I’m glad your boys are safely back. Perhaps Ned and I may try that Andes field together.
I would write to Mrs. Moore but will wait until she is better. Tell her the cascades and mountains of upper Hetch Hetchy [ ].
I hope I may see you a few days soon. I had a pretty letter from old Dr. Torrey, and from Gray I have heard three or four times. I am ever
Cordially.
Yosemite, October 14th, [1872.]
I cannot hear from you. There are some souls, perhaps, that are never tired, that ever go steadily glad, always tuneful and songful like mountain water. Not so, weary, hungry me. This second time I come from the rocks for fresh supplies of the two breads, but I find but one. I cannot hear from you. My last weeks were spent among the 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.
John Muir.
[1872 or 1873.]
[Beginning of letter missing.]