In the notes below, the reference numbers denote page and line of this volume (the line count includes titles, headings, and captions). No note is made for material included in standard desk-reference books such as Webster’s Collegiate, Biographical, and Geographical dictionaries. Biblical references are keyed to the King James Version. Footnotes in the text were in the originals. For further background and references to other studies, see: William Frederic Badè, The Life and Letters of John Muir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924); John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, ed. Linnie Marsh Wolfe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938); Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1945); Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1981); Michael P. Cohen, The Pathless Way: John Muir and the American Wilderness (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984); Frederick Turner, Rediscovering America: John Muir in His Time and Ours (New York: Viking, 1985); William F. Kimes and Maymie B. Kimes, John Muir: A Reading Bibliography (Fresno: Panorama West Books, 1986).
The editor acknowledges Gregory Summers for his work in preparing the Chronology.
1.1–2 THE STORY . . . YOUTH] Edward H. Harriman persuaded Muir to allow a stenographer to take down his recollections of his life during a visit to Harriman’s Pelican Bay Lodge in Klamath Lake, Oregon, in August 1908. The resulting triple-spaced typescript was more than a thousand pages long, and this book, pared down as a series of episodes and published five years later, was the eventual result.
8.23 “Llewellyn’s Dog,”] Traditional story of Llewelyn the Great, prince of Wales, (d. 1240) and the greyhound given him by King John.
9.1–2 “The Inchcape Bell,”] Actually, “The Inchcape Rock” (1802).
9.24–28 the keeper . . . medical school.] William Hare, an Irishman living in Edinburgh, in 1827 sold the body of a person who died in his lodging house to Dr. Robert Knox, a prominent anatomist at the Edinburgh College of Surgeons, and then in 1828 with William Burke, his lodger, lured to the house and murdered, usually by suffocation, about 15 persons to procure more bodies for Knox; the doctor evidently did not inquire into the nature of the deaths. When one of the victims was traced to Hare’s home the murderers were apprehended. Hare turned king’s evidence and Burke was convicted of the murders and executed by hanging in 1829. Hare is believed to have fled to England to escape lynching.
15.8–9 Tam . . . witches] In Robert Burns’ “Tam o’ Shanter” (1791).
29.11 Scotch ornithologist Wilson] Alexander Wilson (1766–1813), known as the founder of American ornithology, immigrated to the United States in 1794, worked as a schoolteacher in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and, with William Bartram’s encouragement, began the serious study of ornithology. His major work is American Ornithology (9 vols., 1808–14); he also wrote poetry, including The Foresters (1805), an account of his walk from Philadelphia to Niagara Falls and back.
32.34 Fort Winnebago] Built 1828 near the site of present Portage, Wisconsin, and abandoned by the military in 1846. The Muir homestead was about 16 miles south of Portage, the closest town.
60.4–5 Fountain . . . Muir Lake] At present John Muir Memorial Park in Columbia County, Wisconsin. Nothing remains of the original Muir farmstead.
60.38 “oak openings”] Nineteenth-century phrase for oak savannahs in which prairie grasses mingled with widely separated trees, most commonly shagbark hickories and white and bur oaks.
66.40–67.1 The best . . . agley,”] Cf. Robert Burns, “To a Mouse” (1785), stanza 7: “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, / Gang aft agley.”
78.22–23 passenger pigeons] Passenger pigeons became extinct by 1920, and the last great nestings in Wisconsin took place in the 1870s, shortly after Muir arrived in California.
80.17 Pokagon’s] Simon Pokagon (1830–99), author of the posthumously published novel O-gi-maw-kwe-ki Mit-i-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods) (1899), was the son of a Potawatomi chief. He studied at Oberlin College.
102.14 Todleben] Russian military engineer Count Frants Eduard Ivanovich Totleben, or Todleben (1818–84).
102.17 terrible war] The Crimean War (1853–56).
103.35–105.17 One of the saddest deaths . . . jaw.] In later printings, Muir made changes in this section in deference to the sensibilities of a childhood friend who objected to the depiction of his father, the “blacksmith and preacher”; some of the changes are shown below.
