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Show THE MAKING - ' Of Y06EMITE After the visitor to the Yosemite Valley has, recovered from his first shock ot astonishment for it Is no less at the supreme beauty of the valley, Inevitably he wonders how nature made It. However did It happen hap-pen that walls so enormous rose so nearly perpendicular from so level a floor. It will not lessen wonder to learn that it was water which cut most of this 'deep valley in the solid granite. gran-ite. Originally the Merced Illver flowed practically at the level of the canyon top. flow long It took Us waters, enormous In volume then, no doubt, to scrape with tools ot sand( this valley thousands ot feet into the living granite, no man can even guess. And, as It cut the valley, lt left the tributary streams sloping even more sharply from their levels until eventually they poured over brinks as giant waterfalls. But geologists have determined, by , unerring fact, that the river did by far the most of the work, and that! the great glacier which followed the water ages afterwards did little more than square Its corners and steepen its cliffs. It may have Increased the depth from seven hundred to a thousand feet, not more. During the uncountable years since the glaciers vanished, erosion has again marvelously used Its wonder won-der chisel. With the lessening of the Merced's volume, the effect was no longer to deepen the channel but to amazingly carve and decorate the walls. |
