condition
of the range was comparatively simple: one vast wave of stone in which a
thousand mountains, domes, canons, ridges, etc., lay concealed. And in
the development of these Nature chose for a tool not the earthquake or
lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding
rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered
centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea. Laboring harmoniously in
united strength they crushed and ground and wore away the rocks in their
march, making vast beds of soil, and at the same time developed and
fashioned the landscapes into the delightful variety of hill and dale
and lordly mountain that mortals call beauty. Perhaps more than a mile
in average depth has the range been thus degraded during the last
glacial period,--a quantity of mechanical work almost inconceivably
great. And our admiration must be excited again and again as we toil and
study and learn that this vast job of rockwork, so far-reaching in its
influences, was done by agents so fragile and small as are these flowers
of the mountain clouds. Strong only by force of numbers, they carried
away entire mountains, particle by particle, block by block, and cast
them into the sea; sculptured, fashioned, modeled all the range, and
developed its predestined beauty. All these new Sierra landscapes were
evidently predestined, for the physical structure of the rocks on which
the features of the scenery depend was acquired while they lay at least
a mile deep below the pre-glacial surface. And it was while these
features were taking form in the depths of the range, the particles of
the rocks marching to their appointed places in the dark with reference
to the coming beauty, that the particles of icy vapor in the sky
marching to the same music assembled to bring them to the light. Then,
after their grand task was done, these bands of snow-flowers, these
mighty glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more importance
than dew destined to last but an hour. Few, however, of Nature's agents
have left monuments so noble and enduring as they. The great granite
domes a mile high, the canons as deep, the noble peaks, the Yosemite
valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra
scenery, are glacier monuments.

Contemplating the works of these flowers of the sky, one may easily
fancy them endowed with life: messengers sent down to work in the
mountain mines on errands of divine love.