Uinta Mountains

“ The Uinta Mountains are storm carved from an immense uplifted block. The mountains of the Cañon Lands are isolated and volcanic. In the High Plateaus sedimentary beds are covered by vast sheets of lava. The sedimentary beds exposed in the mountains of the Desert region are of Paleozoic age, and many crystalline schists appear, while the sedimentary beds exposed in the valleys are Post-Tertiary. The crystalline schists and ancient sedimentaries of the mountains are often extensive masses of extravasated rocks. ”

“ Our fears are soon allayed, for we find it all right. Our chronometer wheels are not taken for hair ornaments; our barometer tubes, for beads; nor the sextant thrown into the river as “bad medicine,” as had been predicted.
Taking up our cache, we pass down to the foot of the Uinta Mountains, and, in a cold storm, go into camp.
The river is running to the south; the mountains have an easterly and westerly trend directly athwart its course, yet it glides [35] on in a quiet way as if it thought a mountain range no formidable obstruction to its course. ”

“ All the features of the Uinta range, instead, point to upward pressure as the form of mountain-building energy to which its elevation was due. It is very important, however, to note that the process of the Uinta elevation was so gradual and slow that the rivers which flowed across the area before its upheaval were not turned aside, being able to cut down their channels, which in the heart of the mountains are precipitous, narrow canons, as fast as the elevation progressed. ”

“ The highest point on the wall is at Dunn’s Cliff, near Triplet Falls, where the rocks reach an altitude of 2,700 feet, but the peaks a little way back rise nearly a thousand feet higher. Yellow pines, nut pines, firs, and cedars stand in extensive forests on the Uinta Mountains, and, clinging to the rocks and growing in the crevices, come down the walls to the water’s edge from Flaming Gorge to Echo [82] Park. The red sandstones are lichened over; delicate mosses grow in the moist places, and ferns festoon the walls. ”

“ Fig. 2.—Northern Slope of the Uinta Mountains, showing Red's Canyon and Hog's Back with Intervening Valleys.
show that this explanation is unsatisfactory. The proof is abundant that the river cut its own channel; that the cañons are gorges of corrasion. Again, the question returns to us, Why did not the stream turn around this great obstruction, rather than pass through it? The answer is, that the river had the right of way ”

“ Uyuni is intensely cold, lying, as the town does, at an altitude of 12,100 feet under the snow mountains which send down their icy breath, and on the salt plains which, when the rays of the sun are off them, are scarcely less chilling. The legend told every newcomer is of going to bed with a bottle of hot water to keep the feet warm, and waking up to find the glass in fragments and the ice retaining the perfect form of the bottle. ”

“ The line is not, however, as might be expected from analogy with the Himalayan, a continuous unbroken chain; it consists of insulated mountains, apparently volcanic, rising from elevated plains, and sometimes connected by barren and broken ridges. The south-eastern threshold of the Lunar cordillera is the highland region of Usumbara, which may attain the height of 3000 or 4000 feet above sea-level. It leads by a succession of mountain and valley to Chhaga, whose apex is the “Æthiopian Olympus,” Kilima-Ngao. ”

“ Higher up, on the same river, is another group of rather less height. On the Uaupés are numerous hills, some conical, others dome-shaped, but all keeping the same character of abrupt elevations, quite independent of the general profile of the country. About the falls of the river Uaupés there are small hills of granite, broken about in the greatest confusion. Great chasms or bowls occur, and slender pillars of rock rise up like dead trunks out of the surrounding forest. Up the river Isanna, the Tunuhy mountains are a similar isolated group. ”

“ Beyond the broad valley rose ridge after ridge, separated from each other by deep parallel basins or valleys, and behind these, receding into dim and vague outlines, towered loftier ridges. About sixty miles off, to the northwest, rose a colossal sugar-loaf clump of enormous altitude, which I was told was the Ufumbiro Mountains. From their northern base extended Mpororo country and South Ruanda. ”

