noon, having
loitered by the way to study the fine trees--two-leaved pine, mountain
pine, albicaulis pine, silver fir, and the most charming, most graceful
of all the evergreens, the mountain hemlock. High, cool, late-flowering
meadows also detained me, and lakelets and avalanche tracks and huge
quarries of moraine rocks above the forests.

[Illustration: GLACIER MEADOW STREWN WITH MORAINE BOULDERS 10,000 FEET
ABOVE THE SEA (NEAR MOUNT DANA)]

[Illustration: FRONT OF CATHEDRAL PEAK]

All the way up from the Big Meadows to the base of the Cathedral the
ground is covered with moraine material, the left lateral moraine of the
great glacier that must have completely filled this upper Tuolumne
basin. Higher there are several small terminal moraines of residual
glaciers shoved forward at right angles against the grand simple lateral
of the main Tuolumne Glacier. A fine place to study mountain sculpture
and soil making. The view from the Cathedral Spires is very fine and
telling in every direction. Innumerable peaks, ridges, domes, meadows,
lakes, and woods; the forests extending in long curving lines and broad
fields wherever the glaciers have left soil for them to grow on, while
the sides of the highest mountains show a straggling dwarf growth
clinging to rifts in the rocks apparently independent of soil. The dark
heath-like growth on the Cathedral roof I found to be dwarf snow-pressed
albicaulis pine, about three or four feet high, but very old looking.
Many of them are bearing cones, and the noisy Clarke crow is eating the
seeds, using his long bill like a woodpecker in digging them out of the
cones. A good many flowers are still in bloom about the base of the
peak, and even on the roof among the little pines, especially a woody
yellow-flowered eriogonum and a handsome aster. The body of the
Cathedral is nearly square, and the roof slopes are wonderfully regular
and symmetrical, the ridge trending northeast and southwest. This
direction has apparently been determined by structure joints in the
granite. The gable on the northeast end is magnificent in size and
simplicity, and at its base there is a big snow-bank protected by the
shadow of the building. The front is adorned with many pinnacles and a
tall spire of curious workmanship. Here too the joints in the rock are
seen to have played an important part in determining their forms and
size and general arrangement. The Cathedral is said to be about eleven
thousand feet a