After the splendid blessing, the afternoon was veiled in calm clouds, and
one of intensely beautiful pattern and gorgeously _irised_ was stationed
over Eagle Rock at the sunset.

Farewell. I’ll see you with my common eyes, and touch you with these
very writing fingers ere long.

Remember me cordially to Mrs. Moore and Mr. and all your family, and I
am as ever

  Your friend,
  JOHN MUIR.

  Yosemite Valley,
  September 13, 1872.

Yours of Aug. 23rd is received. Le Conte writes me that Agassiz will
not come to the valley.

I just got down last evening from a fifteen-day ramble in the basins
of Illilouette and Pohono, and start again in an hour for the summit
glaciers to see some cañons and to examine the stakes I planted in the
ice a month ago.

I would like to come down to see Agassiz, but now is my harvest of rocks
and I cannot spare the time.

I shall work in the outer mountains incessantly until the coming of the
snow [rest of letter missing].

  Yosemite Valley,
  October 8th, 1872.

Here we are again, and here is your letter of Sept. 24th. I got down last
evening, and boo! was I not weary after pushing through the rough upper
half of the great Tuolumne Cañon? I have climbed more than twenty-four
thousand feet in these ten days, three times to the top of the glacieret
of Mt. Hoffman, and once to Mts. Lyell and McClure. I have bagged a
quantity of Tuolumne rocks sufficient to build a dozen Yosemites; stripes
of cascades longer than ever, lacy or smooth and white as pressed snow;
a glacier basin with ten glassy lakes set all near together like eggs
in a nest; then El Capitan and a couple of Tissiacks, cañons glorious
with yellows and reds of mountain maple and aspen and honeysuckle and
ash and new indescribable music immeasurable from strange waters and
winds, and glaciers, too, flowing and grinding, alive as any on earth.
Shall I pull you out some? Here is a clean, white-skinned glacier from
the back of McClure with glassy emerald flesh and singing crystal blood
all bright and pure as a sky, yet handling mud and stone like a navvy,
building moraines like a plodding Irishman. Here is a cascade two hundred
feet wide, half a mile long, glancing this way and that, filled with
bounce and dance and joyous hurrah, yet earnest as tempest, and singing
like angels loose on a frolic from heaven; and here are more cascades
and more, broad and flat like clouds and fringed like flowing hair, with
occasional falls erect as pines, and lakes like glowing eyes; and here
are visions and dreams, and a splendid set of ghosts, too many for ink
and narrow paper.

I have not heard anything concerning Le Conte’s glacier lecture, but
he seems to have drawn all he knows of Sierra glaciers and new theories
concerning them so directly from here that I cannot think that he will
claim discovery, etc. If he does, I will not be made poorer.

Professor Kneeland, Secretary Boston Institute of Technology, gathered
some letters I sent to Runkle and that “Tribune” letter, and hashed them
into a compost called a paper for the Boston Historical Society, and
gave me credit for all of the smaller sayings and doings and stole the
broadest truth to himself. I have the proof-sheets of “The Paper” and
will show them to you some time. But all of such meanness can work no
permanent evil to any one except the dealer.

As for the living “glaciers of the Sierras,” here is what I have learned
concerning them. You will have the first chance to steal, for I have
just concluded my experiments on them for the season and have not yet
cast them at any of the great professors, or presidents.

One of the yellow days of last October, when I was among the mountains
of the “Merced Group,” following the footprints of the ancient glaciers
that once flowed grandly from their ample fountains, reading what I could
of their history as written in moraines and cañons and lakes and carved
rocks, I came upon a small stream that was carrying mud I had not before
seen. In a calm place where the stream widened I collected some of this
mud and observed that it was entirely mineral in composition and fine
as flour, like the mud from a fine-grit grindstone. Before I had time
to reason I said, Glacier mud, mountain meal.

Then I observed that this muddy stream issued from a bank of fresh
quarried stones and dirt that was sixty or seventy feet in height. This I
at once took to be a moraine. In climbing to the top of it I was struck
with the steepness of its slope and with its raw, unsettled, plantless,
newborn appearance. The slightest touch started blocks of red and black
slate, followed by a rattling train of smaller stones and sand and
a cloud of the dry dust of mud, the whole moraine being as free from
lichens and weather stains as if dug from the mountain that very day.

When I had scrambled to the top of the moraine, I saw what seemed a huge
snow-bank four or five hundred yards in length by half a mile in width.
Imbedded in its stained and furrowed surface were stones and dirt like
that of which the moraine was built. Dirt-stained lines curved across
the snow-bank from side to side, and when I observed that these curved
lines coincided with the curved moraine and that the stones and dirt
were most abundant near the bottom of the bank, I shouted, “A living
glacier.” These bent dirt lines show that the ice is flowing in its
different parts with unequal velocity, and these embedded stones are
journeying down to be built into the moraine, and they gradually become
more abundant as they approach the moraine because there the motion is
slower.

On traversing my new-found glacier, I came to a crevass, down a wide and
jagged portion of which I succeeded in making my way, and discovered that
my so-called _snow-bank_ was clear green ice, and, comparing the form
of the basin which it occupied with similar adjacent basins that were
empty, I was led to the opinion that this glacier was several hundred
feet in depth.

Then I went to the “snow-banks” of Mts. Lyell and McClure and believed
that they also were true glaciers and that a dozen other snow-banks seen
from the summit of Mt. Lyell crouching in shadow were glaciers, living
as any in the world and busily engaged in completing that vast work of
mountain-making, accomplished by their giant relatives now dead, which,
united and continuous, covered all the range from summit to sea like a
sky.

I’m going to take your painter boys with me into one of my best sanctums
on your recommendation for holiness.

Emerson has sent me a profound little book styled “The Growth of the
Mind,” by Reed. Do you know it? It is full of the fountain truth.

I’m glad your boys are safely back. Perhaps Ned and I may try that Andes
field together.

I would write to Mrs. Moore but will wait until she is better. Tell her
the cascades and mountains of upper Hetch Hetchy [    ].

I hope I may see you a few days soon. I had a pretty letter from old
Dr. Torrey, and from Gray I have heard three or four times. I am ever

  Cordially.

  Yosemite, October 14th, [1872.]

