Transcriber’s Note:

Inconsistencies in punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling—such as “Snelling” and “Snellings”, hardworking and hard-drinking—were left as printed in the original text. The inconsistent use of italics—as in “Linnæa” and “Linnæa”—was retained as printed in the original.

Letters to a Friend

Written to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr
1866—1879

By
John Muir

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1915

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY WANDA MUIR HANNA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THIS EDITION CONSISTS OF 300 COPIES

Prefatory Note

When John Muir was a student in the University of Wisconsin he was a frequent 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 interests 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 notion 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 wonders 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 symptom, 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, harmonize beautifully, and contain enough of divine truth for the study of all eternity. It is so 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 ornamented with these lovely plants. Aspidium spinulosum is common everywhere, so also is A. marginale., A. aculeatum, A. Lonchitis, and 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-vitæ shade in company with the beautiful and fragrant Linnæa 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 Germanica grows to a great height in open places in arbor-vitæ and black ash swamps. Camptosorus rhizophyllus and Scolopendrium officinarum 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. Calypso 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 practical 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 philanthropy; is it not? I sometimes feel as though I was losing time here, but I am at least receiving my first lessons in practical mechanics, and 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, sportive “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 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 practical 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. Remember 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 communion with Nature understands them, and 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 converse with the spirit of the storms of autumn, till I forgot my very existence, and thought myself 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 liverworts, but find difficulty in procuring a suitable lens. Here is a specimen of Climacium Americanum, a common moss here but seldom in fruit.

I was sorry to hear of your loss at the University 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 published?

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

Trout’s Mills, near Meaford,
September 13th, [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. Accept, 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 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 incompatible 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 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 important 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; I 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 Creator’s plan concerning us. In our higher state of existence we shall have time and intellect for study. Eternity, with perhaps the whole unlimited creation of God as our field, should satisfy us, and make us patient and trustful, while we pray with the Psalmist, “Teach us to 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 Saviour and about the trees gathering in the sunshine. 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 glorious 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 magnificent forest trees, black as demons and material 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 elements 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 and 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.

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 holding 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 enclosing wall of verdure new tints appear, the gorgeous dyes of autumn are to be plainly seen, and 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 improvement 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 endeavored 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 kingdom, 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—I am lost.

I am shut in darkness. My hard, toil-tempered muscles have disappeared, and I am feeble and tremulous as an ever-sick woman.

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

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 because I feel, Mrs. Carr, that you will appreciate my feelings.

Most cordially,
J. Muir.

Sunday, April 6th, [1867.]

Your precious letter of the 15th reached me last night. By accident it was nearly lost.

I cannot tell you, Mrs. Carr, how much I appreciate 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.

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.

Nat. size of wound.
Outer side, right eye.

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 increased 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 anything 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, because 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 without meaning and purpose that comes from a Father’s hand,” but during these dark weeks I could not feel this, and, as for courage and fortitude, 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 leaves, as Mrs. Browning would say, are “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 properly plaited, and drawn far enough down, every hood with the proper dainty slant, their fashions 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 increasing. 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 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 repaired? 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 loving naturalist of yours. It is indeed a pleasant 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 thankful I am for his sympathy. He is one who can sympathize in full. I feel sorry for his like misfortune 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 congratulated me on my happiness in having avoided the misery and mud of March, but for the serious 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 Sanguinaria, and Isopyrum too, and Thalictrum 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 blossoms. 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 9th, 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 rapidly of late, and I don’t think it can ever be paid.

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, Ill., thence northward 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 summer, 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 Muir.

Roses with us are now in their grandest splendor.

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? Please tell me particularly about the sending or bringing 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 numerous than those of Canada or Indiana. With what fervid, unspeakable joy did I welcome 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 meadow sedge whose flowing tapered leaves have just sufficient stiffness to make them arch with inimitable beauty as they reach down to welcome 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 neighborhood. We have some of the finest assemblies imaginable. There is a little grassy lakelet 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 brotherhood of the three osmundas,—regalis, Claytoniana, and Cinnamomea. Of the three, Claytoniana is the most stately and luxuriant. I never saw such lordly, magnificent clumps before. Their average height is not less than 3½ 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 Scotland. Had Hugh Miller seen it there, he would not have called regalis the prince of Balich 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 Pecatonica. 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 entertaining the remotest idea of making a bouquet. At the end of this measured walk my 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:—

The extremely fine and diffuse purple Agrostis contrasted most divinely with the taller, strict, taper-finished Kœleria. 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 cylindrical spikes of the sedges. All were just in place; every leaf had its proper taper and texture and exact measure of green. Only P. pratensis seemed out of place, and as might be expected 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 beautiful combined into individuals, and undoubtedly 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 before. My poor eye is not better or worse. A cloud is over it, but in gazing over the widest landscapes I am not always sensible of its presence.

