Part 2 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 13.--WHERE THE CAnONS BEGIN UNDER PRECIPITOUS PEAKS

The head of the King's River]

In one portion of the earth after another, Nature raises great mountain ranges and immediately proceeds to remove them. This continent was discovered and California was settled at the right time for the Sierra Nevadas to be seen in all their grandeur.

When the pioneers came in sight of the Sierra Nevada (snowy range), they little dreamed of the canons hidden among these mountains.

Gold, and not scenery, was the object of their search. The great canons were outside of the gold regions, and so inaccessibly situated that no one except the Indians looked upon them until 1851. In that year a party of soldiers following the trail of some thieving Indians discovered and entered the Yosemite Valley, but it was not explored until 1855. For many years the valley could be reached only by the roughest trails, but as its advantages became more widely known roads were built, and there are now three different wagon routes by which it may be entered.

The history of the Yosemite Valley is like that of all the other canons of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Long ago there were no high mountains in eastern California. If there had been explorers crossing the plains in those days, they would have found no rugged wall shutting them off from the Pacific. There came a time, however, when the surface of the western portion of America was broken by violent earthquake movements, and hundreds of fissures were formed.

Some of the earth blocks produced by these fissures were shoved upward, while others were dropped. One enormous block, which was to form the Sierra Nevada, was raised along its eastern edge until it stood several thousand feet above the adjoining country. The movement was like that of a trap-door opened slightly, so that upon one side--in this case the western one--the slope was long and gentle, while upon the east it was very abrupt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 14.--THE YOSEMITE VALLEY]

Nature, the sculptor, took this mountain block in hand, and with the aid of running water began to carve its surface into a most intricate system of canons and ridges. The streams first flowed over the easiest slopes to the Great Valley of California, but soon they began to cut their way down into the granite, while along the crests of the ridges the more resistant rocks began to stand out as jagged peaks.

Thus Nature worked until the mountains promised before long to be well worn down. The canons had widened to valleys and the rugged slopes had given place to gentle ones. Toward the northern end of the range the work was even farther advanced, for the streams, now choked with gravel and sand, flowed over broad flood plains.

In this gravel was buried a part of the wealth of California. The rocks over which the streams flowed contained veins of quartz with little particles of gold scattered through it, and as the surface rock crumbled and was worn away, the gold, being much heavier, slowly acc.u.mulated in the gravel at the bottom of the streams.

This gold amounted in value to hundreds of millions of dollars.

The forces within the earth became active again. Apparently Nature did not intend that the gold should be forever buried, or that the country should always appear so uninteresting. Internal forces raised the mountain block for a second time, tilting it still more to the westward. Volcanoes broke forth along the summit of the range near the line of fracture, and floods of lava and volcanic mud ran down the slopes, completely filling the broad valleys of the northern Sierras and burying a great part of the gold-bearing gravel.

The eruptions turned the streams from their channels, but on the steeper slope of the mountains the rivers went energetically to work making new beds. They cut down through the lava and the buried gravel until they finally reached the solid rock underneath. Into this rock, which we call ”bed-rock,” they have now worn canons two thousand feet deep. The beds of gravel that lay under the old streams frequently form the tops of the hills between these deep canons. Here they are easily accessible to the miners, who by tunnels or surface workings have taken out many millions of dollars' worth of gold.

The important canons of the northern Sierras, where the gold is found, have been made by the American and Feather rivers. Farther south are the deeper and more rugged canons of the Tuolumne, Merced, King's, and Kern rivers, which open to us inviting pathways into the mountains.

It might be supposed that the mantle of snow and ice which at that time covered most of the surface of the earth would have protected it from further erosion, but this was not the case. In the basin at the head of each stream the snow acc.u.mulated year after year until it was more than a thousand feet deep. Under the influence of the warm days and cold nights the snow slowly turned to ice, and moved by its own weight, crept down into the canons. The solid rock walls were ground and polished, and even now, so long a time after the glaciers have melted, some of these polished surfaces still glisten in the sunlight. The glaciers deepened and enlarged the canons, but running water was the most important agent in their making.

Upon the disappearance of the glaciers, the streams went to work again deepening their canons. From their starting-points, under the lofty crags, they first ran through broad upland valleys, then tumbled into the canons; but until they had reached the lower mountain slopes, to which the glaciers had not extended, they pa.s.sed through a dreary and desolate region devoid of almost every sign of life.

The glaciers had swept away all the loose rock and soil, and it was many long years before the surface again crumbled so that forest trees could spread over it once more.

The grandeur and attractiveness of the Yosemite is partly due to the precipitous cliffs enclosing the valley, some of which are nearly four thousand feet in height, partly to the high waterfalls, and partly to the green meadows and forest groves through which the Merced River winds.

Although the glaciers had little to do with the making of the Yosemite Valley, yet they added to its attractiveness. The valley is situated where a number of smaller streams join the Merced River. Erosion was more rapid here because the granite was soft, while the vertical seams in the rock gave the growing valley precipitous walls. When the glacier came it pushed out the loose rocks and boulders, and dropping a portion of them at the lower end, made a dam across the Merced River. At first a shallow lake filled the valley, but after a time the silt and gravel which the streams were continually bringing in filled the lake, and formed marshy flats. Finally, gra.s.ses and trees spread over these flats and gave the valley the appearance which it has to-day.

Besides the meadows, the glaciers gave us two of the waterfalls.

Yosemite Creek, which comes down over the walls twenty-seven hundred feet in three successive falls, was turned into its present channel by a dam which a glacier had left across its old course. A glacier also turned the Merced River at its entrance to the main valley so as to form the Nevada Fall.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 15.--THE CAnON OF BUBB'S CREEK, A BRANCH OF THE KING'S RIVER CAnON]

After the valley had been made and clothed in vegetation, it was discovered by a small tribe of Indians who came here to make their home, secure from all their enemies. There were fish in the streams and animals in the woods. The oaks supplied acorns, and in early summer the meadows were covered with strawberries. Legends were a.s.sociated with many of the cliffs and waterfalls, for the Indians, like ourselves, are impressed by the wonders of Nature.

Hetch-Hetchy Valley, twenty-five miles north of the Yosemite, has been formed upon much the same plan, but a portion of its floor is marshy and there are few waterfalls. King's River Canon has no green meadows and no high waterfalls, while its great granite walls are not so precipitous as those of the Yosemite. Next to the Yosemite, in the wildness of its scenery, is Tehipite Canon.

This canon is situated upon the middle fork of King's River, about a hundred miles south. For many miles its walls and domes present ever changing views.

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