I cannot hear from you. There are some souls, perhaps, that are never
tired, that ever go steadily glad, always tuneful and songful like
mountain water. Not so, weary, hungry me. This second time I come from
the rocks for fresh supplies of the two breads, but I find but one. I
cannot hear from you. My last weeks were spent among the cañons of the
Hoffman range and the Cathedral Peak group east of Lake Tenaya. All
gloriously rich in the written truths which I am seeking. I will now go
to the wide, ragged tributaries of Illilouette and to Pohono, after which
I will mope about among the rim cañons and rock forms of the valley as
the weather permits.

Perhaps I have not yet answered all of your last long pages. Here is a
quotation from Tyndall concerning the nature and origin of his intense
mountain enjoyments. He reaches far and near for a theory of his delight
in the mountains, going among the accidents of his own boyhood and those
of his remotest fathers, but surely this must be all wrong, and, instead
of groping away backwards among the various grades of grandfathers, he
should explore the most primary properties of man. Perhaps we owe “the
pleasurable emotions which fine landscape makes in us” to a cause as
radical as that which makes a magnet pulse to the two poles. I think that
one of the _properties_ of that compound which we call man is that when
exposed to the rays of mountain beauty it glows with _joy_. I don’t know
who of all my ancestry are to blame, but my attractions and repulsions
are badly balanced to-night and I will not try to say any more, excepting
farewell and love to you all.

  JOHN MUIR.

  [1872 or 1873.]

  [Beginning of letter missing.]

although I was myself fully satisfied concerning the real nature of
these ice-masses. I found that my friends regarded my deductions and
statements with distrust, therefore I determined to collect proofs of
the common measured arithmetical kind.

On the 21st of Aug. last I planted five stakes in the glacier of Mt.
McClure, which is situated east of Yosemite Valley, near the summit of
the range. Four of these stakes were extended across the middle of the
glacier. The first stake was planted about 25 yds. from the east bank
of the glacier. The second 94 yards, the third 152, and the fourth 223
yards. The positions of these stakes were determined by sighting across
from bank to bank past a plumbline made of a stone and a black horsehair.

On observing my stakes on the 6th of Oct., or in 46 days after being
planted, I found that stake No. 1 had been carried down stream 11 inches;
No. 2, 18 inches; No. 3, 34; No. 4, 47 inches. As stake No. 4 was near
the middle of the glacier, perhaps it was not far from the point of
maximum velocity, 47 inches in 46 days, or 1 inch per day. Stake No. 5
was planted about midway between the head of the glacier and stake No.
[    ]. Its motion I found to be in 46 days 40 inches.

Thus these ice-masses are seen to possess the true glacial motion. Their
surfaces are striped with bent dirt bands. Their surfaces are bulged
and undulated by inequalities in the bottom of their basins, causing an
upward and downward swedging corresponding to the horizontal swedging
as indicated by the curved dirt bands.

The McClure Glacier is about half a mile in length and about the same in
width at the broadest place. It is crevassed on the southeast corner.
The crevass runs about southwest and northeast and is several hundred
yards in length. Its width is nowhere more than one foot.

The Mt. Lyell Glacier, separated from that of McClure by a narrow crest,
is about a mile in width by a mile in length.

I have planted stakes in the glacier of Red Mountains also but have not
yet observed them.

  [No date.]

  [Beginning of letter missing.]

In going up any of the principal Yosemite streams, lakes in all stages
of decay are found in great abundance, regularly becoming younger until
we reach the almost countless gems of the summits with scarce an inch
of carex upon their shallow, sandy borders and with their bottoms still
bright with the polish of ice. Upon the Nevada and its branches there
are not fewer than a hundred of these glacial lakes from a mile to a
hundred yards in diameter with countless glistening pondlets not much
larger than moons.

All of the grand fir forests about the valley are planted upon moraines,
and from any of the mountain-tops the shape and extent of the neighboring
moraines may always be surely determined by the firs growing upon them.
Some pines will grow upon shallow sand and crumbling granite, but those
luxuriant forests of the silver firs are always upon a generous bed of
glacial drift. I discovered a moraine with smooth pebbles upon a shoulder
of the South Dome, and upon every part of the Yosemite upper and lower
walls.

I am surprised to find that _water_ has had so little to do with mountain
structure here. Whitney says that there is no proof that glaciers ever
flowed in this valley, yet its walls have not been eroded to the depth of
an inch since the ice left it, and glacial action is glaringly apparent
many miles below the valley.

The bottom portion of the foregoing section, with perpendicular sides,
is here about two feet in depth and was cut by the water. The Nevada
here _never was_ more than four or five feet deep, and all of the bank
records of all the upper streams say the same thing of the absence of
great floods.

The entire region above Yosemite and as far down as the bottoms of
Yosemite has scarcely been touched by any other inundation than that of
ice. Perhaps all of the past glacial inundation of every kind would not
average an inch in depth for the whole region.

Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy are lake-basins filled with sand and the matter
of moraines washed from the upper cañons. The Yosemite ice, in escaping
from the Yosemite basin, was compelled to flow upward a considerable
height on both sides of the bottom walls of the valley. The cañon below
the valley is very crooked and very narrow, and the Yosemite glacier
flowed across all of its crooks and high above its walls without paying
any compliance to it, thus: [drawing here]. The light lines show the
direction of the ice-current.

  Yosemite Valley,
  March 30, 1873.

Your two last are received. The package of letters was picked up by a
man in the valley. There was none for thee. I have Hetch Hetchy about
ready. I did not intend that Tenaya ramble for publication, but you know
what is better.

I mean to write and send all kinds of game to you with hides and feathers
on, for if I wait until all become one, it may be too long.

As for Le Conte’s Glaciers, they will not hurt mine, but hereafter I
will say my thoughts to the public in any kind of words I chance to
command, for I am sure that they will be better expressed in this way
than in any second-hand hash, however able. Oftentimes when I am free
in the wilds I discover some rare beauty in lake or cataract or mountain
form and instantly seek to sketch it with my pencil, but the drawing is
always enormously unlike the reality. So also in word sketches of the
same beauties that are so living, so loving, so filled with warm God,
there is the same infinite shortcoming. The few hard words make but a
skeleton, fleshless, heartless, and when you read, the dead, bony words
rattle in one’s teeth. Yet I will not the less endeavor to do my poor
best, believing that even these dead bone-heaps called articles will
occasionally contain hints to some living souls who know how to find them.

I have not received Dr. Stebbins’ letter. Give him and all my friends
love from me. I sent Harry Edwards the butterflies I had lost. Did
he get them? Farewell, dear, dear spiritual mother! Heaven repay your
everlasting love.

  JOHN MUIR.

