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AMONG the many unlooked-for
treasures that are bound up and hidden away in the depths of Sierra
solitudes, none more surely charm and surprise all kinds of travelers than
the glacier lakes. The forests and the glaciers and the snowy fountains of
the streams advertise their wealth in a more or less telling manner even in
the distance, but nothing is seen of the lakes until we have climbed above
them. All the upper branches of the rivers are fairly laden with lakes, like
orchard trees with fruit. They lie embosomed in the deep woods, down in the
grovy bottoms of canons, high on bald tablelands, and around the feet of the
icy peaks, mirroring back their wild beauty over and over again. Some
conception of their lavish abundance may be made from the fact that, from
one standpoint on the summit of Red Mountain, a day's journey to the east of
Yosemite Valley, no fewer than forty-two are displayed within a radius of
ten miles. The whole number in the Sierra can hardly be less than fifteen
hundred, not counting the smaller pools and tarns, which are innumerable.
Perhaps two thirds or more lie on the western flank of the range, and all
are restricted to the alpine and subalpine regions. At the close of the last
glacial period, the middle and foothill regions also abounded in lakes, all
of which have long since vanished as completely as the magnificent ancient
glaciers that brought them into existence.
Though the eastern flank of the range is
excessively steep, we find lakes pretty regularly distributed throughout
even the most precipitous portions. They are mostly found in the upper
branches of the canons, and in the glacial amphitheaters around the peaks.
Occasionally long, narrow specimens occur upon
the steep sides of dividing ridges, their basins swung lengthwise like
hammocks, and very rarely one is found lying so exactly on the summit of the
range at the head of some pass that its waters are discharged down both
flanks when the snow is melting fast. But, however situated, they soon cease
to form surprises to the studious mountaineer; for, like all the love-work
of Nature, they are harmoniously related to one another, and to all the
other features of the mountains. It is easy, therefore, to find the bright
lake-eyes in the roughest and most ungovernable-looking topography of any
landscape countenance. Even in the lower regions, where they have been
closed for many a century, their rocky orbits are still discernible, filled
in with the detritus of flood and avalanche. A beautiful system of grouping
in correspondence with the glacial fountains is soon perceived; also their
extension in the direction of the trends of the ancient glaciers; and in
general their dependence as to form, size, and position upon the character
of the rocks in which their basins have been eroded, and the quantity and
direction of application of the glacial force expended upon each basin.
In the upper caflons we usually find them in
pretty regular succession, strung together like beads on the bright ribbons
of their feeding-streams, which pour, white and gray with foam and spray,
from one to the other, their perfect mirror stillness making impressive
contrasts with the grand blare and glare of the connecting cataracts. In
Lake Hollow, on the north side of the Hoffman spur, immediately above the
great Tuolumne canon, there are ten lovely lakelets lying near together in
one general hollow, like eggs in a nest. Seen from above, in a general view,
feathered with hemlock spruce, and fringed with sedge, they seem to me the
most singularly beautiful and interestingly located lake cluster I have ever
yet discovered. Lake
Tahoe, twenty-two miles long by about ten wide, and from five hundred to
over sixteen hundred feet in depth, is the largest of all the Sierra lakes.
It lies just beyond the northern limit of the higher portion of the range
between the main axis and a spur that puts out on the east side from near
the head of the Carson River. Its forested shores go curving in and out
around many an emerald bay and pine-crowned promontory, and its waters are
everywhere as keenly pure as any to be found among the highest mountains.
