Yours most cordially,
J. M.
Yosemite,
August 13th, [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
cannot 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 undisturbed 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, 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 mountain walks, and,
notwithstanding the glorious portion of daily bread which my soul will
receive 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 entirely 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; and is it true that these are
Bryant’s Melancholy 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 MUIR.
I shall hope to hear from you soon. I will come down some of the valley
cañons occasionally for letters.
I am sorry that you are so laden with University 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 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 measurement. No, dear friend, you would
say: “Keep your mind untrammelled and pure. Go unfrictioned, unmeasured,
and God give you the true meaning and interpretation of his mountains.”
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 considered the sky above it and all of its opening cañons, 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 attempting what is not possible
for you to accomplish. Yosemite is the _end_ of a grand chapter; if you
would learn to read it, go commence at the beginning.” Then I went above
to the alphabet valleys of the summits, comparing cañon with cañon, with
all their varieties of rock-structure and cleavage and the comparative
size and slope of the glaciers and waters which they contained; also the
grand congregations 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 extraordinary rock-form. Now it is clear that woe is me if I do
not drown this tendency towards nervous 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 Institute of Technology, was here
last week, and I preached my glacial theory to him for five days, taking
him into the cañon of the valley and up among the grand glacier wombs
and pathways of the summit. He was fully convinced 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 scientific 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 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 dollars,--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 dollar. Some of
my friends are badgering me to write for some of the magazines, and I
am almost 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?
Suppose I should give some of the journals 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 cañons 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 brother is the necessary result of the
delicately balanced blows of well-directed and combined glaciers against
the parent rocks which contained 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 Darwin. 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 other
chance, and I will remit the money required 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 31st. I see that some of our
letters are missing. I received 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 sympathize 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_ 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 expense
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 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 Doctor 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 15th containing Ned’s canoe and colonization
adventure came to-night. I feel that you are coming and I will not hear
any words of preparatory consolation for the unsupposable 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 Westfall 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.”
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 cañon below the snow, but
you must not come that way.
You may also enter the valley via Little Yosemite 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 beyond measure though you come as a
comet tailed with a whole misty town.
Ned is a brave fellow. God bless him unspeakably and feed him with his
own South American self.