THE SIEKRA NEVADA 15 



day, 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 wher 

 ever glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct 

 rivers, as in Switzerland, Norway, the mountains of 

 Asia, and the Pacific Coast; or in continuous mant 

 ling folds, as in portions of Alaska, Greenland, 

 Franz- Joseph-Land, 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. 



Toward 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 lowlands, and then move slowly up the 

 flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the changes 

 of climate. The great white mantle on the moun 

 tains 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 small 

 est residual topmost branches of the grand system 

 exist on the cool slopes of the summit peaks. 



Plants and animals, biding their time, closely 

 followed the retiring ice, bestowing quick and 

 joyous animation on the new-born landscapes. 

 Pine-trees marched up the sun-warmed moraines in 