  April 1st, 1873.

Yours containing Dr. Stebbins’ was received to-day. Some of our letters
come in by Mariposa, some by Coulterville, and some by Oak Flat, causing
large delays.

I expect to be able to send this out next Sunday, and with it Hetch
Hetchy, which is about ready and from this time you will receive about
one article a month.

This letter of yours is a very delightful one. I shall look eagerly for
the rural homes.

When I know Dr. Stebbins’ summer address I will write to him. He is a
dear young soul, though an old man.

I am “not to write” therefore.

Farewell with love.

I will some time send you “Big Tuolumne Cañon,” Ascent of Mt. Ritter,
Formation of Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Lake, Other Yosemite Valleys (one,
two, three, four, or more), The Lake District, Transformation of Lakes to
Meadows Wet, to Meadows Dry, to Sandy Flats Treeless, or to Sandy Flats
Forested, The Glacial Period, Formation of Simple Cañons, of Compound
Cañons, Description of each Glacier of Region, Origin of Sierra Forest,
Distribution of Sierra Forests; a description of each of the Yosemite
falls and of the basins from whence derived; Yosemite Shadows, as related
to groves, meadows, and bends of the river; Avalanches, Earthquakes,
Birds, Bear, etc., and “mony mair.”

  Yosemite Valley,
  April 13th, 1873.

Indian Tom goes out of the valley to-morrow. With this I send you “Hetch
Hetchy.”

Last year I wrote a description of Hetchy and sent it to Prof. Runkle.
Not having heard of it since, I thought it lost in some waste-basket,
but to-day I received a Boston letter stating that a Hetch from my pen
appeared in the “Boston Transcript” of about March 12th, 1873, which
may possibly be the article in question. If so, this present H. H. will
be found to contain a page or two of the same, but this is about three
times as large and all rewritten, etc. That Tuolumne song of five cantos
“Nature loves the Number Five” may perhaps be better out. If you think
it unfit for the public, keep it to thyself. I never can keep my pen
perfectly sober when it gets into the bounce and hurrah of cascades,
but it never has broken into rhyme before.

Love to all and “Fare ye well, my ain Jean.”

The kerchiefs have come from Bentons and a package of books from Doggetts.

  Yosemite Valley,
  April 19th, 1873.

The bearer of this is my friend Mr. Black, proprietor of Black’s Hotel,
Yosemite. He will give you tidings of all our valley affairs.

I sent off a letter and article for you a week ago. I find this literary
business very irksome, yet I will try to learn it.

The falls respond gloriously to the ripe sunshine of these days; so do
the flowers.

I hope that you will be able to send me word when you will _come_, so
that I may arrange accordingly. Mr. Black will give all particulars of
trails, times, etc. If Moores have not gone ranching, send Mr. Black
over to their house. It will do her good. I fondly hope she is growing
better.

Love to all.

  JOHN MUIR.

  Yosemite Valley,
  May 15th, 1873.

The robins have eaten too much breakfast this morning, and there is a
grossness in their throats that will require a good deal of sunshine
for its cure. The leaves of many of the plants are badly disarranged,
showing that they have had a poor night’s sleep. The reason of all this
trouble is a snowstorm that overloaded the flowers and benumbed the
butterflies, upon which the birds have breakfasted too heartily.

The grand Upper Yosemite Fall is at this moment (7 A.M.) coming
with all its glorious array of fleecy comets out of a cloud that is laid
along the top of the cliff, and going into a cloud that is drawn along
the face of the wall about half way up. These clouds are shot through and
through with sunshine, forming, with the snowy waters and fresh-washed
walls, one of the most openly glorious scenes I ever beheld. A lady on
Black’s piazza is quietly looking at it, sitting with arms folded in
her chair. A gentleman is pointing at it with his cane, while another
gentleman is speaking loudly and businessly about his “baggage.” “Eyes
have they but they see not.”

Looking up the valley, the cloud effects are yet more lavishly glorious.
Tissiack is mantled with silvery burning mists, her gray rocks appearing
dimly where thinly veiled. Over the top of Washington Column the clouds
are descending in a continuous stream and rising again suddenly from the
bottom like spray from a waterfall. O dear! I wish you were here. I may
write this cloud glory forevermore but never be able to picture it for
you.

Doctor and Priest in Yosemite. Emerson prophesies in similar dialect that
I will one day go to him and “_better men_” in New England, or something
to that effect. I feel like objecting in popular slang that I can’t see
it. I shall indeed go gladly to the “Atlantic Coast,” as he prophesies,
but only to see him and the Glacier Ghosts of the north. Runkle wants
to make a teacher of me, but I have been too long wild, too befogged and
befogged to burn well in their patent high-heated educational furnaces.

  [A portion missing.]

I had a good letter from Le Conte. He evidently doesn’t know what to
think of the huge lumps of ice that I sent him. I don’t wonder at his
cautious withholding of judgment. When my mountain mother first told me
the tale, I could hardly dare to believe either, and kept saying “What?”
like a child half awake. Farewell. My love to the Doctor and the boys.
I hope the Doctor will run away from his enormous bundles of duty and
rest a summer with the mountains. I have a great deal to ask him. I have
begun to build my cabin. You will have a _home_ in Yosemite.

  Ever thine,
  J. MUIR.

  [1873.]

My horse and bread, etc., are ready for upward. I returned three days ago
from Mts. Lyell, McClure, and Hoffman. I spent three days on a glacier
up there, planting stakes, etc. This time I go to the Merced group, one
of whose mountains shelters a glacier. I will go over all the lakes and
moraines, etc., there. Will be gone a week or two or so.

Hutchings wants to go with me to “help me,” but I will, etc., etc.

Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to
the mountains. I feel strong to leap Yosemite walls at a bound. Hotels
and human impurity will be far below. I will fuse in spirit skies.

Farewell, or come meet in ghost between Red Mountain and Black on the
star-sparkled ice.

Love to all thine and to Moores and Stoddard.

  Yosemite Valley,
  June 7th, 1873.

I came down last night from the Lyell Glacier, weary with walking in the
snow, but I forgot my weariness and the pain of my sun-blistered face
in the news of your coming.

I would like you to bring me a pair or two of green spectacles to
save my eyes, as I have some weeks of hard work and exposure among the
glaciers this fall. They are sore with my last journey. All of the upper
mountains are yet deeply snow-clad, and the view from the top of Lyell
was infinitely glorious.

Thanking God for thee, I say a short farewell.

