smoothness. He has seen the snow descending in avalanches, but concludes this cannot be the work of snow, for he finds it where no avalanches occur. Nor can water have done it, for he sees this smoothness glowing on the sides and tops of the highest domes. Only the winds of all the agency knows seem capable of flowing in the directions indicated by the scoring. Indians, usually so little curious about geological phenomena, have come to me occasionally and asked me, what make them the ground so smooth at Lake Tanaya? Even horses and dogs gaze wonderingly at the strange brightness of the ground, and smell the polished spaces and place their feet cautiously on them when they come to them for the first time, as if afraid of sinking. The most perfect of the polished pavements and walls lies in an elevation of from seven thousand to nine thousand feet above the sea, where the rock is compact silica granite. Small dim patches may be found as low as three thousand feet on the driest and most enduring portions of sheer walls with a southern exposure, and on compact swelling bosses partially protected from rain by a covering of large boulders. On the north half of the range the striated and polished surfaces are less common, not only because this part of the chain is lower, but because the surface rocks are chiefly porous lavas subject to comparatively rapid waste. The ancient moraines also, though well preserved on most of the south half of the range, are nearly obliterated to the northward, but then material is found scattered and disintegrated. A similar blurred condition of the superficial records of glacial action obtains throughout most of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska do in great part to the action of excessive moisture. Even in southeastern Alaska where the most extensive glaciers on the continent are, the more effinicent of the traces of their former greater extension, though comparatively recent, are more obscure than those of the ancient California glaciers where the climate is drier and the rocks more resisting. These general views of the glaciers of the Pacific Coast will enable my readers to see something of the changes that have taken place in California and will throw light on the residual glaciers of the High Sierra. Prior to the autumn of 1871 the glaciers of the Sierra were unknown. In October of that year I discovered the Black Mountain Glacier in a shadowy amphitheater between Black and Rod Mountains, two of the peaks of the Merced Group. This group is the highest portion of a spur that straggles out from the main axis of the range in the direction of Yosemite Valley. At the time of this interesting discovery I was exploring the Neve Amphitheaters of the group and tracing the courses of the ancient glaciers that once poured from its ample fountains through the Illoet Basin and the Yosemite Valley, not expecting to find any active glaciers so far south in the land of sunshine. Going on the northwestern extremity of the group I explored the chief tributary basins in succession, their moraines, roche mutanés and splendid glacier pavements, taking them in regular succession without any reference to the time consumed in their study. The monuments of the tributary that poured its ice from between red and black mountains I found to be the most interesting of them all, and when I saw its magnificent moraines extending in majestic curves from the spacious amphitheater between the mountains I was exhilarated with the work that lay before me. It was one of the golden days of the Sierra Indian summer when the rich sunshine glorifies every landscape, however rocky and cold, and suggests anything rather than glaciers. The path of the vanished glacier was warm now and shown in many places as if washed with silver. The tall pines growing on the moraines stood transfigured in the glowing light. The poplar groves on the levels of the basin were masses of orange-yellow, and the late blooming golden rods added gold to gold. Pushing on over my rosy glacial highway I passed lake after lake set in solid basins of granite, and many a thicket and meadow watered by a stream that issues from the amphitheater and links the lakes together. Now wading through plushy bogs knee-deep in yellow and purple sphagnum. The main lateral moraines that bounded the view on either hand are from one hundred to nearly two hundred feet high, and about as regular as artificial embankments, and covered with the superb growth of silver fir and pine. But this garden and forest luxuriance was speedily left behind. The trees were dwarfed as I ascended. Patches of the alpine bryanthus and cassiope began to appear, and arctic willows pressed into flat carpets by the winter snow. The lakelets, which a few miles down the valley were so richly embroidered with flowery meadows, had here, at an elevation of ten thousand feet, only small brown mats of caracks, leaving bare rocks around more than half their shores. Yet amid this alpine suppression, the mountain pine bravely tossed his storm-beaten branches on the ledges and buttresses of Red Mountain, some specimens being over one hundred feet high and twenty-four feet in circumference, seemingly as fresh and vigorous as the giants of the lower