Letters to a friend, written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr, 1866-1879

LETTERS

TO

A FRIEND

by
John Muir

These letters of the late John Muir, now given to the pub
lic for the first time, will be of particular interest to the
many admirers of his work. Most of them were written
from Yosemite Valley and give a good idea of the life Muir
led there as well as reveal more of his personality than is to
be found in his more formal writings.

University of California • Berkeley

Bequest of
LOUIS ANA SCOTT SHUMAN

^A*-*<— •

Letters to a Friend

Letters to a Friend

Written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr
1866—1879

By

John Muir

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

Sitoewfoe

1915

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY WANDA MUIR HANNA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THIS EDITION CONSISTS OF 300 COPIES

Prefatory Note

HEN John Muir was a student in the
University of Wisconsin he was a fre
quent caller at the house of Dr. Ezra S. Carr.
The kindness shown him there, and especially
the sympathy which Mrs. Carr, as a botanist
and a lover of nature, felt in the young man's in
terests and aims, led to the formation of a lasting
friendship. He regarded Mrs. Carr, indeed, as
his "spiritual mother," and his letters to her in
later years are the outpourings of a sensitive
spirit to one who he felt thoroughly understood
and sympathized with him. These letters are
therefore peculiarly revealing of their writer's
personality. Most of them were written from
the Yosemite Valley, and they give a good no
tion of the life Muir led there, sheep-herding,
guiding, and tending a sawmill at intervals to
earn his daily bread, but devoting his real self
to an ardent scientific study of glacial geology
and a joyous and reverent communion with
Nature.

LETTERS TO A FRIEND

"The Hollow," January 21, 1866.

YOUR last, written in the delicious quiet of a
Sabbath in the country, has been received and
read a good many times. I was interested with
the description you draw of your sermon. You
speak of such services like one who appreciated
and relished them. But although the page of
Nature is so replete with divine truth, it is
silent concerning the fall of man and the won
ders of Redeeming Love. Might she not have
been made to speak as clearly and eloquently
of these things as she now does of the character
and attributes of God ? It may be a bad symp
tom, but I will confess that I take more intense
delight from reading the power and goodness of
God from "the things which are made" than
from the Bible. The two books, however, har
monize beautifully, and contain enough of di
vine truth for the study of all eternity. It is so

Letters to a Friend

much easier for us to employ our faculties upon
these beautiful tangible forms than to exercise
a simple, humble living faith such as you so well
describe as enabling us to reach out joyfully
into the future to expect what is promised as
a thing of to-morrow.

I wish, Mrs. Carr, that I could see your
mosses and ferns and lichens. I am sure that
you must be happier than anybody else. You
have so much less of winter than others; your
parlor garden is verdant and in bloom all the
year.

I took your hint and procured ten or twelve
species of moss all in fruit, also a club-moss, a
fern, and some liverworts and lichens. I have
also a box of thyme. I would go a long way to
see your herbarium, more especially your ferns
and mosses. These two are by far the most
interesting of all the natural orders to me. The
shaded hills and glens of Canada are richly or
namented with these lovely plants. Aspidium
spinulosum is common everywhere, so also is
A. marginal*. A. aculeatum, A. Lonchitis, and

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A. acrostichoides are also abundant in many
places. I found specimens of most of the other
aspidiums, but those I have mentioned are more
common. Cystopteris bulbifera grows in every
arbor-vitae shade in company with the beau
tiful and fragrant Linncza borealis. Botrychium
lunarioides is a common fern in many parts of
Canada. Osmunda regalis is far less common
here than in Wisconsin. I found it in only two
localities. Six Claytoniana only in one place
near the Niagara Falls. The delicate Adiantum
trembles upon every hillside. Struthiopteris Ger-
manica grows to a great height in open places
in arbor-vitae and black ash swamps. Campto-
sorus rhizophyllus and Scolopendrium officina-
rum I found in but one place, amid the wet
limestone rocks of Owen Sound. There are
many species of sedge common here which I do
not remember having seen in Wisconsin. Ca
lypso borealis is a lovely plant found in a few
places in dark hemlock woods. But this is an
endless thing; I may as well stop here.
I have been very busy of late making prac-
[3]

Letters to a Friend

tical machinery. I like my work exceedingly
well, but would prefer inventions which would
require some artistic as well as mechanical skill.
I invented and put in operation a few days ago
an attachment for a self-acting lathe, which has
increased its capacity at least one third. We
are now using it to turn broom-handles, and as
these useful articles may now be made cheaper,
and as cleanliness is one of the cardinal virtues,
I congratulate myself in having done something
like a true philanthropist for the real good of
mankind in general. What say you? I have
also invented a machine for making rake-teeth,
and another for boring for them and driving
them, and still another for making the bows,
still another used in making the handles, still
another for bending them, so that rakes may
now be made nearly as fast again. Farmers will
be able to produce grain at a lower rate, the
poor get more bread to eat. Here is more phil
anthropy ; is it not ? I sometimes feel as though
I was losing time here, but I am at least receiv
ing my first lessons in practical mechanics, and

[4]

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as one of the firm here is a millwright, and as
I am permitted to make as many machines as
I please and to remodel those now in use, the
school is a pretty good one.

I wish that Allie and Henry B. could come to
see me every day, there are no children in our
family here, and I miss them very much. They
would like to see the machinery, and I could
turn wooden balls and tops, rake-bows before
being bent would make excellent canes, and if
they should need crutches broom-handles and
rake-handles would answer. I have not heard
from Henry for a long time. I suppose that
this evening finds you in your pleasant library
amid books and plants and butterflies. Are
you really successful in keeping happy, spor
tive "winged blossoms" in such weather as
this?

One of the finest snowstorms is raging now ;
the roaring wind thick with snow rushes cruelly
through the desolate trees. Our rapid stream
that so short a time ago shone and twinkled in
the hazy air bearing away the nuts and painted
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Letters to a Friend

leaves of autumn is now making a doleful noise
as it gropes its way doubtfully and sulkily amid
heaps of snow and broken ice.

The weather here is unusually cold. How do
matters stand at the University? Can it be
that the Doctor is really going to become prac
tical farmer? He will have time to compose
excellent lectures while following the plow and
harrow or when shearing his sheep.

I thank you for your long, good letter. Those
who are in a lonely place and far from home
know how to appreciate a friendly letter. Re
member me to the Doctor and to all my friends
and believe me

Yours with gratitude,

JOHN MUIR.

[1866 or 1867.]

[Beginning of letter missing.]
I have not before sent these feelings and
thoughts to anybody, but I know that I am
speaking to one who by long and deep com
munion with Nature understands them, and
[6]

Letters to a Friend

can tell me what is true or false and unworthy
in my experiences.

The ease with which you have read my mind
from hints taken from letters to my child friends
gives me confidence to write.

Thank you for the compliment of the great
picture-frame. That is at least one invention
that I should not have discovered, — but the
picture is but an insect, an animalcule. I have
stood by a majestic pine, witnessing its high
branches waving "in sign of worship" or in con
verse with the spirit of the storms of autumn,
till I forgot my very existence, and thought my
self unworthy to be made a leaf of such a tree.

What work do you use in the study of the
Fungi ? and where can I get a copy ? I think of
your description of these " little children of the
vegetable kingdom" whenever I meet any of
them. I am busy with the mosses and liver
worts, but find difficulty in procuring a suitable
lens. Here is a specimen of Climacium Amer-
icanum, a common moss here but seldom in fruit.

I was sorry to hear of your loss at the Uni-
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versity of so valuable a man from such a cause.
I hope that the wheels of your institution are
again in motion.

I have not yet, I am sorry to say, found "The
Stone Mason of Saint Point," though I have
sought for it a great deal. By whom is it pub
lished ?

Please remember me to my friends. I often
wish myself near the Doctor with my difficul
ties in science. Tell Allie Mr. Muir does not
forget him.

Trout's Mills, near Meaford,

September I3th, [1866.]

Your precious letter with its burden of cheer
and good wishes has come to our hollow, and
has done for me that work of sympathy and
encouragement which I know you kindly wished
it to do. It came at a time when much needed,
for I am subject to lonesomeness at times. Ac
cept, then, my heartfelt gratitude — would that
I could make better return !

I am sorry over the loss of Professor Stirling's
letter, for I waited and wearied for it a long
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time. I have been keeping up an irregular
course of study since leaving Madison, but with
no great success. I do not believe that study,
especially of the Natural Sciences, is incom
patible with ordinary attention to business;
still I seem to be able to do but one thing at a
time. Since undertaking a month or two ago
to invent new machinery for our mill, my mind
seems to so bury itself in the work that I am
fit for but little else; and then a lifetime is so
little a time that we die ere we get ready to live.
I would like to go to college, but then I have to
say to myself, "You will die ere you can do
anything else." I should like to invent useful
machinery, but it comes, "You do not wish to
spend your lifetime among machines and you
will die ere you can do anything else." I should
like to study medicine that I might do my part
in helping human misery, but again it comes,
"You will die ere you are ready or able to do
so." How intensely I desire to be a Humboldt !
but again the chilling answer is reiterated ; but
could we but live a million of years, then how

Letters to a Friend

delightful to spend in perfect contentment so
many thousand years in quiet study in college,
as many amid the grateful din of machines, as
many among human pain, so many thousand
in the sweet study of Nature among the dingles
and dells of Scotland, and all the other less im
portant parts of our world ! Then perhaps might
we,'with at least a show of reason, " shuffle off this
mortal coil" and look back upon our star with
something of satisfaction;! should be ashamed
— if shame might be in the other world — if
any of the powers, virtues, essences, etc., should
ask me for common knowledge concerning our
world which I could not bestow. But away
with this aged structure and we are back to our
handful of hasty years half gone, all of course
for the best did we but know all of the Crea
tor's plan concerning us. In our higher state
of existence we shall have time and intellect
for study. Eternity, with perhaps the whole un
limited creation of God as our field, should
satisfy us, and make us patient and trustful,
while we pray with the Psalmist, "Teach us to
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number our days that we may apply our hearts
unto wisdom."

I was struck with your remarks about our
real home of stillness and peace. How little
does the outer and noisy world in general know
of that "real home" and real inner life ! Happy
indeed they who have a friend to whom they
can unmask the workings of their real life, sure
of sympathy and forbearance !

I sent for the book which you recommend;
I have just been reading a short sketch of the
life of the mother of Lamartine.

You say about the humble life of our Sav
iour and about the trees gathering in the sun
shine. These are beautiful things.

What you say respecting the littleness of the
number who are called to "the pure and deep
communion of the beautiful, all-loving Nature,"
is particularly true of the hardworking, hard-
drinking, stolid Canadians. In vain is the glo
rious chart of God in Nature spread out for
them. So many acres chopped is their motto,
as they grub away amid the smoke of the mag-

Letters to a Friend

nificent forest trees, black as demons and mate
rial as the soil they move upon. I often think
of the Doctor's lecture upon the condition of the
different races of men as controlled by physical
agencies. Canada, though abounding in the ele
ments of wealth, is too difficult to subdue to
permit the first few generations to arrive at
any great intellectual development. In my long
rambles last summer I did not find a single
person who knew anything of botany and but
a few who knew the meaning of the word ; and
wherein lay the charm that could conduct a man
who might as well be gathering mammon so
many miles through these fastnesses to suffer
hunger &nd exhaustion was with them never
to be discovered. Do not these answer well to
the person described by the poet in these lines?

" A primrose by the river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And nothing more."

I thank Dr. Carr for his kind remembrance
of me, but still more for the good patience he
had with so inept a scholar.
[ 12]

Letters to a Friend

We remember in a peculiar way those who
first gave us the story of Redeeming Love from
the great book of Revelation, and I shall not
forget the Doctor, who first laid before me the
great book of Nature, and though I have taken
so little from his hand he has at least shown
me where those mines of priceless knowledge
lie and how to reach them. O how frequently,
Mrs. Carr, when lonely and wearied, have I
wished that like some hungry worm I could
creep into that delightful kernel of your house,
your library, with its portraits of scientific men,
and so bountiful a store of their sheaves amid
the blossom and verdure of your little kingdom
of plants, luxuriant and happy as though hold
ing their leaves to the open sky of the most
flower-loving zone in the world !

That "sweet day" did as you wished reach
our hollow, and another is with us now. The
sky has the haze of autumn, and excepting the
aspen not a tree has motion. Upon our enclos
ing wall of verdure new tints appear, the gor
geous dyes of autumn are to be plainly seen, and
[ 13]

Letters to a Friend

the forest seems to have found out that again
its leaf must fade. Our stream, too, has a less
cheerful sound, and as it bears its foam-bells
pensively away from the shallow rapids it seems
to feel that summer is past.

You propose, Mrs. Carr, an exchange of
thoughts, for which I thank you very sincerely.
This will be a means of pleasure and improve
ment which I could not have hoped ever to
have been possessed of, but then here is the
difficulty: I feel I am altogether incapable of
properly conducting a correspondence with one
so much above me. We are, indeed, as you
say, students in the same life school, but in very
different classes. I am but an alpha novice
in those sciences which you have studied and
loved so long. If, however, you are willing in
this to adopt the plan that our Saviour endeav
ored to beat into the stingy Israelites, viz., to
"give, hoping for nothing again," all will be
well; and as long as your letters resemble this
one before me, which you have just written,
in genus, order, cohort, class, province, or king-
[ 14]

Letters to a Friend

dom, be assured that by way of reply you shall
at least receive an honest "Thank you."

Tell Allie that Mr. Muir thanks him for his
pretty flowers and would like to see him, also
that I have a story for him which I shall tell
some other time.

Please remember me to my friends, and
now, hoping to receive a letter from you at
least semi-occasionally, I remain

Yours with gratitude,

JOHN MUIR.

Address: —
Meaford P. O.,
County Grey,
Canada West.

April 3rd, [1867.]

You have, of course, heard of my calamity.

The sunshine and the winds are working in
all the gardens of God, but / — I am lost.

I am shut in darkness. My hard, toil-tem
pered muscles have disappeared, and I am fee
ble and tremulous as an ever-sick woman.

Please tell the Butlers that their precious
sympathy has reached me.

Letters to a Friend

I have read your "Stone Mason" with a
great deal of pleasure. I send it with this
and will write my thoughts upon it when I
can.

My friends here are kind beyond what I can
tell and do much to shorten my immense blank
days.

I send no apology for so doleful a note be
cause I feel, Mrs. Carr, that you will appreciate
my feelings.

Most cordially,

J. MUIR.

Sunday, April 6th, [1867.]

Your precious letter of the I5th reached me
last night. By accident it was nearly lost.

I cannot tell you, Mrs. Carr, how much I ap
preciate your sympathy and all of these kind
thoughts of cheer and substantial consolation
which you have stored for me in this letter.

I am much better than when I wrote you;
can now sit up about all day and in a room
partly lighted.

f 16 1

Letters to a Friend

Your Doctor says, "The aqueous humor
may be restored/' How? By nature or by art?

The position of my wound
will be seen in this figure.

The eye is pierced just where
the cornea meets the sclerotic
coating. I do not know the depth of the wound
or its exact direction. Sight was completely
gone from the injured eye for the first few days,
and my physician said it would be ever gone,
but I was surprised to find that on the fourth
or fifth day I could see a little with it. Sight
continued to increase for a few days, but for
the last three weeks it has not perceptibly in
creased or diminished.