Kellogg has not yet appeared, nor any of the other friends you speak of.

  Yosemite,
  September 17, [1873.]

I am again at the bottom meadow of Yosemite after a most intensely
interesting bath among the outer mountains. I have been exploring the
upper tributaries of the Cascade and Tamarac streams. And in particular
all of the basin of the Yosemite Creek. The present basin of every stream
which enters the valley on the north side was formerly filled with ice,
which also flowed into the valley, although the ancient ice basins did
not always correspond with the present water basins because glaciers can
flow up hill. The _whole_ of the north wall of the valley was covered
with an unbroken flow of ice, with perhaps the single exception of the
crest of Eagle Cliff, and though the book of glaciers gradually dims as
we go lower on the range, yet I fully believe that future investigation
will show that, in the earlier ages of Sierra Nevada ice, vast glaciers
flowed to the foot of the range east of Yosemite and also north and south
at an elevation of 9000 feet. The glacier basins are almost unchanged,
and I believe that ice was the agent by which all of the present rocks
receive their special forms. More of this some other day. Would that I
could have you here or in any wild place where I can think and speak!
Would you not be thoroughly iced? You would not find in me one unglacial
thought. Come, and I will tell you how El Capitan and Tissiack were
fashioned. I will most likely live at Black’s Hotel this winter in charge
of the premises, and before next spring I will have an independent cabin
built, with a special Carr corner where you and the Doctor can come and
stay all summer; also I will have a tent so that we can camp and receive
night blessings when we choose, and then I will have horses enough so
that we can go to the upper temples also. I wish you could see Lake
Tenaya. It is one of the most perfectly and richly spiritual places in
the mountains, and I would like to preëmpt there. Somehow I should feel
like leaving home in going to Hetch Hetchy. Besides, there is room there
for many other claims, and it soon will fill with coarse homesteads, but
as the winter is so severe at Lake Tenaya, very few will care to live
there. Hetch Hetchy is about four thousand feet above sea, while Lake
Tenaya is eight. I have been living in these mountains in so haunting,
soaring, floating a way that it seems strange to cast any kind of an
anchor. All is so equal in glory, so ocean-like, that to choose one
place above another is like drawing dividing lines in the sky. I think I
answered your last with respect to remaining here in the winter. I can
do much of this ice work in the quiet, and the whole subject is purely
physical, so that I can get but little from books. All depends upon the
goodness of one’s eyes. No scientific book in the world can tell me how
this Yosemite granite is put together or how it has been taken down.
Patient observation and constant brooding above the rocks, lying upon
them for years as the ice did, is the way to arrive at the truths which
are graven so lavishly upon them.

Would that I knew what good prayers I could say or good deeds I could
do, so that ravens would bring me bread and venison for the next two
years! Then would I get some tough gray clothes the color of granite,
so no one could see or find me [words missing] would I reproduce the
ancient ice-rivers and [words missing] and dwell with them. I go again
to my lessons to-morrow morning. Some snow fell, and bye-and-bye I must
tell you about it.

If poor good Melancholia Cowper had been here yesterday morning, here
is just what he would have sung:--

  The rocks have been washed, just washed in a shower
  Which winds in their faces conveyed.
  The plentiful cloudlets bemuffled their brows
  Or lay on their beautiful heads.

  But cold sighed the winds in the fir trees above
  And down on the pine trees below,
  For the rain that came laving and washing in love
  Was followed, alas, by a snow.

Which, being unmetaphored and prosed into sense, means that yesterday
morning a strong southeast wind, cooled among the highest snows of the
Sierra, drove back the warm northwest winds from the hot San Joaquin
plains and burning foothill woods, and piled up a jagged cloud addition
to our valley walls. Soon those white clouds began to darken and to reach
out long filmy edges which, uniting over the valley, made a close, dark
ceiling. Then came rain, unsteady at first, now a heavy gush, then a
sprinkling halt, as if the clouds so long out of practice had forgotten
something, but after half an hour of experimental pouring and sprinkling
there came an earnest, steady, well-controlled rain.

On the mountain the rain soon turned to snow and some half-melted flakes
reached the bottom of the valley. This morning Starr King and Tissiack
and all the upper valley are white.

  [1873.]

  [Beginning of letter missing.]

I had a grand ramble in the deep snow outside the valley and discovered
one beautiful truth concerning snow-structure and three concerning the
forms of forest trees.

These earthquakes have made me immensely rich. I had long been aware of
the life and gentle tenderness of the rocks, and, instead of walking upon
them as unfeeling surfaces, began to regard them as a transparent sky.
Now they have spoken with audible voice and pulsed with common motion.
This very instant, just as my pen reached “and” on the third line above,
my cabin creaked with a sharp shock and the oil waved in my lamp.

We had several shocks last night. I would like to go somewhere on the
west South American coast to study earthquakes. I think I could invent
some experimental apparatus whereby their complicated phenomena could
be separated and read, but I have some years of ice on hand. ’Tis most
ennobling to find and feel that we are constructed with reference to
these noble storms, so as to draw unspeakable enjoyment from them. Are
we not rich when our six-foot column of substance sponges up heaven
above and earth beneath into its pores? Aye, we have chambers in us the
right shape for earthquakes. Churches and the schools lisp limpingly,
painfully, of man’s capabilities, possibilities, and fussy developing
nostrums of duties, but if the human flock, together with their Rev.’s
and double L-D shepherds, would go wild themselves, they would discover
without Euclid that the solid contents of a human soul is the whole world.

Our streams are fast obtaining their highest power; warm nights and days
are making the high mountain snow into snow avalanches and snow-falls;
violets, blue, white, and yellow, abound; butterflies [flit] through the
meadows; and mirror shadows reveal new heavens and new earths everywhere.

Remember me to the Doctor and all the boys and to McChesney and the
brotherhood.

  Cordially,
  J. MUIR.

  Independence,
  October 16th, 1873.

All of my season’s mountain work is done. I have just come down from
Mt. Whitney and the newly discovered mountain five miles northwest of
Whitney, and now our journey is a simple saunter along the base of the
range to Tahoe, where we will arrive about the end of the month or a
few days earlier.

I have seen a good deal more of the high mountain region about the head
of Kings and Kern rivers than I expected to do in so short and so late
a time.