Donner Lake, rendered memorable by the terrible
fate of the Donner party, is about three miles long, and lies about ten
miles to the north of Tahoe, at the head of one of the tributaries of the
Truckee. A few miles farther north lies Lake Independence, about the same
size as Donner. But far the greater number of the lakes lie much higher and
are quite small, few of them exceeding a mile in length, most of them less
than half a mile. Along
the lower edge of the lake belt, the smallest have disappeared by the
filling-in of their basins, leaving only those of considerable size. But all
along the upper freshly glaciated margin of the lake-bearing zone, every
hollow, however small, lying within reach of any portion of the close
network of streams, contains a bright, brimming pool; so that the landscape
viewed from the mountain-tops seems to be sown broadcast with them. Many of
the larger lakes are encircled with smaller ones like central gems girdled
with sparkling brilliants. In general, however, there is no marked dividing
line as to size. In order, therefore, to prevent confusion, I would state
here that in giving numbers, I include none less than five hundred yards in
circumference. In the
basin of the Merced River, I counted one hundred and thirty-one, of which
one hundred and eleven are upon the tributaries that fall so grandly into
Yosemite Valley. Pohono Creek, which forms the fall of that name, takes its
rise in a beautiful lake, lying beneath the shadow of a lofty granite spur
that puts out from Buena Vista peak. This is now the only lake left in the
whole Pohono Basin. The Illilouette has sixteen, the Nevada no fewer than
sixty-seven, the Tenaya eight, Hoffman Creek five, and Yosemite Creek
fourteen. There are but two other lake-bearing affluents of the Merced,
namely, the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five, both of
which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite.
The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like
an elm tree, and it requires but little effort on the part of the
imagination to picture it standing upright, with all its lakes hanging upon
its spreading branches, the topmost eighty miles in height. Now add all the
other lake-bearing rivers of the Sierra, each in its place, and you will
have a truly glorious spectacle, — an avenue the length and width of the
range; the long, slender, gray shafts of the main trunks, the milky way of
arching branches, and the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and shining on
the sky. How excitedly such an addition to the scenery would be gazed at!
Yet these lakeful rivers are still more excitingly beautiful and impressive
in their natural positions to those who have the eyes to see them as they
lie embedded in their meadows and forests and glacier-sculptured rocks.
When a mountain lake is born, — when, like a
young eye, it first opens to the light, — it is an irregular, expressionless
crescent, inclosed in banks of rock and ice, — bare, glaciated rock on the
lower side, the rugged snout of a glacier on the upper. In this condition it
remains for many a year, until at length, toward the end of some auspicious
cluster of seasons, the glacier recedes beyond the upper margin of the
basin, leaving it open from shore to shore for the first time, thousands of
years after its conception beneath the glacier that excavated its basin. The
landscape, cold and bare, is reflected, in its pure depths; the winds ruffle
its glassy surface, and the sun fills it with throbbing spangles, while its
waves begin to lap and murmur around its leafless shores, — sun-spangles
during the day and reflected stars at night its only flowers, the winds and
the snow its only visitors. Meanwhile, the glacier continues to recede, and
numerous rills, still younger than the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud,
sand grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To
these fresh soil-beds come many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with
arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow
warmer, and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their
appointed places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies,
dodecatheons, violets, honeyworts, and many a lowly moss. Shrubs also hasten
in time to the new gardens, — kalmia with its glossy leaves and purple
flowers, the arctic willow, making soft woven carpets, together with the
heathy bryanthus and cassiope, the fairest and dearest of them all. Insects
now enrich the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by
the ouzel, which is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is
the first of plants. So
the young lake grows in beauty, becoming more and more humanly lovable from
century to century. Groves of aspen spring up, and hardy pines, and the
hemlock spruce, until it is richly overshadowed and embowered. But while its
shores are being enriched, the soil-beds creep out with incessant growth,
contracting its area, while the lighter mud-particles deposited on the
bottom cause it to grow constantly shallower, until at length the last
remnant of the lake vanishes, — closed forever in ripe and natural old age.
And now its feeding-stream goes winding on without halting through the new
gardens and groves that have taken its place.
