THE PASSES 89 



it croon and mutter in ripples along its broidered 

 shores. 



Leaving the lake, it glides quietly through the 

 rushes, destined never more to touch the living 

 rock. Henceforth its path lies through ancient 

 moraines and reaches of ashy sage-plain, which no 

 where afford rocks suitable for the development of 

 cascades or sheer falls. Yet this beauty of maturity, 

 though less striking, is of a still higher order, en 

 ticing us lovingly on through gentian meadows 

 and groves of rustling aspen to Lake Mono, where, 

 spirit-like, our happy stream vanishes in vapor, and 

 floats free again in the sky. 



Bloody Canon, like every other in the Sierra, was 

 recently occupied by a glacier, which derived its 

 fountain snows from the adjacent summits, and 

 descended into Mono Lake, at a time when its 

 waters stood at a much higher level than now. 

 The principal characters in which the history of 

 the ancient glaciers is preserved are displayed here 

 in marvelous freshness and simplicity, furnishing 

 the student with extraordinary advantages for the 

 acquisition of knowledge of this sort. The most 

 striking passages are polished and striated surfaces, 

 which in many places reflect the rays of the sun 

 like smooth water. The dam of Eed Lake is an 

 elegantly modeled rib of metamorphic slate, brought 

 into relief because of its superior strength, and be 

 cause of the greater intensity of the glacial erosion 

 of the rock immediately above it, caused by a 

 steeply inclined tributary glacier, which entered the 

 main trunk with a heavy down-thrust at the head 

 of the lake. 



