t distance. It presents a smooth and gently curved
outline against the sky, as observed from the plains, and is whitened
with patches of enduring snow. The summit is made up of irregular
volcanic tables, the most extensive of which is about two and a half
miles long, and like the smaller ones is broken abruptly down on the
edges by the action of the ice. Its height is approximately eleven
thousand three hundred feet above the sea.

A few days after making these interesting discoveries, I found other
well-preserved glacial traces on Arc Dome, the culminating summit of
the Toyabe Range. On its northeastern slopes there are two small glacier
lakes, and the basins of two others which have recently been filled with
down-washed detritus. One small residual glacier lingered until quite
recently beneath the coolest shadows of the dome, the moraines and
neve-fountains of which are still as fresh and unwasted as many of those
lying at the same elevation on the Sierra--ten thousand feet--while
older and more wasted specimens may be traced on all the adjacent
mountains. The sculpture, too, of all the ridges and summits of this
section of the range is recognized at once as glacial, some of the
larger characters being still easily readable from the plains at a
distance of fifteen or twenty miles.

The Hot Creek Mountains, lying to the east of the Toquima and Monito
ranges, reach the culminating point on a deeply serrate ridge at a
height of ten thousand feet above the sea. This ridge is found to be
made up of a series of imposing towers and pinnacles which have been
eroded from the solid mass of the mountain by a group of small residual
glaciers that lingered in their shadows long after the larger ice
rivers had vanished. On its western declivities are found a group of
well-characterized moraines, canyons, and roches moutonnees, all of
which are unmistakably fresh and telling. The moraines in particular
could hardly fail to attract the eye of any observer. Some of the short
laterals of the glaciers that drew their fountain snows from the jagged
recesses of the summit are from one to two hundred feet in height, and
scarce at all wasted as yet, notwithstanding the countless storms that
have fallen upon them, while cool rills flow between them, watering
charming gardens of arctic plants--saxifrages, larkspurs, dwarf
birch, ribes, and parnassia, etc.--beautiful memories of the Ice Age,
representing a once greatly extended flora.

In t