Looking southward along the axis of the range, the eye is first caught
by a row of exceedingly sharp and slender spires, which rise openly to a
height of about a thousand feet, above a series of short, residual
glaciers that lean back against their bases; their fantastic sculpture
and the unrelieved sharpness with which they spring out of the ice
rendering them peculiarly wild and striking. These are "The Minarets."
Beyond them you behold a sublime wilderness of mountains, their snowy
summits towering together in crowded abundance, peak beyond peak,
swelling higher, higher as they sweep on southward, until the
culminating point of the range is reached on Mount Whitney, near the
head of the Kern River, at an elevation of nearly 14,700 feet above the
level of the sea.
Westward, the general flank of the range is seen flowing sublimely away
from the sharp summits, in smooth undulations; a sea of huge gray
granite waves dotted with lakes and meadows, and fluted with stupendous
canons that grow steadily deeper as they recede in the distance. Below
this gray region lies the dark forest zone, broken here and there by
upswelling ridges and domes; and yet beyond lies a yellow, hazy belt,
marking the broad plain of the San Joaquin, bounded on its farther side
by the blue mountains of the coast.
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