The length of the life of any lake depends
ordinarily upon the capacity of its basin, as compared with the carrying
power of the streams that flow into it, the character of the rocks over
which these streams flow, and the relative position of the lake toward other
lakes. In a series whose basins lie in the same canon, and are fed by one
and the same main stream, the uppermost will, of course, vanish first unless
some other lake-filling agent comes in to modify the result; because at
first it receives nearly all of the sediments that the stream brings down,
only the finest of the mud-particles being carried through the highest of
the series to the next below. Then the next higher, and the next would be
successively filled, and the lowest would be the last to vanish. But this
simplicity as to duration is broken in upon in various ways, chiefly through
the action of side streams that enter the lower lakes direct. For,
notwithstanding many of these side tributaries are quite short, and, during
late summer feeble, they all become powerful torrents in springtime when the
snow is melting, and carry not only sand and pine-needles, but large trunks
and boulders tons in weight, sweeping them down their steeply inclined
channels and into the lake basins with astounding energy. Many of these side
affluents also have the advantage of access to the main lateral moraines of
the vanished glacier that occupied the canon, and upon these they draw for
lake-filling material, while the main trunk stream flows mostly over clean
glacier pavements, where but little moraine matter is ever left for them to
carry. Thus a small rapid stream with abundance of loose transportable
material within its reach may fill up an extensive basin in a few centuries,
while a large perennial trunk stream, flowing over clean, enduring
pavements, though ordinarily a hundred times larger, may not fill a smaller
basin in thousands of years.
The comparative influence of great and small
streams as lake-fillers is strikingly illustrated in Yosemite Valley,
through which the Merced flows. The bottom of the valley is now composed of
level meadow-lands and dry, sloping soil-beds planted with oak and pine, but
it was once a lake stretching from wall to wall and nearly from one end of
the valley to the other, forming one of the most beautiful cliff-bound
sheets of water that ever existed in the Sierra. And though never perhaps
seen by human eye, it was but yesterday, geologically speaking, since it
disappeared, and the traces of its existence are still so fresh, it may
easily be restored to the eye of imagination and viewed in all its grandeur,
about as truly and vividly as if actually before us. Now we find that the
detritus which fills this magnificent basin was not brought down from the
distant mountains by the main streams that converge here to form the river,
however powerful and available for the purpose at first sight they appear;
but almost wholly by the small local tributaries, such as those of Indian
Canon, the Sentinel, and the Three Brothers, and by a few small residual
glaciers which lingered in the shadows of the walls long after the main
trunk glacier had receded beyond the head of the valley.
Had the glaciers that once covered the range
been melted at once, leaving the entire surface bare from top to bottom
simultaneously, then of course all the lakes would have come into existence
at the same time, and the highest, other circumstances being equal, would,
as we have seen, be the first to vanish. But because they melted gradually
from the foot of the range upward, the lower lakes were the first to see the
light and the first to be obliterated. Therefore, instead of finding the
lakes of the present day at the foot of the range, we find them at the top.
Most of the lower lakes vanished thousands of years before those now
brightening the alpine landscapes were born. And in general, owing to the
deliberation of the upward retreat of the glaciers, the lowest of the
existing lakes are also the oldest, a gradual transition being apparent
throughout the entire belt, from the older, forested, meadow-rimmed and
contracted forms all the way up to those that are new born, lying bare and
meadow less among the highest peaks.
A few small lakes unfortunately situated are
extinguished suddenly by a single swoop of an avalanche, carrying down
immense numbers of trees, together with the soil they were growing upon.
Others are obliterated by land-slips, earthquake taluses, etc., but these
lake deaths compared with those resulting from the deliberate and incessant
deposition of sediments, may be termed accidental. Their fate is like that
of trees struck by lightning.
The lake-line is of course still rising, its
present elevation being about eight thousand feet above sea-level; somewhat
higher than this toward the southern extremity of the range, lower toward
the northern, on account of the difference in time of the withdrawal of the
glaciers, due to difference in climate. Specimens occur here and there
considerably below this limit, in basins specially protected from in-washing
detritus, or exceptional in size. These, however, are not sufficiently
numerous to make any marked irregularity in the line. The highest I have yet
found lies at an elevation of about twelve thousand feet, in a glacier womb,
at the foot of one of the highest of the summit peaks, a few miles to the
north of Mount Ritter. The basins of perhaps twenty-five or thirty are still
in process of formation beneath the few lingering glaciers, but by the time
they are born, an equal or greater number will probably have died. Since the
beginning of the close of the ice period the whole number in the range has
perhaps never been greater than at present.
