Chapter VII: Part II (3)

And now, if it be asked how much of this evidence for the former existence of glaciers is to be found in Great Britain, I answer, that there is not a valley in Switzerland where all these traces are found in greater perfection than in the valleys of the Scotch Highlands, or of the mountains of Ireland and Wales, or of the lake-region in England. Not a link is wanting to the chain. Polished surfaces, traversed by striæ, grooves, and furrows, with a sheet of drift resting immediately upon them, extend throughout the realm,--the _roches moutonnées_ raise their rounded backs from the ground there as in Switzerland,--transverse moraines bar their valleys and lateral ones border them, and the boulders from the hill-sides are scattered over the plains as thickly as between the Alps and the Jura, and are here and there perched upon the summits of isolated hills. This being the case, let us examine a little more closely the local phenomena connected with the ancient extension of glaciers in this region, and especially the parallel roads of Glen Roy.

G. R. Glen Roy.
M. Moeldhu Hill.
S. Spean River.
G. S. Glen Spean.
L. Loch Laggan.
T. Loch Treig.
G. Glen Gloy.
L. O. Loch Lochy.
A. Loch Arkeig.
E. Loch Eil.
N. Ben Nevis.
1,2,3. The three parallel roads.]

Among the Grampian Hills, a little to the northeast of Ben Nevis, lies the valley of Glen Roy, a winding valley trending in a northeasterly direction, and some ten miles in length. Across the mouth of this valley, at right angles with it, runs the valley of Glen Spean, trending from east to west, Glen Roy thus opening directly at its southern extremity into Glen Spean. Around the walls of the Glen Roy valley run three terraces, one above the other, at different heights, like so many roads artificially cut in the sides of the valley, and indeed they go by the name of the "parallel roads." These three terraces, though in a less perfect state of preservation, are repeated for a short distance at exactly the same levels on the southern wall of the valley of Glen Spean, just opposite the opening of the Glen Roy valley; that is, they make the whole circuit of Glen Roy, stop abruptly, on both sides, at its southern extremity, and reappear again on the opposite wall of Glen Spean. I should add, however, that all three do not come to this sudden termination; for the lowest of these terraces turns eastward into the valley of Glen Spean, following the whole curve of the eastern half of the valley, while, of the two upper terraces, there is no trace whatever, nor is there any indication that either of the three ever existed in the western half of the valley. When I first visited the region, these phenomena had already been the subject of earnest discussion among English geologists. The commonly accepted explanation of the facts was that these terraces marked ancient sea-levels at a time when the ocean penetrated much farther into the interior, and Glen Roy and the adjoining valleys were as many fiords or estuaries. And though the present elevation of the locality made such an interpretation improbable at first sight, the first or highest of the terraces being eleven hundred and forty-four feet above the present sea-level, the second eighty-two feet below the first, and the third and lowest two hundred and twelve feet below the second, or eight hundred odd feet above the level of the sea, it was thought that the oscillations of the land, its alternate subsidences and upheavals, proved by the modern results of geology to have been so great and so frequent, might account even for so remarkable a change. There are, however, other objections to this theory not so easily explained away. There are no traces of organic life upon these terraces. If they were ancient sea-beaches, we should expect to find upon them the remains of marine animals, shells, crustacea, and the like. All the explanations given to lessen the significance of this absence of organic remains are futile. Again, why should the lower terrace alone be continued into the eastern end of the valley of Glen Spean, while there are no terraces at all in its western part, since both must have been as fully open to the sea as Glen Roy valley itself? This seemed the more inexplicable since all the terraces exist on the valley-wall opposite the outlet of Glen Roy, showing that this sheet of water, wherever it came from, filled the valley itself and the space between it and the southern wall of Glen Spean, but failed to spread, on either side of that space, into the eastern and western extension of Glen Spean. It is evident, that, at the time the water filled Glen Roy, some obstruction blocked the valley of Glen Spean, both to the east and west, leaving, however, that space in the centre free into which Glen Roy opens, while, by the time the water had sunk to the level of the lowest terrace, one of these barriers, that to the east, must have been removed, for the lowest terrace, as I have said, is continuous throughout the eastern part of Glen Spean.[B]

Prepossessed as I was with the idea of glacial agency in times anterior to ours, these phenomena appeared to me under a new aspect. I found the bottom of Glen Spean so worn by glacial action as to leave no doubt in my mind that it must have been the bed of a great glacier, and Dr. Buckland fully concurred with me in this impression. Indeed, the face of the country throughout that region presents not only the glacier-marks in great perfection, but other evidences of the ancient presence of glaciers. There are moraines at the lower end of Glen Spean, remodelled, it is true, by the action of currents, but still retaining enough of their ancient character to be easily recognized; and some of the finest examples of the _roches moutonnées_ I have seen in Scotland are to be found at the entrance of the valley of Loch Treig, a lateral valley opening into Glen Spean on its southern side, and, as we shall see hereafter, intimately connected with the history of the parallel roads of Glen Roy. These _roches moutonnées_ may very fairly be compared with those of the Grimsel, and exhibit all the characteristic features of the Alpine ones. One of them, lying on the western side of the valley where it opens into Glen Spean, is crossed by a trap-dike. The general surface of the hill, consisting of rather soft mica, has been slightly worn down by atmospheric agencies, so that the dike stands out some three-quarters of an inch above it. On the dike, however, the glacier-marks extend for its whole length in great perfection, while they have entirely disappeared from the surrounding surfaces, so as to leave the dike thus standing out in full relief. This is an instructive case, showing how little disintegration has gone on since the drift-period. All the currents that have swept over it, all the rains that have beaten upon it, have not worn away one inch from the original surface of the hill. I have observed many other _roches moutonnées_ in Scotland, especially about the neighborhood of Loch Awe, Loch Fyne, and Loch Etive. In fact, they may be found in almost all the glens of Scotland, in the lake-region of England, and in the valleys of Wales and Ireland.

