Well, to my Father I say “Thank you” and go willingly.
I go by stage and rail to Brownsville to see Emily and the rocks there and Yuba. Then, perhaps, a few days among auriferous drifts on the Tuolumne, and then to Oakland and that book, walking across the Coast Range on the way, either through one of the passes or over Mt. Diablo. I feel a sort of nervous fear of another period of town dark, but I don’t want to be silly about it. The sun glow will all fade out of me and I will be deathly as Shasta in the dark, but mornings will come, dawnings of some kind, and if not, I have lived more than a common eternity already.
Farewell, don’t overwork; that is not the work your Father wants. I wish you could come a-beeing in the Shasta honey lands. Love to the boys.
Brownsville, Yuba Co., [Cal.,]
January 19th, 1875.
My dear Mrs. Mother Carr, here are some of the dearest and bonniest of our Father’s bairns,—the little ones that so few care to see. I never saw such enthusiasm in the care and breeding of mosses as Nature manifests among these northern Sierras.
I have studied a big fruitful week among the cañons and ridges of the Feather, and another along the Yuba River living and dead.
I have seen a dead river, a sight worth going around the world to see. The dead rivers and dead gravels wherein lie the gold form magnificent problems, and I feel wild and unmanageable with the intense interest they excite, but I will choke myself off and finish my glacial work and that little book of studies. I have been spending a few fine social days with Emily, but now work.
How gloriously it storms! The pines are in ecstasy, and I feel it and must go out to them. I must borrow a big coat and mingle in the storm and make some studies.
Farewell. Love to all. Emily and Mrs. Knox send love.