[1872 or 1873.]
[Beginning of letter missing.]
although I was myself fully satisfied concerning the real nature of
these ice-masses. I found that my friends regarded my deductions and
statements with distrust, therefore I determined to collect proofs of
the common measured arithmetical kind.
On the 21st of Aug. last I planted five stakes in the glacier of Mt.
McClure, which is situated east of Yosemite Valley, near the summit of
the range. Four of these stakes were extended across the middle of the
glacier. The first stake was planted about 25 yds. from the east bank
of the glacier. The second 94 yards, the third 152, and the fourth 223
yards. The positions of these stakes were determined by sighting across
from bank to bank past a plumbline made of a stone and a black horsehair.
On observing my stakes on the 6th of Oct., or in 46 days after being
planted, I found that stake No. 1 had been carried down stream 11 inches;
No. 2, 18 inches; No. 3, 34; No. 4, 47 inches. As stake No. 4 was near
the middle of the glacier, perhaps it was not far from the point of
maximum velocity, 47 inches in 46 days, or 1 inch per day. Stake No. 5
was planted about midway between the head of the glacier and stake No.
[ ]. Its motion I found to be in 46 days 40 inches.
Thus these ice-masses are seen to possess the true glacial motion. Their
surfaces are striped with bent dirt bands. Their surfaces are bulged
and undulated by inequalities in the bottom of their basins, causing an
upward and downward swedging corresponding to the horizontal swedging
as indicated by the curved dirt bands.
The McClure Glacier is about half a mile in length and about the same in
width at the broadest place. It is crevassed on the southeast corner.
The crevass runs about southwest and northeast and is several hundred
yards in length. Its width is nowhere more than one foot.
The Mt. Lyell Glacier, separated from that of McClure by a narrow crest,
is about a mile in width by a mile in length.
I have planted stakes in the glacier of Red Mountains also but have not
yet observed them.
[No date.]
[Beginning of letter missing.]
In going up any of the principal Yosemite streams, lakes in all stages
of decay are found in great abundance, regularly becoming younger until
we reach the almost countless gems of the summits with scarce an inch
of carex upon their shallow, sandy borders and with their bottoms still
bright with the polish of ice. Upon the Nevada and its branches there
are not fewer than a hundred of these glacial lakes from a mile to a
hundred yards in diameter with countless glistening pondlets not much
larger than moons.
All of the grand fir forests about the valley are planted upon moraines,
and from any of the mountain-tops the shape and extent of the neighboring
moraines may always be surely determined by the firs growing upon them.
Some pines will grow upon shallow sand and crumbling granite, but those
luxuriant forests of the silver firs are always upon a generous bed of
glacial drift. I discovered a moraine with smooth pebbles upon a shoulder
of the South Dome, and upon every part of the Yosemite upper and lower
walls.
I am surprised to find that _water_ has had so little to do with mountain
structure here. Whitney says that there is no proof that glaciers ever
flowed in this valley, yet its walls have not been eroded to the depth of
an inch since the ice left it, and glacial action is glaringly apparent
many miles below the valley.
The bottom portion of the foregoing section, with perpendicular sides,
is here about two feet in depth and was cut by the water. The Nevada
here _never was_ more than four or five feet deep, and all of the bank
records of all the upper streams say the same thing of the absence of
great floods.
The entire region above Yosemite and as far down as the bottoms of
Yosemite has scarcely been touched by any other inundation than that of
ice. Perhaps all of the past glacial inundation of every kind would not
average an inch in depth for the whole region.
Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy are lake-basins filled with sand and the matter
of moraines washed from the upper cañons. The Yosemite ice, in escaping
from the Yosemite basin, was compelled to flow upward a considerable
height on both sides of the bottom walls of the valley. The cañon below
the valley is very crooked and very narrow, and the Yosemite glacier
flowed across all of its crooks and high above its walls without paying
any compliance to it, thus: [drawing here]. The light lines show the
direction of the ice-current.
Yosemite Valley,
March 30, 1873.
Your two last are received. The package of letters was picked up by a
man in the valley. There was none for thee. I have Hetch Hetchy about
ready. I did not intend that Tenaya ramble for publication, but you know
what is better.
I mean to write and send all kinds of game to you with hides and feathers
on, for if I wait until all become one, it may be too long.
As for Le Conte’s Glaciers, they will not hurt mine, but hereafter I
will say my thoughts to the public in any kind of words I chance to
command, for I am sure that they will be better expressed in this way
than in any second-hand hash, however able. Oftentimes when I am free
in the wilds I discover some rare beauty in lake or cataract or mountain
form and instantly seek to sketch it with my pencil, but the drawing is
always enormously unlike the reality. So also in word sketches of the
same beauties that are so living, so loving, so filled with warm God,
there is the same infinite shortcoming. The few hard words make but a
skeleton, fleshless, heartless, and when you read, the dead, bony words
rattle in one’s teeth. Yet I will not the less endeavor to do my poor
best, believing that even these dead bone-heaps called articles will
occasionally contain hints to some living souls who know how to find them.
I have not received Dr. Stebbins’ letter. Give him and all my friends
love from me. I sent Harry Edwards the butterflies I had lost. Did
he get them? Farewell, dear, dear spiritual mother! Heaven repay your
everlasting love.