Following the glacial indications wherever we could find them in the country about Glen Roy, it became evident to me that the whole western range of the Grampian Hills had once been a great centre of glaciers, that they had come down toward Glen Spean through all the valleys on the mountain-slopes to the north and south of it, so that this valley had become, as it were, the great drainage-bed for the masses of ice thus poured into it laterally, and moving down the valley from east to west as one immense glacier. It is natural to suppose, that, at the breaking-up of the great sheet of ice which, if my view of the case is correct, must have covered the whole country at this time, the ice would yield more readily in a valley like that of Glen Roy, lying open to the south and receiving the full force of the sun, than in those on the opposite side of Glen Spean, opening to the north. At all events, it is evident that at some time posterior to this universal glacial period, when the ice began to retreat, Glen Roy became the basin of a glacial lake such as we now find in the Alps of Switzerland, where occasionally a closed valley becomes a trough, as it were, into which the water from the surrounding hills is drained. In such a lake no animals are found, such as exist in any other sheet of fresh water, and this would account for the absence of any organic remains on the terraces of Glen Roy. But at first sight it seemed that this theory was open in one respect to the same objection as the other. What prevented this sheet of water from spreading east and west in Glen Spean? If it not only filled Glen Roy, but extended to the southern side of Glen Spean immediately opposite the opening of Glen Roy, what prevented it from filling the whole of that valley also? In endeavoring to answer this question, I found the solution of the mystery.

The bed of Glen Spean, through its whole extent from east to west, is marked, as I have said, by glacial action, in rectilinear scratches and furrows. This westward track of the main glacier is crossed transversely near the centre of the valley by two other glacier-tracks cutting it at right angles. Upon tracing these cross-tracks carefully, I became satisfied, that, after the surrounding ice had begun to yield, after the masses of ice which descended from the northern and southern slopes of the mountains into Glen Spean had begun to retreat, and to form local limited glaciers, two of those lateral glaciers, one coming down from Ben Nevis on the southwest, the other from Loch Treig on the southeast, extended farther than the others and stretched across Glen Spean.[C] These two glaciers for a long time formed barriers across the western and eastern extension of this valley, damming back the waters which filled Glen Roy and the central part of Glen Spean.

Evidently the glacier descending from Loch Treig was the first to yield, for, by the time the Glen Roy lake had sunk to the level of the lowest terrace, the entrance to the eastern extension of the valley must have been free, otherwise the water could not have spread throughout that basin as we find it did; but it would seem that by the time the western barrier, or the glacier from Ben Nevis, was removed, the sheet of water was too far reduced to have left permanent marks of its outflow into the Great Glen, except by disturbing and remodelling the large moraines of the older Glen Spean glacier. There are faint indications of other terraces in Glen Roy, even at a higher level than the uppermost parallel road, owing their origin probably to the short duration of a higher level of the glacier-lake, when the great general glacier had not yet been lowered to a more permanent level determined by a limited circumscription within the walls of the valleys. There are other terraces in neighboring valleys at still different levels,--in Glen Gloy, for instance, where the one horizontal road was no doubt formed in consequence of the damming of the valley by a glacier from Loch Arkeig. Mr. Darwin has seen another in Glen Kinfillen, which I would explain by the presence of a glacier in the Great Glen, the marks of which are particularly distinct about the eastern end of Glen Garry.

The evidence of the ancient presence of glaciers is no less striking in other parts of the Scotch Highlands. Between the southeastern range of the Grampian Hills, in Forfarshire and Perthshire, and the opposite ridge of Sidlaw Hills, stretches the broad valley of Strathmore. At the time when Glen Spean received the masses of ice from the slopes of the western Grampian range, the glaciers descended from the valleys on the southern slope of the southeastern range and from those on the northern slope of Sidlaw Hills into the capacious bed of the valley which divides them. The glacial phenomena of this region present a striking resemblance in their general relations to those of the Alps and the Jura. The Grampian range on the northern side of Strathmore valley occupies the same position in reference to that of the Sidlaw Hills opposite, as does the range of the Alps to that of the Jura, while the intervening valley may be compared to the plain of Switzerland. As from the Bernese Oberland and from the valleys of the Reuss and Limmath gigantic glaciers came down and stretched across the plain of Switzerland to the Jura, scattering their erratic boulders over its summit and upon its slopes at the time of their greater extension, and, as they withdrew into the higher Alpine valleys, leaving them along their retreating track at the foot of the Jura and over the whole plain, so did the glaciers from Glen Prossen and parallel valleys on the Grampian Mountains extend across the valley of Strathmore, dropping their boulders not only on the slopes and along the base of the Sidlaw Hills, but scattering them in their retreat throughout the valley, until they were themselves reduced to isolated glaciers in the higher valleys. At the same time other glaciers came down from the heights of Schihallion on the west, and, descending through the valley of the Tay, joined the great masses of ice in the valley of Strathmore, thus combining with the eastern ice-field, just as the glacier from Mont Blanc and the valley of the Rhone formerly combined in the western part of Switzerland with those of the Bernese Oberland. The relations are identical, though the geographical position is reversed,--the higher range, or the Grampian Hills, lying to the north in Scotland, and the lower one, or the Sidlaw Hills, to the south, while in Switzerland, on the contrary, the higher range lies to the south and the lower to the north. I have alluded especially to Glen Prossen because the glacial marks in that valley are remarkably distinct, the whole bed of the valley being scratched, polished, and furrowed by the great rasp which has moved over it, while the concentric moraines at its lower extremity are very striking. But these signs, so perfectly preserved in Glen Prossen, recur with greater or less intensity in all the corresponding valleys, leaving no doubt that the same phenomena existed over the whole region.