I called in a Dr. Parvin lately, said to be
a very skillful oculist and of large experience
both here and in Europe. He said that he
thought the iris permanently injured; that the
crystalline lens was not injured ; that, of course,
my two eyes would not work together; and
that on the whole my chances of distinct vision
were not good. But the bare possibility of any-
[ 17]

Letters to a Friend

thing like full sight is now my outstanding hope.
When the wound was made about one third
of a teaspoonful of fluid like the white of an
egg flowed out upon my fingers, — aqueous
fluid, I suppose. The eye has not yet lost its
natural appearance.

I can see sufficiently well with it to avoid the
furniture, etc., in walking through a room.
Can almost, in full light, recognize some of
my friends but cannot distinguish one letter
from another of common type. I would like to
hear Dr. Carr's opinion of my case.

When I received my blow I could not feel
any pain or faintness because the tremendous
thought glared full on me that my right eye was
lost. I could gladly have died on the spot, be
cause I did not feel that I could have heart to
look at any flower again. But this is not so,
for I wish to try some cloudy day to walk to
the woods, where I am sure some of spring's
sweet fresh-born are waiting.

I believe with you that "nothing is with
out meaning and purpose that comes from a
[ 18 ]

Letters to a Friend

lather's hand," but during these dark weeks I
could not feel this, and, as for courage and for
titude, scarce the shadows of these virtues were
left me. The shock upon my nervous system
made me weak in mind as a child. But enough
of woe.

When I can walk to where fruited specimens
of Climacium are, I will send you as many as
you wish.

I must close. I thank you all again for your
kindness. I cannot make sentences that will
tell how much I feel indebted to you.

Please remember me to all my friends.

You will write soon. I can read my letters
now. Please send them in care of Osgood &

Smith.

Cordially,

MUIR.

[April, 1867.]

[Beginning of letter missing.]
I have been groping among the flowers a good
deal lately. Our trees are now in leaf, but the
[ 19 ]

Letters to a Friend

leaves, as Mrs. Browning would say,
"scarce long enough for waving/' The dear
little conservative spring mosses have elevated
their capsules on their smooth shining shafts,
and stand side by side in full stature, and full
fashion, every ornament and covering carefully
numbered and painted and sculptured as were
those of their Adams and Eves, every cowl prop
erly plaited, and drawn far enough down, every
hood with the proper dainty slant, their fash
ions never changing because ever best.

Tell Allie that I would be very glad to have
him send me an Anemone nemorosa [?] and A.
Nuttalliana. They do not grow here. I wish he
and Henry could visit me on Saturdays as they
used to do.

The poor eye is much better. I could read a
letter with it. I believe that sight is increas
ing. I have nearly an eye and a half left.

I feel, if possible, more anxious to travel than
ever.

I read a description of the Yosemite Valley
last year and thought of it most every day
f 20 1

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since. You know my tastes better than any one
else. I am, most gratefully,

JOHN MUIR.

Indianapolis, May 2nd, 1867.

I am sorry and surprised to hear of the cruel
fate of your ^plants.

I have never seen so happy flowers in any
other home. They lived with you so cheerfully
and confidingly, and felt so sure of receiving
from you sympathy and tenderness in all their
sorrows.

How could they grow cold and colder and
die without your knowing? They must have
called you. Could any bedroom be so remote
you could not hear? I am very sorry, Mrs.
Carr, for you and them. Can your loss be re
paired ? Will not other flowers lose confidence
in you and live like those of other people, sickly
and mute, half in, half out of, the body?

No snow fell here Easter evening, but a few
wet flakes are falling here and there to-day.

Thank you for sending the prophecy of that
[21 ]

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loving naturalist of yours. It is indeed a pleas
ant one, but my faith concerning its complete
fulfillment is weak. I do not know who your
other doctor is, but I am sure that when in the
Yosemite Valley and following the Pacific coast
I would obtain a great deal of geology from
Dr. Carr, and from yourself and that I should
win the secret of many a weed's plain heart.

I am overestimated by your friend. He
places me in company far too honorable, but
if we meet in the fields of the sunny South I
shall certainly speak to him.

Tell him, Mrs. Carr, in your next how thank
ful I am for his sympathy. He is one who can
sympathize in full. I feel sorry for his like mis
fortune and am indebted to him through you
for so many good and noble thoughts.

A little messenger met me with your letter of
April 8th when I was on my way to the woods
for the first time. I read it upon a moss-clad
fallen tree. You only of my friends congratu
lated me on my happiness in having avoided
the misery and mud of March, but for the seri-

[22 ]

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ous part of your letter, the kind of life which
our plant friends have, and their relation to us,
I do not know what to think of it. I must write
of this some other time.

In this first walk I found Erigenia, which
here is ever first, and sweet little violets, and
Sanguinariay and Isopyrum too, and Thalic-
trum anemonoides were almost ready to venture
their faces to the sky. The red maple was in
full flower glory; the leaves below and the
mosses were bright with its fallen scarlet blos
soms. And the elm too was in flower and the
earliest willows. All this when your fields had
scarce the memory of a flower left in them.

I will not try to tell you how much I enjoyed
in this walk after four weeks in bed. You can
feel it.

Indianapolis, June Qth, 1867.

I have been looking over your letters and am
sorry that so many of them are unanswered.
My debt to you has been increasing very rap
idly of late, and I don't think it can ever be
paid.

[23]

Letters to a Friend

I am not well enough to work, and I cannot
sit still; I have been reading and botanizing
for some weeks, and I find that for such work
I am very much disabled. I leave this city
for home to-morrow accompanied by Merrill
Moores, a little friend of mine eleven years of
age. We will go to Decatur, 111., thence north
ward through the wide prairies, botanizing a
few weeks by the way. We hope to spend a few
days in Madison, and I promise myself a great
deal of pleasure.

I hope to go South towards the end of sum
mer, and as this will be a journey that I know
very little about, I hope to profit by your
counsel before setting out.

I am very happy with the thought of so soon
seeing my Madison friends, and Madison, and
the plants of Madison, and yours.

I am thankful that this affliction has drawn
me to the sweet fields rather than from them.

Give my love to Allie and Henry and all my
friends. Yours most cordially,

JOHN Mum.
[24]

Letters to a Friend

Roses with us are now in their grandest splen
dor.

My address for five or six weeks from this
date will be Portage City, Wis.

[1867.]

I am now with the loved of home. I received
your kind letter on my arrival in Portage four
weeks ago. I have delayed writing that I might
be able to state when I could be in Madison.
I have never seen Arethusa nor Aspidium
fragrans, but I know many a meadow where
Calopogon finds home. With us it is now in the
plenitude of glory. Camptosorus is not here,
but I can easily procure you a specimen from
the rocks of Owen Sound, Canada. It is there
very abundant, so also is Scolopendrium. Have
you a living specimen of this last fern r Please
tell me particularly about the sending or bring
ing Calopogon or any other of our plants you
wish for. I have no skill whatever in the matter.
I am enjoying myself exceedingly. The dear
flowers of Wisconsin are incomparably more
[25]

Letters to a Friend

numerous than those of Canada or Indiana.
With what fervid, unspeakable joy did I wel
come those flowers that I have loved so long!
Hundreds grow in the full light of our opening
that I have not seen since leaving home. In
company with my little friend I visited Muir's
Lake. We approached it by a ravine in the
principal hills that belong to it. We emerged
from the low leafy oaks, and it came in full view
all unchanged, sparkling and clear, with its
edging of rushes and lilies. And there, too, was
the meadow, with its brook and willows, and all
the well-known nooks of its winding border
where many a moss and fern find home. I held
these poor eyes to the dear scene and it reached
me once more in its fullest glory.

We visited my millpond, a very Lilliputian
affair upon a branch creek from springs in the
meadow. After leaving the dam my stream
flows underground a few yards. The opening
of this dark way is extremely beautiful. I wish
you could see it. It is hung with a slender mea
dow sedge whose flowing tapered leaves have
[26]

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just sufficient stiffness to make them arch with
inimitable beauty as they reach down to wel
come the water to the light. This, I think, is
one of Nature's finest pieces most delicately
finished and composed of just this quiet flowing
water, sedge, and summer light.

I wish you could see the ferns of this neigh
borhood. We have some of the finest assem
blies imaginable. There is a little grassy lake
let about half a mile from here, shaded and
sheltered by a dense growth of small oaks. Just
where those oaks meet the marginal sedges of
the lake is a circle of ferns, a perfect brother
hood of the three osmundas, — regalis, Clayto-
niana, and Cinnamomea. Of the three, Clay to-
niana is the most stately and luxuriant. I never
saw such lordly, magnificent clumps before.
Their average height is not less than 3! or 4
feet. I measured several fronds that exceeded
5, — one, 5 feet 9 inches. Their palace home
gave no evidence of having ever been trampled
upon. I do wish you could meet them. This is
my favorite fern. I 'm sorry it does not grow in
[27]

Letters to a Friend

Scotland. Had Hugh Miller seen it there, he
would not have called regalis the prince of Ba-
lich ferns. I think that I have seen specimens
of the ostrich fern in some places of Canada
which might rival my Osmunda in height, but
not in beauty and sublimity.

I was anxious to see Illinois prairies on my
way home ; so we went to Decatur, or near the
centre of the State, thence north by Rockford
and Janesville. I botanized one week on the
prairie about seven miles southwest of Peca-
tonica. I gathered the most beautiful bouquet
there that I ever saw. I seldom make bouquets.
I never saw but very few that I thought were
at all beautiful. I was anxious to know the
grasses and sedges of the Illinois prairies and
also their comparative abundance ; so I walked
one hundred yards in a straight line, gathering
at each step that grass or sedge nearest my foot,
placing them one by one in my left hand as I
walked along, without looking at them or en
tertaining the remotest idea of making a bou
quet. At the end of this measured walk my
[ 28 ]

Letters to a Friend

handful, of course, consisted of one hundred
plants arranged in Nature s own way as regards
kind, comparative numbers, and size. I looked
at my grass bouquet by chance — was startled
— held it at arms length in sight of its own near
and distant scenery and companion flowers —
my discovery was complete and I was delighted
beyond measure with the new and extreme
beauty. Here it is: —

Of Kceleria cristata 55

" Agrostis s cobra 29

" Panicum clandestinum 7

" " depauperatum I

" Stipa spar tea 7

" Poa abodes 7

" " pratensis I

" Car ex panicea 4

" " Nova-Jnglia I

The extremely fine and diffuse purple Agros
tis contrasted most divinely with the taller,
strict, taper-finished Kceleria, The long-awned
single Stipa too and P. clandestinum, with their
broad ovate leaves and purple muffy pistils,
played an important part; so also did the cylin
drical spikes of the sedges. All were just in
[29]

Letters to a Friend

place; every leaf had its proper taper and tex
ture and exact measure of green. Only P. pra-
tensis seemed out of place, and as might be ex
pected it proved to be an intruder, belonging
to a field or bouquet in Europe. Can it be that
a single flower or weed or grass in all these
prairies occupies a chance position? Can it be
that the folding or curvature of a single leaf is
wrong or undetermined in these gardens that
God is keeping?

The most microscopic portions of plants are
beautiful in themselves, and these are beau
tiful combined into individuals, and undoubt
edly all are woven with equal care into one
harmonious, beautiful whole.

I have the analysis of two other handfuls of
prairie plants which I will show you another
time.

We hope to be in Madison in about three
weeks.

To me all plants are more precious than be
fore. My poor eye is not better or worse. A
cloud is over it, but in gazing over the widest
[30]

Letters to a Friend

landscapes I am not always sensible of its pres
ence.

My love to Allie and Henry Butler and all
my friends, please tell the Butlers when we are
coming. Their invitation is prior to yours, but
your houses are not widely separated. I mean
to write again before leaving home. You will
then have all my news and I will have only to
listen. Most cordially,

JOHN MUIR.

Indianapolis, August 3Oth, 1867.

We are safely in Indianapolis., I am not go
ing to write a letter, I only want to thank you
and the Doctor and all of the boys for the en
joyments of the pleasant botanical week we
spent with you.

We saw, as the steam hurried us on, that
the grand harvest of Composite would be no
failure this year. It is rapidly receiving its
purple and gold, in generous measure from the
precious light of these days.

I could not but notice how well appearances
[31 ]

Letters to a Friend

in the vicinity of Chicago agreed with Lesque-
reux's theory of the formation of prairies. We
spent about five hours in Chicago. I did not
find many flowers in her tumultuous streets;
only a few grassy plants of wheat and two or
three species of weeds, — amaranth, purslane,
carpet-weed, etc., — the weeds, I suppose, for
man to walk upon, the wheat to feed him. I
saw some new algae, but no mosses. I expected
to see some of the latter on wet walls and in
seams in the pavement, but I suppose that the
manufacturers' smoke and the terrible noise is
too great for the hardiest of them.

I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed
to be "carried of the spirit into the wilderness,"
I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate
in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no
rest. Is not your experience the same as this ?

I feel myself deeply indebted to you all for
your great and varied kindness, — not any the
less if from stupidity and sleepiness I forgot on
leaving to express it. Farewell.

J. MUIR.
[32]

Letters to a Friend

Among the Hills of Bear Creek,

seven miles southeast of Burkesville, Kentucky,

September 9th, [1867.]

I left Indianapolis last Monday and have
reached this point by a long, weary, round
about walk. I walked from Louisville a dis
tance of 170 miles, and my feet are sore, but I
am paid for all my toil a thousand times over.

The sun has been among the treetops for
more than an hour, and the dew is nearly all
taken back, and the shade in these hill basins
is creeping away into the unbroken strongholds
of the grand old forests.

I have enjoyed the trees and scenery of
Kentucky exceedingly. How shall I ever tell
of the miles and miles of beauty that have
been flowing into me in such measure? These
lofty curving ranks of bobbing, swelling hills,
these concealed valleys of fathomless verdure,
and these lordly trees with the nursing sun
light glancing in their leaves upon the outlines
of the magnificent masses of shade embosomed
among their wide branches, — these are cut
into my memory to go with me forever.
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I often thought as I went along how dearly
Mrs. Carr would appreciate all this. I have
thought of many things I wished to ask you
about when with you. I hope to see you all
again some time when my tongue and memory
are in better order. I have much to ask the
Doctor about the geology of Kentucky.

I have seen many caves, Mammoth among
the rest. I found two [ ] ferns at the last.
My love to Allie and all.

Very cordially yours,

JOHN MUIR.

I am in the woods on a hilltop with my back
against a moss-clad log. I wish you could see
my last evening's bedroom.

My route will be through Kingston and Mad-
isonville, Tenn., and through Blairsville and
Gainesville, Georgia. Please write me at Gaines
ville. I am terribly hungry. I hardly dare to
think of home and friends.

I was a few miles south of Louisville when
I planned my journey. I spread out my map
[34]

Letters to a Friend

under a tree and made up my mind to go
through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia to
Florida, thence to Cuba, thence to some part
of South America, but it will be only a hasty
walk. I am thankful, however, for so much.

I will be glad to receive any advice from you.
I am very ignorant of all things pertaining to

this journey.

Again farewell.

J. MUIR.

My love to the Butlers. I am sorry I could
not see John Spooner before leaving Madison.

Cedar Keys, [Fla.]

November 8th, [1867.]

I am just creeping about getting plants and
strength after my fever. I wrote you a long
time ago, but retained the letter, hoping to be
able soon to tell you where you might write.
Your letter arrived in Gainesville just a few
minutes before I did. Somehow your letters
always come when most needed. I felt and en
joyed what you said of souls and solitudes, also
that "All of Nature being yet found in man/'
[35 ] "

Letters to a Friend

I shall long for a letter from you. Will you
please write me a long letter? Perhaps it will
be safer to send it to New Orleans, La. I shall
have to go there for a boat to South America.
I do not yet know which point in South Amer
ica I had better go to. What do you say? My
means being limited, I cannot stay long any
where. I would gladly do anything I could for
Mr. Warren, but I fear my time will be too short
to effect much.

