The Moraines In Particular
Could Hardly Fail To Attract The Eye Of Any Observer.
Some of the
short laterals of the glaciers that drew their fountain snows from the
jagged recesses of the
Summit are from one to two hundred feet in
height, and scarce at all wasted as yet, notwithstanding the countless
storms that have fallen upon them, while cool rills flow between them,
watering charming gardens of arctic plants - saxifrages, larkspurs,
dwarf birch, ribes, and parnassia, etc. - beautiful memories of the Ice
Age, representing a once greatly extended flora.
In the course of explorations made to the eastward of here, between
the 38th and 40th parallels, I observed glacial phenomena equally
fresh and demonstrative on all the higher mountains of the White Pine,
Golden Gate, and Snake ranges, varying from those already described
only as determined by differences of elevation, relations to the snow-bearing winds, and the physical characteristics of the rock
formations.
On the Jeff Davis group of the Snake Range, the dominating summit of
which is nearly thirteen thousand feet in elevation, and the highest
ground in the basin, every marked feature is a glacier monument - peaks, valleys, ridges, meadows, and lakes. And because here the
snow-fountains lay at a greater height, while the rock, an exceedingly
hard quartzite, offered superior resistance to post-glacial agents,
the ice-characters are on a larger scale, and are more sharply defined
than any we have noticed elsewhere, and it is probably here that the
last lingering glacier of the basin was located.
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