16 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA 



long, hopeful files, taking the ground and establish 

 ing themselves as soon as it was ready for them ; 

 brown-spiked sedges fringed the shores of the new 

 born lakes ; young rivers roared in the abandoned 

 channels of the glaciers; flowers bloomed around 

 the feet of the great burnished domes, while with 

 quick fertility mellow beds of soil, settling and 

 warming, offered food to multitudes of Nature's 

 waiting children, great and small, animals as well as 

 plants; mice, squirrels, marmots, deer, bears, ele 

 phants, etc. The ground burst into bloom with 

 magical rapidity, and the young forests into bird- 

 song : life in every form warming and sweetening 

 and growing richer as the years passed away over 

 the mighty Sierra so lately suggestive of death and 

 consummate desolation only. 



It is hard without long and loving study to realize 

 the magnitude of the work done on these mountains 

 during the last glacial period by glaciers, which are 

 only streams of closely compacted snow-crystals. 

 Careful study of the phenomena presented goes to 

 show that the pre-glacial condition of the range 

 was comparatively simple : one vast wave of stone 

 in which a thousand mountains, domes, canons, 

 ridges, etc., lay concealed. And in the development 

 of these Nature chose for a tool not the earthquake 

 or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the 

 stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender siiow- 

 flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered cen 

 turies, the offspring of the sun and sea. Laboring 

 harmoniously in united strength they crushed and 

 ground and wore away the rocks in their march, 

 making vast beds of soil, and at the same time de- 