A rough approximation to the average duration of
these mountain lakes may be made from data already suggested, but I cannot
stop here to present the subject in detail. I must also forego, in the mean
time, the pleasure of a full discussion of the interesting question of
lake-basin formation, for which fine, clear, demonstrative material abounds
in these mountains. In addition to what has been already given on the
subject, I will only make this one statement. Every lake in the Sierra is a
glacier lake. Their basins were not merely remodeled and scoured out by this
mighty agent, but in the first place were eroded from the solid.
I must now make haste to give some nearer views
of representative specimens lying at different elevations on the main lake
belt, confining myself to descriptions of the features most characteristic
of each. SHADOW LAKE
This is a fine specimen of the oldest and lowest
of the existing lakes. It lies about eight miles above Yosemite Valley, on
the main branch of the Merced, at an elevation of about 7350 feet above the
sea; and is everywhere so securely cliff-bound that without artificial
trails only wild animals can get down to its rocky shores from any
direction. Its original length was about a mile and a half; now it is only
half a mile in length by about a fourth of a mile in width, and over the
lowest portion of the basin ninety-eight feet deep. Its crystal waters are
clasped around on the north and south by majestic granite walls sculptured
in true Yosemitic style into domes, gables, and battlemented headlands,
which on the south come plunging down sheer into deep water, from a height
of from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet. The South Lyell glacier eroded
this magnificent basin out of solid porphyritic granite while forcing its
way westward from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the exposed
rocks around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the walls, ground and
burnished beneath the vast ice flood, still glow with silvery radiance,
notwithstanding the innumerable corroding storms that have fallen upon them.
The general conformation of the basin, as well as the moraines laid along
the top of the walls, and the grooves and scratches on the bottom and sides,
indicate in the most unmistakable manner the direction pursued by this
mighty ice river, its great depth, and the tremendous energy it exerted in
thrusting itself into and out of the basin; bearing down with superior
pressure upon this portion of its channel, because of the greater declivity,
consequently eroding it deeper than the other portions about it, and
producing the lake bowl as the necessary result.
With these magnificent ice characters so vividly
before us it is not easy to realize that the old glacier that made them
vanished tens of centuries ago; for, excepting the vegetation that has
sprung up, and the changes effected by an earthquake that hurled rock
avalanches from the weaker headlands, the basin as a whole presents the same
appearance that it did when first brought to light. The lake itself,
however, has undergone marked changes; one sees at a glance that it is
growing old. More than two thirds of its original area is now dry land,
covered with meadow grasses and groves of pine and fir, and the level bed of
alluvium stretching across from wall to wall at the head is evidently
growing out all along its lakeward margin, and will at length close the lake
forever. Every lover of
fine wildness would delight to saunter on a summer day through the flowery
groves now occupying the filled-up portion of the basin. The curving shore
is clearly traced by a ribbon of white sand upon which the ripples play;
then comes a belt of broad-leafed sedges, interrupted here and there by
impenetrable tangles of willows; beyond this there are groves of trembling
aspen; then a dark, shadowy belt of two-leaved pine, with here and there a
round carex meadow ensconced nest-like in its midst; and lastly, a narrow
outer margin of majestic silver fir two hundred feet high. The ground
beneath the trees is covered with a luxuriant crop of grasses, chiefly
triticum, bromus, and calamagrostis, with purple spikes and panicles arching
to one's shoulders; while the open meadow patches glow throughout the summer
with showy flowers, — heleniums, goldenrods, erigerons, lupines, castilleias,
and lilies, and form favorite hiding- and feeding-grounds for bears and
deer. The rugged south
wall is feathered darkly along the top with an imposing array of spiry
silver firs, while the rifted precipices all the way down to the water's
edge are adorned with picturesque old junipers, their cinnamon-colored bark
showing finely upon the neutral gray of the granite. These, with a few
venturesome dwarf pines and spruces, lean out over fissured ribs and
tablets, or stand erect back in shadowy niches, in an indescribably wild and
fearless manner. Moreover, the white-flowered Douglas spireea and dwarf
evergreen oak form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the
slightest hold can be effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as allosorus,
pella a, and cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier fissures;
and the delicate maidenhair, cistoperis, and woodsia hide back in mossy
grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill; and then the orange wallflower
holds up its showy panicles here and there in the sunshine, and bahia makes
bosses of gold. But, notwithstanding all this plant beauty, the general
impression in looking across the lake is of stern, unflinching rockiness;
the ferns and flowers are scarcely seen, and not one fiftieth of the whole
surface is screened with plant life.
