Its numerous fountains
were ranged side by side in three series, at an elevation of from 10,000
to 12,000 feet above the sea. The first, on the right side of the basin,
extended from the Matterhorn to Cathedral Peak; that on the left through
the Merced group, and these two parallel series were united by a third
that extended around the head of the basin in a direction at right
angles to the others.
The three ranges of high peaks and ridges that supplied the snow for
these fountains, together with the Clouds' Rest Ridge, nearly inclose a
rectangular basin, that was filled with a massive sea of ice, leaving
an outlet toward the west through which flowed the main trunk glacier,
three-fourths of a mile to a mile and a half wide, fifteen miles long,
and from 1000 to 1500 feet deep, and entered Yosemite between the Half
Dome and Mount Starr King.
Could we have visited Yosemite Valley at this period of its history, we
should have found its ice cascades vastly more glorious than their tiny
water representatives of the present day. One of the grandest of these
was formed by that portion of the Nevada Glacier that poured over the
shoulder of the Half Dome.
This glacier, as a whole, resembled an oak, with a gnarled swelling base
and wide-spreading branches.
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