I did not see Miss Brooks, because I found
she was 130 miles from Savannah. I passed the
Bostwich plantation and could not conveniently
go back. I am very sorry about the mistake.

I have written little, but you will excuse me.
I am wearied.

My most cordial love to all.

Near Snelling, Merced Co.,

California, July 26th, [1868.]

I have had the pleasure of but one letter
since leaving home from you. That I received
at Gainesville, Georgia.

[36]

Letters to a Friend

I have not received a letter from any source
since leaving Florida, and of course I am very
lonesome and hunger terribly for the commun
ion of friends. I will remain here eight or nine
months and hope to hear from all my friends.

Fate and flowers have carried me to Califor
nia, and I have reveled and luxuriated amid
its plants and mountains nearly four months.
I am well again, I came to life in the cool winds
and crystal waters of the mountains, and, were
it not for a thought now and then of loneliness
and isolation, the pleasure of my existence
would be complete.

I have forgotten whether I wrote you from
Cuba or not. I spent four happy weeks there
in January and February.

I saw only a very little of the grandeur of
Panama, for my health was still in wreck, and
I did not venture to wait the arrival of another
steamer. I had but half a day to collect speci
mens. The Isthmus train rushed on with camel
speed through the gorgeous Eden of vines and
palms, and I could only gaze from the car plat-
[37 1

Letters to a Friend

form and weep and pray that the Lord would
some day give me strength to see it better.

After a delightful sail among the scenery of
the sea I arrived in San Francisco in April and
struck out at once into the country. I followed
the Diablo foothills along the San Jose Valley
to Gilroy, thence over the Diablo Mountains
to valley of San Joaquin by the Pacific pass,
thence down the valley opposite the mouth of
the Merced River, thence across the San Joa
quin, and up into the Sierra Nevada to the
mammoth trees of Mariposa and the glorious
Yosemite, thence down the Merced to this
place.

The goodness of the weather as I journeyed
towards Pacheco was beyond all praise and de
scription, fragrant and mellow and bright. The
air was perfectly delicious, sweet enough for
the breath of angels; every draught of it gave
a separate and distinct piece of pleasure. I do
not believe that Adam and Eve ever tasted
better in their balmiest nook.

The last of the Coast Range foothills were
[38]

Letters to a Friend

in near view all the way to Gilroy. Their union
with the valley is by curves and slopes of inimit
able beauty, and they were robed with the
greenest grass and richest light I ever beheld,
and colored and shaded with millions of flowers
of every hue, chiefly of purple and golden yel
low; and hundreds of crystal rills joined songs
with the larks, filling all the valley with music
like a sea, making it an Eden from end to end.
The scenery, too, and all of Nature in the
pass is fairly enchanting, — strange and beau
tiful mountain ferns, low in the dark canons
and high upon the rocky, sunlit peaks, banks
of blooming shrubs, and sprinklings and gath
erings of [ ] flowers, precious and pure as
ever enjoyed the sweets of a mountain home.
And oh, what streams are there! beaming,
glancing, each with music of its own, singing
as they go in the shadow and light, onward upon
their lovely changing pathways to the sea; and
hills rise over hills, and mountains over moun
tains, heaving, waving, swelling, in most glori
ous, overpowering, unreadable majesty; and
[391

Letters to a Friend

when at last, stricken with faint like a crushed
insect, you hope to escape from all the terrible
grandeur of these mountain powers, other foun
tains, other oceans break forth before you, for
there, in clear view, over heaps and rows of foot
hills is laid a grand, smooth outspread plain,
watered by a river, and another range of peaky
snow-capped mountains a hundred miles in the
distance. That plain is the valley of the San
Joaquin, and those mountains are the great
Sierra Nevadas. The valley of the San Joaquin
is the floweriest piece of world I ever walked,
one vast level, even flower-bed, a sheet of flow
ers, a smooth sea ruffled a little by the tree
fringing of the river and here and there of small
er cross streams from the mountains. Florida
is indeed a land of flowers, but for every flower
creature that dwells in its most delightsome
places more than a hundred are living here.
Here, here is Florida. Here they are not sprin
kled apart with grass between, as in our prai
ries, but grasses are sprinkled in the flowers ; not,
as in Cuba, flowers piled upon flowers heaped
[40]

Letters to a Friend

and gathered into deep, glowing masses, but
side by side, flower to flower, petal to petal,
touching but not entwined, branches weaving
past and past each other, but free and separate,
one smooth garment, mosses next the ground,
grasses above, petaled flowers between.

Before studying the flowers of this valley,
and their sky and all of the furniture and sounds
and adornments of their home, one can scarce
believe that their vast assemblies are perma
nent, but rather that, actuated by some plant
purpose, they had convened from every plain,
and mountain, and meadow of their kingdom,
and that the different coloring of patches, acres,
and miles marked the bounds of the various
tribe and family encampments. And now just
stop and see what I gathered from a square
yard opposite the Merced. I have no books
and cannot give specific names: —

Orders Open flowers Species

Composite 132,125 2 yellow, 3305 heads

Leguminosse 2620 2 purple and white

Scrophulariacese 169 I purple

Umbellaceae 620 I yellow

Geraniacese 22 I purple

[41 1

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Orders Open flowers Species

Rubiaceae 40 I white

85 Natural order unknown

60 Plants unflowered

Polemoniacese 407 2 purple

Graminese 29,830 3; stems about 700; spikelets

10,700

Musci 10,000,000 2 purples, Dicranum, Tunar

Total of open flowers, 165,912
" " flowers in bud, 100,000
" " withered, 40,000
" " natural orders, 9-11
" " species, 16-17

The yellow of these Composite is extremely
deep and rich and bossy, as though the sun had
rilled their petals with a portion of his very self.
It exceeds the purple of all the others in super
ficial quantity forty or fifty times their whole
amount, but to an observer who first looks
downward and then takes a more distant view,
the yellow gradually fades and purple predomi
nates because nearly all of the purple flowers
are higher. In depth the purple stratum is
about ten or twelve inches, the yellow seven or
eight, and second purple of mosses one.

I 'm sorry my page is done. I have not told
anything. I thought of you, Mrs. Carr, when
I was in the glorious Yosemite and of the proph-
[42]

Letters to a Friend

ecy of "the Priests" that you would see it and
worship there with your Doctor and Priest and
I. It is by far the grandest of all of the special
temples of Nature I was ever permitted to en
ter. .It must be the sanctum sanctorum of the
Sierras, and I trust that you will all be led to it.
Remember me to the Doctor. I hope he
has the pleasure of sowing in good and honest
hearts the glorious truth of science to which he
has devoted his life. Give my love to all your
boys and my little Butler.

Adieu.

J. MUIR.

Address:

Hopeton, Merced Co., Cala.

At a sheep ranch between the

Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers,

November 1st, [1868.]

I was extremely glad to receive yet one more
of your ever welcome letters. It found me two
weeks ago. I rode over to Hopeton to seek for
letters. I had to pass through a bed of Compos
ite two or three miles in diameter. They were
in the glow of full prime, forming a lake of the
[43]

Letters to a Friend

purest Composite gold I ever beheld. Some
single plants had upwards of three thousand
heads. Their petal-surface exceeded their leaf-
surface thirty or forty times. Because of the
constancy of the winds all these flowers faced
in one direction (southeast), and I thought, as
I gazed upon myriads of joyous plant beings
clothed in rosy golden light, What would old
Linnaus or Mrs. Carr say to this?

I was sorry to think of the loss of your letters,
but it is just what might be expected from the
wretched mail arrangements of the South.

I am not surprised to hear of your leaving
Madison and am anxious to know where your
lot will be cast. If you go to South America
soon, I shall hope to meet you, and if you should
decide to seek the shores of the Pacific in Cali
fornia before the end of the year, I shall find
you and be glad to make another visit to the
Yosemite with your Doctor and Priest, accord
ing to the old plan. I know the way up the
rocks to the falls, and I know too the abode
of many a precious mountain fern. I gathered
[44]

Letters to a Friend

plenty for you, but you must see them at home.
Not an angel could tell a tithe of these glories.

If you make your home in California, I know
from experience how keenly you will feel the
absence of the special flowers you love. No
others can fill their places; Heaven itself would
not answer without Calypso and Linncea.

I think that you will find in California just
what you desire in climate and scenery, for
both are so varied. March is the springtime
of the plains, April the summer, and May the
autumn. The other months are dry and wet
winter, uniting with each other, and with the
other seasons by splices and overlappings of
very simple and very intricate kinds. I rode
across the seasons in going to the Yosemite
last spring. I started from the Joaquin in the
last week of May. All the plain flowers, so
lately fresh in the power of full beauty, were
dead. Their parched leaves crisped and fell to
powder beneath my feet, as though they had
been "cast into the oven." And they had not,
like the plants of our West, weeks and months
[45]

Letters to a Friend

to grow old in, but they died ere they could
fade, standing together holding out their bran
ches erect and green as life. But they did not
die too soon; they lived a whole life and stored
away abundance of future life-principle in the
seed.

After riding for two days in this autumn I
found summer again in the higher foothills.
Flower petals were spread confidingly open, the
grasses waved their branches all bright and
gay in the colors of healthy prime, and the
winds and streams were cool. Forty or fifty
miles further into the mountains, I came to
spring. The leaves on the oak were small and
drooping, and they still retained their first
tintings of crimson and purple, and the wrinkles
of their bud folds were distinct as if newly
opened, and all along the rims of cool brooks
and mild sloping places thousands of gentle
mountain flowers were tasting life for the first
time.

A few miles farther "onward and upward"
I found the edge of winter. Scarce a grass
[46 ]

Letters to a Friend

could be seen. The last of the lilies and spring
violets were left below; the winter scales were
still shut upon the buds of the dwarf oaks and
alders ; the grand Nevada pines waved solemnly
to cold, loud winds among rushing, changing
stormclouds. Soon my horse was plunging in
snow ten feet in depth, the sky became darker
and more terrible, many-voiced mountain winds
swept the pines, speaking the dread language
of the cold north, snow began to fall, and in
less than a week from the burning plains of the
San Joaquin autumn was lost in the blinding
snows of mountain winter.

Descending these higher mountains towards
the Yosemite, the snow gradually disappeared
from the pines and the sky, tender leaves un
folded less and less doubtfully, lilies and violets
appeared again, and I once more found spring
in the grand valley. Thus meet and blend the
seasons of these mountains and plains, beauti
ful in their joinings as those of lake and land
or of the bands of the rainbow. The room is
full of talking men ; I cannot write, and I only
[ 47 ]

Letters to a Friend

attempt to scrawl this note to thank you for all
the good news and good thoughts and friendly
wishes and remembrances you send.

My kindest wishes to the Doctor. I am sure
you will be directed by Providence to the place
where you will best serve the end of existence.
My love to all your family.

Ever yours most cordially,

J. M.

Near Snellings, Merced Co., [Cal.]
February 24th, 1869.

Your two California notes from San Francis
co and San Mateo reached me last evening, and
I rejoice at the glad tidings they bring of your
arrival in this magnificent land. I have thought
of you hundreds of times in my seasons of deep
est joy, amid the flower purple and gold of the
plains, the fern fields in gorge and cafion, the
sacred waters, tree columns, and the eternal
unnameable sublimities of the mountains. Of
all my friends you are the only one that under
stands my motives and enjoyments. Only a
few weeks ago a true and liberal-minded friend
[48]

Letters to a Friend

sent me a large sheetful of terrible blue-steel
orthodoxy, calling me from clouds and flowers
to the practical walks of politics and philan
thropy. Mrs. Carr, thought I, never lectured
thus. I am glad, indeed, that you are here to
read for yourself these glorious lessons of sky
and plain and mountain, which no mortal
power can ever speak. I thought when in the
Yosemite Valley last spring that the Lord had
written things there that you would be allowed
to read some time.

I have not made a single friend in California,
and you may be sure I strode home last evening
from the post office feeling rich indeed. As soon
as I hear of your finding a home, I shall begin
a plan of visiting you. I have frequently seen
favorable reports upon the silk-culture in Cali
fornia. The climate of Los Angeles is said to be
as well tempered for the peculiar requirements
of the business as any in the world. I think that
you have brought your boys to the right field
for planting. I doubt if in all the world man's
comforts and necessities can be more easily
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Letters to a Friend

and abundantly supplied than in California.
I have often wished the Doctor near me in my
rambles among the rocks. Pure science is a most
unmarketable commodity in California. Con
spicuous, energetic, unmixed materialism rules
supreme in all classes. Prof. Whitney, as you
are aware, was accused of heresy while conduct
ing the State survey, because in his reports he
devoted some space to fossils and other equally
dead and un-Californian objects instead of col
umns of discovered and measured mines.

I am engaged at present in the very impor
tant and patriarchal business of sheep. I am
a gentle shepherd. The gray box in which I
reside is distant about seven miles northwest
from Hopeton, two miles north of Snellings.
The Merced pours past me on the south from
the Yosemite ; smooth, domey hills and the tree
fringe of the Tuolumne bound me on the north ;
the lordly Sierras join sky and plain on the east ;
and the far coast mountains on the west. My
mutton family of eighteen hundred range over
about ten square miles, and I have abundant
[ 50 ]

Letters to a Friend

opportunities for reading and botanizing. I
shall be here for about two weeks, then I shall
be engaged in shearing sheep between the Tuo-
lumne and Stanislaus from the San Joaquin
to the Sierra foothills for about two months.
I will be in California until next November,
when I mean to start for South America.

I received your Castleton letter and wrote
you in November. I suppose you left Vermont
before my letter had time to reach you. You
must prepare for your Yosemite baptism in June.

Here is a sweet little flower that I have just
found among the rocks of the brook that waters
Twenty-Hill Hollow. Its anthers are curiously
united in pairs and form stars upon its breast.
The calyx seems to have been judged too plain
and green to accompany the splendid corolla,
and so is left behind among the leaves. I first
met this plant among the Sierra Nevadas.
There are five or six species. For beauty and
simplicity they might be allowed to dwell with
in sight of Calypso. There are about twenty
plants in flower in the gardens of my daily

Letters to a Friend

walks. The first was born in January. I give
them more attention than I give the dirty mon
grel creatures of my flock, that are about half
made by God and half by man. I have not yet
discovered the poetical part of a shepherd's
duties.

Spring will soon arrive to the plants of Madi
son, and surely they will miss you. In Yosemite
you will find cassiopes and laurels and azaleas,
and luxuriant mosses and ferns, but I know
that even these can never take the place of the
long-loved ones of your Vermont hills.

Forgive me this long writing. I know that
you are in a fever of joy from the beauty pour
ing upon you; nevertheless you seem so near
I can hardly stop.

My most cordial regards to the Doctor. Cali-
fornians do not deserve such as he.

A lawyer by the name of Wigonton or Wigle-
ton, a graduate of Madison, resides in Snellings.
I suppose you know him.

I am your friend,

JOHN MUIR.
[52]

Letters to a Friend

920 Valencia St.,
San Francisco, April 24th, 1869.

I enclose at last the name of the big orange
book. Either Paqot & Co. or Gregoire & Co.
will import it for Mr. Carr at the price he named,
— for less if intended for the library.

