46 GLACIAL AND SUEFACE GEOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 



side of Cloud's Rest, and which was, in fact, simply an ovei'flow from the 

 vastly greater mass of the Tuolumne glacier. 



The Little Yosemite is a flat valley or mountain meadow, about four miles 

 long, and from half a mile to a mile wide. It is, essentially, a continuation 

 of the Great Ycsemite on a somewhat diminished scale, and is separated from 

 it by only a couple of miles of distance, in the course of which the Merced 

 River descends 2,000 feet, half of which is in two pei'pendicular falls, the Ne- 

 vada and the Merced. The Avails of the Little Yosemite are irregular in form, 

 and consist of almost bai'e granitic masses, showing everywhere a most per- 

 fectly developed concentric structure. Down this valley the Merced glacier 

 passed, and just above the Nevada Fall it was joined by the branch from 

 the Tuolumne glacier, as already mentioned. The moraines left by this last- 

 named branch, along the back or eastern side of Cloud's Rest, are very con- 

 spicuous objects to the traveller following the trail from the Yosemite over 

 to Soda Springs in the Tuolumne Valley, and they are indeed much larger 

 than any of the moraines noticed as belonging to the Merced glacier projier. 

 Just to the southeast of Cloud's Rest the moraine sunnuit was found to be 

 765 feet above the Merced River; but it does not come within 1,500 feet 

 perpendicular of the crest of the ridge of which the Half Dome and Cloud's 

 Rest are the two culminating points. The last traces which could be found 

 of the Merced glacier were at a point a little above the Nevada Fall. The 

 most careful search failed to reveal any signs of glaciation in the canon 

 below the fall. Nor were there any scratches or polished surfaces found on 

 the high points immediately south of the Little Yosemite, especially in the 

 vicinity of Mount Starr King, a curious, isolated, inaccessible cone of granite, 

 rising among a group of similar elevations. 



Another arm, or overflow, of the Tuolumne glacier came down the caiion 

 of the Tenaya Fork of the Merced, on the west side of Cloud's Rest; and it 

 was in all probability joined by an independent ice-flow of considerable di- 

 mensions coming in from the east side of the Mount Hoffmann Range. The 

 highest point of this group of summits, which lies about midway between the 

 Yosemite and the grandest part of the Tuolumne Caiion, is nearly 11,000 feet 

 in elevation ; the pass leading from Tenaya Lake, at the head of the Tenaja 

 Valley, over to the Tuolumne Valley, is about 9,000 feet above the sea-level. 

 All through this region the rocks are beautifully polished and striated, and 

 these evidences of former glacial action are especially conspicuous about 

 Tenaya Lake, at the head of which is an isolated conical knob, which i-ises 



