THE YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK 91 



nel. Two distinct glaciers were thus formed, 

 one of which flowed through the Big Tuolumne 

 Canon and Hetch-Hetchy Valley, while the other 

 swept upward five hundred feet in a broad cur- 

 rent across the divide between the basins of the 

 Tuolumne and Merced into the Tenaya basin, 

 and thence down through the Tenaya Canon and 

 Yosemite Valley. 



The maplike distinctness and freshness of this 

 glacial landscape cannot fail to excite the atten- 

 tion of every observer, no matter how little of 

 its scientific significance he may at first recognize. 

 These bald, glossy, westward-leaning rocks in 

 the open middle ground, with their rounded 

 backs and shoulders toward the glacier fountains 

 of the summit mountains and their split angular 

 fronts looking in the opposite direction, every 

 one of them displaying the form of greatest 

 strength with reference to physical structure and 

 glacial action, show the tremendous force with 

 which through unnumbered centuries the ice 

 flood swept over them, and also the direction of 

 the flow; while the mountains, with their sharp 

 summits and abraded sides, indicate the height 

 to which the glacier rose ; and the moraines, 

 curving and swaying in beautiful lines, mark the 

 boundaries of the main trunk and its tributaries 

 as they existed toward the close of the glacial 

 winter. None of the commercial highways of 

 the sea or land, marked with buoys and lamps, 