“ The general view from the summit consists of a sublime assemblage of ice-born rocks and mountains, long wavering ridges, meadows, lakes, and forest-covered moraines, hundreds of square miles of them. The lofty summit-peaks rise grandly along the sky to the east, the gray pillared slopes of the Hoffman Range toward the west, and a billowy sea of shining rocks like the Monument, some of them almost as high and which from their peculiar sculpture seem to be rolling westward in the middle ground, something like breaking waves. ”

“ As we ascend right up the glacier—either the one coming down from the Mustagh Pass or the one to the east running parallel with the general line of the Karakoram Range—we feel not only far away from but also high above the rest of the world. And we seem to have risen to an altogether purer region. Especially if we sleep in the open, without any tent, with the mountains always before us, with the stars twinkling brightly above us, do we have this sense of having ascended to a loftier and serener world. ”

“ Rising out of the bed of the Urigi, we passed over a low spur of beef-sandwich clay sandstones, and descended into the close, rich valley of Uthenga, bound in by steep hills hanging over us more than a thousand feet high, as prettily clothed as the mountains of Scotland ”

“ The interminable reaches, broken only by the level uplands marked from the plain by their perpendicular walls, and the Wichita Mountains, as faint and unsubstantial to the eye as curved images of smoke against the sky—these dreary monotonies and remotenesses naturally oppress the traveler with a sense of his insignificance. ”

“ Tremendous green precipices fell away to the white rapids of the Urubamba below. Immediately in front, on the north side of the valley, was a great granite cliff rising 2000 feet sheer. To the left was the solitary peak of Huayna Picchu, surrounded by seemingly inaccessible precipices. On all sides were rocky cliffs. Beyond them cloud-capped mountains rose thousands of feet above us.
The Indians said there were two paths to the outside world. ”

“ Standing here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless, as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the plains. ”

“ On reaching the summit the traveller beholds a wide, diversified, and striking prospect. From the foaming river-bed rise wood-crowned hills, while beyond the western shore of the Orinoco the eye rests on the boundless grassy plain of the Meta, uninterrupted save where at one part of the horizon the Mountain of Uniama rises like a threatening cloud. ”

“ You will see by the above sketch that Yosemite was completely overwhelmed with glaciers, and they did not come squeezing, groping down to the main valley by the narrow, angular, tortuous canyons of the Ten-ie-ya, Nevada or South canyons, but they flowed grandly and directly above all of its highest domes, like a steady wind, while their lower currents went mazing and swedging down in the crooking and dome-blocked channels of canyons.
“Glaciers have made every mountain form of this whole region; even the summit mountains are only fragments of their pre-glacial selves. ”

“ High mountain-ranges and broad and frigid deserts, swept by fierce, cold winds, are not the sole obstacles to intercommunication in the Altos of Peru, and among those snow-crowned monarchs of the Andes and Cordilleras. There are deep valleys, gorges, and ravines among the mountains, or cut deep in the plains that alternate with them, in which flow swelling rivers or rapid torrents, fed by the melting snows in the dry season, and swollen by the rains in the wet season. They are often unfordable, but still they must somehow be passed by the traveller. ”

“ One of the very finest of the thousands I have enjoyed lies hidden in an extensive forest of the Two-leaved Pine, on the edge of the basin of the ancient Tuolumne Mer de Glace, about eight miles to the west of Mount Dana.
Imagine yourself at the Tuolumne Soda Springs on the bank of the river, a day's journey above Yosemite Valley. You set off northward through a forest that stretches away indefinitely before you, seemingly unbroken by openings of any kind. As soon as you are fairly into the woods, the gray mountain-peaks, with their snowy gorges and hollows, are lost to view. ”