zones. Everything came on just as I got fairly within the portal of the main amphitheater. It is about a mile wide, and a little less than two miles long. The crumbling spurs and battlements of Red Mountain bounded on the north, the somber, rudely sculptured precipices of black mountain on the south, and a hacked splintery coal curving from mountain to mountain shuts it in on the east. I chose a camping-ground on the brink of one of the lakes where a thicket of hemlock spruce sheltered me from the night wind. Then after making a tin cup full of tea, I sat by my campfire reflecting on the grandeur and significance of the glacial records I had seen. As the night advanced the mighty rock walls of my mountain mansion seemed to come near, while the starry sky and glorious brightness stretched across like a ceiling from wall to wall, and fitted closely down into all the spiky irregularities of the summits. Then after a long fireside rest and a glance at my notebook I cut a few leafy branches for a bed, and fell into the clear, death-like sleep of the tired mountaineer. Early next morning I set out to trace the grand old glacier that had done so much for the beauty of the Yosemite region back to its farthest fountains. Seeing the charm that every explorer feels in nature's untrodden wildernesses. The voices of the mountains were still asleep. The wind scarce stirred the pine needles. The sun was up, but it was yet too cold for the birds and the few burrowing animals that dwell here. Only the stream, cascading from pool to pool, seemed to be wholly awake. Yet the spirit of the opening day called to action. The sunbeams came streaming gloriously through the jagged openings of the coal, glancing on the burnished pavements and lighting the silvery lakes, while every sun-touched rock burned white on its edges like melting iron in a furnace. Passing round the north shore of my camp lake I followed the central stream past many cascades from Lakelet to Lakelet. The scenery became more rigidly arctic, the dwarf pines and hemlocks disappeared, and the stream was bordered with icicles. As the sun rose higher, rocks were loosened on shattered portions of the cliffs, and came down in rattling avalanches, echoing wildly from crag to crag. The main lateral moraines that extend from the jaws of the amphitheater into the illowet basin are continued in straggling masses along the walls of the amphitheater, while separate boulders, hundreds of tons in weight, are left stranded here and there out in the middle of the channel. Here also I observe a series of small terminal moraines, ranged along the south wall of the amphitheater, corresponding in size and form with the shadows cast by the highest portions. The meaning of this correspondence between moraines and shadows was afterward made plain. Tracing the stream back to the last of its chain of Lakelets I noticed a deposit of fine gray mud on the bottom, except where the force of the entering current had prevented its settling. It looked like the mud worn from a grindstone, and I at once suspected its glacial origin, for the stream that was carrying it came gurgling out of the base of a raw moraine that seemed in process of formation. Not a plant or weather stain was visible on its rough, unsettled surface. It is from sixty to over one hundred feet high, and plunges forward at an angle of thirty-eight degrees. Cautiously picking my way I gained the top of the moraine and was delighted to see a small but well-characterized glacier swooping down from the gloomy precipices of Black Mountain in a finely graduated curve to the moraine on which I stood. The compact ice appeared on all the lower portions of the glacier, though gray with dirt and stones embedded in it. Farther up the ice disappeared beneath coarse granulated snow. The surface of the glacier was further characterized by dirt bands and the outcropping edges of the blue veins showing the laminated structure of the ice. The uppermost crevasse or burg-schrunt, where the neve was attached to the mountain, was from twelve to fourteen feet wide, and was bridged in a few places by the remains of snow avalanches. Creeping along the edge of the schrunt, holding on with benumbed fingers, I discovered clear sections where the bedded structure was beautifully revealed. The surface snow, though sprinkled with stones shot down from the cliffs, was in some places almost pure, gradually becoming crystalline and changing to whitish porous ice of different shades of color, and this again changing at a depth of twenty or thirty feet to blue ice, some of the ribbon-like bands of which were nearly pure, and blended with the paler bands in the most gradual and delicate manner imaginable. A series of rugged zig-zags enabled me to make my way down into the weird underworld of the crevasse. Its chambered hollows were hung with a multitude of clustered icicles, amid which pale, subdued light pulsed and shimmered with indescribable loveliness. Water dripped and tinkled overhead, and from far below came strange, solemn murmurings from currents that were feeling their way through veins and fissures in the dark. The chambers of a glacier are perfectly enchanting, notwithstanding one feels out of place in their frosty beauty. I was