Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian War of 1851, Which Led to That Event

by Lafayette Houghton Bunnell

“It is only the vastness of the glacial pathways of this region that prevents their being seen and comprehended at once. A scholar might be puzzled with the English alphabet if it was written large enough, and, if each letter was made up of many smaller ones. The beds of those vast ice rivers are veiled with forests and a network of tiny water channels. You will see by the above sketch that Yosemite was completely overwhelmed with glaciers, and they did not come squeezing, groping down to the main valley by the narrow, angular, tortuous canyons of the Ten-ie-ya, Nevada or South canyons, but they flowed grandly and directly above all of its highest domes, like a steady wind, while their lower currents went mazing and swedging down in the crooking and dome-blocked channels of canyons.

“Glaciers have made every mountain form of this whole region; even the summit mountains are only fragments of their pre-glacial selves.

“Every summit wherein are laid the wombs of glaciers is steeper on its north than its south side, because of the depth and duration of sheltered glaciers, above those exposed to the sun, and this steepness between the north and south sides of summits is greater in the lower summits, as those of the Obelisk group. This tells us a word of glacial climate. Such mountains as Starr Ring, Cloud’s Rest, and Cathedral Peak do not come under this general law because their contours were determined by the ice which flowed about and above them, but even among these inter-basin heights we frequently find marked difference of steepness between their north and south sides, because many of the higher of these mountains and crests extending east and west, continued to shelter and nourish fragmentary glacierets long after the death of the main trunk to which they belonged.

“In ascending any of the principal streams of this region, lakes in all stages of decay are found in great abundance, gradually becoming younger until we reach the almost countless gems of the summits with basins bright as their crystal waters. Upon the Nevada and its branches, there are not fewer than a hundred of these lakes, from a mile to a hundred yards in diameter, with countless glistening pondlets about the size of moons. Both the Yosemite and the Hetch-Hetchy valleys are lake basins filled with sand and the matter of morains easily and rapidly supplied by their swift descending rivers from upper morains. The mountains above Yosemite have scarce been touched by any other denudation but that of ice. Perhaps all of the post glacial denudation of every kind would not average an inch in depth for the whole region.

“I am surprised to find that water has had so little to do with the mountain structure of this region. None of the upper Merced streams give record of floods greater than those of to-day. The small water channel, with perpendicular walls, is about two feet in depth a few miles above the Little Yosemite. The Nevada here, even in flood, never was more than four or five feet in depth. Glacial striæ and glacial drift, undisturbed on banks of streams but little above the present line of high water mark, is sufficient proof.”

The views entertained by Mr. Muir are, for the most part, in consonance with my own. That the valley was originally formed as supposed by Prof. Whitney I do not doubt, but to suppose that the vast bodies of ice, stated by Mr. Whitney to have existed at the sources of the Merced river, could have halted in their glacial flow down the steep declivities of its canyons, seems as absurd as to suppose one entertaining opposite views “ignorant of the whole subject.” As a matter susceptible of eternal proof, I will state that in the canyon below the Yosemite there are existing to-day, large, well rounded bowlders that I think a geologist would say had been brought from above the valley; and if so, water alone could scarcely have brought them over the sunken bed of the valley, or if filled to its present level of about thirty-five feet descent to the mile, the laws that govern aqueous deposits would have left those huge masses of rock far above their present location in the canyon. Some of the bowlders referred to will weigh twenty tons or more, and, in connection with flat or partially rounded rocks fallen, probably, from the adjacent cliff, form waterfalls in the middle of the canyon, of from fifty to one hundred feet of perpendicular height. The fall through the canyon averages over two hundred feet to the mile. Well rounded bowlders of granite and other hard stones may be seen for long distances below the Yosemite, on hillsides and flats far above the present bed of the river, and, in some instances, deposited with those bowlders, have been found well rounded and swedged masses of gold. The experiments and observations of Agassiz, Forbes and others, render it probable that the valley of the Yosemite was filled with ice, but that the upper surface moved more rapidly, carrying down most of the material brought from mountains above the valley. The observations of Prof. Tyndall render it almost certain that a glacier does not move as a rigid mass or on its bed, but as a plastic substance, as asphalt for instance.

Partial liquefaction by pressure would enable a glacier in the Yosemite to conform to the inequalities of its configuration, and regelation would perhaps retard its flow sufficiently to enable the more rapid moving surface and center of the glacier to carry its burden on from above without marking the lower portion of the inclosing walls, as for instance, may be seen at Glacier Point. It has been suggested that “the immense weight of ice that once filled the Yosemite had an important part in the formation of it.” This idea is untenable, because the valley must have already been formed, in order for space to have existed for “the immense weight of ice;” and unless the earth’s crust under the valley was previously broken as suggested in the able theory of Prof. Whitney, no possible weight of any kind could exert a depressing influence upon the surface.

If it were possible, for the reconciliation of geologists, to believe that the subsidence in the valley occurred at about the close of the glacial flow, thereby changing the appearance of the inclosing walls, yet still leaving material to fill the chasm, a great part of the mystery that will always remain as one of the “Wonders of the Yosemite,” would then disappear. As it is, we are compelled to believe, not in miracles, but that the glacier that flowed over the Yosemite was so great in depth as to leave, like some deep sea or ocean, its bottom undisturbed by the tumultuous aerial strife upon its surface.

Now, those glacial heights have, at times, a solitude unutterly profound! Not a bird or beast to break the stillness, nor disturb the solemn charm. Nor does the Indian, even, loiter on his way, but hastens on down to his mountain meadows or wooded valleys. There, if anywhere, the poet’s idea can be realized, that:

“Silence is the heart of all things; sound the fluttering of its pulse,
Which the fever and the spasm of the universe convulse.
Every sound that breaks the silence only makes it more profound,
Like a crash of deafening thunder in the sweet, blue stillness drowned
Let thy soul walk softly in thee, as a saint in heaven unshod,
For to be alone with silence, is to be alone with God.”