Two weeks ago I left the Doctor and Billie in the Kings River Yosemite,
and set out for Mt. Tyndall and adjacent mountains and cañons. I ascended
Tyndall and ran down into the Kern River Cañon and climbed some nameless
mountains between Tyndall and Whitney, and thus gained a pretty good
general idea of the region. After crossing the range by the Kearsarge
Pass, I again left the Doctor and Bill and pushed southward along the
range and northward and up Cottonwood Creek to Mt. Whitney, then over to
the Kern Cañons again and up to the new “_highest_” peak, which I did
not ascend, as there was no one to attend to my horse. Thus you see I
have rambled this highest portion of the Sierra pretty thoroughly, though
hastily. I spent a night without fire or food in a very icy wind-storm
on one of the spires of the new highest peak by some called Fisherman’s
Peak. That I am already quite recovered from the tremendous exposure
proves that I cannot be killed in any such manner. On the day previous
I climbed two mountains, making over 10,000 feet of altitude.

I saw no mountains in all this grand region that appeared at all
inaccessible to a mountaineer. Give me a summer and a bunch of matches
and a sack of meal, and I will climb every mountain in the region.

I have passed through the Lone Pine and noted the Yosemite and local
subsidences accomplished by the earthquakes. The bunchy bush _Compositæ_
of Owen’s Valley are intensely glorious.

I got back from Whitney this P.M. How I shall sleep! My life
rose wavelike with those lofty granite waves; now it may wearily float
for a time along the smooth, flowery plain.

It seems that this new Fisherman’s Peak is causing some stir in the
newspapers. If I feel writeful, I will send you a sketch of the region
for the “Overland.”

Love to all my friends.

  Ever cordially yours,
  JOHN MUIR.

  [1873.]

After Clark’s departure a week ago we climbed the divide between the south
fork of the San Joaquin and Kings River. I scanned the vast landscape
on which the ice had written wondrous things. After a short scientific
feast I decided to attempt entering the valley of the west branch of the
north fork, which we did, following the bottom of the valley for about
10 miles. Then we were compelled to ascend the west side of the cañon
into the forest. About 6 miles farther down we made out to reënter the
cañon, where there is a Yosemite valley, and by hard efforts succeeded
in getting out on the opposite side and reaching the divide between the
east fork and the middle fork. We then followed the top of the divide
nearly to the confluence of the east fork with the trunk and crossed
the main river yesterday, and are now in the pines again, over all the
wildest and most impracticable portions of our journey. In descending
the divide of the main Kings River we made a descent of near 7000 feet
down, clear down with a vengeance, to the hot pineless foot-hills. We
rose again, and it was a most grateful resurrection. Last night I watched
the writing of the spirey pines on the sky gray with stars, and if you
had been here I would have said, Look, etc.

Last night, when the Doctor and I were bed-building, discussing as usual
the goodnesses and badnesses of boughy mountain beds, we were astounded
by the appearance of two prospectors coming through the mountain rye.
By them I send this note.

To-day we will reach some of the sequoias near Thomas’ Mill (_vide_ map
of Geological Survey), and in two or three more days will be in the cañon
of the south fork of Kings River. If the weather appears tranquil when
we reach the summit of the range, I may set out among the glaciers for
a few days, but if otherwise I shall push hastily for the Owen’s River
plains and thence up to Tahoe, etc. I am working hard and shall not feel
easy until I am on the other side beyond the reach of early snowstorms.
Not that I fear snowstorms for myself, but the poor animals would die
or suffer.

The Doctor’s duster and fly-net are safe, and therefore he. Billy is in
good spirits, apt to teach drawing in and out of season.

Remember me to the Doctor and the boys and Morris and Keith, etc.

  Ever yours truly,
  JOHN MUIR.

  Tahoe City,
  November 3rd, [1873.]

  MY DEAR FRIENDS DR. AND MRS. CARR,--

I received the news of your terrible bereavement a few moments ago, and
can only say that you have my heart sympathy and prayer that our Father
may sustain and soothe you.

Dr. Kellogg and Billy Simms left me a week ago at Mono, going directly
to Yosemite. I reached this queen of lakes, two days ago and rode down
around the shore on the east side. Will continue on around up the west
coast homeward through Lake and Hope valleys and over the Sierra to
Yosemite by the Virginia Creek trail, or Sonora road if much snow should
fall. Will reach Yosemite in about a week.

Somehow I had no hopes of meeting you here. I could not hear you or see
you, yet you shared all of my highest pleasures, as I sauntered through
the piney woods, pausing countless times to absorb the blue glimpses of
the lake, all so heavenly clean, so terrestrial yet so openly spiritual.
I wish, my dear, dear friends, that you could share this divine day with
me here. The soul of Indian summer is brooding this blue water, and it
enters one’s being as nothing else does. Tahoe is surely not one but
many. As I curve around its heads and bays and look far out on its level
sky fairly tinted and fading in pensive air, I am reminded of all the
mountain lakes I ever knew, as if this were a kind of water heaven to
which they all had come.

  Yosemite Valley,
  October 7th, 1874.

I expected to have been among the foot-hill drift long ago, but the
mountains fairly seized me, and, ere I knew, I was up the Merced Cañon,
where we were last year, past Shadow and Merced lakes and our soda
springs, etc. I returned last night. Had a glorious storm and a thousand
sacred beauties that seemed yet more and more divine. I camped four
nights at Shadow Lake, at the old place in the pine thickets. I have
ousel tales to tell. I was alone, and during the whole excursion, or
period rather, was in a kind of calm, uncurable ecstasy. I am hopelessly
and forever a mountaineer.

How glorious my studies seem, and how simple! I found out a noble truth
concerning the Merced moraines that escaped me hitherto. Civilization
and fever and all the morbidness that has been hooted at me has not
dimmed my glacial eyes, and I care to live only to entice people to look
at Nature’s loveliness. My own special self is nothing. My feet have
recovered their cunning. I feel myself again. Tell Keith the colors are
coming to the groves.

I leave Yosemite for over the mountains to Mono [?] and Lake Tahoe in a
week, thence anywhere,--Shastaward, etc. I think I may be at Brownsville,
Yuba County, where I may get a letter from you. I promised to call on
Emily Pelton there.

Farewell.

  JOHN MUIR.

  Sissons Station,
  November 1st, 1874.

Here is icy Shasta fifteen miles away yet at the very door. It is all
close wrapt in clean young snow down to the very base, one mass of white
from the dense black forest girdle at an elevation of five or six thousand
feet to the very summit. The extent of its individuality is perfectly
wonderful.