Among the localities of Scotland where the indications of glacial action are most marked is the region about Stirling. Near Stirling Castle the polished surfaces of the rocks with their distinct grooves and scratches show us the path followed by the ice as it moved down in a northeasterly direction toward the Frith of Forth from the mountains on the northwest. To the west of Edinburgh, also, there is a broad glacier-track, showing that here also the ice was ploughing its way eastward to find an outlet on the shore.

The western slope of the great Scotch range is no less remarkable for its glacier-traces. The heads of Loch Long, Loch Fyne, Loch Awe, and Loch Leven everywhere show upon their margins the most distinct glacial polish and furrows, while from the trend of these marks and the distribution of the moraines, especially about Ben Cruachan, it is obvious that in this part of the country the glaciers moved westward and southward. About Aberdeen, on the contrary, they moved eastward, while in the vicinity of Elgin they advanced toward the north.

It thus appears that the whole range of the Grampians formed a great centre for the distribution of glaciers, and that a colossal ice-field spread itself over the whole country, extending in every direction toward the lower lands and the sea-shore. As the glaciers which now descend through all the valleys of the Alps, along their northern as well as their southern slopes, and in their eastern as well as their western prolongation, though limited, in our days, within the valley-walls, nevertheless once covered the plain of Switzerland and that of Northern Italy, so did the ice-fields of the Grampians during the greatest extension of the Scotch glaciers spread over the whole country. They also were, in course of time, reduced to local glaciers, circumscribed within the higher valleys of the more mountainous parts of the country, until they totally disappeared, as those of Switzerland would also have done, had it not been for the greater elevation of that country above the level of the sea. Scotland nowhere rises above the present level of perpetual snow, while in Switzerland the whole Alpine range has an altitude favorable to the preservation of glaciers. In the range of the Jura, however, which had at one time its local glaciers also, but which nowhere now rises above the line of perpetual snow, they have disappeared as completely as in the Grampian Hills.

It would lead me too far, were I to give here a special account of all the investigations I made in 1840 upon the distribution of glaciers in Great Britain. I will therefore only point out a few of the more distinct areas of distribution. The region surrounding Ben Wyvis formed such a centre of dispersion from which glaciers radiated, and we have another in the Pentland Hills about Edinburgh. In Northumberland, the Cheviot Hills present a glacial centre of the same kind, and in the Westmoreland Hills we have still another. In the last-named locality, the glacial tracks can be followed in various directions, some of them descending toward the northwest from the heights of Helvellyn, others moving southward toward Ambleside. In Wales the same kind of glacial distribution has been observed; but, as Professor Ramsay has treated this subject in full, I would refer my readers to his masterly work for a further account of the ancient Welch glaciers. In Ireland I had also opportunities of making extensive local investigations of glacial action. I observed the centres of distribution in the neighborhood of Belfast, in the County of Wicklow, and in Cavan.

But nowhere are these phenomena more striking than in Fermanagh County about the neighborhood of Enniskillen, and more especially in the immediate vicinity of Florence Court, the seat of the Earl of Enniskillen. On the northern slope of Ben Calcagh are five valleys lying parallel with each other and opening into the valley of Loch Nilly, which runs from east to west at the base of the mountain. A road now passes through this valley, and, where it crosses the mouth of either of the five valleys rising towards the mountain-slope, it cuts alternately through the two horns of a crescent-shaped wall which bars the lower end of every one of them. These crescent-shaped mounds are so many terminal moraines, built up by the five glaciers formerly descending through these lateral valleys into the valley of Loch Nilly. They bore the same relation to each other as the glaciers de Tour and d'Argentière, the Glacier des Bois with the Mer de Glace, the Glacier des Bossons and the Glacier de Taconet, now bear to each other in the valley of Chamouni; and were it not for the smaller dimensions of the whole, any one familiar with the tracks of ancient glaciers might easily fancy himself crossing the ancient moraines at the foot of the northern slope of the range of Mont Blanc, through which the Arve has cut its channel, the valley of Chamouni standing in the same relation to Mont Blanc as the valley of Loch Nilly does to Ben Calcagh.

