Preview
Circa Date
circa 1887
Transcription
35
& reached to where I was standing. But before the first stones reached the bottom of the valley I shouted “I have found it at last” [For I had been greatly puzzled in seeking a cause for the formation of the large taluses that lean against the walls of the valley in many places & form so striking a feature not only of Yosemite but of every other valley similarly situated & also of all the deep canons from one end of the whole range to the other.] That they had not been formed bit by bit in slow accumulations from the cliffs by weathering was plain to be seen because no appreciable quantity of fresh material was to be found on them. Trees are growing on them to the very tops close up to the walls. Some of the trees several hundred years of age having grown undisturbed all their lives, not a limb broken showing clearly that the taluses must have been formed all at once from top to bottom & also the blocks of which each talus is made up seemed to be of the same age & the forests growing upon them, as if all throughout the range had been formed simultaneously
Now it was all clear to me in a moment. A great earthquake had occurred far greater than this one hurling [a] thousands of beetling
36
cliffs & headlands to bottom of the valleys at once
Then all was still for centuries & the trees took possession of them & grew up undisturbed for centuries
And how grand a roar must then have arisen throughout the range. Loud enough to be heard in the stars. I was greatly delighted & ran up the valley to look upon this new talus that I had been so fortunate as to see made, & before the last of the falling stones had come [finally] to rest I climbed up [on] its lower slopes to compare it with the many old ones I had observed so often before. Glad to find the new corresponded with the old in every particular
The trees, mostly Douglas Spruces, some of them 6 ft [feet] in diameter were snipped off like weeds. An avalanche of rocks pouring into a forest of fir & spruce. Their battered ground trunks leaves & branches made a delightful fragrance which lasted long
One of the most palpable of the good ends accomplished by what seemed the very highest term of destruction.
The dust formed a level cloud that reached in a few minutes from wall to wall through which the moon shone dimly as if through
Date Occurred
1871-1874
Resource Identifier
MuirReel31 Notebook11 Img021.jpg
Contributing Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
Rights Management
To view additional information on copyright and related rights of this item, such as to purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish them, click here to view the Holt-Atherton Special Collections policies.
