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Page 10
I found the lake frozen, and the ice was so clear and unruffled that
the surrounding mountains and the groves that look down upon it were
reflected almost as perfectly as I ever beheld them in the calm
evening mirrors of summer. At a little distance, it was difficult to
believe the lake frozen at all; and when I walked out on it,
cautiously stamping at short intervals to test the strength of the
ice, I seemed to walk mysteriously, without adequate faith, on the
surface of the water. The ice was so transparent that I could see
through it the beautifully wave-rippled, sandy bottom, and the scales
of mica glinting back the down-pouring light. When I knelt down with
my face close to the ice, through which the sunbeams were pouring, I
was delighted to discover myriads of Tyndall's six-rayed water
flowers, magnificently colored.
A grand old mountain mansion is this Tenaya region! In the glacier
period it was a mer de glace, far grander than the mer de glace of
Switzerland, which is only about half a mile broad. The Tenaya mer de
glace was not less than two miles broad, late in the glacier epoch,
when all the principal dividing crests were bare; and its depth was
not less than fifteen hundred feet. Ice streams from Mounts Lyell and
Dana, and all the mountains between, and from the nearer Cathedral
Peak, flowed hither, welded into one, and worked together. After
eroding this Tanaya Lake basin, and all the splendidly sculptured
rocks and mountains that surround and adorn it, and the great Tenaya
Canyon, with its wealth of all that makes mountains sublime, they were
welded with the vast South, Lyell, and Illilouette glaciers on one
side, and with those of Hoffman on the other--thus forming a portion
of a yet grander mer de glace in Yosemite Valley.
I reached the Tenaya Canyon, on my way home, by coming in from the
northeast, rambling down over the shoulders of Mount Watkins, touching
bottom a mile above Mirror Lake. From thence home was but a saunter
in the moonlight.
After resting one day, and the weather continuing calm, I ran up over
the left shoulder of South Dome and down in front of its grand split
face to make some measurements, completed my work, climbed to the
right shoulder, struck off along the ridge for Cloud's Rest, and
reached the topmost heave of her sunny wave in ample time to see the
sunset.
Cloud's Rest is a thousand feet higher than Tissiack. It is a
wavelike crest upon a ridge, which begins at Yosemite with Tissiack,
and runs continuously eastward to the thicket of peaks and crests
around Lake Tenaya. This lofty granite wall is bent this way and that
by the restless and weariless action of glaciers just as if it had
been made of dough. But the grand circumference of mountains and
forests are coming from far and near, densing into one close
assemblage; for the sun, their god and father, with love ineffable, is
glowing a sunset farewell. Not one of all the assembled rocks or
trees seemed remote. How impressively their faces shone with
responsive love!
I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made
me strong. Down through the junipers; down through the firs; now in
jet shadows, now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare,
clanking rocks; past the huge ghost of South Dome rising weird through
the firs; past the glorious fall of Nevada, the groves of Illilouette;
through the pines of the valley; beneath the bright crystal sky
blazing with stars. All of this mountain wealth in one day!--one of
the rich ripe days that enlarge one's life; so much of the sun upon
one side of it, so much of the moon and stars on the other.
III
Summer Days at Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta rises in solitary grandeur from the edge of a
comparatively low and lightly sculptured lava plain near the northern
extremity of the Sierra, and maintains a far more impressive and
commanding individuality than any other mountain within the limits of
California. Go where you may, within a radius of from fifty to a
hundred miles or more, there stands before you the colossal cone of
Shasta, clad in ice and snow, the one grand unmistakable landmark--the
pole star of the landscape. Far to the southward Mount Whitney lifts
its granite summit four or five hundred feet higher than Shasta, but
it is nearly snowless during the late summer, and is so feebly
individualized that the traveler may search for it in vain among the
many rival peaks crowded along the axis of the range to north and
south of it, which all alike are crumbling residual masses brought
into relief in the degradation of the general mass of the range. The
highest point on Mount Shasta, as determined by the State Geological
Survey, is 14,440 feet above mean tide. That of Whitney, computed
from fewer observations, is about 14,900 feet. But inasmuch as the
average elevation of the plain out of which Shasta rises is only about
four thousand feet above the sea, while the actual base of the peak of
Mount Whitney lies at an elevation of eleven thousand feet, the
individual height of the former is about two and a half times as great
as that of the latter.
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