“ From Central Zungomero to the nearest ascent of the Usagara Mountains is a march of five hours; and, after a painful and troublesome journey, we arrived at the frontier of the first gradient of the Usagara Mountains. Here we found a tattered kraal, erected by the last passing caravan, and, spent with fatigue, we threw ourselves on the short grass to rest. We were now about three hundred feet above the plain level, and there was a wondrous change of climate. Strength and health returned as if by magic; the pure sweet mountain air, alternately soft and balmy, put new life into us. ”

“ In Utah some of these have been lifted up so that heavy caps of lava now form isolated sheets topping lofty plateaus. There the lowland shepherds drive their sheep in summer and live in absolute isolation for months at a time. There, as everywhere, the cordillera bears the marks of mountains in the making, while the mountains of eastern America bear the marks of those that were made when the world was young. ”

“ A serious impediment to the construction is the narrow gorge through the mountains, impracticable even for a pedestrian; yet the difficulty will soon be overcome. After ten miles on the desert the road passes near sugar plantations and haciendas. The region of coal deposits follows, extending through 56the mountain range and up the two lateral valleys beyond, the north in the direction of Cajamarca, the south, the Huailas Valley, to Recuay. The passage of the sombre gorge will be along the side of splendid cliffs with a foaming stream below, a continuous spectacle of superb grandeur. ”

“ From Aurora my road, still parallel with the mountains, though now hidden from them by banks of volcanic hills, climbed a long, wearisome slope from whose summit a glorious panorama of snowy Sierras lay before us. From our feet, steep declivities fell two thousand feet to the level of a wide desert basin, bounded upon the west by long ranks of high, white peaks, and otherwise walled in by chains of volcanic hills, smooth with dull sage flanks, and yet varied here and there by outcropping formations of eruptive rocks and dusky cedar forests. ”

“ It has been asserted that mountaineers are fairer than lowlanders in the same latitude. This is generally the case, but there are some striking exceptions to the rule. The natives of the Mexican plateaus are as brown as those of the coast, and the Aymaras and Quichuas of the Peruvian Andes are darker than the Yuracaras of the forests to the east. The inhabitants of the Altai Mountains are yellow; those of the plains of European Russia, at the same distance from the equator, white. ”

“ Then, after their grand task was done, these bands of snow-flowers, these mighty glaciers, were melted and removed as if of no more importance than dew destined to last but an hour. Few, however, of Nature’s agents have left monuments so noble and enduring as they. The great granite domes a mile high, the cañons as deep, the noble peaks, the Yosemite valleys, these, and indeed nearly all other features of the Sierra scenery, are glacier monuments. ”

“ A long valley with a very small gradient extends nearly across its breadth; and the rivers are for the most part tidal estuaries fed, except in one or two cases, by insignificant streams. There is, however, a lofty range of ridge-mountains in its broadest part attaining a height of 2,500 feet; whilst away to the east stretches the great Undu Promontory singular for the straightness of its form.
Volcanic rocks of acid types, such as oligoclase-trachytes, quartz-porphyries, and white pumice-tuffs prevail in the northern part between Undu Point and the promontory opposite Mali Island. ”

“ But before I come to the scenery, let a few words be said upon the mountains from the climber's point of view, as offering a field for his energy and skill.
The Andes are not only a longer and loftier chain than any of those just named, except the Himalayas, but are altogether on a vaster scale, the plateaux higher and wider, the valleys longer and deeper. Thus they bear what one may call a different ratio to man,—that is to say, his power of walking and climbing enables him to accomplish less in a given time in these two greater than in the lesser ranges. ”

“ First there were the plains, represented by a brown haze of heat; then, very remote, the foot-hills, the brush-hills, the pine mountains, the upper timber, the tremendous granite peaks, and finally the barrier of the main crest with its glittering snow. From the plains to that crest was over seventy miles. I should not dare say how far we could see down the length of the range; nor even how distant was the other wall of the cañon over which we rode. Certainly it was many miles; and to reach the latter point consumed three days.
It is useless to multiply instances. ”