How are Ned and Keith? I wish Keith had been with us these Shasta and Feather River days. I have gained a thousandfold more than I hoped. Heaven send him light and the good blessing of wildness. How the rains [?] splash and roar! and how the pines wave and pray!
1419 Taylor St.,
May 4th, 1875.
Here I am, safe in the arms of Daddy Swett, home again from icy Shasta and richer than ever in dead-river gravel and in snowstorms and snow. The upper end of the main Sacramento Valley is entirely covered with ancient river drift, and I wandered over many square miles of it. In every pebble I could hear the sound of running water. The whole deposit is a poem whose many books and chapters form the geological Vedas of our glorious State.
I discovered a new species of hail on the summit of Shasta and experienced one of the most beautiful and most violent snowstorms imaginable.
I would have been with you ere this to tell you about it and to give you some lilies and pine tassels that I brought for you and Mrs. McChesney and Ina Coolbrith, but alack! I am battered and scarred like a log that has come down the Tuolumne in flood-time, and I am also lame with frost-nipping. Nothing serious, however, and I will be well and better than before in a few days.
I was caught in a violent snowstorm and held up on the summit of the mountain all night in my shirt-sleeves. The intense cold and the want of food and sleep made the fire of life smoulder and burn low. Nevertheless, in company with another strong mountaineer I broke through six miles of frosty snow down into the timber and reached fire and food and sleep and am better than ever with all the valuable experiences. Altogether I have had a very instructive and delightful trip.
The bryanthus you wanted was snow-buried, and I was too lame to dig it out for you, but I will probably be back ere long.
I’ll be over in a few days or so.
Old Yosemite Home,
November 3d, 1875.
I’m delighted, in coming out of the woods, to learn that the Doctor is elected to do the work he is so well fitted for.