90 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



streams and meadows, moraines in wide-sweeping 

 belts, and beds covered and dotted with forests 

 and groves, — hundreds of square miles of them 

 composed in wild harmony. The snowy moun- 

 tains on the axis of the range, mostly sharp- 

 peaked and crested, rise in noble array along the 

 sky to the eastward and northward ; the gray- 

 pillared Hoffman spur and the Yosemite domes 

 and a countless number of others to the west- 

 ward ; Cathedral Peak with its many spires and 

 companion peaks and domes to the southward ; 

 and a smooth billowy multitude of rocks, from 

 fifty feet or less to a thousand feet high, which 

 from their peculiar form seem to be rolling on 

 westward, fill most of the middle ground. Im- 

 mediately beneath you are the Big Tuolumne 

 Meadows, with an ample swath of dark pine 

 woods on either side, enlivened by the young 

 river, that is seen sparkling and shimmering as 

 it sways from side to side, tracing as best it can 

 its broad glacial channel. 



The ancient Tuolumne Glacier, lavishly flooded 

 by many a noble affluent from the snow-laden 

 flanks of Mounts Dana, Gibbs, Lyell, Maclure, 

 and others nameless as yet, poured its majes- 

 tic overflowing current, four or five miles wide, 

 directly against the high outstanding mass of 

 Mount Hoffman, which divided and deflected it 

 right and left, just as a river is divided against 

 an island that stands in the middle of its chan- 



