THE SIERRA NEVADA 17 



veloped and fashioned the landscapes into the de 

 lightful variety of hill and dale and lordly moun 

 tain that mortals call beauty. Perhaps more than a 

 mile in average depth has the range been thus de 

 graded during the last glacial period, a quantity of 

 mechanical work almost inconceivably great. And 

 oiii- admiration must l>e excited again and again as 

 we toil and study and learn that this vast job of 

 rockwork, so far-reaching in its influences, was done 

 by agents so fragile and small as are these flowers 

 of the mountain clouds. Strong only by force of 

 numbers, they carried away entire mountains, par 

 ticle by particle, block by block, and cast them into 

 the sea; sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the 

 range, and developed its predestined beauty. All 

 these new Sierra landscapes were evidently predes 

 tined, for the physical structure of the rocks on 

 which the features of the scenery depend was ac 

 quired while they lay at least a mile deep below 

 the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these fea 

 tures were taking form in the depths of the range, 

 the particles of the rocks marching to their ap 

 pointed places in the dark with reference to the com 

 ing beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the 

 sky marching to the same music assembled to bring 

 them to the light. Then, after their grand task was 

 done, these bands of snow-flowers, these mighty 

 glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more 

 importance than dew destined to last but an hour. 

 Few, however, of Nature's agents have left monu 

 ments so noble and enduring as they. The great 

 granite domes a mile high, the canons as deep, the 

 noble peaks, the Yosemite valleys, those, and indeed 



