, the South Fork with fifteen, and Cascade Creek with five, both of
which unite with the main trunk below Yosemite.
[Illustration: LAKE TENAYA, ONE OF THE YOSEMITE FOUNTAINS.]
The Merced River, as a whole, is remarkably like an elm-tree, and it
requires but little effort on the part of the imagination to picture it
standing upright, with all its lakes hanging upon its spreading
branches, the topmost eighty miles in height. Now add all the other
lake-bearing rivers of the Sierra, each in its place, and you will have
a truly glorious spectacle,--an avenue the length and width of the
range; the long, slender, gray shafts of the main trunks, the milky way
of arching branches, and the silvery lakes, all clearly defined and
shining on the sky. How excitedly such an addition to the scenery would
be gazed at! Yet these lakeful rivers are still more excitingly
beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to those who have
the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in their meadows and forests
and glacier-sculptured rocks.
When a mountain lake is born,--when, like a young eye, it first opens to
the light,--it is an irregular, expressionless crescent, inclosed in
banks of rock and ice,--bare, glaciated rock on the lower side, the
rugged snout of a glacier on the upper.
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