THE GLACIEK, MEADOWS 127 



are quite small, averaging perhaps but little more 

 than three fourths of a mile in length. 



One of the very finest of the thousands I have en 

 joyed lies hidden in an extensive forest of the Two- 

 leaved Pine, on the edge of the basin of the ancient 

 Tuolumne Mer de Grlace, about eight miles to the 

 west of Mount Dana. 



Imagine yourself at the Tuolumne Soda Springs 

 on the bank of the river, a day's journey above 

 Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through a 

 forest that stretches away indefinitely before you, 

 seemingly unbroken by openings of any kind. As 

 soon as you are fairly into the woods, the gray 

 mountain-peaks, with their snowy gorges and hol 

 lows, are lost to view. The ground is littered with 

 fallen trunks that lie crossed and recrossed like 

 storm-lodged wheat ; and besides this close forest 

 of pines, the rich moraine soil supports a luxuriant 

 growth of ribbon-leaved grasses bromus, triticum, 

 calamagrostis, agrostis, etc., which rear their hand 

 some spikes and panicles above your waist. Making 

 your way through the fertile wilderness, finding 

 lively bits of interest now and then in the squirrels 

 and Clark crows, and perchance in a deer or bear, 

 after the lapse of an hour or two vertical bars of 

 sunshine are seen ahead between the brown shafts 

 of the pines, showing that you are approaching an 

 open space, and then you suddenly emerge from 

 the forest shadows upon a delightful purple lawn 

 lying smooth and free in the light like a lake. This 

 is a glacier meadow. It is about a mile and a half 

 long by a quarter of a mile wide. The trees come 

 pressing forward all around in close serried ranks, 



