Letters to a Friend 



[No date.] 



[Beginning of letter missing.] 

 In going up any of the principal Yosemite 

 streams, lakes in all stages of decay are found 

 in great abundance, regularly becoming younger 

 until we reach the almost countless gems of the 

 summits with scarce an inch of carex upon 

 their shallow, sandy borders and with their bot 

 toms still bright with the polish of ice. Upon 

 the Nevada and its branches there are not 

 fewer than a hundred of these glacial lakes from 

 a mile to a hundred yards in diameter with 

 countless glistening pondlets not much larger 

 than moons. 



All of the grand fir forests about the valley 

 are planted upon moraines, and from any of 

 the mountain-tops the shape and extent of the 

 neighboring moraines may always be surely 

 determined by the firs growing upon them. 

 Some pines will grow upon shallow sand and 

 crumbling granite, but those luxuriant forests 

 of the silver firs are always upon a generous bed 

 of glacial drift. I discovered a moraine with 

 [ 1431 



