Kneeland.] 44 [February 21; 
frequently found; if there are more numerous periods of rest, there 
will be a chain of lakes in proportion to this number. 
At first pure and filled with floating ice, in course of time the 
streams from the higher crests and the melting snows carry their 
detritus to these scbcleimmined lakes; then the ines becomes fringed 
with a border of yellowish and brown carex, or sedges, deriving 
their lowly sustenance chiefly from their water-absorbing leaves ; 
then, as the soil increases in thickness, come other rush-like plants 
and mosses in the swampy edges, exactly defining the limits of the 
water; then the grasses, and the flowers, and the shrubs, and the 
forests, as the meadow becomes more solid and extended. In the 
spring of the year, these high meadows are flooded with water from 
the ridges on each side, and are at all times to be traversed cau- 
tiously by the traveller, a wandering from the path being attended 
with the danger of sinking inextricably into the springy and treach- 
erous peat-like bog. 
. With these facts before us, it seems to me evident that the forma- - 
ation of the Yosemite Valley is not due to water. The erosive ac- 
tion of water, the tremendous power of which the Niagara gorge 
amply proves, is well seen in the Sierras, but not remarkably in this 
portion of it; its action does not produce such vertical walls as those 
of this valley, nor such perpendicular surfaces in granite as the sides 
of El Capitan, more than three thousand feet high, meeting each 
other almost at a right angle, and with faces turned down the valley 
in a direction opposite to that in which water must have acted. 
There is no source for water of depth sufficient to have filled this 
valley; and the Half Dome rises two thousand feet above the top of 
the valley, and the same above the action of water had it filled the 
whole valley —this is five miles in length, one-half to a mile wide, 
with very irregular sides, and a narrow outlet at its western ex- 
tremity. 
It should be remembered that the material to be worn by water 
here is granite, comparatively indestructible by agents which might 
readily wear away and undermine the shales and limestone at Niag- 
ara. The granite behind the Vernal fall is hardly at all worn by — 
water, and even most of this possible erosion may be more reasonably 
attributed to ice. The insignificance of the water area compared to 
the ice area in the cafions here has been shown by Mr. Muir in the 
Nevada glacier basin, and the fact that floods have never risen, and 
do not now rise high enough to change perceptibly the proportion of 