The sunnier north wall is more varied in
sculpture, but the general tone is the same. A few headlands, flat-topped
and soil-covered, support clumps of cedar and pine; and up-curving tangles
of chinquapin and live-oak, growing on rough earthquake taluses, girdle
their bases. Small streams come cascading down between them, their foaming
margins brightened with gay primulas, gilias, and mimuluses. And close along
the shore on this side there is a strip of rocky meadow enameled with
buttercups, daisies, and white violets, and the purple-topped grasses out on
its beveled border dip their leaves into the water.
The lower edge of the basin is a dam-like swell
of solid granite, heavily abraded by the old glacier, but scarce at all cut
into as yet by the outflowing stream, though it has flowed on unceasingly
since the lake came into existence.
As soon as the stream is fairly over the
lake-lip it breaks into cascades, never for a moment halting, and scarce
abating one jot of its glad energy, until it reaches the next filled-up
basin, a mile below. Then swirling and curving drowsily through meadow and
grove, it breaks forth anew into gray rapids and falls, leaping and gliding
in glorious exuberance of wild bound and dance down into another and yet
another filled-up lake basin. Then, after a long rest in the levels of
Little Yosemite, it makes its grandest display in the famous Nevada Fall.
Out of the clouds of spray at the foot of the fall the battered, roaring
river gropes its way, makes another mile of cascades and rapids, rests a
moment in Emerald Pool, then plunges over the grand cliff of the Vernal
Fall, and goes thundering and chafing down a boulder-choked gorge of
tremendous depth and wildness into the tranquil reaches of the old Yosemite
lake basin. The color
beauty about Shadow Lake during the Indian summer is much richer than one
could hope to find in so young and so glacial a wilderness. Almost every
leaf is tinted then, and the goldenrods are in bloom; but most of the color
is given by the ripe grasses, willows, and aspens. At the foot of the lake
you stand in a trembling aspen grove, every leaf painted like a butterfly,
and away to right and left round the shores sweeps a curving ribbon of
meadow, red and brown dotted with pale yellow, shading off here and there
into hazy purple. The walls, too, are dashed with bits of bright color that
gleam out on the neutral granite gray. But neither the walls, nor the margin
meadow, nor yet the gay, fluttering grove in which you stand, nor the lake
itself, flashing with spangles, can long hold your attention; for at the
head of the lake there is a gorgeous mass of orange-yellow, belonging to the
main aspen belt of the basin, which seems the very fountain whence all the
color below it had flowed, and here your eye is filled and fixed. This
glorious mass is about thirty feet high, and extends across the basin nearly
from wall to wall. Rich bosses of willow flame in front of it, and from the
base of these the brown meadow comes forward to the water's edge, the whole
being relieved against the unyielding green of the coniferae, while thick
sun-gold is poured over all.
During these blessed color days no cloud darkens
the sky, the winds are gentle, and the landscape rests, hushed everywhere,
and indescribably impressive. A few ducks are usually seen sailing on the
lake, apparently more for pleasure than anything else, and the ouzels at the
head of the rapids sing always; while robins, grosbeaks, and the Douglas
squirrels are busy in the groves, making delightful company, and
intensifying the feeling of grateful sequestration without ruffling the
deep, hushed calm and peace.