When I first caught sight of it over the braided folds of the Sacramento
valley, I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone, and weary, yet all my
blood turned to wine and I have not been weary since. Stone was to have
accompanied me, but has failed of course. The last storm was severe,
and all the mountains shake their heads and say impossible, etc., but
you know I will meet all its icy snows lovingly.

I set out in a few minutes for the edge of the timber-line. Then upwards,
if unstormy, in the early morning. If the snow proves to be mealy and
loose, it is barely possible that I may be unable to urge my way through
so many upward miles, as there is no intermediate camping-ground. Yet I
am feverless and strong now and can spend two days with their intermediate
nights in one deliberate, unstrained effort.

I am the more eager to ascend to study the mechanical conditions of the
fresh snow at so great an elevation; also to obtain clear views of the
comparative quantities of lava inundation northward and southward; also
general views of the channels of the ancient Shasta glaciers, etc.; many
other lesser problems, besides the fountains of the rivers here and the
living glaciers. I would like to remain a week or two and may have to
return next year in summer.

I wrote a short letter a few days ago which was printed in the “Evening
Bulletin,” which I suppose you have seen.

I wonder how you all are faring in your wilderness educational
departmental institutional, etc. Write me a line here in care of Sisson.
I think it will reach me on my return from icy Shasta.

Farewell.

  Ever cordially yours,
  JOHN MUIR.

Love to all,--Keith and the boys and McChesney, etc.

Don’t forward any letters from the Oakland office. I want only mountains
until my return to civilization.

  Sissons Station,
  December 9th, 1874.

Coming in for a sleep and rest, I was glad to receive your card. I seem
to be more than married to icy Shasta.

One yellow, mellow morning six days ago, when Shasta snows were looming
and blooming, I slept outside the bar-room door to gaze and was instantly
drawn up over the meadows, over the forests, to the main Shasta glacier
in one rushing cometic whizz, then, swooping to Shasta valley, whirled
off around the base like a satellite of the grand icy sun. I have just
completed my first revolution. Length of orbit, 100 miles; time, one
Shasta day.

For two days and a half I had nothing in the way of food, yet suffered
nothing and was finely nerved for the most delicate work of mountaineering
both among crevasses and lava cliffs. Now I am sleeping and _eating_. I
found some geological facts that are perfectly glorious, and botanical
ones too.

I wish I could make the public be kind to Keith and his paint.

And so you contemplate vines and oranges among the warm California
angels. I wish you would all go a-granging among oranges and bananas
and all such blazing, red-hot fruits, for you are a species of Hindoo
sun fruit yourself.

For me, I like better the huckleberries of cool glacial bogs and acid
currants and benevolent, rosy, beaming apples and common Indian-summer
pumpkins.

I wish you could see the holy morning’s Alpen glow of Shasta.

Farewell. I’ll be down into gray Oakland some time.

I am glad you are so essentially independent of those commonplace plotters
that have so marred your peace, eat oranges and hear the larks and wait
on the sun.

  Ever cordially,
  JOHN MUIR.

Love to all.

The letter you sent here is also received. Emily’s I will get bye and
bye. Love to color Keith.

  Sissons Station,
  December 21st, 1874.

I have just returned from a fourth Shasta excursion and find yours of
the 17th. I wish you could have been with me on Shasta’s shoulder last
evening in the sun glow. I was over on the head waters of the McCloud; and
what a head! Think of a spring giving rise to a river! I fairly quiver
with joyous exultation when I think of it. The infinity of Nature’s
glory in rock, cloud, and water! As soon as I beheld the McCloud upon
its lower course, I knew that there must be something extraordinary in
its Alpine fountains, and I shouted, “O where, my glorious river, do
you come from?” Think of a spring fifty yards wide at the mouth issuing
from the base of a lava bluff with wild songs, not gloomily from a dark
cavy mouth, but from a world of ferns and mosses, gold and green.

I broke my way through chaparral tangle in eager vigor utterly
unweariable. The dark blue stream sang solemnly with a deep voice,
pooling and bowlder-dashing and an a-a-aing in white flashing rapids,
when suddenly I heard water notes I never had heard before. They came
from that mysterious spring. And then the Elk forest and the Alpine glow
and the sunset,--poor pen cannot tell it.

The sun this morning is at work with its blessings as if it had never
blessed before. He never wearies of revealing himself on Shasta. But in
a few hours I leave this altar and all its----

Well, to my Father I say “Thank you” and go willingly.

I go by stage and rail to Brownsville to see Emily and the rocks there and
Yuba. Then, perhaps, a few days among auriferous drifts on the Tuolumne,
and then to Oakland and that book, walking across the Coast Range on
the way, either through one of the passes or over Mt. Diablo. I feel a
sort of nervous fear of another period of town dark, but I don’t want
to be silly about it. The sun glow will all fade out of me and I will
be deathly as Shasta in the dark, but mornings will come, dawnings of
some kind, and if not, I have lived more than a common eternity already.

Farewell, don’t _overwork_; that is not the work your Father wants. I
wish you could come a-beeing in the Shasta honey lands. Love to the boys.

  Brownsville, Yuba Co., [Cal.,]
  January 19th, 1875.

My dear Mrs. Mother Carr, here are some of the dearest and bonniest of
our Father’s bairns,--the little ones that so few care to see. I never
saw such enthusiasm in the care and breeding of mosses as Nature manifests
among these northern Sierras.

I have studied a big fruitful week among the cañons and ridges of the
Feather, and another along the Yuba River living and dead.

_I have seen a dead river_, a sight worth going around the world to see.
The dead rivers and dead gravels wherein lie the gold form magnificent
problems, and I feel wild and unmanageable with the intense interest
they excite, but I _will_ choke myself off and finish my glacial work
and that little book of studies. I have been spending a few fine social
days with Emily, but now work.

How gloriously it storms! The pines are in ecstasy, and I feel it and
must go out to them. I must borrow a big coat and mingle in the storm
and make some studies.

Farewell. Love to all. Emily and Mrs. Knox send love.

How are Ned and Keith? I wish Keith had been with us these Shasta and
Feather River days. I have gained a thousandfold more than I hoped.
Heaven send him light and the good blessing of wildness. How the rains
[?] splash and roar! and how the pines wave and pray!

  1419 Taylor St.,
  May 4th, 1875.

Here I am, safe in the arms of Daddy Swett, home again from icy Shasta
and richer than ever in dead-river gravel and in snowstorms and snow.
The upper end of the main Sacramento Valley is entirely covered with
ancient river drift, and I wandered over many square miles of it. In
every pebble I could hear the sound of running water. The whole deposit
is a poem whose many books and chapters form the geological Vedas of
our glorious State.

