Very many years ago, at the foot of a nameless peak between Mount Ritter and Togobah, after three successive years of deep snow there was a glacier¹ born. It crept out fanwise from a furrow² on the mountain-side, very high up, above the limit of the white-barked pines, and its upper end was lost under the drift of loose snow that trailed down the slope. For three successive winters the gray veil of storms hung month-long about the crest⁴ of the Sierras, while the snow came falling, falling, and the wind kept heaping, heaping, until the drifts sagged⁵ and slipped of their own weight down the long groove⁶ of the mountain; and since it lay on the sunless northern slope, and as it happened the summers that came between fell cool and rainy, there, when the spring thaw⁷ had cleared the loose snow, spread out on a little stony⁸ flat lay the rim⁹ of the glacier. Yet it was a very little one, a rod or two of clear shining ice that ran into deep blue and gray sludge under a drift of coarse, whitish granules, and very high up, fine dry particles of snow like powdered glass. So it lay at the time of year when the mountain sheep began to come back to their summer feeding-grounds.