REVELATIONS OF THE YO SEMITE VALLEY 73 



out." The commonplace processes of work-a-day life psychologically 

 bore their imprint in their deductions. Miners could only see gigantic 

 excavations. The metallurgist would detect an apparent analogy in the 

 swelling of these domes to the bubbling and solidification of molten 

 metal. Engineers were most impressed by the evidences of stresses, 

 strains and the rupture of weaker materials. 



One of the most ingenious interpretations of the subsidence theory 

 was advanced most ingenuously by one of the gentler sex. To new- 

 comers in the Yosemite I was explaining the " cataclysmic hypothesis," 

 still popular with those who prefer the more spectacular speculations. 

 Suddenly, she exclaimed: "Did you ever bake a cake?" I answered 

 proudly in the affirmative. " "Well, did you ever spoil a cake ? " Again, 

 but with less pride, I admitted that such had been my experience. 

 "Then you will know," she continued, "how it is that heat and the 

 gas formed by baking-powder make the batter rise. Up it swells. 

 Then a crust forms. If all goes well, the cake becomes crisp and 

 compact. But, if some one jars it, while it is rising, down it drops in 

 the middle. And so I guess the Yosemite Valley must have dropped 

 in just such a way." This homely homology from an expert in culinary 

 science was unanswerable. Her mind was made up. Even the most 

 uncompromising glacialist could only have caused her to concede 

 that the ice sheet was but a frosting spread over the surface of her 

 hypothetical cake. 



During the summers of 1863— 1, Professor Josiah Dwight Whitney, 

 chief of the California Geological Survey, conducted a most thorough 

 reconnoissance of the Yosemite and High Sierra region. In his first 

 report, published in 1865, he advanced his theory that the Yosemite 

 Valley had been formed by the subsidence of a limited area during the 

 processes of upheaval of the Sierra. This supposed sinking of its floor 

 he attributed to the fracturing of its strata in a series of cross fractures 

 and faults traversing each other, generally at right angles. The pioneer 

 geologist declared that "this great cataclysm may have taken place at 

 a time when the granitic mass was in a semiplastic condition below, 

 although, quite consolidated at the surface and for some distance down." 

 But Professor Whitney must not be misunderstood as maintaining that 

 the gorge of the Yosemite is one gigantic fissure. Later, in 1870, in 

 his celebrated "Yosemite Guide-book," he demonstrates that "the 

 valley is too wide to have been formed by a fissure." Had such been the 

 case its opposite walls would have corresponded in most details, instead 

 of differing as notably as they do. Bather did he regard its fracturing 

 as having been the resultant of a chaotic complication of dislocations. 

 Believing that its supports had been withdrawn during the convulsive 

 movements of the plastic strata, he assumed in his homely phrase that 

 "the bottom of the Yosemite dropped out." When pressed for further 

 evidence to support his theory, he could show no conclusive, concrete 



