COCKSCOMB CREST* 



By Franqois Emile Matthes 



'AMILIAR to all who have visited the Tuolumne Meadows, 



X and transcending perhaps all other mountain groups over- 

 looking that campers' paradise in spectacular beauty and mon- 

 umental dignity, are the pinnacled and spired peaks of Uni- 

 corn, Echo, and Cathedral. Each has its own individuality, 

 striking and unforgettable, each is wholly different from the 

 others, yet all are notably alike in one respect: their frail min- 

 arets and splintered crests stand planted upon full-bodied 

 mountains of great bulk, all rising to approximately the same 

 height ; they seem like delicate superstructures, specially added 

 for the sake of ornamentation. Indeed, they recall the slender 

 turrets and spires on certain ponderous cathedrals of Old 

 Europe. 



The significance of this peculiar style of mountain architec- 

 ture, which is not prevalent in the Sierra Nevada, has been 

 hinted at by more than one writer. Muir and Chase both have 

 suggested that the sharp pinnacles and crests may be summits 

 that were never overridden by the ice of the Glacial Epoch; 

 that stood out above even the highest ice-floods and escaped 

 being planed down and rounded off as were the massive shoul- 

 ders of the mountain pedestals under them. This explanation, 

 though only conjectural, was eminently reasonable, and it is a 

 genuine satisfaction, now that the region has been submitted to 

 a systematic and detailed study, to be able to confirm its cor- 

 rectness and to corroborate with positive and abundant evi- 

 dence the surmise of these two keen observers. 



However, the matter is not so simple as it at first may seem. 

 In Muir's day glacial science was in its infancy, and no man 

 had as yet that perspective of the succession of ice-ages and 

 intervening epochs of milder climate which the world-wide re- 

 search of the last two decades has made known to us. To 

 Muir and his contemporaries the Glacial Epoch still seemed a 

 single, uninterrupted cycle of glacial conditions that slowly 



* Published by permission of the Director of the U. S. Geological Survey. 



