Passing a little way down over the summit until I had reached an
elevation of about 10,000 feet, I pushed on southward toward a group of
savage peaks that stand guard about Ritter on the north and west,
groping my way, and dealing instinctively with every obstacle as it
presented itself. Here a huge gorge would be found cutting across my
path, along the dizzy edge of which I scrambled until some less
precipitous point was discovered where I might safely venture to the
bottom and then, selecting some feasible portion of the opposite wall,
reascend with the same slow caution. Massive, flat-topped spurs
alternate with the gorges, plunging abruptly from the shoulders of the
snowy peaks, and planting their feet in the warm desert. These were
everywhere marked and adorned with characteristic sculptures of the
ancient glaciers that swept over this entire region like one vast
ice-wind, and the polished surfaces produced by the ponderous flood are
still so perfectly preserved that in many places the sunlight reflected
from them is about as trying to the eyes as sheets of snow.
God's glacial-mills grind slowly, but they have been kept in motion long
enough in California to grind sufficient soil for a glorious abundance
of life, though most of the grist has been carried to the lowlands,
leaving these high regions comparatively lean and bare; while the
post-glacial agents of erosion have not yet furnished sufficient
available food over the general surface for more than a few tufts of the
hardiest plants, chiefly carices and eriogonae.
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