I thought you would have been to make at
least one of your small businesslike calls to see
me ere this, but I suppose the office and con
ventions and your farm leave you precious little
time. Your days all go by in little beats and
bits, while you move so fast you are nearly
invisible.

Had a moment's talk with the Doctor. Am
glad he is looking so much like himself again.
The summer is coming. Don't know how it
will be spent.

Did you hear the Butlers the other day?
Glassy leaves tilted at all angles.

Cordially yours,

JOHN MUIR.

[53]

Letters to a Friend

Seven miles north from Snellings,
May 1 6th, 1869.

The thoughts of again meeting with you and
with the mountains make me scarce able to hold
my pen. If you can let me know by the first
of June when you will leave Stockton, I will
meet you in the very valley itself. When the
grass of the plains is dead, most owners of sheep
drive their flocks to the pastures green of the
mountains, and as my soul is athirst for moun
tain things, I have engaged to take charge of a
flock all summer between the head waters of the
Tuolumne and Yosemite, within a few hours'
walk of the valley. For the next two weeks I
will be at Hopeton. Some time in the first week
of June, I will start from this place (Patrick
Delaney's ranch) for the mountains. By the
middle of June or a little later we will have our
flock settled in the new home, and, having made
special arrangements for a two weeks' ramble
with you, I will then be ready and free. Any
time, say between the 2Oth of June and the
1 5th of July, will suit me. I intended to enjoy
[54]

Letters to a Friend

another baptism in the sanctuaries of Yosem-
ite, whether with companions of like passions
or alone. Surely, then, my cup will be full
when blessed with such company.

Last May I made the trip on horseback, go
ing by Coulterville and returning by Mariposa.
A passable carriage-road reached about twelve
miles beyond Coulterville ; the rest of the dis
tance to the valley was crossed only by a nar
row trail. On the Mariposa route a point is
reached twelve or fourteen miles beyond Mari
posa by carriages ; the rest of the journey, about
forty miles, must be made on horseback. Tour
ists are generally advised to go one way and re
turn the other, that as much as possible may
be seen, but I think that more is seen by going
and returning by the same route, because all
of the magnitudes of the mountains are so great
that unless seen and submitted to a good long
time they are not seen or felt at all.

I think that you had better take the Mari
posa route, for the grandest grove of sequoias
ever discovered is upon it, and it is much the
[ 55 ]

Letters to a Friend

best route in many respects. You can reach
Mariposa direct from Stockton by stage. At
Mariposa you can procure saddle-horses and all
necessary supplies, — provisions, cooking uten
sils, etc. Provisions can also be obtained at
"Clark's" and in the valley. Clark's Hotel is
midway between the valley and Mariposa. It
would be far more pleasant to camp out — to
alight like birds in beautiful groves of your own
choosing — than to travel by rule and make
forced marches to fixed points of common resort
and common confusion.

You will require a light tent made of cotton
sheeting, also a strong dress and strong pair of
shoes for rock service. You will, of course, bring
a good supply of paper for plants. I suppose,
too, that you will all bring a supply of drawing-
material, but I hardly think that drawing will
be done. People admitted to heaven would
most likely "wonder and adore" for at least
two weeks before sketching its scenery, and I
don't think that you will sketch Yosemite any
sooner.

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Letters to a Friend

Here is, I think, a fair estimate of the cost
of the round trip from Stockton, allowing,
say, ten days from time of departure from
Mariposa till arrival at same point. Stage fare
and way expenses to and from Mariposa, say
$40.00; saddle horse, $20.00; provisions, cook
ing utensils, etc., $15.00; total, direct expense
for one person, $75.00. Each additional day
spent in the valley would cost about $3 .00. If
you and all the members of your company are
good riders, and there are among you one or
two men practical travelers, and you could pur
chase, or hire, horses at a reasonable rate in
San Jose or Gilroy, you could cross the Coast
Range via the Pacheco Pass or Livermore Val
ley, thence direct to the Yosemite across the
Joaquin and up the Merced, passing through
Hopeton and Snellings. This kind of a trip
would be less costly, and you would enjoy it,
but unless your company was all composed of
the same kind of material it would not answer.

I hope the Doctor will come too. I want to
see him and ask him a great many questions.
[57 ]

Letters to a Friend

There is a kind of hotel in the valley, but it is
incomparably better to choose your own camp
among the rocks and waterfalls. The time of
highest water in the valley varies very much
in different seasons. Last year it was highest
about the end of June. I think, perhaps, the
falls would be seen to as good advantage to
wards the end of June as at another time, and
at any rate there will be a thousand times more
of grandeur than any person can absorb.

Here, then, in a word is the plan which I pro
pose: That you take the stage at Stockton for
Mariposa. At Mariposa you procure saddle-
horses and one pack-animal for your tent, blan
kets, provisions, etc., (a guide will be furnished
by the keeper of the livery - stable to take
charge of the horses,) and that I meet you in the
valley, which I can do without difficulty pro
vided you send me word by the first of June
what day you will set out from Stockton. Ad
dress to Hopeton.

When you arrive in the valley, please regis
ter your name at Mr. Hutchings' hotel. I will
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Letters to a Friend

do the same. If you should wish to reach me
by letter after I have started with the sheep to
the mountains, you may perhaps do so by ad
dressing to Coulterville.

When you write, state whether you will visit
the big trees on your way to the valley or
whether you will do so on your return.

I bid you good-bye, thanking the Lord for
the hope of seeing you and for his goodness to
you in turning your face towards his most holy
mansion of the mountains.

Hopeton, May 2Oth, 1869.

I forgot to state in my last concerning the
Yosemite that I did not receive yours until
many days after its arrival, as I was shearing
sheep a considerable distance from here in the
foothills, and the postmaster, knowing where
I was, could not forward it; but I will remain
here until the ist of June, or possibly a few days
later, and will receive any letters arriving for
me at once either in Snelling or Hopeton.

The grove of sequoias is only six miles from
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Letters to a Friend

the Yosemite trail, about midway between
Mariposa and the valley. The trail leading
through the groves leaves the Yosemite trail
at Mr. Clark's, where you can obtain all neces
sary directions, etc. It is not many years since
this grove was discovered. The sequoias so
often described and so well known throughout
the world belong to the Calaveras grove. The
Mariposa grove has a much larger number of
trees than the Calaveras, and it is in all the
majesty and grandeur of nature undisturbed.

You will likely make the journey from Mari
posa to the valley in two days. No member of
your company need be afraid of this mountain
ride, as you will be provided with sure-footed
horses accustomed to the journey and an ex
perienced guide.

Most persons visiting the sequoia grove spend
only a few hours in it and depart without seeing
a single tree, for the chiefest glories of these
mountain kings are wholly invisible to hasty
or careless observers. I hope you may be able
to spend a good long time in worship amid the
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glorious columns of this mountain temple. I
fancy they are aware of your coming and are
waiting. I fondly hope that nothing will occur
to prevent your coming. I will endeavor to
reach the valley a day or so before you. The
night air of the mountains is very cold. You
will require plenty of warm blankets.

I am sorry that the Doctor has been so sud
denly smothered up in business. If he and the
priest were in the company according to the
prophecy our joy would be full.

I am in a perfect tingle with the memories of
a year ago and with anticipation glowing bright
with all that I love.

Farewell.

JOHN MUIR.

I received your letter containing "The Song
of Nature" by Emerson and derived a great
deal of pleasure from it.

J. M.

61

Letters to a Friend

Five miles west of Yosemite,
July n, [1869.]

I need not try to tell you how sorely I am
pained by this bitter disappointment. Your
Mariposa note of June 22 did not reach Black's
until July 3d, and I did not receive it until
the 6th.

I met a shepherd a few miles from here yes
terday who told me that a letter from Yosemite
for me was at Harding's Mills. I have not yet
received it. No dependence can be placed upon
the motions of letters in the mountains, and
I feared this result on my not receiving any
thing definite concerning your time of leaving
Stockton before I left the plains. I wish now
that I had not been entangled with sheep at
all but that I had remained among post-offices
and joined your party at Snellings.

Thus far all of my deepest, purest enjoyments
have been taken in solitude, and the fate seems
hard that has hindered me from sharing Yo
semite with you.

We are camped this evening among a bundle
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of the Merced's crystal arteries, which have just
gone far enough from their silent fountain to be
full of lakelets and lilies [?], and the bleating
of our flock can neither confuse nor hush the
thousand notes of their celestial song. The sun
has set, and these glorious shafts of the spruce
and pine shoot higher and higher as the dark
ness comes on. I must say good night while
bonds of Nature's sweetest influences are about
me in these sacred mountain halls, and I know
that every chord of your being has throbbed and
tingled with the same mysterious powers when
you were here. Farewell. I am glad to know
that you have been allowed to bathe your ex
istence in God's glorious Sierra Nevadas and
sorry that I could not meet you.

JOHN MUIR.

A few miles north of Yosemite,
July isth, [1869.]

We are camped this afternoon upon the bank
of the stream that falls into the valley opposite
Hutchings' hotel (Yosemite Falls). We are
perhaps three miles from the valley.
[63]

Letters to a Friend

This Yosemite stream is flowing rapidly here
in a small flowery meadow, not meandering like
a meadow stream but going straight on with
ripples and rapids. It derives its waters from
a basin corresponding in every respect with its
own sublimity and loneliness.

July i yth. We are now camped in a splendid
grove of spruce only one mile from the Yosemite
wall. The stream that goes spraying past us
in the rocks reaches the valley by that canon
between the Yosemite Falls and the North
Dome. I left my companions in charge of the
sheep for the last three days and have had a
most heavenly piece of life among the domes
and falls and rocks of the north side and upper
end of the valley.

Yesterday I found the stream that flows
through Crystal Lake past the South Dome and
followed it three miles among cascades and
rapids to the dome. Were you at the top or bot
tom of the upper Yosemite Falls? Were you
at the top of the Nevada Falls ? Were you in
that Adiantum cave by the Vernal Falls ? Have
[64]

Letters to a Friend

you had any view of the valley excepting from
the Mariposa Trail? How long were you in
Sequoia Grove ?

We will, perhaps, be here about two weeks;
then we will go to the "big meadows" twelve
miles towards the summit, where we will re
main until we start for the plains some time
near the end of September. The kind of meet
ing you have had with Yosemite answers well
enough for most people, but it will not do for
you. When will you return to the mountains ?

I had a letter from Professor Butler a short
time ago, saying that he would probably visit
California this month in company with a man
of war.

Remember me to the Doctor and to Allie and
Ned. Please send me a letter by the middle
of September to Snellings. I have no hope of
hearing from you after we start for the Big
Meadows.

Letters to a Friend

Two miles below La Grange,
October 3rd, 1869.

My summer in the third heaven of the Sierras
is past. I am again in the smooth open world
of plains. I received three of your eight notes,
which for mountain correspondence is about
as might be expected. I learned by a San Fran
cisco newspaper that Dr. Carr had accepted
a professorship in the University, and Prof.
Butler told me about a month ago that he had
gone to Madison to fetch his cabinet, etc. There
fore I know that you are making a fixed home
and that you will yet see the mountains and the
Joaquin plains. We were camped within a mile
or two of the Yosemite north wall for three
weeks. I used to go to the North Dome or
Yosemite Falls most every day to sketch and
listen to the waters. One day I went down into
the valley by the canon opposite Hutchings and
found Prof. Butler near the bridge between the
Vernal and Nevada falls. He was in company
with Gen. Alvord. He was in the valley only
a few hours, his time being controlled by the
[ 66]

Letters to a Friend

General's military clock, and I am pretty sure
that he saw just about nothing.

I am glad that the world does not miss me
and that all of my days with the Lord and his
works are uncounted and unmeasured. I found
the guide who was with you. He said that you
wished me to gather some cones for you. I
hope to see you soon in San Francisco and will
fetch you specimens of those which grow higher
than you have been. I am sorry that you were
so short a time in the valley, but you will go
again and remain a month or two. I would like
to spend a winter there to see the storms. We
spent most of the summer on the south fork of
the Tuolumne near Castle and Cathedral peaks,
and oh, how unspeakable the glories of these
higher mountains. You have not yet caught a
glimpse of the Sierra Nevadas. You must go
to Mono by the Bloody Canon pass. I will not
try to write the grandeur I have seen all sum
mer but I will copy you the notes of one day
from my journal.

"Sept. 2nd. Amount of cloudiness .08. Sky
[67]

Letters to a Friend

red evening and morning, not usual crimson
glow but separate clouds colored and anchored
in dense massive mountain forms. One red,
bluffy cap is placed upon Castle Peak and its
companion to the south, but the smooth cone
tower of the castle is seen peering out over the
top. Tiger Peak has a cloud cap also of the
grandest proportion and colors, and the exten
sive field of clustered towers and peaks and
domes where is stored the treasures of snow be
longing to the Merced and Tuolumne and Joa-
quin is embosomed in bossy clouds of white.
The grand Sierra Cathedral is overshadowed
like Sinai. Never before beheld such divine
mingling of cloud and mountain. Had a delight
ful walk upon the north wall. Ascended by a
deep narrow passage cut in the granite. Its
borders are splendidly decorated with ferns
and blooming shrubs. The most delicate of
plantlets in the gush and ardor of full bloom in
places called desolate and gloomy, where the
dwarfed and crumpled pines are felled with hail
and rocks and wintry snows ; but as frail flowers
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Letters to a Friend

of human kind are protected by the hand of
God, blooming joyfully through a long beauti
ful life in places and times that are strewn with
the wrecks of the powerful and the great, so in
these far mountains, where are the treasures of
snow and storms, live in safety and innocence
these sweet, tender children of the plants.
Had looked long and well for Cassiope, but in
all my long excursions failed to find its dwelling-
places and began to fear that we would never
meet, but had presentiment of finding it to
day, and as I passed a rock-shelf after reaching
the great gathered heaps of everlasting snow,
something seemed to whisper 'Cassiope, Cas
siope.5 That name was 'driven in upon me/
as Calvinists say, and, looking around, behold
the long-looked-for mountain child!"

Farewell! I do not care to write much be
cause you seem so near. I hope that you will
all be very happy in your new home and not
feel too sorely the separation from the loved
places and people of Wisconsin.

[69]

Letters to a Friend

Remember me to the Doctor and to all of
your boys.

I am most cordially,

Your friend,

JOHN MUIR.

La Grange, November 15, 1869.

DEAR FRIENDS MRS. AND DR. CARR: —

I thank you most heartily for the very kind
invitation you send me. I could enjoy a blink
of rest in your new home with a relish that only
those can know who have suffered solitary ban
ishment for so many years, but I must return
to the mountains, to Yosemite. I am told that
the winter storms there will not be easily borne,
but I am bewitched, enchanted, and to-morrow
I must start for the great temple to listen to the
winter songs and sermons preached and sung
only there.

The plains here are green already and the
upper mountains have the pearly whiteness of
their first snows.

Farewell. I will bring you some cones in
M 70]

Letters to a Friend

the spring. I hope that you enjoy your labor
in your new sphere.
My love to all your family, and I am
Yours most cordially,

JOHN Mum.

Yosemite, December 6th, 1869.

I am feasting in the Lord's mountain house,
and what pen may write my blessings ? I am
going to dwell here all winter magnificently
"Snowbound"? Just think of the grandeur of
the mountain winter in the Yosemite ! Would
that you could enjoy it also!

I read your word in pencil upon the bridge
below the Nevada, and I thank you for it most
devoutly. No one or all the Lord's blessings can
enable me to exist without a friend indeed.