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 30th, 1867.

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

We saw, as the steam hurried us on, that the grand harvest of Compositæ 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 in the vicinity of Chicago agreed with Lesquereux’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 algæ, 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.

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, roundabout walk. I walked from Louisville a distance 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 sunlight 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.

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 Madisonville, Tenn., and through Blairsville and Gainesville, Georgia. Please write me at Gainesville. 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 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 enjoyed what you said of souls and solitudes, also that “All of Nature being yet found in man.” 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 America I had better go to. What do you say? My means being limited, I cannot stay long anywhere. 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.

I have not received a letter from any source since leaving Florida, and of course I am very lonesome and hunger terribly for the communion 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 California, 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 specimens. The Isthmus train rushed on with camel speed through the gorgeous Eden of vines and palms, and I could only gaze from the car platform 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 José 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 Joaquin, 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 description, 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 in near view all the way to Gilroy. Their union with the valley is by curves and slopes of inimitable 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 yellow; 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 beautiful mountain ferns, low in the dark cañons and high upon the rocky, sunlit peaks, banks of blooming shrubs, and sprinklings and gatherings 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 mountains, heaving, waving, swelling, in most glorious, overpowering, unreadable majesty; and when at last, stricken with faint like a crushed insect, you hope to escape from all the terrible grandeur of these mountain powers, other fountains, other oceans break forth before you, for there, in clear view, over heaps and rows of foothills 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 flowers, a smooth sea ruffled a little by the tree fringing of the river and here and there of smaller 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 sprinkled apart with grass between, as in our prairies, but grasses are sprinkled in the flowers; not, as in Cuba, flowers piled upon flowers heaped 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 permanent, 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:—

The yellow of these Compositæ is extremely deep and rich and bossy, as though the sun had filled their petals with a portion of his very self. It exceeds the purple of all the others in superficial 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 predominates 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 prophecy 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 enter. 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 Compositæ two or three miles in diameter. They were in the glow of full prime, forming a lake of the purest Compositæ 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 Linnæus 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 California 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, according 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 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 Linnæa.

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 to grow old in, but they died ere they could fade, standing together holding out their branches 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 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 unfolded 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, beautiful 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 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 Francisco 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 deepest joy, amid the flower purple and gold of the plains, the fern fields in gorge and cañon, the sacred waters, tree columns, and the eternal unnameable sublimities of the mountains. Of all my friends you are the only one that understands my motives and enjoyments. Only a few weeks ago a true and liberal-minded friend sent me a large sheetful of terrible blue-steel orthodoxy, calling me from clouds and flowers to the practical walks of politics and philanthropy. 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 California. 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 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. Conspicuous, energetic, unmixed materialism rules supreme in all classes. Prof. Whitney, as you are aware, was accused of heresy while conducting the State survey, because in his reports he devoted some space to fossils and other equally dead and un-Californian objects instead of columns of discovered and measured mines.

I am engaged at present in the very important 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 opportunities for reading and botanizing. I shall be here for about two weeks, then I shall be engaged in shearing sheep between the Tuolumne 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 within sight of Calypso. There are about twenty plants in flower in the gardens of my daily walks. The first was born in January. I give them more attention than I give the dirty mongrel 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 Madison, 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 pouring upon you; nevertheless you seem so near I can hardly stop.

My most cordial regards to the Doctor. Californians do not deserve such as he.

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

I am your friend,
John Muir.

920 Valencia St.,

San Francisco, April 24th, 1869.

I enclose at last the name of the big orange book. Either Paqot & Co. or Grégoire & 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 conventions 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.

