Studies in the Sierra 



67 



The greatest effects of earthquakes on the valley we have al- 

 ready noticed in avalanche taluses, which were formed by the 

 precipitation of weak headlands, that fell like ripe fruit. The 

 greatest obstacle in the way of reading the history of Yosemite 

 valleys is not its complexity or obscurity, but simply the magni- 

 tude of the characters in which it is written. It would require 

 years of enthusiastic study to master the English alphabet if it 

 were carved upon the flank of the Sierra in letters sixty or sev- 

 enty miles long, their bases set in the foothills, their tops leaning 

 back among the glaciers and shattered peaks of the summit, oft- 

 en veiled with forests and thickets, and their continuity often 

 broken by cross-gorges and hills. So also the sculptured alpha- 

 bet canons of the Sierra are magnificently simple, yet demand 

 years of laborious research for their apprehension. A thousand 

 blurred fragments must be conned and brooded over with stu- 

 dious care, and kept vital and formative on the edges, ready to 

 knit like broken living bones, while a final judgment is being 

 bravely withheld until the entire series of phenomena has been 

 weighed and referred to an all-unifying, all-explaining law. To 

 one who can leisurely contemplate Yosemite from some com- 

 manding outlook, it offers, as a whole, a far more natural com- 

 bination of features than is at all apparent in partial views ob- 

 tained from the bottom. Its stupendous domes and battlements 

 blend together and manifest delicate compliance to law, for the 

 mind is then in some measure emancipated from the repressive 

 and enslaving effects of their separate magnitudes, and gradual- 

 ly rises to a comprehension of their unity and of the poised har- 

 mony of their general relations. 



Nature is not so poor as to possess only one of anything, nor 

 throughout her varied realms has she ever been known to offer 

 an exceptional creation, whether of mountain or valley. When, 

 therefore, we explore the adjacent Sierra, we are not astonished 

 to find that there are many Yosemite valleys identical in general 

 characters, each presenting on a varying scale the same species 

 of mural precipices, level meadows, and lofty waterfalls. The 

 laws which preside over their distribution are as constant and 

 apparent as those governing the distribution of forest trees. 

 They occur only in the middle region of the chain, where the 

 declivity is considerable and where the granite is Yosemitic in 



