I cannot hear from you. There are some souls, perhaps, that are never
tired, that ever go steadily glad, always tuneful and songful like
mountain water. Not so, weary, hungry me. This second time I come from
the rocks for fresh supplies of the two breads, but I find but one. I
cannot hear from you. My last weeks were spent among the cañons of the
Hoffman range and the Cathedral Peak group east of Lake Tenaya. All
gloriously rich in the written truths which I am seeking. I will now go
to the wide, ragged tributaries of Illilouette and to Pohono, after which
I will mope about among the rim cañons and rock forms of the valley as
the weather permits.
Perhaps I have not yet answered all of your last long pages. Here is a
quotation from Tyndall concerning the nature and origin of his intense
mountain enjoyments. He reaches far and near for a theory of his delight
in the mountains, going among the accidents of his own boyhood and those
of his remotest fathers, but surely this must be all wrong, and, instead
of groping away backwards among the various grades of grandfathers, he
should explore the most primary properties of man. Perhaps we owe “the
pleasurable emotions which fine landscape makes in us” to a cause as
radical as that which makes a magnet pulse to the two poles. I think that
one of the _properties_ of that compound which we call man is that when
exposed to the rays of mountain beauty it glows with _joy_. I don’t know
who of all my ancestry are to blame, but my attractions and repulsions
are badly balanced to-night and I will not try to say any more, excepting
farewell and love to you all.