The Mountains of California is John Muir's tribute to the beauties of the Sierra, in the book form. When he came to California and finally settled in San Francisco, John Muir immediately left for a visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Muir noted that «He was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower.» He climbed a number of mountains, including Cathedral Peak and Mount Dana, and hiked the old Indian trail down Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake. He vividly described not only his journeys through the mountains, valleys andglaciersof Sierra, but also the nature and geology of the area. John Muir (1838 – 1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is a prominent American conservation organization.
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John Muir. The Mountains of California (With All Original Illustrations)
The Mountains of California (With All Original Illustrations)
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1. The Sierra Nevada
Chapter 2. The Glaciers
Chapter 3. The Snow
Chapter 4. A Near View of the High Sierra
Chapter 5. The Passes
Chapter 6. The Glacier Lakes
Chapter 7. The Glacier Meadows
Chapter 8. The Forests
Chapter 9. The Douglas Squirrel
Chapter 10. A Wind-storm in the Forests
Chapter 11. The River Floods
Chapter 12. Sierra Thunder-Storms
Chapter 13. The Water-Ouzel
Chapter 14. The Wild Sheep
Chapter 15. In the Sierra Foot-Hills
Chapter 16. The Bee-Pastures
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John Muir
Chapter 2. The Glaciers
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This change from icy darkness and death to life and beauty was slow, as we count time, and is still going on, north and south, over all the world wherever glaciers exist, whether in the form of distinct rivers, as in Switzerland, Norway, the mountains of Asia, and the Pacific Coast; or in continuous mantling folds, as in portions of Alaska, Greenland, Franz-Joseph-Land, Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen, and the lands about the South Pole. But in no country, as far as I know, may these majestic changes be studied to better advantage than in the plains and mountains of California.
Toward the close of the glacial period, when the snow-clouds became less fertile and the melting waste of sunshine became greater, the lower folds of the ice-sheet in California, discharging fleets of icebergs into the sea, began to shallow and recede from the lowlands, and then move slowly up the flanks of the Sierra in compliance with the changes of climate. The great white mantle on the mountains broke up into a series of glaciers more or less distinct and river-like, with many tributaries, and these again were melted and divided into still smaller glaciers, until now only a few of the smallest residual topmost branches of the grand system exist on the cool slopes of the summit peaks.