Seven miles north from Snellings,

May 16th, 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 mountain 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 20th of June and the 15th of July, will suit me. I intended to enjoy another baptism in the sanctuaries of Yosemite, 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, going by Coulterville and returning by Mariposa. A passable carriage-road reached about twelve miles beyond Coulterville; the rest of the distance to the valley was crossed only by a narrow trail. On the Mariposa route a point is reached twelve or fourteen miles beyond Mariposa by carriages; the rest of the journey, about forty miles, must be made on horseback. Tourists are generally advised to go one way and return 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 Mariposa route, for the grandest grove of sequoias ever discovered is upon it, and it is much the 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 utensils, 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.

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, cooking 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 purchase, or hire, horses at a reasonable rate in San José or Gilroy, you could cross the Coast Range via the Pacheco Pass or Livermore Valley, 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.

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 towards 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 propose: That you take the stage at Stockton for Mariposa. At Mariposa you procure saddle-horses and one pack-animal for your tent, blankets, 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 provided you send me word by the first of June what day you will set out from Stockton. Address to Hopeton.

When you arrive in the valley, please register your name at Mr. Hutchings’ hotel. I will 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 addressing 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 20th, 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 1st 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 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 necessary 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 Mariposa 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 experienced 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 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 suddenly 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.

Five miles west of Yosemite,

July 11, [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 yesterday 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 anything 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 Yosemite with you.

We are camped this evening among a bundle 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 darkness 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 existence in God’s glorious Sierra Nevadas and sorry that I could not meet you.

John Muir.

A few miles north of Yosemite,

July 13th, [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.

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 17th. 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 cañon 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 bottom 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 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 remain until we start for the plains some time near the end of September. The kind of meeting 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.

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 Francisco 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. Therefore 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 cañon 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 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 Cañon pass. I will not try to write the grandeur I have seen all summer but I will copy you the notes of one day from my journal.

“Sept. 2nd. Amount of cloudiness .08. Sky 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 extensive field of clustered towers and peaks and domes where is stored the treasures of snow belonging to the Merced and Tuolumne and Joaquin 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 delightful 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 of human kind are protected by the hand of God, blooming joyfully through a long beautiful 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 today, and as I passed a rock-shelf after reaching the great gathered heaps of everlasting snow, something seemed to whisper ‘Cassiope, Cassiope.’ 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 because 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.

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 banishment 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 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 Muir.

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 rustling makes one think of the groves of Madison. I have been wandering about among the falls and rapids, studying the grand instruments of 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 beginning.”

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 luxuriant 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 heaven’s beauty to the music of the water. The motion 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.

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, occasionally 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 quantity 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 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.

April 13th.

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 distinctions were leveled off; all plants and the very rocks and streams were equally polypetalous.

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 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 Oakland 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 Madison.

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 valley. I have a great deal to say to you which I will not try to write. Remember me most cordially to the Doctor and to Allie and all the boys. I am much obliged to you for those botanical 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 17th, 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 enjoyments; 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 outermost 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 19th of last month, those of the oaks on the 24th.

May 1st 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 14th was extremely warm, the thermometer averaging about 85 degrees 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 Yosemite 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 valley 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-like sheets. But last Sunday, 15th, 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 16th. 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 Washington, 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.

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 Muir.

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 nevertheless. 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 amazing. I do not wonder that the thought of such people being here, Mrs. Carr, makes you “mad,” but after all, Mrs. Carr, they are about harmless. 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 complain of the desecrating influences of the fashionable 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 Yosemite, 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 mountains 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 precious 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 summer 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 grandest 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 Spiræa 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 abundant 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 going 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, perhaps, to make a living, but for a garden I should 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 Linnæa and Chiogenes hispidula once more! I would rather see these two children of the evergreen woods than all the twenty-seven species of palm that Agassiz met on the Amazons.

These summer days “go on” calmly and evenly. Scarce a mark of the frost and snow of the 15th 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 thermometer 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 11 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.

Mr. Hutchings arrived here from Washington 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 7th.

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. Muir.

[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 two months in the spirit world, screaming among the peaks and outside meadows like a negro Methodist in revival time, and every intervening 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 picture-like about “the walls of memory,” but in unselected atmospheres of terrestrial glory diffused 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 sweetness 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 am just beginning to know how fully congenial you are. Would that you could share my mountain 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 waterfalls, 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 below the bridge.

I am glad to know that McClure and McChesney 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 Sanderson and Mrs. Waterston. Mrs. Waterston 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.