wide field of sunken, boulder-like domes and ridges. The
Hoffman Glacier, on the contrary moved right ahead on a comparatively
even surface, making descent of nearly five thousand feet in five miles,
steadily contracting and deepening its current, and finally united with
the Tenaya Glacier as one of its most influential tributaries in the
development and sculpture of the great Half Dome, North Dome and the
rocks adjacent to them about the head of the Valley.

The story of its death is not unlike that of its companion already
described, though the declivity of its channel, and its uniform exposure
to sun-heat prevented any considerable portion of its current from
becoming torpid, lingering only well up on the Mountain slopes to finish
their sculpture and encircle them with a zone of moraine soil for
forests and gardens. Nowhere in all this wonderful region will you find
more beautiful trees and shrubs and flowers covering the traces of ice.

The rugged Tenaya Glacier wildly crevassed here and there above the
ridges it had to cross, instead of drawing its sources direct from the
summit of the Range, formed, as we have seen, one of the outlets of the
great Tuolumne Glacier, issuing from this noble fountain like a river
from a lake, two miles wide, about fourteen miles long, and from 1500
to 2000 feet deep.

In leaving the Tuolumne region it crossed over the divide, as mentioned
above, between the Tuolumne and Tenaya basins, making an ascent of five
hundred feet. Hence, after contracting its wide current and receiving
a strong affluent from the fountains about Cathedral Peak, it poured
its massive flood over the northeastern rim of its basin in splendid
cascades. Then, crushing heavily against the Clouds' Rest Ridge, it bore
down upon the Yosemite domes with concentrated energy.

Toward the end of the ice period, while its Hoffman companion continued
to grind rock-meal for coming plants, the main trunk became torpid,
and vanished, exposing wide areas of rolling rock-waves and glistening
pavements, on whose channelless surface water ran wild and free. And
because the trunk vanished almost simultaneously throughout its whole
extent, no terminal moraines are found in its canyon channel; nor, since
its walls are, in most places, too steeply inclined to admit of the
deposition of moraine matter, do we find much of the two main laterals.
The lowest of its residual glaciers lingered beneath the shadow of the
Yosemite Half Dome;