he course of explorations made to the eastward of here, between the
38th and 40th parallels, I observed glacial phenomena equally fresh
and demonstrative on all the higher mountains of the White Pine, Golden
Gate, and Snake ranges, varying from those already described only as
determined by differences of elevation, relations to the snow-bearing
winds, and the physical characteristics of the rock formations.

On the Jeff Davis group of the Snake Range, the dominating summit of
which is nearly thirteen thousand feet in elevation, and the highest
ground in the basin, every marked feature is a glacier monument--peaks,
valleys, ridges, meadows, and lakes. And because here the snow-fountains
lay at a greater height, while the rock, an exceedingly hard quartzite,
offered superior resistance to post-glacial agents, the ice-characters
are on a larger scale, and are more sharply defined than any we have
noticed elsewhere, and it is probably here that the last lingering
glacier of the basin was located. The summits and connecting ridges are
mere blades and points, ground sharp by the glaciers that descended on
both sides to the main valleys. From one standpoint I counted nine of
these glacial channels with their moraines sweeping grandly out to the
plains to deep sheer-walled neve-fountains at their heads, making a most
vivid picture of the last days of the Ice Period.

I have thus far directed attention only to the most recent and
appreciable of the phenomena; but it must be borne in mind that less
recent and less obvious traces of glacial action abound on ALL the
ranges throughout the entire basin, where the fine striae and grooves
have been obliterated, and most of the moraines have been washed away,
or so modified as to be no longer recognizable, and even the lakes and
meadows, so characteristic of glacial regions, have almost entirely
vanished. For there are other monuments, far more enduring than these,
remaining tens of thousands of years after the more perishable records
are lost. Such are the canyons, ridges, and peaks themselves, the
glacial peculiarities of whose trends and contours cannot be hid from
the eye of the skilled observer until changes have been wrought upon
them far more destructive than those to which these basin ranges have
yet been subjected.

It appears, therefore, that the last of the basin glaciers have but
recently vanished, and that the almost innumerable ranges trending north
and south between the