I have dwelt thus at length on the glaciers of Great Britain because they have been the subject of my personal investigations. But the Scotch Highlands and the mountains of Wales and Ireland are but a few of the many centres of glacial distribution in Europe. From the Scandinavian Alps glaciers descended also to the shores of the Northern Ocean and the Baltic Sea. There is not a fiord of the Norway shore that does not bear upon its sides the tracks of the great masses of ice which once forced their way through it, and thus found an outlet into the sea, as in Scotland. Indeed, under the water, as far as it is possible to follow them through the transparent medium, I have noticed in Great Britain and in the United States the same traces of glacial action as higher up, so that these ancient glaciers must have extended not only to the sea-shore, but into the ocean, as they do now in Greenland. Nor is this all. Scandinavian boulders, scattered upon English soil and over the plains of Northern Germany, tell us that not only the Baltic Sea, but the German Ocean also, was bridged across by ice, on which these masses of rock were transported. In short, over the whole of Northern Europe, from the Arctic Ocean to the northern borders of its southern promontories, we find all the usual indications of glacial action, showing that a continuous sheet of ice once spread over nearly the whole continent, while from all the mountain-ranges descended those more limited glacial tracks terminating frequently in transverse moraines across the valleys, showing, that, as the general ice-sheet broke up and contracted into local glaciers, every cluster or chain of hills became a centre of glacial dispersion, such as the Alps are now, such as the Jura, the Highlands of Scotland, the mountains of Wales and Ireland, the Alps of Scandinavia, the Hartz, the Black Forest, the Vosges, and many others have been in ancient times.

* * * * *

In the next article we shall consider the glacial phenomena as they exist in America.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] See January No., p. 61.

[B] Having enumerated the characteristic features of the glacial phenomena in the preceding pages, I throw into this note some explanation which may render my views of the parallel roads more intelligible, not to interrupt again the exposition with details. It would be desirable, however, that the reader should first make himself thoroughly familiar with the localities concerned, before proceeding any farther. I would therefore state here, that, in the wood-cut opposite, G. R. indicates the valley of Glen Roy, with the three parallel roads marked 1, 2, 3. Glen Spean is designated by G. S., and the river flowing at its bottom by S. Loch Laggan, out of which the River Spean rises, is marked L. G. indicates Glen Gloy, a little valley to the northwest of Glen Roy, with a single terrace. Loch Treig is designated by T., Loch Lochy by L. O., Loch Arkeig by A., and Moeldhu Hill by M., while E. indicates Loch Eil. The Great Glen of Scotland, through which the Caledonian Canal runs, extends in the direction of L. O. and E. The position of Ben Nevis is designated by N. The dotted area between N. and M. marks the place occupied by the great glacier of Ben Nevis, when it extended as far as Moeldhu; while the close continuous lines in front of Loch Treig indicate the direction of the glacial scratches left across Glen Spean by the glacier of Loch Treig, when it extended as far as the eastern termination of the two upper terraces. It ought to be remembered, in this connection, that the bottom of the valley of the Spean, as well as that of Glen Roy, is occupied by loose materials, partly drift, that is, materials acted upon by glaciers, and partly decomposed fragments of rocks brought down by the torrents, greatly impeding the observation of the polished surfaces. The river-bed is cut through this deposit, and here and there through the underlying rock. Besides the parallel roads, there are also peculiar accumulations of loose materials in Glen Roy and Glen Spean, more particularly connected with the lowest terrace, which Mr. Darwin and Professor Jamieson have shown to be little deltas formed during the existence of the lake of Glen Roy at the bottom of the gullies intersecting the shelves of the upper roads. The outlet for the water at the period during which the second terrace was formed, not known when I visited Glen Roy, has been discovered by Mr. Milne-Holme, and also observed by Professor Jamieson. During the formation of the upper terrace, the waters escaped through the westernmost tributary of the River Spey, in the direction of the northeast corner of the wood-cut, and during that of the lowest terrace, at the eastern end of Loch Laggan, also through the valley of the Spey. The state of preservation of the parallel roads is such as to prove that no disturbance of any importance can have taken place in the country since they were formed. Far from believing, therefore, that these remarkable shelves are ancient sea-beaches, I am prepared to maintain, that, had the area occupied by them been submerged only for a few days, under an ocean rising and falling for several feet with every tide, no vestige would have been left of their former existence.