This autumnal mellowness usually lasts until the
end of November. Then come days of quite another kind. The winter clouds
grow, and bloom, and shed their starry crystals on every leaf and rock, and
all the colors vanish like a sunset. The deer gather and hasten down their
well-known trails, fearful of being snow-bound. Storm succeeds storm,
heaping snow on the cliffs and meadows, and bending the slender pines to the
ground in wide arches, one over the other, clustering and interlacing like
lodged wheat. Avalanches rush and boom from the shelving heights, piling
immense heaps upon the frozen lake, and all the summer glory is buried and
lost. Yet in the midst of this hearty winter the sun shines warm at times,
calling the Douglas squirrel to frisk in the snowy pines and seek out his
hidden stores; and the weather is never so severe as to drive away the
grouse and little nuthatches and chickadees.
Toward May, the lake begins to open. The hot sun
sends down innumerable streams over the cliffs, streaking them round and
round with foam. The snow slowly vanishes, and the meadows show tintings of
green. Then spring comes on apace; flowers and flies enrich the air and the
sod, and the deer come back to the upper groves like birds to an old nest.
I first discovered this charming lake in the
autumn of 1872, while on my way to the glaciers at the head of the river. It
was rejoicing then in its gayest colors, untrodden, hidden in the glorious
wildness like unmined gold. Year after year I walked its shores without
discovering any other trace of humanity than the -remains of an Indian
camp-fire, and the thigh-bones of a deer that had been broken to get at the
marrow. It lies out of the regular ways of Indians, who love to hunt in more
accessible fields adjacent to trails. Their knowledge of deer haunts had
probably enticed them here some hunger time when they wished to make sure of
a feast; for hunting in this lake hollow is like hunting in a fenced park. I
had told the beauty of Shadow Lake only to a few friends, fearing it might
come to be trampled and "improved" like Yosemite. On my last visit, as I was
sauntering along the shore on the strip of sand between the water and sod,
reading the tracks of the wild animals that live here, I was startled by a
human track, which I at once saw belonged to some shepherd; for each step
was turned out thirty-five or forty degrees from the general course pursued,
and was also run over in an uncertain sprawling fashion at the heel, while a
row of round dots on the right indicated the staff that shepherds carry.
None but a shepherd could make such a track, and after tracing it a few
minutes I began to fear that he might be seeking pasturage; for what else
could he be seeking? Returning from the glaciers shortly afterward, my worst
fears were realized. A trail had been made down the mountain-side from the
north, and all the gardens and meadows were destroyed by a horde of hoofed
locusts, as if swept by a fire. The money-changers were in the temple.
ORANGE LAKE
Besides these larger canon lakes, fed by the
main canon streams, there are many smaller ones lying aloft on the top of
rock benches, entirely independent of the general drainage channels, and of
course drawing their supplies from a very limited area. Notwithstanding they
are mostly small and shallow, owing to their immunity from avalanche
detritus and the inwashings of powerful streams, they often endure longer
than others many times larger but less favorably situated. When very shallow
they become dry toward the end of summer; but because their basins are
ground out of seamless stone they suffer no loss save from evaporation
alone; and the great depth of snow that falls, lasting into June, makes
their dry season short in any case.
Orange Lake is a fair illustration of this bench
form. It lies in the middle of a beautiful glacial pavement near the lower
margin of the lake-line, about a mile and a half to the northwest of Shadow
Lake. It is only about one hundred yards in circumference. Next the water
there is a girdle of carices with wide overarching leaves, then in regular
order a shaggy ruff of huckleberry bushes, a zone of willows with here and
there a bush of the mountain ash, then a zone of aspens with a few pines
around the outside. These zones are of course concentric, and together form
a wall beyond which the naked ice-burnished granite stretches away in every
direction, leaving it conspicuously relieved, like a bunch of palms in a
desert. In autumn, when
the colors are ripe, the whole circular grove, at a little distance, looks
like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be kept fresh — a tuft of
goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are exceedingly beautiful, notwithstanding
their inconstancy and extreme shallowness. They have no channels whatever,
and consequently are left free to spread in thin sheets upon the shining
granite and wander at will. In many places the current is less than a fourth
of an inch deep, and flows with so little friction it is scarcely visible.