soon cold in my shirt-sleeves, and the leaning wall threatened to engulf me, yet it was hard to leave the delicious music of the water and the lovely light. Going again to the surface, I noticed boulders of every size on their journeys to the terminal moraine, journeys of more than a hundred years without a single stop, night or day, winter or summer. The sun gave birth to a network of sweet-voiced rills that ran gracefully down the glacier, curling and swirling in their shining channels, and cutting clear sections through the porous surface ice into the solid blue where the structure of the glacier was beautifully illustrated. The series of small terminal moraines which I had observed in the morning along the south wall of the amphitheater correspond in every way with the moraine of this glacier, and their distribution with reference to shadows was now understood. When the climatic changes came on that caused the melting and retreat of the main glacier that filled the amphitheater, a series of residual glaciers were left in the cliff shadows under the protection of which they lingered until they formed the moraines we are studying. Then as the snow became still less abundant all of them vanished in succession except the one just described, and the cause of its longer life is sufficiently apparent in the greater area of snow basin it drains and its more perfect protection from wasting sunshine. How much longer this little glacier will last depends, of course, on the amount of snow it receives from year to year as compared with melting waste. After this discovery I made excursions over all the high Sierra pushing my exploration summer after summer and discovered that what at first sight in the distance looked like extensive snow fields were in great part glaciers, busily at work completing the sculpture of the summit peaks so grandly blocked out by their giant predecessors. On August 21st I set a series of stakes in the McClure Glacier near Mount Liel and found its rate of motion to be little more than an inch a day in the middle showing a great contrast to the Muir Glacier in Alaska which near the front flows at a rate from five to ten feet in twenty four hours. Mount Shasta has three glaciers but Mount Whitney although it is the highest mountain in the range does not now cherish a single glacier. Small patches of lasting snow and ice occur on its northern slopes but they are shallow and present no well marked evidence of glacial motion. Its sides, however, are scored and polished in many places by the action of its ancient glaciers that flowed east and west as tributaries of the great glaciers that once filled the valleys of the Kern and Owens rivers. End of Chapter 2 The Glaciers Chapter 3 of the Mountains of California This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Mountains of California by John Muir Chapter 3 The Snow The first snow that whitens their Sierra usually falls about the end of October or early November to a depth of a few inches after months of the most charming Indian summer weather imaginable. But in a few days this light covering mostly melts from the slopes exposed to the sun and causes but little apprehension on the part of mountaineers who may be lingering among the high peaks at this time. The first general winter storm that healed snow that is to form a lasting portion of the season's supply seldom breaks on the mountains before the end of November. Then, warned by the sky, cautious mountaineers, together with the wild sheep, deer, and most of the birds and bears, make haste to the lowlands or foothills. And burrowing marmots, mountain beavers, wood rats, and such people go into winter quarters, some of them not again to see the light of day until the general awakening and resurrection of the spring and June or July. The first heavy fall is usually from about two to four feet in depth. Then, with intervals of splendid sunshine, some succeed storm, heaping on snow on snow, until thirty to fifty feet has fallen. But, on account of its settling and compacting, and the almost constant waste from melting and evaporation, the average depth actually found at any time seldom exceeds ten feet in the forest region or fifteen feet along the slopes of the summit peaks. Even during the coldest weather evaporation never wholly ceases, and the sunshine that abounds between the storms is sufficiently powerful to melt the surface more or less through all the winter months. Waste from melting also goes on to some extent on the bottom, from heat stored up in the rocks, and given off slowly to the snow in contact with them, as is shown by the rising of the streams on the higher regions after the first snowfall, in their steady sustained flow all winter. The greater portion of the snow deposited around the lofty summits of the range falls in small crisp flakes and broken crystals, or, when accompanied by strong winds and low temperature, the crystals, instead of being locked together in their fall to form tufted flakes, are beaten and broken into meal and fine dust. But, down in the forest region, the greater portion comes gently to the ground, light and feathery, some of the flakes and mild weather being nearly an inch in diameter, and it is easily distributed