[C] The wood-cut on p. 730 is a reproduction of the little map accompanying a paper of mine upon "The Glacial Theory and its Recent Progress," printed in the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal" for October, 1842. I might have greatly improved the topography, and represented more accurately the details of the phenomenon, by availing myself of the much larger and very minute map recently published by Professor Thomas F. Jamieson, of Aberdeen; but I thought it advisable to leave my first sketch as I presented it twenty-two years ago, in order to show that Sir Charles Lyell is mistaken in ascribing (see "Antiquity of Man," pp. 260, 261) the discovery of the glacier of Loch Treig to Professor Jamieson. A comparison of his statements with mine will show that the solution of the problem offered by him is identical with that proposed by me, as he himself candidly admits ("Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" for August, 1863, p. 239). I have only one fault to find with his observations, and, as I have never revisited the locality since, this remark may satisfy him that my examination of its features was not so hurried as he supposes. Professor Jamieson confounds the effects of two distinct glaciers moving in different valleys as the action of one and the same glacier. In my paper, it is true, I made no allusion to the great glacier of Glen Spean, the existence of which I had recognized along the river from Loch Laggan nearly to the Caledonian Canal. I publish my observations upon this great central glacier for the first time in the present article, having omitted them in my contributions upon this subject to the scientific periodicals of the day simply because I thought best not to complicate my exposition of the facts concerning the parallel roads by considerations foreign to their origin, convinced as I was, from the manner in which the glacial theory was then received, that they would not be understood, and still less admitted. But now that all the geologists of Great Britain seem to have given their adhesion to it, I may be permitted to state that I already knew then, what Professor Jamieson has overlooked in his latest paper, that a separate glacier had occupied the valley of the Spean _prior_ to the formation of the parallel roads, and that at that time the glacier of Loch Treig was only a lateral tributary of the same, just as the glacier of the Thierberg is a tributary of the glacier of the Aar. It was not until the Glen Spean glacier had retreated to the hills east of Loch Laggan that the glacier of Loch Treig could form a barrier across Glen Spean, and thus dam the waters in Glen Roy which produced the parallel roads. The marks left by the great Glen Spean glacier in the valley are mistaken by Professor Jamieson for indications, that, in its greatest extension, the glacier of Loch Treig not only advanced across Glen Spean, but divided into two branches, one moving westward down Glen Spean, the other eastward up Glen Spean, as far as Loch Laggan. Any one sufficiently familiar with existing glaciers to compare their action with the phenomena referred to above will at once see the impossibility of such a course for any glacier coming down from Loch Treig. At the time the Grampians had become a separate centre of glacial action a great glacier must have moved down, towards the Caledonian Canal, through Glen Spean, receiving as tributaries lateral glaciers not only from Loch Treig and Glen Roy, but also from all the other minor lateral valleys emptying into Glen Spean, the largest of which must have come from the range of Ben Nevis,--just as the great glacier of the valley of the Rhone once received as tributaries all the glaciers coming down into that valley from the southern slope of the Bernese Oberland, and from the northern slope of the Valesian Alps, and at one time also from the eastern slopes of the range of Mont Blanc. And when the large glacier occupying the lower, and therefore warmer, level gradually disappeared and retreated far away to levels where it could maintain itself against the effect of a returning milder climate, the opening spring of our era, as we may call it, the lateral glaciers, arising from the nearer high grounds, could extend across the valleys, but not before.

UNDER THE CLIFF.

"Still ailing, Wind? Wilt be appeased or no?
Which needs the other's office, thou or I?
Dost want to be disburthened of a woe,
And can, in truth, my voice untie
Its links, and let it go?

"Art thou a dumb, wronged thing that would be righted,
Intrusting thus thy cause to me? Forbear!
No tongue can mend such pleadings; faith, requited
With falsehood,--love, at last aware
Of scorn,--hopes, early blighted,--

"We have them; but I know not any tone
So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow:
Dost think men would go mad without a moan,
If they knew any way to borrow
A pathos like thy own?

"Which sigh wouldst mock, of all the sighs? The one
So long escaping from lips starved and blue,
That lasts while on her pallet-bed the nun
Stretches her length; her foot comes through
The straw she shivers on,--

"You had not thought she was so tall; and spent,
Her shrunk lids open; her lean fingers shut
Close, close; their sharp and livid nails indent
The clammy palm; then all is mute:
That way, the spirit went.

"Or wouldst thou rather that I understand
Thy will to help me?--like the dog I found
Once, pacing sad this solitary strand,
Who would not take my food, poor hound,
But whined and licked my hand."

* * * * *

All this, and more, comes from some young man's pride
Of power to see, in failure and mistake,
Relinquishment, disgrace, on every side,
Merely examples for his sake,
Helps to his path untried:

Instances he must--simply recognize?
Oh, more than so!--must, with a learner's zeal,
Make doubly prominent, twice emphasize,
By added touches that reveal
The god in babe's disguise.

Oh, he knows what defeat means, and the rest,
Himself the undefeated that shall be!
Failure, disgrace, he flings them you to test,--
His triumph in eternity
Too plainly manifest!

Whence judge if he learn forthwith what the wind
Means in its moaning,--by the happy, prompt,
Instinctive way of youth, I mean,--for kind
Calm years, exacting their accompt
Of pain, mature the mind:

And some midsummer morning, at the lull
Just about daybreak, as he looks across
A sparkling foreign country, wonderful
To the sea's edge for gloom and gloss
Next minute must annul,--

Then, when the wind begins among the vines,
So low, so low, what shall it mean but this?
"Here is the change beginning, here the lines
Circumscribe beauty, set to bliss
The limit time assigns."

Nothing can be as it has been before;
Better, so call it, only not the same.
To draw one beauty into our hearts' core,
And keep it changeless! such our claim;
So answered,--Never more!

Simple? Why, this is the old woe o' the world,
Tune to whose rise and fall we live and die.
Rise through it, then! Rejoice that man is hurled
From change to change unceasingly,
His soul's wings never furled!

That's a new question; still remains the fact,
Nothing endures: the wind moans, saying so;
We moan in acquiescence: there's life's pact,
Perhaps probation,--do _I_ know?
God does: endure His act!

Only, for man, how bitter not to grave
On his soul's hands' palms one fair, good, wise thing
Just as he grasped it! For himself, death's wave;
While time first washes--ah, the sting!--
O'er all he'd sink to save.

SEVEN WEEKS IN THE GREAT YO-SEMITE.