There is no snow in the valley. The ground
is covered with the brown and yellow leaves of
the oak and maple, and their crisping and rust
ling makes one think of the groves of Madison.
I have been wandering about among the falls
and rapids, studying the grand instruments of
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Letters to a Friend

slopes and curves and echoing caves upon which
those divine harmonies are played. Only a thin
flossy veil sways and bends over Yosemite now,
and Pohono is a web of waving mist. New
songs are sung, forming parts of the one grand
anthem composed and written " in the begin
ning."

Most of the flowers are dead. Only a few are
blooming in summer nooks on the north side
rocks. You remember that delightful fernery
by the ladders. Well, I discovered a garden
meeting of adiantum far more delicate and lux
uriant than those of the ladders. They are in
a cover or coverlet between the upper and lower
Yosemite Falls. They are the most delicate and
graceful plant creatures I ever beheld, waving
themselves in lines of the most refined of heav
en's beauty to the music of the water. The mo
tion of purple dulses in pools left by the tide on
the sea-coast of Scotland was the only memory
that was stirred by these spiritual ferns. You
speak of dying and going to the woods; I am
dead and gone to heaven.
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Letters to a Friend

r An Indian comes to the valley once a month
upon snowshoes. He brings the mail, and so
I shall hope to hear from you. Address to
Yosemite, via Big Oak Flat, care of Mr.
Hutchings.

Yosemite, April 5, 1870.

I wish you were here to-day, for our rocks are
again decked with deep snow. Two days ago a
big gray cloud collared Barometer Dome. The
vast booming column of the upper falls was
swayed like a shred of loose mist by broken
pieces of storm that struck it suddenly, occa
sionally bending it backwards to the very top
of the cliff, making it hang sometimes more
than a minute like an inverted bow edged with
comets. A cloud upon the dome and these ever
varying rockings and bendings of the falls are
sure storm signs, but yesterday morning's sky
was clear, and the sun poured the usual quan
tity of the balmiest spring sunshine into the
blue ether of our valley gulf, but ere long ragged
lumps of cloud began to appear all along the
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valley-rim, coming gradually into closer ranks,
and rising higher like rock additions to the
walls. From the top of these cloud-banks fleecy
fingers arched out from both sides and met
over the middle of the meadows, gradually
thickening and blackening, until at night big,
confident snowflakes began to fall. We thought
that the last snow-harvest had been withered
and reaped long ago by the glowing sun, for
the bluebirds and robins sang spring, and so also
did the bland, unsteady winds, and the brown
meadow opposite the house was spotted here
and there with blue violets. Carex spikes were
shooting up through the dead leaves, and the
cherry and briar rose were unfolding their leaves,
and besides these spring wrote many a sweet
mark and word that I cannot tell ; but snow fell
all the hours of to-day in cold winter earnest,
and now at evening there rests upon rocks,
trees, and weeds as full and ripe a harvest of
snow flowers as I ever beheld in the stormiest,
most opaque days of midwinter.

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Letters to a Friend

April 1 3th.

About twelve inches of snow fell in that last
snowstorm. It disappeared as suddenly as it
came, snatched away hastily almost before it
had time to melt, as if a mistake had been made
in allowing it to come here at all.

A week of spring days bright in every hour,
without a stain or thought of the storm, came
in glorious colors, giving still greater pledges of
happy life to every living creature of the spring,
but a loud, energetic snowstorm possessed
every hour of yesterday. Every tree and broken
weed bloomed yet once more; all summer dis
tinctions were leveled off; all plants and the
very rocks and streams were equally polypetal-
ous.

This morning winter had everything in the
valley. The snow drifted about in the frosty
wind like meal, and the falls were muffled in
thick sheets of frozen spray. Thus do winter
and spring leap into the valley by turns, each
remaining long enough to form a small season
or climate of its own, or going and coming
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squarely in a single day. Whitney says that
the bottom has fallen out of the rocks here
(which I most devoutly disbelieve). Well, the
bottom frequently falls out of these winter
clouds and climates. It is seldom that any long
transition slant exists between dark and bright
days in this narrow world of rocks.

I know that you are enchanted with the April
loveliness of your new home. You enjoy the
most precious kind of sunshine, and by this
time flower-patches cover the hills about Oak
land like colored clouds. I would like to visit
these broad outspread blotches of social flowers
that are so characteristic of your hills, but far
rather would I see and feel the flowers that are
now at Fountain Lake and the lakes of Madi
son.

Mrs. Hutchings thought of sending you a
bulb of the California lily by mail but found
it too large. She wished to be remembered to
you. Your Squirrel is very happy. She is a
rare creature.

I hope to see you and the Doctor soon in the
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Letters to a Friend

valley. I have a great deal to say to you which
I will not try to write. Remember me most cor
dially to the Doctor and to Allie and all the
boys. I am much obliged to you for those bo
tanical notes, etc., and I am ever most
Cordially yours,

JOHN MUIR.

Here is a moss with a globular capsule and a
squinted, cowl-shaped calyptra. Do you know
it?

Yosemite, May lyth, 1870.

Our valley is just gushing, throbbing full of
open, absorbable beauty, and I feel that I must
tell you about it. I am lonely among my en
joyments; the valley is full of visitors, but I
have no one to talk to.

The season that is with us now is about what
corresponds to full-fledged spring in Wisconsin.
The oaks are in full leaf and have shoots long
enough to bend over and move in the wind.
The good old bracken is waist-high already,
and almost all the rock ferns have their outer-
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most fronds unrolled. Spring is in full power
and is steadily reaching higher like a shadow
and will soon reach the topmost horizon of rocks.
The buds of the poplar opened on the I9th of
last month, those of the oaks on the 24th.

May ist was a fine, hopeful, healthful, cool,
bright day with plenty of the fragrance of new
leaves and flowers and of the music of bugs and
birds. From the 5th to I4th was extremely
warm, the thermometer averaging about 85 de
grees at noon in shade. Craggy banks of cumuli
became common about Storm King and the
Dome. Flowers came in troops. The upper
snows melted very fast, raising the falls to their
highest pitch of glory. The waters of the Yose-
mite Fall no longer float softly and downily like
hanks of spent rockets but shoot at once to the
bottom with tremendous energy. There is at
least ten times the amount of water in the val
ley that there was when you were here.

In crossing the valley we had to sail in the
boat. The river paid but little attention to its
banks, flowing over the meadow in great river-
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Letters to a Friend

like sheets. But last Sunday, ifjth, was a dark
day; the rich streams of heat and light were
withheld; the thermometer fell suddenly to
35 degrees, and down among the verdant banks
of new leaves, and groves of half-open ferns,
and thick settlements of confident flowers, came
heavy snow in big, blinding flakes, coming
down with a steady gait and taking their places
gracefully upon shrinking leaves and petals as
if they were doing exactly right. The whole
day was snowy and stormy like a piece of early
winter. Snow fell also on the i6th. A good
many of the ferns and delicate flowers are
killed.

There are about fifty visitors in the valley at
present. When are you and the Doctor coming?
Mr. Hutchings has not yet returned from Wash
ington, and so I will be here all summer. I have
not heard from you since January.

I had a letter the other day from Prof. Butler.
He has been glancing and twinkling about
among the towns of all the States at a most
unsubstantial velocity.

[ 79]

Letters to a Friend

Did you see the gold of the Joaquin plains
this spring? There is a later gold in October
which you must see.

Remember me warmly to Dr. Carr and all the
boys, and I remain always

Most cordially yours,

JOHN Mum.

Yosemite via Big Oak Flat.

Yosemite, Sunday, May 29th, 1870.

I received your "apology" two days ago and
ran my eyes hastily over it three or four lines
at a time to find the place that would say you
were coming, but you "fear" that you cannot
come at all, and only "hope" that the Doctor
may; but I shall continue to look for you never
theless. The Chicago party you speak of were
here and away again before your letter arrived.
All sorts of human stuff is being poured into our
valley this year, and the blank, fleshly apathy
with which most of it comes in contact with the
rock and water spirits of the place is most amaz
ing. I do not wonder that the thought of such
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Letters to a Friend

people being here, Mrs. Carr, makes you "mad,"
but after all, Mrs. Carr, they are about harm
less. They climb sprawlingly to their saddles
like overgrown frogs pulling themselves up a
stream-bank through the bent sedges, ride up
the valley with about as much emotion as the
horses they ride upon, and comfortable when
they have "done it all," and long for the safety
and flatness of their proper homes.

In your first letter to the valley you com
plain of the desecrating influences of the fashion
able hordes about to visit here, and say that
you mean to come only once more and "into
the beyond." I am pretty sure that you are
wrong in saying and feeling so, for the tide of
visitors will float slowly about the bottom of the
valley as a harmless scum, collecting in hotel
and saloon eddies, leaving the rocks and falls
eloquent as ever and instinct with imperishable
beauty and greatness. And recollect that the
top of the valley is more than half way to real
heaven, and the Lord has many mansions away
in the Sierra equal in power and glory to Yo-
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semite, though not quite so open, and I venture
to say that you will yet see the valley many
times both in and out of the body.

I am glad you are going to the coast moun
tains to sleep on Diablo, — Angelo ere this.
I am sure that you will be lifted above all the
effects of your material work. There is a pre
cious natural charm in sleeping under the open
starry sky. You will have a very perfect view
of the Joaquin Valley and the snowy, pearly wall
of the Sierra Nevada. I lay for weeks last sum
mer upon a bed of pine leaves at the edge of a
[ ] gentian meadow in full view of Mt. Dana.

Mrs. Hutchings says that the lily bulbs were
so far advanced in their growth when she dug
some to send you that they could not be packed
without being broken, but I am going to be
here all summer, and I know where the grand
est plantation of these lilies grow, and I will box
up as many of them as you wish, together with
as many other Yosemite things as you may ask
for and send them out to you before the pack
train makes its last trip. I know the Spircea
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you speak of. It is abundant all around the top
of the valley and on the rocks at Lake Tenaya
and reaches almost to the very summit about
Mt. Dana. There is also a purple one very abun
dant on the fringe meadows of Yosemite Creek,
a mile or two back from the brink of the Falls.
Of course it will be a source of keen pleasure to
me to procure you anything you may desire.
I should like to see that ground again. I saw
some in Cuba but they did not exceed twenty-
five or thirty feet in height.

I have thought of a walk in the wild gardens
of Honolulu, and now that you speak of my go
ing there it becomes very probable, as you seem
to understand me better than I do myself. I
have no square idea about the time I shall get
myself away from here. I shall at least stay till
you come. I fear that the agave will be in the
spirit world ere that time. You say that I ought
to have such a place as you saw in the gardens
of that mile and a half of climate. Well, I think
those lemon and orange groves would do, per
haps, to make a living, but for a garden I should
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Letters to a Friend

not have anything less than a piece of pure
nature. I was reading Thoreau's "Maine
Woods" a short time ago. As described by him,
these woods are exactly like those of Canada
West. How I long to meet Linnaea and Chiog-
enes hispidula once more! I would rather see
these two children of the evergreen woods than
all the twenty-seven species of palm that Agas-
siz met on the Amazons.

These summer days "go on" calmly and
evenly. Scarce a mark of the frost and snow
of the I5th is visible. The brackens are four or
five feet high already. The earliest azaleas have
opened, and the whole crop of bulbs is ready to
burst. The river does not overflow its banks
now, but it is exactly brim-full. The thermom
eter averages about 75 degrees at noon. We
have sunshine every morning from a bright
blue sky. Ranges of cumuli appear towards the
summits with neat regularity every day about
ii o'clock, making a splendid background for
the South Dome. In a few hours these clouds
disappear and give up the sky to sunny evening.
[ 84]

Letters to a Friend

Mr. Hutchings arrived here from Washing
ton a week ago. There are sixty or seventy
visitors here at present.

I have received only two letters from you
this winter and spring, dated Jan. 22nd and
May yth.

I kissed your untamed one for you. She
wishes that she knew the way to Oakland that
she might come to you.

Remember me to the Doctor and all your
boys and to your little Allie. I remain ever
Yours most cordially,

J. Mum.

[1870.]

I am very, very blessed. The valley is full of
people but they do not annoy me. I revolve
in pathless places and in higher rocks than the
world and his ribbony wife can reach. Had I
not been blunted by hard work in the mill and
crazed by Sabbath raids among the high places
of this heaven, I would have written you long
since. I have spent every Sabbath for the last
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two months in the spirit world, screaming among
the peaks and outside meadows like a negro
Methodist in revival time, and every interven
ing clump of week-days in trying to fix down
and assimilate my shapeless harvests of revealed
glory into the spirit and into the common earth
of my existence; and I am rich, rich beyond
measure, not in rectangular blocks of sifted
knowledge or in thin sheets of beauty hung pic
ture-like about "the walls of memory," but in
unselected atmospheres of terrestrial glory dif
fused evenly throughout my whole substance.

Your Brooksian letters I have read with a
great deal of interest, they are so full of the spice
and poetry of unmingled nature, and in many
places they express my own present feelings
very fully. Quoting from your Forest Glen,
"without anxiety and without expectation all
my days come and go mixed with such sweet
ness to every sense/' and again, "I don't know
anything of time and but little of space." "My
whole being seemed to open to the sun." All
this I do most comprehensively appreciate and
[86]

Letters to a Friend

am just beginning to know how fully congenial
you are. Would that you could share my moun
tain enjoyments ! In all my wanderings through
Nature's beauty, whether it be among the ferns
at my cabin door or in the high meadows and
peaks or amid the spray and music of water
falls, you are the first to meet me and I often
speak to you as verily present in the flesh.

Last Sabbath I was baptized in the irised
foam of the Vernal and in the divine snow of
Nevada, and you were there also and stood in
real presence by the sheet of joyous rapids be
low the bridge.

I am glad to know that McClure and Mc-
Chesney have told you of our night with upper
Yosemite. Oh, what a world is there I passed !
No, I had another night there two weeks ago,
entering as far within the veil amid equal glory,
together with Mr. Frank Shapleigh of Boston.
Mr. Shapleigh is an artist and I like him. He
has been here six weeks and has just left for
home. I told him to see you and to show you
his paintings. He is acquainted with Charles
[87 ]

Letters to a Friend

Sanderson and Mrs. Waterston. Mrs. Water-
ston left the valley before your letter reached
me, but one morning about sunrise an old lady
came to the mill and asked me if I was the man
who was so fond of flowers, and we had a very
earnest, unceremonious chat about the valley
and about "the beyond/' She is made of better
stuff than most of the people of that heathen
town of Boston, and so also is Shapleigh.

Mrs. Yelverton is here and is going to stop
a good while. Mrs. Waterston told her to find
me, and we are pretty well acquainted now.
She told me the other day she was going to
write a Yosemite novel and that Squirrel and
I were going into it. I was glad to find that she
knew you. I have not seen Prof. Le Conte.
Perhaps he is stopping at one of the other
hotels.

Has Mrs. Rapley or Mr. Colby told you
about our camping in the spruce woods on the
south rim of the valley and of our walk at day
break to the top of the Sentinel Dome to see
the sun rise out of the crown peaks of beyond ?
[ 88 ]

Letters to a Friend

About a week ago at daybreak I started up
the mountain near Glacier Point to see Pohono
in its upper woods and to study the kind of life
it lived up there. I had a glorious day and
reached my cabin at daylight by walking all
night. Oh, what a night among those moon
shadows! It was seven o'clock A.M., when I
reached the top of the Cathedral Rocks, — a
most glorious twenty-two hours of life amid
nameless peaks and meadows and the upper
cataracts of Pohono.

