o believe the
lake frozen at all; and when I walked out on it, cautiously stamping
at short intervals to test the strength of the ice, I seemed to walk
mysteriously, without adequate faith, on the surface of the water.
The ice was so transparent that I could see through it the beautifully
wave-rippled, sandy bottom, and the scales of mica glinting back the
down-pouring light. When I knelt down with my face close to the ice,
through which the sunbeams were pouring, I was delighted to discover
myriads of Tyndall's six-rayed water flowers, magnificently colored.

A grand old mountain mansion is this Tenaya region! In the glacier
period it was a mer de glace, far grander than the mer de glace of
Switzerland, which is only about half a mile broad. The Tenaya mer de
glace was not less than two miles broad, late in the glacier epoch, when
all the principal dividing crests were bare; and its depth was not less
than fifteen hundred feet. Ice streams from Mounts Lyell and Dana, and
all the mountains between, and from the nearer Cathedral Peak, flowed
hither, welded into one, and worked together. After eroding this Tanaya
Lake basin, and all the splendidly sculptured rocks and mountains that
surround and adorn it, and the great Tenaya Canyon, with its wealth of
all that makes mountains sublime, they were welded with the vast South,
Lyell, and Illilouette glaciers on one side, and with those of Hoffman
on the other--thus forming a portion of a yet grander mer de glace in
Yosemite Valley.

I reached the Tenaya Canyon, on my way home, by coming in from the
northeast, rambling down over the shoulders of Mount Watkins, touching
bottom a mile above Mirror Lake. From thence home was but a saunter in
the moonlight.

After resting one day, and the weather continuing calm, I ran up over
the left shoulder of South Dome and down in front of its grand split
face to make some measurements, completed my work, climbed to the right
shoulder, struck off along the ridge for Cloud's Rest, and reached the
topmost heave of her sunny wave in ample time to see the sunset.

Cloud's Rest is a thousand feet higher than Tissiack. It is a wavelike
crest upon a ridge, which begins at Yosemite with Tissiack, and runs
continuously eastward to the thicket of peaks and crests around Lake
Tenaya. This lofty granite wall is bent this way and that by the
restless and weariless action of glaciers just as if it had been made of
dough. But the grand circumference of