The whole
quantity of post-glacial wear and tear it has suffered has not degraded
it a hundredth of an inch, as may readily be shown by the polished
portions of the surface. A few erratic boulders, nicely poised on its
crown, tell an interesting story. They came from the summit-peaks twelve
miles away, drifting like chips on the frozen sea, and were stranded
here when the top of the monument merged from the ice, while their
companions, whose positions chanced to be above the slopes of the sides
where they could not find rest, were carried farther on by falling back
on the shallowing ice current.
The general view from the summit consists of a sublime assemblage of
ice-born rocks and mountains, long wavering ridges, meadows, lakes, and
forest-covered moraines, hundreds of square miles of them. The lofty
summit-peaks rise grandly along the sky to the east, the gray pillared
slopes of the Hoffman Range toward the west, and a billowy sea of
shining rocks like the Monument, some of them almost as high and which
from their peculiar sculpture seem to be rolling westward in the middle
ground, something like breaking waves. Immediately beneath you are the
Big Tuolumne Meadows, smooth lawns with large breadths of woods on
either side, and watered by the young Tuolumne River, rushing cool and
clear from its many snow- and ice-fountains.
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