Ever your friend,
J. Muir.
Tuolumne River, two miles below La Grange,
November 4th, 1870.
Yours of October 2nd reached me a few days since. The Amazon and Andes have been in all my thoughts for many years, and I am sure that I shall meet them some day ere I die, or become settled and civilized and useful. I am obliged to you for all this information. I have studied many paths and plans for the interior of South America, but none so easy and sure ever appeared as this of your letter. I thought of landing at Guayaquil and crossing the mountains to the Amazon, floating to Para, subsisting on berries and quinine, but to steam along the palmy shores with company and comforts is perhaps more practical though not so pleasant. Hawthorne says that steam spiritualizes travel, but I think that it squarely degrades and materializes travel. However, flies and fevers have to be considered in this case. I am glad that Ned has gone. The woods of the Purús will be a grand place for the growth of men. It must be that I am going soon, for you have shown me the way. People say that my wanderings are very mazy and methodless, but they are all known to you in some way before I think of them. You are a prophet in the concerns of my little outside life, and pray, what says the spirit about my final escape from Yosemite? You saw me at these rock altars years ago, and I think I shall remain among them until you take me away. I reached this place last month by following the Merced out of the valley and through all its cañons to the plains above Snelling,—a most glorious walk.
I intended returning to the valley ere this, but Mr. Delaney, the man with whom I am stopping at present, would not allow me to leave before I had plowed his field, and so I will not be likely to see Yosemite again before January, when I shall have a grand journey over the snow.
Mrs. Yelverton told me before I started upon my river explorations that she would likely be in Oakland in two weeks, and so I made up a package for you of lily bulbs, cones, ferns, etc., but she wrote me a few days ago that she was still in the valley.
I find that a portion of my specimens collected in the last two years and left at this place and Hopeton are not very well cared for, and I have concluded to send them to you.
I will ship them in a few days by express, and I will be down myself perhaps in about a year. If there is anything in these specimens that the Doctor can make use of in his lectures, tell him to do so freely, of course.
The purple of these plains and of this whole round sky is very impressively glorious after a year in the deep rocks. People all throughout this section are beginning to hear of Dr. Carr. He accomplishes a wonderful amount of work.
My love to Allie and to the Doctor, and I am ever most
Cordially yours,
John Muir.