and kept from drifting to any great extent by the shelter afforded by the large trees. Every tree, during the progress of gentle storms, is loaded with fairy blossom at the coldest and darkest time of year, bending the branches and touching every single needle. But, as soon as the storm is over and the sun shines, the snow at once begins to shift and settle and fall from the branches in miniature avalanches, and the whole forest soon becomes green again. The snow on the ground also settles and thaws every bright day and freezes at night. The snow on the ground also settles and thaws every bright day and freezes at night, until it becomes coarsely granulated, and loses every trace of its raid crystalline structure, and then a man may walk firmly over its frozen surface as if on ice. The forest region, up to an elevation of 7,000 feet, is usually in great part free from snow in June, but at this time the higher regions are still heavy laden, and are not touched by the spring weather to any considerable extent before the middle or end of July. One of the most striking effects of the snow on the mountains is the burial of the rivers and small lakes. As the snow fars in the river a moment white then lost forever, Sangh burns, in illustrating the fleeting character of human pleasure. The first snowflakes that fall into the Sierra rivers vanish thus suddenly, but in great storms when the temperature is low, the abundance of the snow at length chills the water nearly to the freezing point, and then of course it ceases to melt and consume the snow so suddenly. The falling flakes and crystals form cloud-like masses of blue sludge, which are swept forward with the current and carried down to warmer climates many miles distant. While some are lodged against logs and rocks and projecting points of the banks, and last for days piled high above the level of the water and snow white again, instead of being at once lost forever, while the rivers themselves are at length lost for months during the snowy period. The snow is first built out from the banks in the bossy, over-curling drifts, compacting and cementing until the streams are spanned. They then flow in the dark beneath the continuous covering across the snowy zone, which is about thirty miles wide. All the Sierra rivers and the tributaries in these high regions are thus lost every winter, as if another glacial period had come on. Not a drop of running water is to be seen, accepting at a few points where large falls occur, though the rush and rumble of the heavy occurrence may still be heard. Toward spring, when the weather is warm during the day and frosty at night, repeated thawing and freezing and new layers of snow render the bridging masses dense and firm, so that one may safely walk across the streams, or even lead a horse across them without danger of falling through. In June the thinnest parts of the winter ceiling, and those most exposed to sunshine, begin to give way, forming dark, rugged-edged, pitch-like sinks, at the bottom of which the rushing water may be seen. At the end of June, only here and there, may the mountaineer find a secure snow bridge. The most lasting of the winter bridges, thawing below as well as from above, because of warm currents of air passing through the tunnels, are strikingly arched and sculptured, and by the occasional freezing of the oozing, dripping water of the ceiling, they become brightly and picturesquely icy. In some of the reaches, where there is a free margin, we may walk through them. Small skylights appearing here and there, these tunnels are not very dark. The roaring river fills all the arching way with impressively loud reverberating music, which is sweetened at times by the usal, a bird that is not afraid to go wherever a stream may go, and to sing wherever a stream sings. All the small alpine pools and lakelets are in a like manner obliterated from the winter landscapes, either by being first frozen and then covered by snow, or by being filled in by avalanches. The first avalanche of the season, shot into a lake basin, may perhaps find the surface frozen. Then there is a grand crashing of breaking ice and dashing of waves, mingled with the low, deep booming of the avalanche. Detached masses of the invading snow, mixed with fragments of ice, drift about in sludgy island-like heaps. While the main body of it forms a talus, with its base holy or in part resting on the bottom of the basin, as controlled by its depth and the size of the avalanche. The next avalanche, of course, encroaches still farther, and so on with each in succession, until the entire basin may be filled at its water sponged up or displaced. This huge mass of sludge, more or less mixed with sand, stones, and perhaps timber, is frozen to a considerable depth, and much sun is required to thaw it. Some of these unfortunate lakelets are not clear of ice and snow, until near the end of summer. Others are never quite free, opening only on the side opposite the entrance of the avalanches. Some show only a narrow crescent of water, lying between the shore and sheer buffs of icy, compact snow. Masses of which breaking off float in front, like icebergs in a miniature arctic ocean. While the avalanche heaps, leaning back against the