Forests flourish
luxuriantly upon its ample moraines, lakes and meadows shine and bloom
amid its polished domes, and a thousand gardens adorn the banks of its
streams.
It is to the great width and even slope of the Yosemite Creek Glacier
that we owe the unrivaled height and sheerness of the Yosemite Falls.
For had the positions of the ice-fountains and the structure of the
rocks been such as to cause down-thrusting concentration of the Glacier
as it approached the Valley, then, instead of a high vertical fall we
should have had a long slanting cascade, which after all would perhaps
have been as beautiful and interesting, if we only had a mind to see
it so.
The short, comparatively swift-flowing Hoffman Glacier, whose fountains
extend along the south slopes of the Hoffman Range, offered a striking
contrast to the one just described. The erosive energy of the latter was
diffused over a wide field of sunken, boulder-like domes and ridges. The
Hoffman Glacier, on the contrary moved right ahead on a comparatively
even surface, making descent of nearly five thousand feet in five miles,
steadily contracting and deepening its current, and finally united with
the Tenaya Glacier as one of its most influential tributaries in the
development and sculpture of the great Half Dome, North Dome and the
rocks adjacent to them about the head of the Valley.
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