the earth, large fissures and crevasses may have occurred, and that
Yosemite and kindred valleys may be the result of the action of
water and ice in enlarging these original chasms. Little wonder that
the earlier geologists, such as Whitney, were led to attribute the
exceptional character of these valleys to exceptional and
extraordinary agents--to sudden faulting or dislocation of the
earth's crust. But geologists are becoming more and more loath to
call in the cataclysmal to explain any feature of the topography of
the land. Not to the thunder or the lightning, to earthquake or
volcano, to the forces of upheaval or dislocation, but to the still,
small voice of the rain and the winds, of the frost and the
snow,--the gentle forces now and here active all about us, carving
the valleys and reducing the mountains, and changing the courses of
rivers,--to these, as Lyell taught us, we are to look in nine cases
out of ten, yes, in ninety-nine out of a hundred, to account for the
configuration of the continents.

The geologists of our day, while not agreeing as to the amount of
work done respectively by ice and water, yet agree that to the
latter the larger proportion of the excavation is to be ascribed. At
any rate between them both they have turned out one of the most
beautiful and stupendous pieces of mountain carving to be found upon
the earth.






IV