103.37 blacksmith and preacher, etc.] In later printings, this reads: “devout, severe puritan.”
104.11–13 The brawny . . . shortcoming.] In later printings, this reads: “His guardian brother, delighting in hard work and able for anything, was as remarkable for strength of body and mind as poor Charlie for childishness.”
104.20 he ran away] In later printings, “he ran gladly.”
104.22 punishment] In later printings, “illness.”
104.24–25 was beaten every day] In later printings, “was tired of life.”
105.3–8 bring the reproach . . . brother then walked] In later printings, this reads: “bring harm to religion. Though snatched from the lake to his bed, poor Charlie lived only a few days longer. A physician who was called when his health first became seriously impaired reported that he was suffering from Bright’s disease. After all was over, the stoical brother walked.”
105.15–17 in all that excessively . . . blacksmith’s jaw.] In later printings, this reads: “the brother who had faithfully cared for him controlled and concealed all his natural affection as incompatible with sound faith.”
106.22–23 “they should take . . . who can,”] Cf. “Rob Roy’s Grave” (1807), lines 39–40.
118.5 Dick’s “Christian Philosopher,”] Thomas Dick (1774–1857) was a Scottish Secessionist minister who became a schoolteacher and author; the book (1823) is subtitled: or the Connection of Science with Religion.
123.22 Burns’s wee mousie] In “To a Mouse.”
124.35 “All flesh is grass.”] Isaiah 40:6.
139.29 I invented a desk] The desk-clock has been placed on permanent display at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison.
147.1–2 MY FIRST . . . SIERRA] For this book Muir significantly revised the diary that he kept during his first visit to the Yosemite and its environs in 1869, linking entries with carefully constructed transitional passages and adding episodes from other summers.
163.10–11 “wee, . . . beasties”] Cf. Robert Burns, “To a Mouse,” line 1.
179.24 “bank to brae.”] Robert Burns, “Winter”: “While, tumbling brown, the Burn comes down, / And roars frae bank to brae”; a “burn” is a rivulet and a “brae,” the slope of a hill.
198.22–23 Once I . . . Bonaventure graveyard] During his walk to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867.
204.23–34 “He giveth his beloved sleep.”] Psalm 127:2.
213.36–37 Samson’s riddle . . . sweetness.”] Cf. Judges 14:5–8, 14–18; the solution to the riddle is: “What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion?”
239.6 “I sift . . . mountains below.”] “The Cloud,” line 7.
249.11 Grip] A parrot in Charles Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge (1841).
250.9–10 Tenaya . . . company of soldiers] Tenaya was chief of the Ahwahneechee Indians who were removed from Yosemite in 1851; he was killed in 1853.
257.9 Professor J. D. Butler] James Davie Butler was professor of classics. He helped to introduce Muir to the works of Emerson.
259.9 Mrs. Hutchings] Elvira Hutchings, who became a close friend of Muir’s.
259.34 General Alvord] Benjamin Alvord (1813–84), a career soldier, was brevetted brigadier general of the Union Army in 1862 and served as paymaster general for the U.S. Army, 1872–80. He taught mathematics and physics at West Point early in his career, served in numerous conflicts, including the Seminole War, 1835–37, and was the author of many articles, notably on math and geography.
278.28–29 “still singing . . . for joy.”] Cf. Job 38:7.
282.11–13 “It’s coming yet . . . a’ that.”] From Burns’ untitled song that begins: “The Honest Man the best of Men.”
311.1–2 THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA] This volume established Muir’s reputation as a writer. In it, he revised and wove together essays that had been published previously in national periodicals such as Scribner’s Monthly, its successor The Century Magazine, and Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. For the 1911 printing, Muir added the following dedication: “To the Memory of Louiza Strentzel, this ninth edition of The Mountains of California is affectionately dedicated.”
