Its
original length was about a mile and a half; now it is only half a mile
in length by about a fourth of a mile in width, and over the lowest
portion of the basin ninety-eight feet deep. Its crystal waters are
clasped around on the north and south by majestic granite walls
sculptured in true Yosemitic style into domes, gables, and battlemented
headlands, which on the south come plunging down sheer into deep water,
from a height of from 1500 to 2000 feet. The South Lyell glacier eroded
this magnificent basin out of solid porphyritic granite while forcing
its way westward from the summit fountains toward Yosemite, and the
exposed rocks around the shores, and the projecting bosses of the walls,
ground and burnished beneath the vast ice-flood, still glow with silvery
radiance, notwithstanding the innumerable corroding storms that have
fallen upon them. The general conformation of the basin, as well as the
moraines laid along the top of the walls, and the grooves and scratches
on the bottom and sides, indicate in the most unmistakable manner the
direction pursued by this mighty ice-river, its great depth, and the
tremendous energy it exerted in thrusting itself into and out of the
basin; bearing down with superior pressure upon this portion of its
channel, because of the greater declivity, consequently eroding it
deeper than the other portions about it, and producing the lake-bowl as
the necessary result.
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