Mr. Hutchings told me next morning that
I had done two or three days' climbing in one
and that I was shortening my life, but I had a
whole lifetime of enjoyment and I care but lit
tle for the arithmetical length of days. I can
hardly realize that I have not yet seen you
here.

I thank you for sending me so many friends,
but I am waiting for you. I am going up the
mountain soon to see your lily garden at the top
of Indian Canon.

"Let the Pacific islands lie."
[89]

Letters to a Friend

My love to Allie and all your boys and to the
Doctor. Tell him that I have been tracing
glaciers in all the principal canons towards the
summit.

Ever thine,

J. MUIR.

Yosemite, August 2Oth, [1870.]

I have just returned from a ten days' ramble
with Prof. Le Conte and his students in the be
yond, and oh, we have had a most glorious season
of terrestrial grace. I do wish I could ramble
ten days of equal size in very heaven, that I
could compare its scenery with that of Bloody
Canon and the Tuolumne meadows and Lake
Tenaya and Mt. Dana. Our first camp after
leaving the valley was at Eagle Point, overlook
ing the valley on the north side, from which a
much better general view of the valley and the
high crest of the Sierra beyond is obtained than
from Inspiration Point. There we watched the
long shadows of sunset upon the living map at
our feet, and, in the later darkness half silvered
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by the moon, went far out of human cares and
human civilization. Our next camp was at Lake
Tenaya, one of the countless multitudes of
starry gems that make this topmost mountain
land to sparkle like a sky. After moonrise Le
Conte and I walked to the lake-shore and
climbed upon a big sofa-shaped rock that stood
islet-like a little way out in the shallow water,
and here we found another bounteous throne of
earthly grace, and I doubt if John in Patmos
saw grander visions than we. And you were
remembered there and we cordially wished you
with us. Our next sweet home was upon the vel
vet gentian meadows of the South Tuolumne.
Here we feasted upon soda and burnt ashy
cakes and stood an hour in a frigid rain with
our limbs bent forward like Lombardy poplars
in a gale, but ere sunset the black clouds de
parted, our shins were straightened at a glow
ing fire, we forgot the cold and all about half-
raw mutton and alkaline cakes, the grossest
of our earthly coils was shaken off, and ere the
last slant sunbeams left the dripping meadow
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Letters to a Friend

and spiry mountain peaks we were again in the
third alpine heaven and saw and heard things
equal in glory to the purest and best of Yosem-
ite itself. Our next camp was beneath a big
gray rock at the foot of Mt. Dana. Here we had
another rainstorm, which drove us beneath our
rock, where we lay in complicated confusion,
our forty limbs woven into a knotty piece of
tissue compact as felt.

Next day we worshiped upon high places on
the brown cone of Dana and returned to our
rock. Next day walked among the flowers and
cascades of Bloody Canon and camped at the
lake. Rode next day to the volcanic cone near
est to the lake, and bade farewell to the party
and climbed to the highest crater in the whole
range south of the Mono Lake. Well, I shall not
try to tell you anything, as it is unnecessary.
Prof. Le Conte, whose company I enjoyed ex
ceedingly, will tell you all. Ask him in particu
lar to tell you about our camp-meeting on the
Tenaya rock. I will send you a few choice moun
tain plant children by Mrs. Yelverton. If there
[92]

Letters to a Friend

is anything in particular that you want, let me
know. Mrs. Yelverton will not leave the valley
for some weeks, and you have time to write. I
am

Ever your friend,

J. MUIR.

Tuolumne River, two miles below La Grange,

November 4th, 1870.

Yours of October 2nd reached me a few days
since. The Amazon and Andes have been in all
my thoughts for many years, and I am sure that
I shall meet them some day ere I die, or become
settled and civilized and useful. I am obliged to
you for all this information. I have studied
many paths and plans for the interior of South
America, but none so easy and sure ever ap
peared as this of your letter. I thought of land
ing at Guayaquil and crossing the mountains to
the Amazon, floating to Para, subsisting on ber
ries and quinine, but to steam along the palmy
shores with company and comforts is perhaps
more practical though not so pleasant. Haw-
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thorne says that steam spiritualizes travel, but I
think that it squarely degrades and materializes
travel. However, flies and fevers have to be
considered in this case. I am glad that Ned has
gone. The woods of the Purus will be a grand
place for the growth of men. It must be that
I am going soon, for you have shown me the
way. People say that my wanderings are very
mazy and methodless, but they are all known
to you in some way before I think of them. You
are a prophet in the concerns of my little out
side life, and pray, what says the spirit about
my final escape from Yosemite? You saw me
at these rock altars years ago, and I think I
shall remain among them until you take me
away. I reached this place last month by fol
lowing the Merced out of the valley and through
all its canons to the plains above Snelling, — a
most glorious walk.

I intended returning to the valley ere this,

but Mr. Delaney, the man with whom I am

stopping at present, would not allow me to

leave before I had plowed his field, and so I will

[94]

Letters to a Friend

not be likely to see Yosemite again before Jan
uary, when I shall have a grand journey over
the snow.

Mrs. Yelverton told me before I started upon
my river explorations that she would likely be
in Oakland in two weeks, and so I made up a
package for you of lily bulbs, cones, ferns, etc.,
but she wrote me a few days ago that she was
still in the valley.

I find that a portion of my specimens col
lected in the last two years and left at this place
and Hopeton are not very well cared for, and
I have concluded to send them to you.

I will ship them in a few days by express, and
I will be down myself perhaps in about a year.
If there is anything in these specimens that the
Doctor can make use of in his lectures, tell him
to do so freely, of course.

The purple of these plains and of this whole
round sky is very impressively glorious after a
year in the deep rocks. People all throughout
this section are beginning to hear of Dr. Carr.
He accomplishes a wonderful amount of work.
[95 ]

Letters to a Friend

My love to Allie and to the Doctor, and I am
ever most

Cordially yours,

JOHN Mum.
Address to Snelling for the next few months.

Yosemite, [1871.]

"The Spirit" has again led me into the
wilderness, in opposition to all counter attrac
tions, and I am once more in the glory of the
Yosemite.

Your very cordial invitation to your home
reached me as I was preparing to ascend and
my whole being was possessed with visions of
snowy forests of the pine and spruce, and of
mountain spires beyond, pearly and half trans
parent, reaching into heavens blue not purer
than themselves.

In company with another young fellow whom
I persuaded to walk, I left the plains just as the
first gold sheets were being outspread. My first
plan was to follow the Tuolumne upward as I
had followed the Merced downward, and, after
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Letters to a Friend

reaching the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which has
about the same altitude as Yosemite, and spend
ing a week or so in sketching and examining its
falls and rocks, to cross the high mountains
past the west end of the Hoffman Range and
go down into Yosemite by Indian Canon, pass
ing thus a glorious month with the mountains
and all their snows and crystal brightness, and
all the nameless glories of their magnificent
winter; but my plan went agley. I lost a week's
sleep by the pain of a sore hand, and I became
unconfident in my strength when measured
against weeks of wading in snow up to my neck.
Therefore I reluctantly concluded to push
directly for the valley and Tamarac.

Our journey was just a week in length, in
cluding one day of rest in the Crane's Flat
Cabin. Some of our nights were cold, and we
were hungry once or twice. We crossed the
snow-line on the flank of Pilot Peak Ridge six
or eight miles below Crane's Flat. From Crane's
Flat to brim of the valley the snow was about
five feet in depth, and as it was not frozen or
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Letters to a Friend

compacted in any way we of course had a
splendid season of wading.

I wish that you could have seen the edge of
the snow-cloud which hovered, oh, so sooth
ingly, down to the grand Pilot Peak brows, dis
charging its heaven-begotten snows with such
unmistakable gentleness and moving perhaps
with conscious love from pine to pine as if be
stowing separate and independent blessings up
on each. In a few hours we climbed under and
into this glorious storm-cloud. What a harvest
of crystal flowers and what wind songs were
gathered from the spiry firs and the long fringy
arms of the Lambert pine ! We could not see far
before us in the storm, which lasted until some
time in the night, but as I was familiar with the
general map of the mountain we had no diffi
culty in finding our way.

Crane's Flat Cabin was buried, and we had
to grope about for the door. After making a fire
with some cedar rails, I went out to watch the
coming-on of the darkness, which was most im
pressively sublime. Next morning was every
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Letters to a Friend

way the purest creation I ever beheld. The
little flat, spot-like in the massive spiring woods,
was in splendid vesture of universal white, up
on which the grand forest-edge was minutely
repeated and covered with a close sheet of snow
flowers.

Some mosses grow luxuriantly upon the dead
generations of their own species. The common
snow flowers belong to the sky and in storms
are blown about like ripe petals in an orchard.
They settle on the ground, the bottom of the
atmospheric sea, like mud or leaves in a lake,
and upon this soil, this field of broken sky
flowers, grows a luxuriant carpet of crystal veg
etation complete and ripe in a single night.

I never before knew that these mountain
snow plants were so variable and abundant,
forming such bushy clumps and thickets and
palmy, ferny groves. Wading waist-deep, I had
a fine opportunity for observing them, but they
shrink from human breath, — not the only flow
ers which do so, — evidently not made for man,
neither the flowers composing the snow which
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came drifting down to us broken and dead, nor
the more beautiful crystals which vegetate
upon them. A great many storms have come to
these mountains since I passed them, and they
can hardly be less than ten feet ; at the altitude
of Tamarac still more.

The weather here is balmy now, and the falls
are glorious. Three weeks ago the thermometer
at sunrise stood at 12 degrees.

I have repaired the mill and dam, and the
stream is in no danger of drying up and is more
dammed than ever.

To-day has been cloudy and rainy. Tissiack
and Starr King are grandly dipped in white
cloud.

I sent you my plants by express. I am sorry
that my Yosemite specimens are not with the
others.

I left a few notes with Mrs. Yelverton when
I left the valley in the fall. I wish that you would
ask her, if you should see her, where she left
them, as Mrs. Hutchings does not know.

I shall be happy to join Stoddard in anything

f 100 1

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whatever. Mrs. H. had a letter from him lately,
part of which she read to me. And now, Mrs.
Carr, you must see the upper mountains and
meadows back of Yosemite. You have seen
nothing as yet, and I will guide you a whole
summer if you wish. I am very happy here and
cannot break for the Andes just yet.

Squirrel is at my knee. She says, " Tell Mrs.
Carr to come here to-morrow and tell her to
bring her little boy when she conies." If you
will come, she says that she will guide you to
the falls and give you lots of flowers. Mrs. H.
tells me to say that she has received a very kind
letter from you, which she will answer. Sends
thus her kindest regards. If she can find a chance,
she will send bulbs of lily by mail.

I have been nearly blind since I crossed the
snow.

Give my kindest regards to all your homeful
and to my friends.

I am always

Yours most cordially,

J. M.
f 101 1

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Yosemite,
August I3th, [1871.]

I was so stunned and dazed by your last that
I have not been able to write anything. I was
sure that you were coming, and you cannot
come; and Mr. King, the artist, left me the
other day and I am done with Hutchings, and
I am lonely. Well it must be wait, for although
there is no common human reason why I should
not see you and civilization in Oakland, I can
not escape from the powers of the mountains.
I shall tie some flour and a blanket behind my
saddle and return to the Mono region and try
to decide some questions that require undis
turbed thought. There I will stalk about on the
summit slates of Dana and Gibbs and Lyell,
reading new chapters of glacial manuscript and
more if I can. Then, perhaps, I will follow the
Tuolumne down to the Hetch Hetchy Yosemite ;
then, perhaps, follow the Yosemite stream back
to its smallest source in the mountains of the
Lyell group and the Cathedral group and the
Obelisk and Mt. Hoffman. This will, perhaps,
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be my work until the coming of the winter
snows, when I will probably find a sheltered
rock nook where I can make a nest of leaves
and mosses and doze until spring.

I expect to be entirely alone in these moun
tain walks, and, notwithstanding the glorious
portion of daily bread which my soul will re
ceive in these fields where only the footprints
of God are seen, the gloamin' will be lonely, but
I will cheerfully pay the price of friendship and
all besides.

I suppose that you have seen Mr. King, who
kindly carried some flies for Mr. Edwards. I
thought you would easily see him or let him
know that you had his specimens. I collected
most of them upon Mt. Hoffman, but was so
busy in assisting Reilly that I could not do
much in butterflies. Hereafter I shall be entire
ly free.

The purples and yellows begin to come in

the green of our groves, and the rocks have the

autumn haze, and the water songs are at their

lowest hushings ; young birds are big as old ones ;

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and is it true that these are Bryant's Melan
choly Days? I don't know, I will not think,
but I will go above these brooding days to the
higher, brighter mountains.

Farewell.

Cordially ever yours,

JOHN Mum.

\ I shall hope to hear from you soon. I will
come down some of the valley canons occasion
ally for letters.

I am sorry that you are so laden with Uni
versity cares. I think that you and the Doctor
do more than your share.

Do you know anything about this Liebig's
extract of meat ? I would like to carry a year's
provisions in the form of condensed bread and
meat, and I have been thinking perhaps all that
I want is in the market.

Yosemite,
September 8th, [1871.]

I am sorry that King made you uneasy about
me. He does not understand me as you do, and
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Letters to a Friend

you must not heed him so much. He thinks that
I am melancholy and above all that I require
polishing. I feel sure that if you were here to
see how happy I am and how ardently I am
seeking a knowledge of the rocks, you could not
call me away but would gladly let me go with
only God and his written rocks to guide me.
You would not think of calling me to make
machines or a home, or of rubbing me against
other minds, or of setting me up for measure
ment. No, dear friend, you would say: "Keep
your mind untrammelled and pure. Go unfric-
tioned, unmeasured, and God give you the
true meaning and interpretation of his moun

tains."

You know that for the last three years I have
been ploddingly making observations about this
valley and the high mountain region to the east
of it, drifting broodingly about and taking in
every natural lesson that I was fitted to absorb.
In particular the great valley has always kept
a place in my mind. What tools did he use?
How did he apply them and when? I consid-
[ 105]

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ered the sky above it and all of its opening
canons, and studied the forces that came in by
every door that I saw standing open, but I
could get no light. Then I said: "You are at
tempting what is not possible for you to ac
complish. Yosemite is the end of a grand chap
ter; if you would learn to read it, go commence
at the beginning." Then I went above to the
alphabet valleys of the summits, comparing
canon with canon, with all their varieties of
rock-structure and cleavage and the compara
tive size and slope of the glaciers and waters
which they contained; also the grand congre
gations of rock-creations was present to me, and
I studied their forms and sculpture. I soon had
a key to every Yosemite rock and perpendicular
and sloping wall. The grandeur of these forces
and their glorious results overpower me and
inhabit my whole being. Waking or sleeping,
I have no rest. In dreams I read blurred sheets
of glacial writing, or follow lines of cleavage,
or struggle with the difficulties of some extraor
dinary rock-form. Now it is clear that woe is
[ 106]

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me if I do not drown this tendency towards ner
vous prostration by constant labor in working
up the details of this whole question. I have
been down from the upper rocks only three days
and am hungry for exercise already.

Prof. Runkle, president of the Boston Insti
tute of Technology, was here last week, and
I preached my glacial theory to him for five
days, taking him into the canon of the valley
and up among the grand glacier wombs and
pathways of the summit. He was fully con
vinced of the truth of my readings and urged
me to write out the glacial system of Yosemite
and its tributaries for the Boston Academy of
Science. I told him that I meant to write my
thoughts for my own use and that I would send
him the manuscript, and if he and his wise sci
entific brothers thought it of sufficient interest
they might publish it.

