TIME AND CHANGE 
of Yosemite downward is an open valley strewn 
with huge angular granite rocks and shows no signs 
of glaciation whatever. The reason of: this abrupt- 
ness is quite beyond my ken. It is to me a plausible 
theory that when the granite that forms the Sierra 
was lifted or squeezed up by the shrinking of 
the earth, large fissures and crevasses may have 
occurred, and that Yosemite and kindred valleys 
may be the result of the action of water and ice in 
enlarging these original chasms. Little wonder that 
the earlier geologists, such as Whitney, were led to 
attribute the exceptional character of these valleys 
to exceptional and extraordinary agents — to sudden 
faulting or dislocation of the earth’s crust. But 
geologists are becoming more and more loath to call 
in the cataclysmal to explain any feature of the topo- 
graphy of the land. Not to the thunder or the light- 
ning, to earthquake or volcano, to the forces of 
upheaval or dislocation, but to the still, small 
voice of the rain and the winds, of the frost and the 
snow, — the gentle forces now and here active all 
about us, carving the valleys and reducing the 
mountains, and changing the courses of rivers, — 
to these, as Lyell taught us, we are to look in nine 
cases out of ten, yes, in ninety-nine out of a hun- 
dred, to account for the configuration of the con- 
tinents. 
The geologists of our day, while not agreeing as 
to the amount of work done respectively by ice and 
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