316.7 When I first] In 1868.
318.28–31 miners . . . left their marks.] The landscape was altered principally through placer mining, in which gold miners worked the gravel of Sierra streambeds and river valleys by hand, using water to wash away earth and gravel from the gold they hoped to find in their pans and sluices. Placer mining created pits in gravel beds, but far more devastating was hydraulic mining, in which high-pressure jets of water were used to wash away whole hillsides in order to extract their gold. Hydraulic mining so silted up the Sacramento Valley and altered its drainage patterns that in the 1870s and 1880s farmers successfully lobbied to ban it.
318.34 quartz-mining] Underground mining for gold embedded in quartz veins.
320.12–14 lava . . . granite] The Sierra Nevadas are in fact underlain by an enormous batholith—a huge intrusion of volcanic magma that did not breach the surface but instead cooled underground—which is the source of the granite for which they are famous.
320.20 Mount Shasta] Mount Shasta, like Mount Lassen, is considered part of the series of volcanic peaks that make up the Cascade Range.
326.29–30 Schlagintweit brothers] German naturalists, explorers, and writers Hermann von Schlagintweit (1826–82) and Adolf Schlagintweit (1829–57); they explored the Alps in 1846–53.
326.31 névé] Or firn, the granular, partially compacted snow located at the upper end of a glacier.
333.18–23 lateral moraines . . . terminal moraines] Moraines are the piles of gravel that accumulate along the front and sides of glaciers as their ice moves forward. Every glacier is always moving forward as the weight of snow and ice renders its base plastic, even when the front of the glacier remains fixed at a stable location (the front will remain fixed as long as the rate at which snow and ice accumulate in the winter matches the rate at which they melt in the summer). Moraines form as the forward moving ice transports rock to the stable front of the glacier, where the load is deposited to form heaps of gravel on the margins of the ice. Terminal moraines lie at the outward leading edge of the glacier, marking its farthest forward extent; lateral moraines lie along its edges.
334.6 “bergschrund,”] A crevasse, a fissure extending deep into the ice of a glacier.
337.26–28 As the snaw . . . sang Burns] In “Tam o’ Shanter.”
361.17 mining regions of Nevada] The most famous of the Nevada mines were those of the Comstock Lode, in the vicinity of Virginia City. Building and fueling the mines, which required an immense amount of timber from the nearby mountains, resulted in extensive deforestation.
364.36 supplies of acorns] Acorns were a principal foodstuff for native peoples in many parts of California.
377.37–38 terrible fate . . . Donner party] A group of 82 emigrants under the leadership of Jacob and George Donner of Illinois were trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains by an eight-day snowstorm at the end of October 1846 and reached the brink of starvation by mid-December. The first rescuers from Sutter’s Fort (present-day Sacramento) reached the Donner party’s camps through deep snow on February 18 and began bringing survivors down into the valley settlements. The last emigrant left camp on April 21; by that time many in the main party had died from exhaustion and malnutrition and their flesh had been eaten by the others as a last resort. Of the 82 emigrants, 47 survived.
387.31 money-changers . . . temple] Cf. Matthew 2:12, Mark 11:15.
403.37–404.1 “boundless contiguity of shade,”] William Cowper, The Task (1785): Bk. 2—“The Timepiece,” line 2.
404.9 openness . . . Sierra woods] The openness of the forests in Muir’s time was in part attributable to Indian burning, which helped clear the undergrowth. The valley floor of Yosemite would become more densely forested because of subsequent suppression of these fires.
405.24 moraines vanish] Moraines consist of unconsolidated gravel, often deposited in such a way as to create very steep slopes that erode easily.
436.6 Heer and Lesquereux] Swiss naturalists Oswald Heer (1809–83) and (Charles) Leo Lesquereux (1806–89); Lesquereux immigrated to the United States in 1848.
436.25–26 forest reservations] First established by the Forest Reserves Act of 1891, which provided for the setting aside of forested public land to protect watersheds and timber supplies. In the early 20th century these reserves became known as the national forests.
463.22 “Old Hundredth,”] Dignified tune so-named for its use as the setting for Psalm 100 in the 1563 Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter.