mountains, look like small glaciers. The frontal cliffs are, in some instances, quite picturesque, and with the burgh-dotted waters in front of them lighted with sunshine, are exceedingly beautiful. It often happens that while one side of a lake basin is hopelessly snow-buried and frozen, the other, enjoying sunshine, is adorned with beautiful flower gardens. Some of the smaller lakes are extinguished in an instant by a heavy avalanche, either of rock or snow. The rolling, sliding, ponderous mass entering on one side sweeps across the bottom and up the opposite side, displacing the water and even scraping the basin clean, and shoving the accumulated rocks and sediments up the farther bank and taking full possession. The dislodged water is in part absorbed, but most of it is sent around the front of the avalanche and down the channel of the outlet, roaring and hurrying as if frightened and glad to escape. Snow banners, the most magnificent storm phenomenon I ever saw, surpassing in showy grandeur the most imposing effects of clouds, floods or avalanches, was the peaks of the high Sierra, back of Yosemite Valley, decorated with snow banners. Many of the starry snow flowers, out of which these banners are made, fall before they are ripe, while most of those that do attain perfect development as six-rayed crystals glint and chafe against one another in their balls with a frosty air and are broken into fragments. This dry fragmentary snow is still further prepared for the formation of banners by the action of the wind. Four, instead of finding rest at once, like the snow which falls into the tranquil depths of the forests, it is rolled over and over, beaten against rock ridges and swelled in pits and hollows, like boulders, pebbles and sand in the potholes of a river. And, or finally, the delicate angles of the crystals are worn off, and the whole mass is reduced to dust. And, whenever storm winds find this prepared snow dust in a loose condition on the exposed slopes, where there is a free upward sweep to leeward, it is tossed back into the sky and born onward from peak to peak in the form of banners or cloudy drifts, according to the velocity of the wind, and the conformation of the slopes up or around which it is driven. While thus flying through the air, a small portion makes good its escape, and remains in the sky as vapour. But far the greater part, after being driven into the sky again and again, is at length locked fast in bossy drifts, or in the wombs of glaciers, some of it to remain silent and rigid for centuries, before it is finally melted and sent singing down the mountain sides to the sea. Yet do not withstand in the abundance of winter snow dust in the mountains, and the frequency of high winds, and the length of time the dust remains loose and exposed to their action. The occurrence of well-formed banners is, for causes we shall hear after note, comparatively rare. I have seen only one display of this kind that seemed in every way perfect. This was in the winter of 1873, when the snow-laden summits were swept by a wild norther. I happened at the time to be wintering in Yosemite Valley, that sublime Sierra Temple where every day one may see the grandest sights. Yet, even here, the wild gala day of the north wind seems surpassingly glorious. I was awakened in the morning by the rocking of my cabin, and the beating of pine-bursts on the roof. Detached torrents and avalanches from the main wind flood overhead were rushing wildly down the narrow side canyons, and over the precipitous walls, with loud resounding roar, rushing the pines to enthusiastic action, and making the whole valley vibrate as though it were an instrument being played. But afar, on the lofty exposed peaks of the range standing so high in the sky, the storm was expressing itself in still grander characters, which I was soon to see in all their glory. I had long been anxious to study some points in the structure of the ice-cone that is formed every winter at the foot of the upper Yosemite Fall. But the blinding spray by which it is invested had hithero prevented me from making a sufficiently near approach. This morning the entire body of the fall was torn into gauzy shreds, and blown horizontally along the face of the cliff, leaving the cone dry. And while making my way to the top of an overlooking ledge to see so favourable an opportunity to examine the interior of the cone, the peaks of the merged group came in sight over the shoulder of the south dome, each waving in resplendent banner against the blue sky, as regular in form and as firm in texture, as if woven of fine silk. So rare and splendid a phenomenon, of course, overbear all other considerations. And I at once let the ice-cone go, and began to force my way out of the valley to some dome or ridge sufficiently lofty to command a general view of the main summits, feeling assured that I should find them bannered still more gloriously. Nor was I in the least disappointed. Indian canyon, through which I climbed, was choked with snow that had been shot down in avalanches from the high cliffs on the other side, rendering the ascent difficult. But, inspired by the roaring storm, the tedious wallowing brought no fatigue, and in four hours I gained the