It is as hard to leave San Francisco as to get there. To a traveller paying his first visit it has the interest of a new planet. It ignores the meteorological laws which govern the rest of the world. There is no snow there. There are no summer showers. The tailor recognizes no aphelion or perihelion in his custom: the thin woollen suit which his patron had made in April is comfortably worn until April again. The only change of stockings there is from wet to dry, or from soiled to clean. Save that in so-called winter frequent rainfalls alternate with spotless intervals of amber weather, and that _soi-disant_ summer is one entire amber mass, its unbroken divine days concrete in it, there is no inequality on which to forbid the banns between May and December. In San Francisco there is no work for the scene-shifter of Nature: the wealth of that great dramatist, the year, resulting in the same manner as the poverty of dabblers in private theatricals,--a single flat doing service for the entire play. Thus, save for the purpose of notes-of-hand, the Almanac of San Francisco might replace its mutable months and seasons with one great kindly, constant, sumptuous All The Year Round.

Out of this benignant sameness what glorious fruits are produced! Fruit enough metaphorical: for the scientific man or artist who cannot make hay while such a sun shines from April to November must be a slothful laborer indeed. But fruit also literal: for what joy of vegetation is lacking to the man who every month in the year can look through his study-window on a green lawn, and have strawberries and cream for his breakfast,--who can sit down to this royal fruit, and at the same time to apricots, peaches, nectarines, blackberries, raspberries, melons, figs both yellow and purple, early apples, and grapes of three kinds?

Another delightful fact of San Francisco is the Occidental Hotel. Its comfort is like that of a royal home. There is nothing inn-ish about it. Remembering the chief hotels of many places, I am constrained to say that I have never, even in New York, seen its equal for elegance of appointment, attentiveness of servants, or excellence of _cuisine_. Having come to this extreme of civilization from the extreme of barbarism, we found that it actually needed an exertion to leap from the lap of luxury, after a fortnight's pleasaunce, and take to the woods again in flannel and corduroys.

But far more seductive than the beautiful bay, the heavenly climate, the paradisiacal fruits, and the royal hotel of San Francisco, were the old friends whom we found, and the new ones we made there. With but one exception, (and that an express-company, not a man,) we were received by all our San-Francisco acquaintance in a kind and helpful manner, with a welcome and a cheer as delightful to ourselves as it was honorable to them. Need I say whose brotherly hands were among the very first outstretched to us, in whose happy home we found our sweetest rest, by whose radiant face and golden speech we were most lovingly detained evening after evening and far into the night? A few days ago when we read that dreadful message, "_Starr King is dead_," the lightning that carried it seemed to end in our hearts. We withered under it; California had lost its soul for us; at noon or in dreams that balmy land would nevermore be the paradise it once was to us. The last hand that pressed our own, when we sailed for the Isthmus on our way home, was the same that had been first to give us our California welcome. Just before the lines were cast off, Starr King stood at the door of our state-room, and said,--

"I could not bear to have you go away without one more good-bye. Here are the _cartes-de-visite_ I promised. They look hard-worked, but they look like me. Good bye! God bless you! I hope to make a visit to the East next summer, and then we will get together somewhere by the sea. Good bye!"

He went down the ladder. When the steamer glided off, his bright face sent benedictions after us as far as we could see; and then, for the last time on earth, that great, that good, that beloved man faded from our sight,--but, oh! never from our hearts, either in the here or the hereafter. "We shall see him, but not now." We shall be together with him "in the summer, by the sea"; but that summer shall have other glory than the sun to lighten it, and the sea shall be of crystal.

King was to have joined us in our Yo-Semite trip. We little knew that we were losing, for this world, our last opportunity of close daily intercourse with his sweet spirit, though we were grievously disappointed when he told us, on the eve of our setting out, that work for the nation must detain him in San Francisco, after all.

If report was true, we were going to the original site of the Garden of Eden,--into a region which out-Bendemered Bendemere, out-valleyed the valley of Rasselas, surpassed the Alps in its waterfalls, and the Himmal'yeh in its precipices. As for the two former subjects of comparison, we never met any tourist who could adjust the question from his own experience; but the superiority of the Yo-Semite to the Alpine cataracts was a matter put beyond doubt by repeated judgments, and a couple of English officers who had explored the wildest Himmal'yeh scenery told Starr King that there was no precipice in Asia to be compared for height or grandeur with Tu-toch-anula and Tis-sa-ack.

We were going into the vale whose giant domes and battlements had months before thrown their photographic shadow through Watkins's camera across the mysterious wide continent, causing exclamations of awe at Goupil's window, and ecstasy in Dr. Holmes's study. At Goupil's counter and in Starr King's drawing-room we had gazed on them by the hour already,--I, let me confess it, half a Thomas-a-Didymus to Nature, unwilling to believe the utmost true of her till I could put my finger in her very prints. Now we were going to test her reported largess for ourselves.

No Saratoga affair, this! A total lack of tall trunks, frills, and curling-kids. Driven by the oestrum of a Yo-Semite pilgrimage, the San-Francisco belle forsakes (the Western vernacular is "goes back on") her back-hair, abandons her capillary "waterfalls" for those of the Sierra, and, like John Phoenix's old lady who had her whole osseous system removed by the patent tooth-puller, departs, leaving her "skeleton" behind her. The bachelor who cares to see unhooped womanhood once more before he dies should go to the Yo-Semite. The scene was three or four times presented to us during our seven weeks' camp there,--though the trip is one which might well cost a feeble woman her life.