512.1–7 high-walled corral . . . dummy hunters] Archaeological records for this hunting technique, which was used in many parts of North America, go back thousands of years.
516.15 Micawber-like] The impecunious Wilkins Micawber, always waiting for “something to turn up,” in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (1849–50).
549.1 STICKEEN] Muir’s earliest-known writing about the dog Stickeen is in a journal entry dated August 30, 1880, made during his second trip to Alaska; it reads:
An Indian Cur. What labyrinth of relationship Stickeen had, I never tried to trace; probably he came from the Stickeen tribes.
Indian curs are all solemn, even when puppies, I suppose from having to work hard. They are made beasts of burden as soon as they can carry a pound or two. Those of the interior of the country are all thus used, old and young. Each has its pair of saddle-bags, according to size, marching solemnly. Hiding, Stickeen probably learned in trying to avoid his load.
When we came to the Indian villages, he hardly noticed other dogs, being wholly unlike those kingly, magisterial dogs that ever draw a company of dependents at their heels. Rather he was a hermit—a wandering star beyond the influence of any of his kind.
A good-natured sailor and vagabond, he was fond of wandering but without visible enthusiasm, nosing among logs and trees with sober, unhasting industry, now and then shaking the rain from his hair or the dew from the huckleberry bushes, heeding no kind of weather, never in a hurry or fuss, eating as if it were a sad duty.
Never cat-like with the small game he killed, without yelp or growl he did the job with official decorum, like a dull boy doing his chores.
He was smooth and glossy as a berry. His little round feet made no sound on the moss carpet of the woods, turf and moss, nor on the glacier that never before felt the foot of man or dog. From most of dog sins he was free—didn’t fuss, steal, whine, or get in the way. He never offered his head to be patted as an affectionate terrier would, or a loving collie; neither did he refuse a caress—he just didn’t care. He was cold and unemotional as a glacier curled up in a blue shadow on the mountains. Yet his eyes puzzled me—aye, those eyes! They were deep, calm, fateful, suggesting the unfathomable wells of the glaciers.
But at first he seemed to me a small dim dull sluggish unromantic nobody . . . as unfussy as a tree. Even the minister knew him not. He was just a little dog that followed him.
No mark of years was on him—he seemed neither old nor young. He always looked grave, no matter how playful you might be with him; scratch his ears, pat his head, set him up on hind legs, or cuddle him on your lap, he was still irresistibly grave—not a tail-wag. A little black horizontal philosopher, calm, pensive, silently watchful. . . .
He was particular about his beds, and no dog had better ones, for the woods down to the tide-line are not simply carpeted with mosses, but richly plushed with them, so that all the ground was a bed, fresher and finer far than any king could buy of fluffy down silk. Only sticks and roots woven into the yellow fronds had to be avoided. A mossy hollow—not too damp—at the foot of a spruce tree between bulging roots was the favorite place where he curled up comfortably, himself like a little boss of moss, swelled up over a boulder.
He was an adventurous swimmer, as much at home on the waves as a seal. And he could make his way through any wind like a salmon through swift water.
(John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, ed. Linnie Marsh Wolfe, pp. 275–77. Reprinted by permission.)
551.2 J. G. HOLLAND] Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–81), author and editor of magazines including Scribner’s Monthly and its successor The Century Magazine.
566.31 wee . . . beastie] See note 163.10–11.
577.1 Yosemite Glaciers] Aside from a very brief botanical listing in the
Boston Recorder in 1866, this was Muir’s first publication.
588.23–26 Hutching’s . . . Black’s] James M. Hutching’s and A. G. Black’s hotels.
589.6 Hill’s painting] Thomas Hill (1829–1908) emigrated from England in 1840 and settled in California around 1871; he was famous for his landscapes of the Yosemite Valley region.
592.1 A Geologist’s Winter Walk] This was an excerpt from a letter to Jeanne Carr. She submitted it to The Overland Monthly without Muir’s knowledge.
595.20 ‘benmost bore’] Robert Burns, The Jolly Beggars. A Cantata, 2nd recitative; the words mean “inmost crevice (or cranny).”
