Sum Dum Bay 



and passing headland after headland, looking eagerly 

 forward, the glacier and its fountain mountains were 

 still beyond sight, cut off by other projecting head- 

 land capes, toward which I urged my way, enjoy- 

 ing the extraordinary grandeur of the wild unfin- 

 ished Yosemite. Domes swell against the sky in fine 

 lines as lofty and as perfect in form as those of the 

 California valley, and rock-fronts stand forward, as 

 sheer and as nobly sculptured. No ice-work that I 

 have ever seen surpasses this, either in the magnitude 

 of the features or effectiveness of composition. 



On some of the narrow benches and tables of the 

 walls rows of spruce trees and two-leaved pines were 

 growing, and patches of considerable size were found 

 on the spreading bases of those mountains that stand 

 back inside the canons, where the continuity of the 

 walls is broken. Some of these side canons are cut 

 down to the level of the water and reach far back, 

 opening views into groups of glacier fountains that 

 give rise to many a noble stream ; while all along the 

 tops of the walls on both sides small glaciers are 

 seen, still busily engaged in the work of completing 

 their sculpture. I counted twenty-five from the 

 canoe. Probably the drainage of fifty or more pours 

 into this fiord. The average elevation at which they 

 melt is about eighteen hundred feet above sea-level, 

 and all of them are residual branches of the grand 

 trunk that filled the fiord and overflowed its walls 

 when there was only one Sum Dum glacier. 



The afternoon was wearing away as we pushed on 

 and on through the drifting bergs without our having 



[ 227 ] 



