others along the base of Coliseum Peak above Lake
Tenaya and along the precipitous wall extending from the lake to the
Big Tuolumne Meadows. The latter, on account of the uniformity and
continuity of their protecting shadows, formed moraines of considerable
length and regularity that are liable to be mistaken for portions of
the left lateral of the Tuolumne tributary glacier.

Spend all the time you can spare or steal on the tracks of this grand
old glacier, charmed and enchanted by its magnificent canyon, lakes and
cascades and resplendent glacier pavements.

The Nevada Glacier was longer and more symmetrical than the last, and
the only one of the Merced system whose sources extended directly back
to the main summits on the axis of the Range. Its numerous fountains
were ranged side by side in three series, at an elevation of from 10,000
to 12,000 feet above the sea. The first, on the right side of the basin,
extended from the Matterhorn to Cathedral Peak; that on the left through
the Merced group, and these two parallel series were united by a third
that extended around the head of the basin in a direction at right
angles to the others.

The three ranges of high peaks and ridges that supplied the snow for
these fountains, together with the Clouds' Rest Ridge, nearly inclose a
rectangular basin, that was filled with a massive sea of ice, leaving
an outlet toward the west through which flowed the main trunk glacier,
three-fourths of a mile to a mile and a half wide, fifteen miles long,
and from 1000 to 1500 feet deep, and entered Yosemite between the Half
Dome and Mount Starr King.

Could we have visited Yosemite Valley at this period of its history, we
should have found its ice cascades vastly more glorious than their tiny
water representatives of the present day. One of the grandest of these
was formed by that portion of the Nevada Glacier that poured over the
shoulder of the Half Dome.

This glacier, as a whole, resembled an oak, with a gnarled swelling base
and wide-spreading branches. Picturesque rocks of every conceivable form
adorned its banks, among which glided the numerous tributaries, mottled
with black and red and gray boulders, from the fountain peaks, while
ever and anon, as the deliberate centuries passed away, dome after dome
raised its burnished crown above the ice-flood to enrich the slowly
opening landscapes.

The principal moraines occur in short irregular sections along the sides
of the canyo