Our male preparations were of the most pioneer description. One wintry day since my return I was riding in a train on the New-York Central, when an undaunted herdsman, returning Westward, flushed with the sale of beeves, accosted me with the question,--"Friend, yeou've travelled consid'able, and believe in the religion of Natur', don't ye?" "Why so?" I responded. "_Them boots_," replied my new acquaintance, pointing at a pair with high knee-caps, like those our party wore to the Yo-Semite. Otherwise, we took the oldest clothes we had,--and it is not difficult to find that variety in the trunk of a recent overland stager. We were armed with Ballard rifles, shot-guns, and Colt's revolvers which had come with us across the continent; our ammunition we got in San Francisco, together with all such commissariat-luxuries as were worth transportation: our necessaries we left to be purchased at that jumping-off place of civilization, Mariposa, whence we were to start our pack-mules into the wilderness. Let me recommend tourists like ourselves to include in the former catalogue plenty of canned fruits, sardines, and apple-butter,--in the latter, a jug of sirup for the inevitable camp slapjacks. No woodsman, as will presently appear in our narrative, can tell when a slapjack may be the last plank between him and starvation; and to this plank how powerfully sirup enables him to stick!

The only portion of our outfit which would have pleased an exquisite (and he must be rather of the Count-Devereux than the Foppington-Flutter school) was our horseflesh. That greatest of luxuries, a really good saddle-animal, is readily and reasonably attainable in California. Everybody rides there; if you wish to create a sensation with your horsemanship in the streets of San Francisco, you must ride ill, not well: everybody does this last. Even since the horse-railroad has begun to clutter Montgomery Street (the San-Franciscan Boulevards) with its cars, it is a daily matter to see capitalists and statesmen charging through that thoroughfare on a gallop, which, if repeated in Broadway by Henry G. Stebbins, would cost him his reputation on 'Change and his seat in the next Congress. The nation of beggars-on-horseback which first colonized California has left behind it many traditions unworthy of conservation, and multitudinous fleas not at all traditional, but even less keepworthy; but all honor be to the Spaniards, Greasers, and Mixed-Breeds for having rooted the noble idea of horsemanship so firmly in the country that even street-railroads cannot uproot it, and that Americans who never sat even so little as an Atlantic-State's pony, on coming here presently take to the saddle with all their hearts. In most of the smaller Californian towns, a very serviceable half- or quarter-breed saddle-horse is to be had for forty dollars,--the "breed" portion of his blood being drawn from an Eastern stallion, the remaining fraction being native or Mustang stock. This animal, if need be, will live on road-side croppings nearly as well as a mule,--travel all day long on an easy "lope," never offering to stop till fatigue makes him fall,--and, if you let him, will take you through _chaparrals_, and up and down precipices at whose bare suggestion an Eastern horse would break his legs. Our party, seeking rather more ambitious mounts, supplied itself, after a tour through the San-Francisco stables, with saddle-animals at an average of seventy dollars apiece. This, payable in gold, then amounted to one hundred dollars in notes; but the New-York market could not have furnished us with such horses for one hundred and fifty dollars.

It may seem as if, like most cavalcades, we should never get started, but I must linger a moment to do justice to our accoutrements. If there be a more perfect saddle than the Californian, I would ride bare-back a good way to get it. Anything more unlike the slippery little pad on which we of the East amble about parks and suburban roads cannot be imagined. It is not for a day, but for all time, and for those who spend nearly the latter in it. Its wooden skeleton is as scientifically fitted to the rider's form as an old "_incroyable's_" pair of pantaloons. There is no such thing as getting tired in or of it. Rising to the lower lumbar vertebrae behind, and in front terminating gracefully in a broad-topped pommel, it enables one to lean back in descending, forward in climbing, the great ridges on the path of California travel,--thus affording capital relief both to one's self and one's horse, and bringing in both from a fifty-miles' march comparatively unjaded.

The stirrups of this saddle are broad hickory hoops, shaped nearly like an Omega upside-down (U)[Transcriber's note: upside down Omega], left unpolished so as to afford the most unshakable footing, covered with a half-shoe of the stoutest leather, which renders it impossible for the toe to slip through or the ankle to foul under any circumstances. Attached to the straps from which these swing is a wide and neatly ornamented stirrup-leather, which effectually prevents the grazing of the rider's leg. The surcingle, or, _Californicè_, the _cinch_, is a broad strip of hair-cloth with a padded ring at either end through which you reeve and fasten with a half-hitch stout straps sewed to other rings under the saddle-flaps. This arrangement is not only far securer than our Eastern buckle, but enables you to graduate the tightness of your girth much more delicately, and make a far snugger fit.

The only particular in which I could not commend and adopt the native practice was the Mexican bit. It is a dreadful instrument of torture, putting immense leverage in the rider's hands, and enabling him at will to tear the mouth of his horse to pieces; indeed, the horse on which it is used is guided entirely by pressure on the opposite side of the neck from that in which one seeks to turn him. Our Eastern way of drawing his head around would so lift the bit as to drive him frantic. There are very few horses of any breed, even the Mustang, that _never_ stumble; and as I prefer lifting my horse to letting him break his knees or neck, I want a bridle I can pull upon without tearing his mouth. So, in spite of its handsome appearance and the very manageable single white cord into which its two reins are braided, I eschewed the Mexican head-gear, and took the ordinary Eastern snaffle and curb. Immense spurs completed our accoutrement,--whips being here unknown.