I discovered a new species of hail on the summit of Shasta and experienced
one of the most beautiful and most violent snowstorms imaginable.

I would have been with you ere this to tell you about it and to give you
some lilies and pine tassels that I brought for you and Mrs. McChesney
and Ina Coolbrith, but alack! I am battered and scarred like a log
that has come down the Tuolumne in flood-time, and I am also lame with
frost-nipping. Nothing serious, however, and I will be well and better
than before in a few days.

I was caught in a violent snowstorm and held up on the summit of the
mountain all night in my shirt-sleeves. The intense cold and the want of
food and sleep made the fire of life smoulder and burn low. Nevertheless,
in company with another strong mountaineer I broke through six miles of
frosty snow down into the timber and reached fire and food and sleep
and am better than ever with all the valuable experiences. Altogether
I have had a very instructive and delightful trip.

The bryanthus you wanted was snow-buried, and I was too lame to dig it
out for you, but I will probably be back ere long.

I’ll be over in a few days or so.

  Old Yosemite Home,
  November 3d, 1875.

I’m delighted, in coming out of the woods, to learn that the Doctor is
elected to do the work he is so well fitted for.

I’ve had a glorious season of forest grace, notwithstanding the hundred
cañons I’ve crossed, and the innumerable gorges, gulches, and avalanchal
corrugations.

A day or two of resting and lingering in my dear old haunts, and then
down-town work.

I’m sorry about Keith’s stocks. Though of scarce any real consequence,
they yet serve to perturb and spoil his best moods and works.

It seems a whole round season since I saw you, but have I not seen the
King Sequoia in forest glory?

Love to all.

  JOHN MUIR.

  1418 Taylor St., San Francisco,
  April 3, 1876.

We will all be glad to see you. We all heard of the outrage committed
on Johnnie and hope it might not be so serious as made to appear in the
press. Mr. Swett told me the other day that he met a friend down town who
was acquainted with the Whites intimately, who gave it as his opinion
that Mr. White was insane, had a brother in the asylum, and he was as
jealous of a half-dozen other persons as of Johnnie.

If I knew Ned’s boarding-house, I would visit him, for I know he must
feel terribly agitated. The last time I saw him, he was rejoicing over
Johnnie’s steady manly development, like an old fond father over some
reformed son.

As for the stranded sapless condition of political geology, I care only
for the fruitless work expended upon it by friends. The glaciers are
not affected thereby, neither am I nor Cassiope.

The first meeting I had with Mr. Moore was at the lecture the other night.
He seemed immeasurably astonished to find me in so anti-sequestered a
condition, but in the meanwhile he is more changed than I, for he seems
semi-crazy on literature, as Mrs. M. is wholly, doubly so on paint.

I will show your letters to Mr. Swett when he comes in, who will doubtless
be able to decipher the meaning of heads and tails of your bodyless
sentences.

I’m sorry most of all for the destruction of the “Teachers,” thus cutting
off the only adequate outlet for your own thought; but hang it! let them
decapitate and hang, they cannot hang Cassiope.

  Ever yours cordially,
  JOHN MUIR.

  1419 Taylor St., San Francisco,
  January 12th, [1877.]

John Swett told me how heavy a burden you were carrying of work and
sickness. I hope ere this that the Doctor has recovered from his severe
attack of rheumatism and that you have had sleep and rest.

Your description of the orange lands makes me more than ever eager to
see them,--in particular the phenomenon of a real lover of Nature such
as you mention, for one does feel so wholly alone in the midst of this
metallic, money-clinking crowd. And so you are going to dwell down there,
and how rosily you will write about it! Well, I hope you may realize
it all. Independence in quiet life must be delightful indeed, after the
battles and the burdens of these heavy years. In any case it is a fine
thing for old people who have worked and fought through all kinds of
strenuous experiences to have thoughts and schemes so fresh and young
as yours. We all hope to see you soon.

  Cordially yours,
  JOHN MUIR.

  July 23rd, [1877.]

I made only a short dash into the dear old Highlands above Yosemite, but
all was so full of everything I love, every day seemed a measureless
period. I never enjoyed the Tuolumne cataracts so much. Coming out
of the sun land, the gray salt deserts of Utah, these wild ice waters
sang themselves into my soul more enthusiastically than ever, and the
forests’ breath was sweeter, and Cassiope fairer than in all my first
fresh contacts. But I’m not going to tell here. I only write now to say
that next Saturday I will sail to Los Angeles and spend a few weeks in
getting some general views of the adjacent region, then work northward
and begin a careful study of the redwoods. I will at least have time
this season for the lower portion of the belt; that is, for all south
of here. If you have any messages, you have time to write me. I sail at
10 A.M., or if not you may direct to Los Angeles.

I hope to see Congar, and also the spot you have selected for home. I
wish you could be there in your grown fruitful groves, all rooted and
grounded in the fine garden nook that I know you will make. It must be
a great consolation in the midst of the fires you are compassed with to
look forward to a tranquil seclusion in the South of which you are so
fond.

John says he may not move to Berkeley, and if not I may be here this
winter, though I still feel some tendency towards another winter in some
mountain ice. It is long indeed since I had anything like a quiet talk
with you. You have been going like an avalanche for many a year, and
I sometimes fear you will not be able to settle into rest even in the
orange groves.

I’m glad to know that the Doctor is so well. You must be pained by the
shameful attacks made upon your tried friend La Grange. Farewell.

  Ever cordially yours,
  JOHN MUIR.

  Los Angeles, Cal., August 12th, 1877.
  Pico House.

I’ve seen your sunny Pasadena and the patch called yours. Everything
about here pleases me, and I felt sorely tempted to take Dr. Congar’s
advice and invest in an orange-patch myself. I feel sure you will be
happy here with the Doctor and Allie among so rich a luxuriance of sunny
vegetation. How you will dig and dibble in that mellow loam! I cannot
think of you standing erect for a single moment, unless it be in looking
away out into the dreamy west. I made a fine shaggy little five days’
excursion back in the heart of the San Gabriel Mountains, and then a
week of real pleasure with Congar, resurrecting the past about Madison.
He has a fine little farm, fine little family, and fine cosy home.

