Yosemite, etc. [Part 1], Image 15

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 2018
• Subjects: The Cathedral; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn-y1/15; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmn-y1/article/1014/type/native/viewcontent/MuirReel31_Notebook11_Img015.jpg

23 Flowers flocked to their places in many a garden spot the trees took up their lines of march to the moraine soil prepared for them & all the flood of happy life rejoiced in their new-made homes & a thousand lakes & falling foaming streams [began to] sing & shine together as if created simultaneously in all their present glory [in the beginning of time]. In the early glacial history of Yosemite nothing more strikingly beautifully occurred than the birth of the happy singing streams that flowing from the retreating edges of the retiring ice-sheet leaped the polished rim of the valley close together like [a bright] silken fringes & disappeared in the blue [icy] caves of the main valley glacier from below. Formation of Yo. Val [Yosemite Valley] It was not when the gls [glaciers] formed one continuous sheet that most of the deeper graving was accomplished but rather in the breaking up of the ice period when the waning ice formed separate glaciers. 8 large pines (Yel [Yellow]) on as many sq [square] rods Douglas spruce is the principal tree about the Mirror Lake The largest opp. [opposite] Washington Column 27 ft [feet] 8 inches in circum. [circumference] – Branch 14 yrs [years] old 3 ft [feet] 9 inches long. 24 Clouds Rest is a wave shaped crest worn thin forming the highest point of a ridge beginning with a group of peaks, the Cathedral Group, & extending to the S [South] Dome in Yo [Yosemite]. In several places low gaps [appear] occur where glaciers broke over from the NE [northeast] in the earlier days of the ice period. The widest of these gaps occurs a few miles E [East] of Clouds Rest Another gap wh [which] seems to have been made by the meeting of the Tenaya & Lyell gls [glaciers] occurs between the S. [South] Dome & Clds [Clouds] Rest. [sketch of vertical section of South Dome and Clouds Rest: SD / 1600 ft / Clds R / ab sea lowest portion of gap] [sketch of bird’s-eye view of South Dome and Clouds Rest: Tenaya gl / SD / Clds R. / gap / Lyell gl] The south 7700 ft [feet] of ...