SCIENCE. 



469 



scattered all over Europe. Between these sandstone 

 walls the river flows smoothly, without giving the least 

 suspicion that the canon was formed by it. Only some 

 great convulsion could have torn apart this immense 

 sandstone deposit for some twenty or twenty-five miles. 

 It will well repay a visit to the Upper Missouri to see it. 



THE GRAND CANONS OF THE ARKANSAS, 



the South Platte, Clear Creek and the Bowlder strongly 

 resemble each other, and may, therefore, be disposed ot 

 in the same paragraph. Through the three first, in 

 spite of the tremenduous obstacles they presented, rail- 

 ways have been built, and the saucy little locomotive 

 rings out the echoes from their perpendicular granite 

 walls on either side some 2000 to 3000 feet high. Small 

 rivers — for they are small here — rush through them with 

 angry roar ; but it would be worse than idiotic to sup- 

 pose that thev wore down the vast granite walls through 

 which they run to the bed they now occupy. Only Na- 

 ture's reserved forces, such as the world sees in earth- 

 quakes, could rend these granite mountains asunder, 

 and, with perpendicular walls half a mile high, make a 

 pathway for the tiny streams that surge and brawl be- 

 tween them. 



THE CANON OF THE COLUMBIA 



is, in some respects, one of the grandest upon the con- 

 tinent. From Cape Horn to perhaps some twenty miles 

 or more above Celilo, at the head of the Dalles, a dis- 

 tance of sixty or seventy miles, the great river finds its 

 way to the ocean through a gorge, the walls of which 

 are from 500 to 4000 feet high. Even a cursory inspec- 

 tion will convince a practiced eye that for the entire 

 height, and most of the distance, it is composed of nearly 

 perpendicular basaltic rocks. No one series of columns 

 where present reaches from the base to the top of the 

 mountain ; but at the foot, of the cascades, on the south 

 side of the river, their development is truly wonderful. 

 Suppose before you there is a row of them 500 feet high 

 and twice as long on the face of the mountain ; at either 

 end of that thousand feet another row, with their bases 

 on a line with the tops of the first, shoots up another 500 

 feet, and so on from the base to the top, one row of col- 

 umns above another, will convince the beholder that the 

 entire mountain is composed of basalt. From the time 

 of the Ca?sars to the present all the world has been won- 

 dering at, or gazing with admiration at the Giant's 

 Causeway, on the coast of Ireland. It, too, is composed 

 of basaltic columns, and they are actually 300 feet high. 

 Thus America furnishes to Great Britain a ratio in basalt 

 of 3300 to 300 ; figures which I was wicked enough to 

 write in 1879 would probably represent the influence 

 of the two nations on the affairs of the world 100 years 

 hence. 



The Cascade Range, in Oregon and Washington Ter- 

 ritory, corresponds with, and is virtually an extension of, 

 the Sierra Nevada, in California. Near the western end 

 of the canon of the Columbia the Cascades form a splen- 

 did rapid, and the river falls thirty-five feet in two miles. 

 From the head of the Cascades steamers run on the 

 smoothly-flowing river for forty-five miles through the 

 splendid canon to the foot of the Dalles. Here, as the 

 tourist glides along, Mount Hood, clad in a mantle of 

 snow old as creation, peers down upon him through the 

 lateral canons, while the dark, frowning walls of basalt 

 on either side almost make him shudder and forget for 

 the moment how he can escape from this gloomy prison 

 to the cheerful abodes of mankind. These stupendous 

 basaltic walls, with the river flowing smoothly and 

 beautifully between them, would never for a moment 

 suggest the thought that this grand gorge was formed 

 by the river. Only Nature herself, shaking as a reed 

 this vast mountain-chain, could have rent it asunder 



and given us the sublime canon of the Columbia. 

 Only one other, 



THE YOSEMITE VALLEY, 



can be compared with it, and to that, as in some respects 

 the grandest of them all, let us now turn our attention. 

 A description of it will be most easily remembered by 

 saying it is a gorge in one of the spurs of the Sierra 

 Nevada Mountains, about twelve miles long, a mile wide, 

 and a mile deep. As many, perhaps most of the mem- 

 bers, have visited this grandest wonder of the world, 

 only a brief description of it will be attempted. At El 

 Capitan — or Tu-toc-a-nu-la, the granite wall — they are, 

 on both sides, of the same material — is 3,300 feet high 

 and very nearly perpendicular. At the grand arches, the 

 height is about the same and the south dome is 6,000 feet 

 — a very considerable fraction more than a mile — one- 

 half of which is perpendicular. From either side the 

 waterfalls are splendid. The Bridal Vail is 900 feet ; the 

 Yosemite, 2,634, more than half a mile; The Vernal Fall 

 of the Merced River, at the head of the canon, is 350 

 feet ; and Nevada Fall is 700. The question is how was 

 this vast gorge made through this mountain of granite? 

 Prof. Whitney, if correctly reported, ascribes it to the 

 dropping down towards the centre of the earth of a 

 section of the mountain a mile wide. From this opinion, 

 of this master of geological science, with all possible re- 

 spect, I beg leave to differ. The facts of its structure, 

 in my judgment, warrant the belief that, like all the 

 other canons above referred to — that of the Niagara 

 alone excepted — it was formed by an upheaval of the 

 mountain, at that particular point, sufficient to break it 

 apart to the extent of a mile — the more probable cause ; 

 or the mountain, while intensely heated, contracted 

 enough to do it. A few of my reasons for this opinion 

 are as follows : 



These solid granite mountains were once torn apart — 

 on a smaller scale, it is true — for there are immense 

 seams, perhaps two feet thick, of cream-colored feldspar, 

 running through the walls of this valley ; and it is be- 

 lieved that a correspondence can be observed in these 

 seams on both sides of the gorge. If rent asunder to 

 admit the injection of these seams of feldspar, why not 

 on a larger scale ? When this vast fissure was first 

 made it was undoubtedly very deep, perhaps half a dozen 

 miles or more. Where the break was in the line of the 

 cleavage there the wall stands up perpendicularly, ; s at 

 El Capitan, and the arches, and a few other points. 

 Where it was not in the cleavage line, immense masses 

 of rock were thrown into the abyss, and from this source 

 and the debris brought down by the Merced river, the 

 gorge gradually filled up to its present level. At El 

 Capitan and the arches, the granite wall stands unbroken 

 to the top, and you can ride right up to it and, from your 

 saddle, put your hand on that wall rising sheer above you 

 for more than three-fifths of a mile. Your horse stands 

 on the fine disintegrated granite, the last contribution of 

 the snowy range to the eastward. But after the valley 

 was filled up to its present general level, at points where 

 the cleavage was not in the line of the upheaval, as in 

 the rear of Mr. Hutchins' hotel and some other places, 

 the frost and perhaps earthquakes continued to throw 

 down immense blocks, and hence there is at this point, a 

 gradual slope to the top on the south side of the valley, 

 with trees growing wherever they can find a ledge or a 

 crevice to get root in. Another instance, showing how 

 water, frost and other causes have broken the symmetry 

 of the valley, may be seen at the Yosemite Fall. Both 

 the height and the front of the escarpment, east and west 

 of the Fall, are in the same line, while the ice and the 

 stream have worn the wall back at the Fall perhaps a 

 quarter of a mile from the front line. And yet the first 

 perpendicular fall is 1,600 feet, or ten times the height of 

 Niagara. 



Such facts might be multiplied almost indefinitely, but 