I felt at home with Congar and at once took possession of his premises
and all that in them is. We drove down through the settlements eastward
and saw the best orange groves and vineyards, but the mountains I as
usual met alone. Although so gray and silent and unpromising they are
full of wild gardens and ferneries, and lilyries,--some specimens ten
feet high with twenty lilies big enough for bonnets. The main results I
will tell you some other time, should you ever have an hour’s leisure.
I go north to-day, by rail to Newhall, thence by stage to Soledad, and
on to Monterey, where I will take to the woods and feel my way in free
study to San Francisco. May reach the city about the middle of next
month.

Heard through your factor here that Miss Powell is worse and that you
would not be down soon. I _received_ your letter and postal, also the
letters you thought I had lost, via one from Salt Lake for which I sent
and one from Yosemite which Black forwarded.

With love to all I am ever

  Yours cordially,
  J. M.

  1419 Taylor St., San Francisco,
  September 3d, [1877.]

I have just been over at Alameda with poor dear old Gibbons. You have
seen him, and I need give no particulars. “The only thing I’m afraid of,
John,” he said, looking up with his old child face, “is that I shall
never be able to climb the Oakland hills again.” But he is so healthy
and so well cared for we will be strong and hope that he will.

He spoke for an hour with characteristic unselfishness on the injustice
done Dr. Kellogg in failing to recognize his long-continued devotion
to science, at the botanical love-feast held here the other night. He
threatens to write up the whole discreditable affair, and is very anxious
to obtain from you a copy of that Gray letter to Kellogg which was not
delivered.

I had a glorious ramble in the Santa Cruz woods and have found out one
very interesting and picturesque fact concerning the growth of this
sequoia. I mean to devote many a long week to its study. What the upshot
may be, I cannot guess, but you know I am never sent away empty. I
made an excursion to the summit of Mt. Hamilton in extraordinary style,
accompanied by Allen, Norton, Brawley, and all the lady professors and
their friends. A curious contrast to my ordinary _still-hunting_. Spent
a week at San José; enjoyed my visit with Allen very much. Lectured to
the faculty on Methods of Study without undergoing any very great scare.

I believe I wrote you from Los Angeles about my Pasadena week. Have sent
a couple of letters to the “Bulletin” from there, not yet published.

I have no inflexible plans as yet for the remaining months of the season,
but Yosemite seems to place itself as a most persistent candidate for
my winter. I shall soon be in flight to the Sierras or Oregon.

I seem to give up hope of ever seeing you calm again. Don’t grind too
hard at those Sacramento mills. Remember me to the Doctor and Allie.

  Ever yours cordially,
  JOHN MUIR.

  1419 Taylor St.,
  June 5th, 1878.

I’m sorry I did not see you when last in the city. I went over to Oakland,
thence to Alameda to spend a week and finish an “article” with our good
old Gibbons; but the house was full; then I went to Dr. Strentzel’s,
where I remained a week, working a little, resting a good deal and eating
many fine cherries. I enjoyed most the _white_ bed in which first I
rested after rocking so long in the rushes of the Stockton slough. They
all were as kind as ever they could possibly be, and wanted me to stop
longer, but I could not find a conscientious excuse for so doing and
came away somewhat sore with obligations for stopping so long. Met Mr.
and Mrs. Allen there.

Smith has gone this morning to Shasta, taking Helen, and I’m terribly
lonesome and homesick and will not try to stand it. Will go to the woods
to-morrow. How great are your trials! I wish I could help you. May the
Doctor be speedily restored to health.

  Cordially yours,
  JOHN MUIR.

  920 Valencia St.,
  April 9th, 1879.

I did not send the pine book to you, because I was using it in rewriting a
portion of the California forest article, which will appear in Scribner’s,
May or June, and because, before it could have reached you, you were,
according to your letter, to be in San Francisco and could then take it
with you. It is entitled “Gordon’s Pinetum,” published by Henry G. Bohn,
Henrietta St., Covent Garden; Simpkin, Marshall & Co., Stationers, Hall
Court; 1875; second edition. It is an “exhaustive” work, very exhausting
anyhow, and contains a fine big much of little.

The summit pine of our Sierra is _P. albicaulis_ of Engelmann, and the _P.
flexilis_ Torrey, given in this work as a synonym, is a very different
tree, growing sparsely on the eastern flank of the Sierra, from Bloody
Cañon southward, but very abundant on all the higher basin ranges, and
on the Wahsatch and Rocky Mountains.

The orange book is, it seems, another exhaustive work. There is something
admirable in the scientific nerve and aplomb manifested in the titles
of these swollen volumes. How a tree book can be exhaustive when every
species is ever on the wing from one form to another with infinite
variety, it is not easy to see.

I haven’t the least idea who Mr. Rexford is, but, if connected with the
“Bulletin,” I can probably get the title of his citrus book through Mr.
Williams. Will probably see him next Sunday.

The Sunday convention manager offered me a hundred dollars for two
lectures on the Yosemite rocks in June. I have not yet agreed to do so,
though I probably shall, as I am not going into Colorado this summer.

Excepting a day at San José with Allen, I have hardly been out of my
room for weeks, pegging away with my quill and accomplishing little.
My last efforts were on the preservation of the Sierra forests, and the
wild and trampled conditions of our flora from a bee’s point of view.

I want to spend the greater portion of the season up the Coast, observing
ice, and may possibly find my way home in the fall to see my mother.

I wonder if you will really go quietly away South when your office term
expires, and rest in the afternoon of your life among your kin and orange
leaves, or, unable to get full absolution from official woman’s rights’
unrest, you will fight and squirm till sundown. I’ve seen nothing of
you all these fighting years.

I suppose nothing less than an _Exhaustive_ miniature of all the leafy
creatures of the globe will satisfy your Pasadena aspirations. You know
how little real sympathy I can give in such play-garden schemes. Still,
if so inappreciative and unavailable a man as I may be of use at all,
let me know.

  Ever cordially yours,
  JOHN MUIR.

  San Francisco,
  June 19th, 1879.

Good-bye. I am going home, going to my summer in the snow and ice and
forests of the north coast. Will sail to-morrow at noon on the Dakota
for Victoria and Olympia. Will then push inland and along land. May
visit Alaska.

I hope you and the Doctor may not suffer yourselves to be drawn away
into the stream of politics again. You will be far happier on your land.

I was at the valley. How beautiful it was! fresh and full of cool crystal
streams and blooms. Was not scared in my lectures after the first one.

With kind regards to the Doctor and the boys. Farewell.

  JOHN MUIR.

THE END

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