607.1 Flood-Storm in the Sierra] Muir later revised this essay for The Mountains of California, Chapter XI (pp. 474–82 in this volume).
617.28 “it is . . . for a’ that”] From Robert Burns’ “The Honest Man.”
618.1 Living Glaciers of California] Muir revised this essay for The Mountains of California, Chapter II (pp. 326–35 in this volume).
619.1–7 The first Sierra glacier . . . my discovery] The bulk of Muir’s writings about his geological “discoveries” appeared, like this essay, in popular journals. But at a time when science was just beginning to professionalize itself into the academic disciplines that characterized it in the 20th century, Muir was taken quite seriously as an amateur geologist, principally for his work in applying Louis Agassiz’s theories of glaciation to the mountain landscapes of the American West. His more explicitly “scientific” work appeared in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History with the help of Dr. Samuel Kneeland, who shared Muir’s interest in Yosemite geology. Muir also published his work in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
621.14–19 lateral moraines . . . channel.] See note 333.18–23.
622.14 névé] See note 326.31.
622.15 Bergschrund] See note 334.6.
624.38 Professor Joseph Leconte] Le Conte (1823–1901) was a leading geologist at the University of California at Berkeley.
626.18 Schlagintweit brothers] See note 326.29–30.
626.25 Clarence King] King (1842–1901) was considered the leading geologist of his generation; he served as the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey, 1879–81.
629.1 God’s First Temples] This is the first article in which Muir protests the destruction of natural resources and wild country in the mountain West.
629.20–630.10 The practical importance . . . them.] Muir’s argument about the role of forests in regulating streamflow was already familiar to many 19th-century readers from the work of George Perkins Marsh (1801–82), whose Man and Nature (1864) ascribed the fall of ancient Greece and Rome to the environmental degradation resulting from their indiscriminate cutting of Mediterranean forests. Man and Nature was crucial in building a national consensus about the need to protect American forests, leading eventually to the establishment of the Adirondack State Park in New York and to the 1891 Forest Reserves Act which laid the foundation for the national forests. Muir’s efforts to defend wilderness areas in the West were a part of this national movement.
645.13 Sisson] Proprietor of the hotel at which Muir was staying.
649.1 Alaska] For the material in this essay, Muir drew on a series of articles written during his first trip to Alaska in the second half of 1879 and published in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin. The trip gave Muir the opportunity to view for the first time glacial landscapes on a much larger and more active scale than he had been exploring for the past decade in the Sierra Nevada.
657.5–658.2 An Alaskan midsummer day . . . all the world.] Muir often reworked the material in his journals to produce his essays; for this passage he used an entry from his journal of July 10, 1879, which reads:
I should like to sketch one of these Alaska summer days, however imperfect the sketch must be. It is a day without night, for it begins and ends at midnight, which is the low noon of the great round day. The sky is red and orange then, for clouds more or less distinct are almost always present. The day opens slowly, the center of greatest light insensibly increasing and circling round the horizon’s rim; and when at length the sun appears, it is without much of that stirring, impressive pomp, that flashing awakening energy so suggestive of the Bible image of a strong man coming forward to run a race. The colored clouds with their dissolving edges seem to vanish as their color leaves them, sinking into a hazy dimness around the horizon. The islands, some of them with ruffs of mist about their bases, cast black ill-defined shadows over the glistening water, and the whole dome of the sky becomes pale, whitish gray. For three or four hours after sunrise there is no striking feature to be felt or seen. The sun may be looked in the face though seemingly unclouded, and the islands full in the light, and the mainland mountains are seen in the distance. Yet in all their beauty of form and wealth of woods they seem to be yet asleep, rather dull and uncommunicative. As the day advances towards high noon, the light of the sun shining down in full power lights the water levels to silver. Brightly play the ripples about the bushy edges of the warm shores, inzoning every island with a white-glowing girdle. The bland air beats now and makes itself felt as a life-giving ocean of energy through the all-pervading, sifting, drenching, luminous mist of pearl sunshine.