He is going to send me some instruments,

and I mean to go over all the glacier basins

carefully, working until driven down by the

snow. In winter I can make my drawings and

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maps and write out notes. So you see that for
a year or two I will be very busy. I have settled
with Hutchings and have no dealings with him
now.

I think that next spring I will have to guide
a month or two for pocket money, although I
do not like the work. I suppose I might live for
one or two seasons without work. I have five
hundred dollars here, and I have been sending
home money to my sisters and brothers, —
perhaps about twelve or fifteen hundred dol
lars, — and a man in Canada owes me three or
four hundred dollars more, which I suppose I
could get if I was in need, but you know that
the Scotch do not like to spend their last dol
lar. Some of my friends are badgering me to
write for some of the magazines, and I am al
most tempted to try it, only I am afraid that
this would distract my mind from my work
more than the distasteful and depressing labor
of the mill or of guiding. What do you think
about it ?

k Suppose I should give some of the journals
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my first thoughts about this glacier work as I
go along and afterwards gather them and press
them for the Boston wise ; or will it be better
to hold work and say it all at a breath ? You
see how practical I have become and how
fully I have burdened you with my little
affairs.

Perhaps you will ask, "What plan are you
going to pursue in your work ? " Well, here it is,
— the only book I ever have invented. First
I will describe each glacier with its tributaries
separately, then describe the rocks and hills
and mountains over which they have flowed or
past which they have flowed, endeavoring to
prove that all of the various forms which those
rocks now have are the necessary result of the
ice action in connection with their structure
and cleavage, etc. Also the different kinds of
canons and lake-basins and meadows which
they have made. Then, armed with this data,
I will come down to the Yosemite, where all
my ice has come, and prove that each dome and
brow and wall and every grace and spire and
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brother is the necessary result of the delicately
balanced blows of well-directed and combined
glaciers against the parent rocks which con
tained them, only thinly carved and moulded
in some instances by the subsequent action of
water, etc.

Libby sent me Tyndall's new book, and I
have looked hastily over it. It is an Alpine
mixture of very pleasant taste, and I wish I
could enjoy reading and talking it with you.
I expect Mrs. H. will accompany her husband
to the East this winter, and there will not be
one left with whom I can exchange a thought.
Mrs. H. is going to leave me out all the books
I want, and Runkle is going to send me Dar
win. These, with my notes and maps, will fill
my winter hours, if my eyes do not fail, and,
now that you see my whole position, I think
that you would not call me to the excitements
and distracting novelties of civilization.

The bread question is very troublesome. I
will eat anything you think will suit me. Send
up either by express to Big Oak Flat or by any
[ 1 10 ]

Letters to a Friend

other chance, and I will remit the money re
quired in any way you like.

My love to all and more thanks than I can
write for your constant kindness.

Yosemite Valley, February 13, 1872.

Your latest letter is dated December 3ist.
I see that some of our letters are missing. I re
ceived the box and ate the berries and Liebig's
extract long ago and told you all about it, but
Mrs. Yelverton's book and magazine articles
I have not yet seen. Perhaps they may come
next mail. How did you send them ? I sympa
thize with your face and your great sorrows,
but you will bathe in the fountain of light, life,
and love of our mountains and be healed. And
here I wish to say that when you and Al and
the Doctor come, I wish to be completely free.
Therefore let me know that you will certainly
come and when. I will gladly cut off a slice of
my season's time however thick — the thicker
the better — and lay it aside for you. I am in
the habit of asking so many to come, come, come
[ in ]

Letters to a Friend

to the mountain baptisms that there is danger
of having others on my hands when you come,
which must not be. I will mark off one or two
or three months of bare, dutiless time for our
blessed selves or the few good and loyal ones
that you may choose. Therefore, at the ex
pense even of breaking a dozen of civilization's
laws and fences, I want you to come. For the
high Sierra the months of July, August, and
September are best.

As for your Asiatic sayings, I would gladly
creep into the Vale of Cashmere or any other
grove upon our blessed star. I feel my poverty
in general knowledge and will travel some day.
You need not think that I feel Yosemite to be
all in all, but more of this when you come.

I am going to send you with this a few
facts and thoughts that I gathered concerning
Twenty Hill Hollow, which I want to publish,
if you think you can mend them and make
them into a lawful article fit for outsiders. Plant
gold is fading from California faster than did
her placer gold, and I wanted to save the
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Letters to a Friend

memory of that which is laid upon Twenty
Hills.

Also I will send you some thoughts that I
happened to get for poor persecuted, twice-
damned Coyote. If you think anybody will
believe them, have them published. Last mail
I sent you some manuscript about bears and
storms, which you will believe if no one else will.
An account of my preliminary rambles among
the glacier beds was published in the "Daily
Tribune" of New York, Dec. 9th. Have you
seen it ? If you have, call old Mr. Stebbins's
attention to it. He will read with pleasure.
Where is the old friend ? I have not heard from
him for a long time. Remember me to the Doc
tor and the boys and all my old friends.

Yours, etc.,

JOHN MUIR.

New Sentinel Hotel,
Yosemite Valley, April 23, 1872.

Yours of Apr. 9th and isth containing Ned's
canoe and colonization adventure came to
night. I feel that you are coming and I will not
[ 113]

Letters to a Friend

hear any words of preparatory consolation for
the tmsupposable case of your non-appearance.
Come by way of Clark's and spend a whole day
or two in the sequoias, thence to Sentinel Dome
and Glacier Point. From thence swoop to our
meadows and groves direct by a trail now in
course of construction which will be completed
by the time the snow melts. This new trail will
be best in scenery and safety of five which enter
the valley. It leads from Glacier Point down the
face of the mountain by an easy grade to a point
back of Leidig's Hotel and has over half a
dozen inspiration points.

I hear that Mr. Peregoy intends building a
hotel at Glacier Point. If he does, you should
halt there for the night after leaving Clark's.
If not, then stop at the present "Peregoy's,"
five or six miles south of the valley at the West-
fall Meadows — built since your visit. You
might then easily ride from Clark's to the valley
in a day, but a day among the silver firs and
another about the glories of the valley-rim and
settings is a "sma' request."
[ 114]

Letters to a Friend

The snow is deep this year, and the regular
Mariposa Trail leading to Glacier Point, etc.,
will not be open before June. The Mariposa
travel of May and perhaps a week or so of
June will enter the valley from Clark's by a
sort of sneaking trail along the river canon
below the snow, but you must not come that
way.

You may also enter the valley via Little Yo-
semite and Nevada and Vernal Falls by a trail
constructed last season; also by Indian Falls
on the north side of the valley by a trail now
nearly completed. This last is a noble entrance
but perhaps not equal to the first. Whatever
way you come, we will travel all those up and
down, and bear in mind that you must go
among the summits in July or August. Bring
no friends that will not go to these fountains
beyond or are uncastoffable. Calm thinkers
like your Doctor, who first led me with science,
and Le Conte are the kinds of souls fit for the
formation of human clouds adapted to this
mountain sky. Nevertheless, I will rejoice be-

Letters to a Friend

yond measure though you come as a comet
tailed with a whole misty town.

Ned is a brave fellow. God bless him un
speakably and feed him with his own South
American self.

I shall be most happy to know your Doggetts
or anything that you call dear.

Good-night and love to all.

I have not seen any of my " Tribune" letters,
though I have written five or six. Send copy if

you can.

J. Mum.

[1872.]

[Beginning of letter missing.]
Farewell. I 'm glad you are to get your Ned
again. The fever will soon cool out from his
veins in the breath of California.

The valley is full of sun, but glorious Sierras
are piled above the South Dome and Starr
King. I mean the bossy cumuli that are daily
upheaved at this season, making a cloud period
yet grander than the rock-sculpturing, Yosem-
ite-making, forest-planting glacial period,
f 116 1

Letters to a Friend

Yesterday we had our first midday shower.
The pines waved gloriously at its approach, the
woodpeckers beat about as if alarmed, but the
hummingbird moths thought the cloud shadows
belonged to evening and came down to eat
among the mints. All the fire and rocks of
Starr King were bathily dripped before.

[1872.]

[Beginning of letter missing.]
they will go on Monoward for Tahoe. I mean
to set some stakes in a dozen glaciers and gather
some arithmetic for clothing my thoughts.

I hope you will not allow old H. or his picture
agent, Houseworth, to so gobble and bewool
poor Agassiz that I will not see him.

Remember me always to the Doctor and the
boys and to Mrs. Moore, and I am ever yours,

JOHN MUIR.

I will return to the valley in about a week, if
I don't get over-deep in a crevass.

Later. Yours of Monday evening has just
come. I am glad your boy is so soon to feel
[ 117]

Letters to a Friend

mother home and its blessings. I hope to meet
Torrey, although I will push iceward as before,
but may get back in time. I will enjoy Agassiz,
and Tyndall even more. I'm sorry for poor
Stoddard. Tell him to come.

I'll see Mrs. H., perhaps, this evening and

deliver your message.
Farewell.

New Sentinel Hotel,
Yosemite Valley, May 31, 1872.

Yours announcing the Joaquin and the Dog-
getts and more is here. I care not when you
come, so that you come calm and timeful. I
will try to compel myself down to you in Au
gust, but these years and ages among snows
and rocks have made me far more unfit for the
usages of civilization than you appreciate. My
nerves' strings shrink at the prospect, even at
this distance. But if by diving to that slimy
town sea-bottom I can touch Huxley and Tyn
dall and mount again with you to calm months
in the Sierras, I will draw a long breath and
splash into your fearful muds.
[ 118 ]

Letters to a Friend

I would rather have you in September and
October than at any other time, but a few
weeks of this white water would be very glori
ous. Merrill Moores, who was with me in
Wisconsin and at your Madison home, will
be here soon to spend a good big block of a
while with me. Why can't you let Allie join
him?

For the last week our valley has been a lake
and my shanty is in flood. But the walls about
us are white this morning with snow, which
has checked the free life of our torrents, and
the meadows will soon be walkable again. The
snow fell last night and this morning. The falls
will sing loud and long this year, and the moun
tains are fat in thick snow that the sun will
find hard to fry.

Midnight.

O Mrs. Carr, that you could be here to min
gle in this night moon glory! I am in the Upper
Yosemite Falls and can hardly calm to write,
but, from my thick baptism an hour ago, you
[ 119]

Letters to a Friend

have been so present that I must try to fix
you a written thought.

In the afternoon I came up the mountain
here with a blanket and a piece of bread to
spend the night in prayer among the spouts of
the fall. But now what can I say more than
wish again that you might expose your soul to
the rays of this heaven?

Silver from the moon illumines this glorious
creation which we term falls and has laid a mag
nificent double prismatic bow at its base. The
tissue of the falls is delicately filmed on the out
side like the substance of spent clouds, and the
stars shine dimly through it. In the solid shafted
body of the falls is a vast number of passing
caves, black and deep, with close white convolv
ing spray for sills and shooting comet shoots
above and down their sides like lime crystals in
a cave, and every atom of the magnificent being,
from the thin silvery crest that does not dim
the stars to the inner arrowy hardened shafts
that strike onward like thunderbolts in sound
and energy, all is life and spirit, every bolt and
[ 120]

Letters to a Friend

spray feels the hand of God. O the music that
is blessing me now! The sun of last week has
given the grandest notes of all the yearly an
them and they echo in every fibre of me.

I said that I was going to stop here until
morning and pray a whole blessed night with
the falls and the moon, but I am too wet and
must go down. An hour or two ago I went out
somehow on a little seam that extends along
the wall behind the falls. I suppose I was in
a trance, but I can positively say that I was
in the body for it is sorely battered and wetted.
As I was gazing past the thin edge of the fall
and away through beneath the column to the
brow of the rock, some heavy splashes of water
struck me, driven hard against the wall. Sud
denly I was darkened ; down came a section of
the outside tissue composed of spent comets.
I crouched low, holding my breath, and, an
chored to some angular flakes of rocks, took
my baptism with moderately good faith. When
I dared to look up after the swaying column
admitted light, I pounced behind a piece of ice
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Letters to a Friend

which was wedged tight in the wall, and I no
longer feared being washed off, and steady
moonbeams slanting past the arching meteors
gave me confidence to escape to this snug place
where McChesney and I slept one night, where
I had a fire to dry my socks. This rock shelf
extending behind the falls is about five hundred
feet above the base of the fall on the perpendic
ular rock-face.

How little do we know of ourselves, of our
profoundest attractions and repulsions, of our
spiritual affinities! How interesting does man
become, considered in his relations to the spirit
of this rock and water! How significant does
every atom of our world become amid the influ
ences of those beings unseen, spiritual, angelic
mountaineers that so throng these pure man
sions of crystal foam and purple granite!

I cannot refrain from speaking to this little
bush at my side and to the spray-drops that
come to my paper and to the individual sands of
the slope I am sitting upon. Ruskin says that
the idea of foulness is essentially connected with

[ 122 ]

Letters to a Friend

what he calls dead unorganized matter. How
cordially I disbelieve him to-night! and were
he to dwell awhile among the powers of these
mountains, he would forget all dictionary dif
ferences between the clean and the unclean and
he would lose all memory and meaning of the
diabolical, sin-begotten term, foulness.

Well, I must go down. I am disregarding all
of the Doctor's physiology in sitting here in
this universal moisture.

Farewell to you and to all the beings about
us ! I shall have a glorious walk down the moun
tains in this thin white light, over the open
brows grayed with Selaginella and through the
thick black shadow caves in the live oaks all
stuck full of snowy lances of moonlight.

New Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite Valley,
July 6th, 1872.

Yours of Tuesday evening telling of our Dog-

getts and Ned and Merrill Moores has come,

and so has the lamp and book. I have not yet

tried the lamp, but it is splendid in shape and

[ 123]

Letters to a Friend

shines grand as gold. The Lyell is just what
I wanted.

I think that your measure of the Doggetts is
exactly right — as good as civilized people can
be. They have grown to the top of town culture
and have sent out some shoots half gropingly
into the spirit sky.

I am very glad to know that Ned is growing
strong. Perhaps we may see South America
together yet. I hope to see you come to your
own of mountain fountains soon. Perhaps Mrs.
Hutchings may go with us. You live so fully
in my own life that I cannot realize that I have
not yet seen you here; a year or two of waiting
seems nothing.

Possibly I may be down on your coast this
fall or next, for I want to see what relations the
coast and coast mountains have to the Sierras.
Also I want to go north and south along this
range and then among the basins and ranges
eastward. My subject is expanding at a most
unfollowable pace. I could write something with
data already harvested, but I am not satisfied.
[ 124]

Letters to a Friend

I have just returned from Hetch Hetchy with
Mrs. Moore. Of course we had a glory and a
fun — the two articles in about parallel col
umns of equal size. Meadows grassed and lilies
head-high, spangled river-reaches and current-
less pools, cascades countless and unpaintable
in form and whiteness, groves that heaven all
the valley. You were with us in all our joy and
you will come again.

I am a little weary and half inclined to tru-
antism from mobs however blessed, in some
unfindable grove. I start in a few minutes for
Cloud's Rest with Mr. and Mrs. Moore. I like
Mrs. Moore and Mr. first-rate.

My love to the Doctor and all the boys. I
hope for Merrill daily.

I am

Ever your friend,

J. Mum.

New Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite,
July I4th, 1872.