Sometimes there is not a single foam bell, or drifting pine-needle, or
irregularity of any sort to manifest its motion. Yet when observed narrowly
it is seen to form a web of gliding lacework exquisitely woven, giving
beautiful reflections from its minute curving ripples and eddies, and
differing from the water-laces of large cascades in being everywhere
transparent. In spring, when the snow is melting, the lake-bowl is brimming
full, and sends forth quite a large stream that slips glassily for two
hundred yards or so, until it comes to an almost vertical precipice eight
hundred feet high, down which it plunges in a fine cataract; then it gathers
its scattered waters and goes smoothly over folds of gently dipping granite
to its confluence with the main canon stream. During the greater portion of
the year, however, not a single water sound will you hear either at head or
foot of the lake, not even the whispered lappings of ripple waves along the
shore; for the winds are fenced out. But the deep mountain silence is
sweetened now and then by birds that stop here to rest and drink on their
way across the canon.
LAKE STARR KING A
beautiful variety of the bench-top lakes occurs just where the great lateral
moraines of the main glaciers have been shoved forward in outswelling
concentric rings by small residual tributary glaciers. Instead of being
encompassed by a narrow ring of trees like Orange Lake, these lie embosomed
in dense moraine woods, so dense that in seeking them you may pass them by
again and again, although you may know nearly where they lie concealed.
Lake Starr King, lying to the north of the cone
of that name, above the Little Yosemite Valley, is a fine specimen of this
variety. The ouzels pass it by, and so do the ducks; they could hardly get
into it if they would, without plumping straight down inside the circling
trees. Yet these
isolated gems, lying like fallen fruit detached from the branches, are not
altogether without inhabitants and joyous, animating visitors. Of course
fishes cannot get into them, and this is generally true of nearly every
glacier lake in the range, but they are all well stocked with happy frogs.
How did the frogs get into them in the first place? Perhaps their sticky
spawn was carried in on the feet of ducks or other birds, else their
progenitors must have made some exciting excursions through the woods and up
the sides of the canons. Down in the still, pure depths of these hidden
lakelets you may also find the larvae of innumerable insects and a great
variety of beetles, while the air above them is thick with humming wings,
through the midst of which flycatchers are constantly darting. And in
autumn, when the huckleberries are ripe, bands of robins and grosbeaks come
to feast, forming altogether delightful little by-worlds for the naturalist.
Pushing our way upward toward the axis of the
range, we find lakes in greater and greater abundance, and more youthful in
aspect. At an elevation of about nine thousand feet above sea-level they
seem to have arrived at middle age, — that is, their basins seem to be about
half filled with alluvium. Broad sheets of meadow-land are seen extending
into them, imperfect and boggy in many places and more nearly level than
those of the older lakes below them, and the vegetation of their shores is
of course more alpine. Kalmia, ledum, and cassiope fringe the meadow rocks,
while the luxuriant, waving groves, so characteristic of the lower lakes,
are represented only by clumps of the dwarf pine and hemlock spruce. These,
however, are oftentimes very picturesquely grouped on rocky headlands around
the outer rim of the meadows, or with still more striking effect crown some
rocky islet. Moreover,
from causes that we cannot stop here to explain, the cliffs about these
middle-aged lakes are seldom of the massive Yosemite type, but are more
broken, and less sheer, and they usually stand back, leaving the shores.
comparatively free; while the few precipitous rocks that do come forward and
plunge directly into deep water are seldom more than three or four hundred
feet high. I have never
yet met ducks in any of the lakes of this kind, but the ouzel is never
wanting where the feeding streams are perennial. Wild sheep and deer may
occasionally be seen on the meadows, and very rarely a bear. One might camp
on the rugged shores of these bright fountains for weeks without meeting any
animal larger than the marmots that burrow beneath glacier boulders along
the edges of the meadows.