I may as well make a word-map of our route before going farther. Pilgrims to the Yo-Semite ship themselves and their horses from San Francisco by steamer to Stockton. This town is on the San Joaquin, the most northerly of a series of rivers fed directly from the Sierra Nevada water-shed, and here through the middle portion of the State,--a series, indeed, continued through much of the still lower Pacific coast to the Isthmus of Nicaragua. The Sacramento drains quite a different region, that of the broad plains between the Sierra and Coast ranges, occupying the northern portion of the State,--resembling in its physical features, much more than any of the Pacific streams beside, the large isolated trunks which drain the east slope of the Alleghanies. The Colorado is almost the only other large river created from many tributaries, which debouches between the Columbia and the Isthmus,--and that rises east of the mathematical axis of the Rocky Mountains. The Yo-Semite valley is one of the cradles through which the short Sierra-draining rivers reach the ocean; its threading stream is the Merced; and if on any good United-States Survey-map you will please to follow that river back to the mountains, when your finger-nail touches the Sierra it will be (or would, were the maps somewhat correcter) in the Great Yo-Semite. You will then see that our course led us across three streams, after leaving the San Joaquin at Stockton _en route_ for Mariposa,--the Stanislaus, the Tuolomne, and the Main Merced. The distance from Stockton to Mariposa is about one hundred miles, a small part of the way between fenced ranches, a much greater part on wide, open, rolling plains, somewhat like those of Nebraska, embraced between the two great ranges of the State. Here and there you find an isolated herdsman or a small settlement dropped down in this not unfruitful waste, and thrice you come to a hybrid town, with a Spanish _plaza_, and Yankee notions sold around it. We went the distance leisurely, consuming four days to Mariposa, for we stopped here and there to sketch, "peep, and botanize"; besides, we were dragging with us a Jersey wagon, bought second-hand in Stockton, in which we carried our heavier outfit till we should get our extra pack-beasts at Mariposa, and to which we had harnessed for their first time an implacable white mule with an incapable white horse, to neither of which each other's society or their own new trade was congenial.

I shall not linger here as we did there. To an ornithologist the whole road is interesting,--especially to one making a specialty of owls. The only game within easy reach is the dove and the California ground-squirrel,--a big fellow, much like our Northeastern gray, barring the former's subterranean habits. On the plains threaded by the road the pasture is good, save in the extremest drought of summer, when the great herds which usually feed at large on and between the river-bottoms are driven to the rich green grass in the high valleys of the Sierra,--or ought to be: many cattle died along the San Joaquin last summer for want of this care. Occasionally the road winds through the refreshing shadow of a grove of live-oaks, standing far from any water on a sandy knoll. But the most magnificent trees of the oak family that I ever beheld were growing on the banks of the Tuolomne River, where we forded it at Roberts's Ferry. They were not merely in dimension superior to the finest white-oaks of the East, but surpassed in beauty every tradition of their genus. Their vast gnarled branches followed as exquisite curves as belong to any elm on a New-England meadow, and wept at the extremities like those of that else matchless tree,--possessing, moreover, a sumptuous affluence of leafage, an arboreal _embonpoint_, unknown to their graceful sister of our lowlands. Be sure that we lingered long among their shadows with book and pencil, and look for a desirable acquaintance with new Dryads when they grow into the life of color from our artists' hands.

At Princeton, a thriving suburb of Mariposa, we completed our cavalcade of pack-animals, transferred our wagon-load to their backs, (the average mule-pack weighs from two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds,) roped it there in the most approved _muletero_-fashion, and started into the wilderness.

Let us call the roll. Beside Bierstadt and the two other gentlemen who with myself had formed the original overland-party, we numbered two young artists of great merit now sojourning for a short time in California, Williams, an old Roman, and Perry, an ancient Düsseldorf friend,--also a highly scientific metallurgist and physicist generally, Dr. John Hewston of San Francisco.

To serve the party we secured a man and a boy. Regarding the former, perhaps the more truthful assertion would be that he secured us; for, as will shortly appear, though we bought his services, he sold us in return. We picked him up in a San-Francisco employment-office, after looking all over the city for a respectable groom and camp-cook, and finding that in a scarce-labor country like California even fifty gold dollars per month, with keep and expenses, were no sufficient bait for the catch we wanted. He was a meagre, wiry fellow, with sandy hair, serviceable-looking hands, and no end to self-recommendations; but then it was impossible to ask after him at his "last place," that having been General Johnston's camp during Buchanan's forcible-feeble occupation of Utah. As he said he had been a teamster, and knew that soup-meat went into cold water, we rushed blindly into an engagement with him, marriage-service fashion, and took him for better or worse. The thing which I think finally "fired our Northern hearts" and clinched the matter was his assertion of nephewship to the Secession Governor Vance, whose name he bore, combined with unswerving personal loyalty. Lest by some future D'Israeli this be written down among the traditional greennesses of learned men, let me say that he was our _pis-aller_,--we finding ourselves within two hours of the Stockton boat, with nobody to help pack our mules or care for them and the horses.

The boy we obtained near Mariposa. He was an independent squire to the man of whom we got the extra animals, and accompanied them as a sort of trustee and _prochein amy_ to an orphan family of mules. At fifteen years and in jackets, he was one of the keenest speculators in fire-arms I ever saw; could swap horses or play poker with anybody; and, take him for all in all, in the Eastern States, at least, I shall never look upon his like again.