top of a ridge above the valley, eight thousand feet high. And there, in bold relief, like a clear painting, appeared a most imposing scene. Enumerable peaks, black and sharp, rose grandly into the dark blue sky, their bases set in solid white, their sides streaked and splashed with snow, like ocean rocks with foam. And from every summit, all free and uncomfused, was streaming a beautiful silky silvery banner, from half a mile to a mile in length, slender at the point of attachment, then widening gradually as it extended from the peak until it was about a thousand or one thousand five hundred feet in breadth, as near as I could estimate. The cluster of peaks, called the Crown of Sierra, at the head of the Merced and Wallamy rivers, Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Kness, Lyall, McClure, Ritter, with their nameless compeers, each had its own refluxent banner, waving with a clearly visible motion in the sun glow, and there was not a cloud in the sky to mar their simple grandeur. Fancy yourself standing on this Yosemite ridge looking eastward? You notice a strange, garish glitter in the air. The gale drives wildly overhead with a fierce tempestuous roar, but his violence is not felt, for you are looking through a sheltered opening in the woods, as through a window. There, in the immediate foreground of your picture, rises a majestic forest of silver fur, blooming in internal freshness. The foliage yellow-green, and the snow beneath the trees strewn with their beautiful plums, plucked off by the wind. Beyond, and extending over all the mountain-ground, are somber swathes of pine, interrupted by huge swelling ridges and domes, and just beyond the dark forest you see the monarchs of the High Sierra waving their magnificent banners. They are twenty miles away, but you would not wish them nearer, for every feature is distinct, and the whole glorious show is seen in its right proportions. After this general view, mark how sharply the dark, snowless ribs and buttresses and summits of the peaks are to find, accepting the portions veiled by the banners, and how delicately their sides are streaked with snow, where it has come to rest in narrow flutings and gorges. Mark too how grandly the banners wave as the wind is deflected against their sides, and how trimly each is attached to the very summit of its peak, like a streamer at a masthead, how smooth and silky they are in texture, and how finely their fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how dense and opaque they are at the point of attachment, and how firmly and translucent toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen dimly, as though you were looking through ground glass. Yet again observe how some of the longest belong into the loftier summits, stream perfectly free all the way across intervening notches, and passes from peak to peak, while others overlap and partially hide each other, and consider how keenly every particle of this wondrous cloth of snow is flashing out jets of light. These are the main features of the beautiful and terrible picture as seen from the forest window, and it would still be surpassingly glorious where the fore and middle grounds obliterated altogether, leaving only the black peaks, the white banners, and the blue sky. Glancing now in a general way at the formation of snow banners, we find that the main causes of the wondrous beauty and perfection of those we have been contemplating were the favourable direction and great force of the wind, the abundance of snow dust, and the peculiar confirmation of the slopes of the peaks. It is essential not only that the wind should move with great velocity and steadiness to supply a sufficiently copious and continuous stream of snow dust, but that it should come from the north. No perfect banner is ever hung on the Sierra peaks by south wind. Had the girl that day blown from the south, leaving other conditions unchanged, only a dull, confused, fog-like drift would have been produced. For the snow, instead of being spouted up over the tops of the peaks in concentrated currents to be drawn out as streamers, would have been shed off around the sides, and piled down into the glacier wounds. The cause of the concentrated action of the north wind is found in the peculiar form of the north sides of the peak, where the amphitheaters of the residual glaciers are. In general the south sides are convex and irregular, while the north sides are concave both in their vertical and horizontal sections. The wind, in ascending these curves, converges towards the summit, carrying the snow in concentrating currents with it, shooting it almost straight up into the air above the peaks, from which it is then carried away in a horizontal direction. This difference in form between the north and south sides of the peaks was almost wholly produced by the difference in the kind and quantity of the glaciation to which they have been subjected. The north sides, having been hollowed by the residual shadow glaciers of a form that never existed on the sun-beaten sides, it appears therefore that shadows in great part determine not only the form of lofty icy mountains, but also those of the snow banners, that the wild winds hang on them. End of chapter three