The highest and youngest of all the lakes lie
nestled in glacier wombs. At first sight, they seem pictures of pure
bloodless desolation, miniature arctic seas, bound in perpetual ice and
snow, and overshadowed by harsh, gloomy, crumbling precipices. Their waters
are keen ultramarine blue in the deepest parts, lively grass-green toward
the shore shallows and around the edges of the small bergs usually floating
about in them. A few hardy sedges, frost-pinched every night, are
occasionally found making soft sods along the sun-touched portions of their
shores, and when their northern banks slope openly to the south, and are
soil-covered, no matter how coarsely, they are sure to be brightened with
flowers. One lake in particular now comes to mind which illustrates the
floweriness of the sun-touched banks of these icy gems. Close up under the
shadow of the Sierra Matterhorn, on the eastern slope of the range, lies one
of the iciest of these glacier lakes at an elevation of about twelve
thousand feet. A short, ragged-edged glacier crawls into it from the south,
and on the opposite side it is embanked and dammed by a series of concentric
terminal moraines, made by the glacier when it entirely filled the basin.
Half a mile below lies a second lake, at a height of eleven thousand five
hundred feet, about as cold and as pure as a snow-crystal. The waters of the
first come gurgling down into it over and through the moraine dam, while a
second stream pours into it direct from a glacier that lies to the
southeast. Sheer precipices of crystalline snow rise out of deep water on
the south, keeping perpetual winter on that side, but there is a fine
summery spot on the other, notwithstanding the lake is only about three
hundred yards wide. Here, on August 25, 1873, I found a charming company of
flowers, not pinched, crouching dwarfs, scarce able to look up, but warm and
juicy, standing erect in rich cheery color and bloom. On a narrow strip of
shingle, close to the water's edge, there were a few tufts of carex gone to
seed; and a little way back up the rocky bank at the foot of a crumbling
wall so inclined as to absorb and radiate as well as reflect a considerable
quantity of sun-heat, was the garden, containing a thrifty thicket of
cowania covered with large yellow flowers; several bushes of the alpine
ribes with berries nearly ripe and wildly acid; a few handsome grasses
belonging to two distinct species, and one goldenrod; a few hairy lupines
and radiant spragueas, whose blue and rose-colored flowers were set off to
fine advantage amid green carices; and along a narrow seam in the very
warmest angle of the wall a perfectly gorgeous fringe of Epilobium
obcordatum with flowers an inch wide, crowded together in lavish profusion,
and colored as royal a purple as ever was worn by any high-bred plant of the
tropics; and best of all, and greatest of all, a noble thistle in full
bloom, standing erect, head and shoulders above his companions, and
thrusting out his lances in sturdy vigor as if growing on a Scottish brae.
All this brave warm bloom among the raw stones, right in the face of the
onlooking glaciers. As
far as I have been able to find out, these upper lakes are snow-buried in
winter to a depth of about thirty-five or forty feet, and those most exposed
to avalanches, to a depth of even a hundred feet or, more. These last are,
of course, nearly lost to the landscape. Some remain buried for years, when
the snowfall is exceptionally great, and many open only on one side late in
the season. The snow of the closed side is composed of coarse granules
compacted and frozen into a firm, faintly stratified mass, like the neve of
a glacier. The lapping waves of the open portion gradually undermine and
cause it to break off in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a
precipitous front like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea.
The play of the lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, the
pearly white of the outswelling bosses, the bergs drifting in front, aglow
in the sun and edged with green water, and the deep blue disk of the lake
itself extending to your feet, — this forms a picture that enriches all your
after life, and is never forgotten. But however perfect the season and the
day, the cold incompleteness of these young lakes is always keenly felt. We
approach them with a kind of mean caution, and steal unconfidingly around
their crystal shores, ill at ease, as if expecting to hear some forbidding
voice. But the love-songs of the ouzels and the love-looks of the daisies
gradually reassure us, and manifest the warm fountain humanity that pervades
the coldest and most solitary of them all. |