Yours announcing Dr. Gray is received. I
have great longing for Gray, whom I feel to

[ 125 1

Letters to a Friend

be a great, progressive, unlimited man like Dar
win and Huxley and Tyndall. I will be most
glad to meet him. You are unweariable in your
kindness to me, and you helm my fate more
than all the world beside.

I am approaching a kind of fruiting-time in
this mountain work and I want very much to
see you. All say write, but I don't know how or
what, and besides I want to see North and South
and the midland basins and the seacoast and
all the lake-basins and the canons, also the alps
of every country and the continental glaciers
of Greenland, before I write the book we have
been speaking of; and all this will require a doz
en years or twenty, and money. The question
is what will I write now, etc. I have learned the
alphabet of ice and mountain structure here,
and I think I can read fast in other countries.
I would let others write what I have read here,
but that they make so damnable a hash of it
and ruin so glorious a unit.

I miss the Moores because they were so cor
dial and kind to me. Mrs. Moore believes in ice
[ 126]

Letters to a Friend

and can preach it too. I wish you could bring
Whitney and her together and tell me the
fight. Mrs. M. made the most sensible visit to
our mountains of all the comers I have known.
Mr. Moore is a man who thinks, and he took
to this mountain structure like a pointer to
partridges.

I am glad your Ned is growing strong; then
we will yet meet this summer in Yosemite
places. Talk to Mrs. Moore about Hetch
Hetchy, etc. She knows it all from Hog Ranch
to highest sea-wave cascades, and higher, yet
higher.

I ought not to fun away letter space in speak
ing to you. I am weary and impractical and fit
for nothing serious until I am tuned and toned
by a few weeks of calm.

Farewell. I will see you and we will plan

work and ease and days of holy mountain rest.

Remember me to Ned and all the boys and to

the Doctor, who ought to come hither with you.

Ever your friend,

JOHN MUIR.
[ 127 ]

Letters to a Friend

Yosemite Valley,

July 2yth, 1872.

I want to see you. I want to speak about my
studies, which are growing broader and broader
and spreading away to all countries without
any clear horizon anywhere.

I will go over all this Yosemite region this
fall and write it up in some form or other. Will
you be here to accompany me in my easier
excursions ?

I have a good horse for you and will get a tub
and plenty of meal and tea, and you will keep
house in very old style and you can bring whom
you please.

I Ve had a very noble time with Gray, who,
though brooded and breaded by Hutchings,
gave most of his time to me. I was sorry that
his time was so meanly measured and bounded.
He is a most cordial lover of purity and truth,
but the angular factiness of his pursuits has
kept him at too cold a distance from the spirit
world.

I know that Mrs. Moore has given you ice in
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Letters to a Friend

abundance, though even Yosemite glaciers
might melt in the warmth of her laughter and
sunshine. She handles glacier periods like an
Agassiz and has discovered a Hetch Hetchy
period that is her own. Don't you believe all
she tells you about the walk and the dark and
the dust of Indian Canon.

I want to get Doggett's address.

I will begin my long mountain excursion
soon, for the snow is mostly gone from the high
meadows.

I have been guiding a few parties and will
take a few more if they are of the right kind,
but I want my mind kept free and sensitive to
all influences excepting human business.

I need a talk with you more than ever before.
Mrs. Hutchings is always kind to me, and the
clearness of her views on all spiritual things is
very extraordinary. She appreciates your friend
ship very keenly, and I am glad to think you
will soon know each other better. Her little
Casie (Gertrude) is as pure a piece of sunbeam
as ever was condensed to human form.
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Letters to a Friend

Hoping that Ned will be able to come here
to the mountain waters for perfect healing and
that you will also find leisure for the satisfying
of your thirst for beauty, I remain ever
Your friend,

JOHN Mum.
My love to Doctor and all the boys.

Yosemite Valley,

August 5th, 1872.

Your letter telling me to catch my best gla
cier birds and come to you and the coast moun
tains only makes me the more anxious to see
you, and if you cannot come up, I will have to
come down, if only for a talk. My birds are
flying everywhere, — into all mountains and
plains, of all climes and times, — and some are
ducks in the sea, and I scarce know what to do
about it. I must see the coast ranges and the
coast, but I was thinking that a month or so
might answer for the present, and then, instead
of spending the winter in town, I would hide in
Yosemite and write; or I thought I would pack
[ 130]

Letters to a Friend

up some meal and dried plums to some deep
wind-sheltered canon back among the glaciers
of the summits, and write there, and be ready
to catch any whisper of ice and snow in these
highest storms.

You anticipate all the bends and falls and
rapids and cascades of my mountain life, and
I know that you say truly about my compan
ions being those who live with me in the same
sky, whether in reach of hand or only of spir
itual contact, which is the most real contact
of all.

I am learning to live close to the lives of my
friends without ever seeing them. No miles of
any measurement can separate your soul from
mine.

[Part of letter missing.]
the valley was vouchsafed a single drop.

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

Farewell. I '11 see you with my common eyes,

Letters to a Friend

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 Po-
hono, and start again in an hour for the summit
glaciers to see some canons 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 inces
santly until the coming of the snow [rest of
letter missing].

[ 132]

Letters to a Friend

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 Canon? 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, canons 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

Letters to a Friend

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 Insti
tute of Technology, gathered some letters I
sent to Runkle and that "Tribune" letter, and
[ 134]

Letters to a Friend

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 mean
ness 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 canons 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
[ 135]

Letters to a Friend

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 grind
stone. Before I had time to reason I said, Gla
cier mud, mountain meal.

Then I observed that this muddy stream is
sued 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 climb
ing to the top of it I was struck with the steep
ness of its slope and with its raw, unsettled,
plantless, newborn appearance. The slightest
touch started blocks of red and black slate, fol
lowed 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 mo
raine, 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 fur
rowed surface were stones and dirt like that of
[ 136]

Letters to a Friend

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 bot
tom 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 dis
covered 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-

Letters to a Friend

banks seen from the summit of Mt. Lyell crouch
ing 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 sum
mit to sea like a sky.

I 'm going to take your painter boys with me
into one of my best sanctums on your recom
mendation 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.

[ 138 ]

Letters to a Friend

Yosemite, October I4th, [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 canons 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 canons 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 Tyn-
dall concerning the nature and origin of his
intense mountain enjoyments. He reaches far
and near for a theory of his delight in the moun
tains, going among the accidents of his own
boyhood and those of his remotest fathers, but
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Letters to a Friend

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 ex
posed 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 concern
ing the real nature of these ice-masses. I found
that my friends regarded my deductions and
statements with distrust, therefore I determined
[ 140 ]

Letters to a Friend

to collect proofs of the common measured arith
metical kind.

On the 2 ist 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 horse
hair.

On observing my stakes on the 6th of Oct.,
or in 46 days after being planted, I found that
stake No. i had been carried down stream n
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 i inch per day. Stake No. 5 was
planted about midway between the head of
[ 141 ]

Letters to a Friend

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 swedg-
ing 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 south
east 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.

[ 142]

Letters to a Friend

[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 bot
toms 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
[ 1431

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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. Whit
ney 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 in
undation of every kind would not average an
inch in depth for the whole region.
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Yosemite and Hetch Hetchy are lake-basins
filled with sand and the matter of moraines
washed from the upper canons. 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 canon 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 ram
ble 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.
[ 145]

Letters to a Friend

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 com
mand, 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 in
stantly 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
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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 Mari-
posa, 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
Canon," Ascent of Mt. Ritter, Formation of
[ i47 ]

Letters to a Friend

Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Lake, Other Yo-
semite 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 Canons,
of Compound Canons, Description of each
Glacier of Region, Origin of Sierra Forest, Dis
tribution 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 1 3th, 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
[ 148 ]

Letters to a Friend

stating that a Hetch from my pen appeared in
the "Boston Transcript "of about March I2th,
1873, which may possibly be the article in ques
tion. 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 "Na
ture 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 1 9th, 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
[ H9 1

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ago. I find this literary business very irksome,
yet I will try to learn it.

The falls respond gloriously to the ripe sun
shine 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 ac
cordingly. 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 Mum.

Yosemite Valley,

May 1 5th, 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
[ 150]

Letters to a Friend

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
halfway 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 gen
tleman 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 ap
pearing dimly where thinly veiled. Over the
top of Washington Column the clouds are de
scending in a continuous stream and rising
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Letters to a Friend

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 in
deed 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 evi
dently does n'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
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Letters to a Friend

saying " What ?" like a child half awake. Fare
well. My love to the Doctor and the boys. I
hope the Doctor will run away from his enor
mous 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 up
ward. 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

Letters to a Friend

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 Stod-
dard.

Yosemite Valley,

June yth, 1873.

I came down last night from the Lyell Gla
cier, weary with walking in the snow, but I for
got my weariness and the pain of my sun-blis
tered 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.

Letters to a Friend

Yosemite,
September 17, [1873.]

I am again at the bottom meadow of Yosem
ite after a most intensely interesting bath
among the outer mountains. I have been ex
ploring the upper tributaries of the Cascade
and Tamarac streams. And in particular all
of the basin of the Yosemite Creek. The pres
ent basin of every stream which enters the val
ley 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 inves
tigation 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.
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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 thor
oughly iced ? You would not find in me one un-
glacial 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 Ten-
aya. It is one of the most perfectly and richly
spiritual places in the mountains, and I would
like to preempt there. Somehow I should feel
like leaving home in going to Hetch Hetchy.
Besides, there is room there for many other
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Letters to a Friend

claims, and it soon will fill with coarse home
steads, 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 an
other is like drawing dividing lines in the sky.
I think I answered your last with respect to re
maining here in the winter. I can do much of
this ice work in the quiet, and the whole sub
ject is purely physical, so that I can get but
little from books. All depends upon the good
ness 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
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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

[ 158]

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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 out
side the valley and discovered one beautiful
[ i59]

Letters to a Friend

truth concerning snow-structure and three con
cerning 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 walk
ing 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 Ameri
can coast to study earthquakes. I think I could
invent some experimental apparatus whereby
their complicated phenomena could be sepa
rated and read, but I have some years of ice
on hand. JT is most ennobling to find and feel
that we are constructed with reference to these
noble storms, so as to draw unspeakable enjoy
ment from them. Are we not rich when our
six-foot column of substance sponges up heaven
[ 160]

Letters to a Friend

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, pos
sibilities, 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 with
out 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.

[ 161 ]

Letters to a Friend

Independence,
October i6th, 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 north
west 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
canons. I ascended Tyndall and ran down into
the Kern River Canon and climbed some name
less 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
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northward and up Cottonwood Creek to Mt.
Whitney, then over to the Kern Canons 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 high
est 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, mak
ing over 10,000 feet of altitude.

I saw no mountains in all this grand region
that appeared at all inaccessible to a moun
taineer. 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 Com
posite of Owen's Valley are intensely glorious.
[ 163]

Letters to a Friend

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 won
drous 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
[ 164]

Letters to a Friend

the west side of the canon into the forest. About
6 miles farther down we made out to reenter
the canon, where there is a Yosemite valley,
and by hard efforts succeeded in getting out on
the opposite side and reaching the divide be
tween 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 pros-
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Letters to a Friend

pectors 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 canon 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 snow
storms. 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.

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Letters to a Friend

Tahoe City,
November 3rd, [1873.]

MY DEAR FRIENDS DR. AND MRS. CARR, —
I received the news of your terrible bereave
ment 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 home
ward 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 saun
tered through the piney woods, pausing count
less 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,
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Letters to a Friend

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 yth, 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
Canon, 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
f 168 1

Letters to a Friend

period rather, was in a kind of calm, uncurable
ecstasy. I am hopelessly and forever a moun
taineer.

How glorious my studies seem, and how sim
ple! 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.

[ 169 ]

Letters to a Friend

Sissons Station,

November ist, 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 per
fectly 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 accom
panied 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 up-
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ward miles, as there is no intermediate camp
ing-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 inunda
tion northward and southward; also general
views of the channels of the ancient Shasta gla
ciers, 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 wilder
ness 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.
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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 mar
ried 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 satel
lite 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
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nerved for the most delicate work of mountain
eering 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 your
self.

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

I wish you could see the holy morning's Al-
pen 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

Letters to a Friend

marred your peace, eat oranges and hear the
larks and wait on the sun.

Ever cordially,

JOHN Mum.
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 2ist, 1874.

I have just returned from a fourth Shasta
excursion and find yours of the lyth. 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 extraordi
nary in its Alpine fountains, and I shouted, "O

Letters to a Friend

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
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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 I9th, 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

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breeding of mosses as Nature manifests among
these northern Sierras.

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

/ 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 magnif
icent problems, and I feel wild and unmanage
able 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
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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 Sacra
mento 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 sum
mit of Shasta and experienced one of the most
beautiful and most violent snowstorms imagin
able.

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. Mo
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Chesney 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 com
pany 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 ex
periences. Altogether I have had a very instruc
tive 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 '11 be over in a few days or so.

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Letters to a Friend

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.

IVe had a glorious season of forest grace,
notwithstanding the hundred canons IVe
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
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the press. Mr. Swett told me the other day
that he met a friend down town who was ac
quainted 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 polit
ical 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 im
measurably 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.

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Letters to a Friend

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

I Jm sorry most of all for the destruction of
the "Teachers/' thus cutting off the only ade
quate 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 I2th, [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 par
ticular the phenomenon of a real lover of Na
ture such as you mention, for one does feel so
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Letters to a Friend

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 de
lightful indeed, after the battles and the bur
dens 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 experi
ences 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 meas
ureless 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
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Letters to a Friend

enthusiastically than ever, and the forests'
breath was sweeter, and Cassiope fairer than
in all my first fresh contacts. But I 'm not go
ing 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 north
ward 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 conso
lation in the midst of the fires you are com
passed with to look forward to a tranquil seclu
sion 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
[ 184]

Letters to a Friend

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. Fare
well. Ever cordially yours,

JOHN Mum.

Los Angeles, Cal., August 1 2th, 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 can
not think of you standing erect for a single
[ 185]

Letters to a Friend

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 unprom
ising they are full of wild gardens and fern
eries, 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,
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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 Yo-
semite 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 un
selfishness on the injustice done Dr. Kellogg in
failing to recognize his long-continued devotion
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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 sum
mit 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 Jose* ; 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.
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Letters to a Friend

I have no inflexible plans as yet for the re
maining months of the season, but Yosemite
seems to place itself as a most persistent candi
date 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 Sacra
mento 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 Ala-
meda 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 en
joyed most the white bed in which first I rested
after rocking so long in the rushes of the Stock-
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Letters to a Friend

ton 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, tak
ing Helen, and I 'm terribly lonesome and home
sick 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 Cali
fornia forest article, which will appear in Scrib-
ner'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
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take it with you. It is entitled "Gordon's
Pinetum," published by Henry G. Bonn, Hen
rietta St., Covent Garden; Simpkin, Marshall
& Co., Stationers, Hall Court; 1875; second
edition. It is an "exhaustive" work, very ex
hausting 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 Canon southward, but
very abundant on all the higher basin ranges,
and on the Wahsatch and Rocky Mountains.

The orange book is, it seems, another exhaus
tive 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 have n't the least idea who Mr. Rexford
is, but, if connected with the "Bulletin," I can
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probably get the title of his citrus book through
Mr. Williams. Will probably see him next Sun
day.

The Sunday convention manager offered me
a hundred dollars for two lectures on the Yo-
semite 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 Jose 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 abso-

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lution 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 inappre-
ciative and unavailable a man as I may be of
use at all, let me know.

Ever cordially yours,

JOHN MUIR.

San Francisco,

June iQth, 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
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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

CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS
U • S • A

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