(John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, ed., Wolfe, pp. 252–53. Reprinted by permission.)
657.20–21 a bridegroom . . . race.] Cf. Psalm 19:5.
672.35–37 Mr. Swan . . . coast] James G. Swan, a native of Boston, wrote of his 1852–55 stay on the coast in The North West Coast: or Three Tears in Washington Territory (1857).
683.14–22 through the cañon . . . gradually revealed.] This would in 1898 become the principal route that prospectors followed during the Klondike gold rush.
684.16 Muir Glacier] Named for John Muir in 1880.
685.36–38 Sitka . . . Russian ruins] Sitka, founded 1799, was the capital of Russian America and continued as the capital of Alaska when the territory came under U.S. rule in 1867; the capital was transferred to Juneau in 1906.
687.1–2 Features . . . National Park] Muir began to emerge during the 1890s as the leading proponent of permanent federal protection of Yosemite as a national park. In 1864 the United States had given the Yosemite Valley to the state of California. It was the nation’s first wild land park, and leading landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) had played a key role in designing that park. Muir was among those who by the 1890s were arguing for setting aside a much larger tract of land than just Yosemite Valley itself and in 1892 he became a founder of the Sierra Club as part of the lobbying effort to protect the Yosemite and other parts of the Sierra high country.
701.1 The American Forests] This is Muir’s most sustained essay on the lands that eventually became the core of the national forests. It is an outgrowth of his service as a consultant to the National Forestry Commission, chaired by Harvard botanist Charles Sprague Sargent (1841–1927) and with members such as as Yale scientist William H. Brewer (1828–1910), Alexander Agassiz (1835–1910), and Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946). The essay, which was commissioned in 1897 by Atlantic Monthly editor Walter Hines Page, is essentially a précis of the Forestry Report’s major arguments, rendered livelier and more accessible by Muir’s prose. In arguing for government ownership and regulation of forested lands throughout the nation, Muir aligned himself with the work that Gifford Pinchot (who would become Theodore Roosevelt’s Chief Forester and founder of the United States Forest Service) was beginning to pursue in promoting permanent federal management of forests on public lands. The echoes of Marsh’s Man and Nature (see note 629.20–630.10) also are evident here. Pinchot and Muir would soon diverge in their visions of how such forests should be managed and used, with the struggle over Hetch Hetchy providing the occasion for a final break that in fact reflected longstanding philosophical tensions between the two men; the two actually came into conflict over grazing policy in the western forests not long after this piece was written.
707.19 timber culture act] Passed in 1873, the act was another legacy of George Perkins Marsh’s Man and Nature, the theory being that by encouraging settlers to plant trees in grassland and desert environments, “rain would follow the plow” and barren land would be made fertile for agriculture.
709.39–40 *A change . . . 1901.] “The American Forests” was first published in August 1897.
721.1–2 The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West] This essay was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly as the first in a series of nine articles on wild parks of the American West that Walter Hines Page commissioned from Muir following the success of “The American Forests”; all ten essays were collected, with some revisions, in Our National Parks.
729.2–3 buffalo . . . described by Parkman] In Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail (1849).
741.38 p. 736] The page number has been changed to conform to the present volume.
745.5–6 A’ that . . . muckle’s a’ that] Robert Burns, The Jolly Beggars: A Cantata, Song VII; muckle means “great,” “much,” “big.”
745.34 guarded . . . United States cavalry.] Management of the national parks passed from the U.S. Army to the modern Park Service after passage of the National Park Service Act in 1916.
746.22 scaur] Scottish: A bare spot on the side of a steep hill; a precipice; a cliff.
764.11–12 Joliet and Father Marquette] The French explorers passed between the Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds at Portage, Wisconsin, not far from the spot where the Muir family settled.
772.34–39 Dr. Johnson’s . . . something.”] In James Boswell, Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides (1785), entry of October 19, 1773.
786.33 Emerson came.] This is Muir’s first published account of his 1871 meeting with Emerson, who was vacationing in the West as part of a cross-country railroad trip with family and friends. Emerson had become exhausted by his teaching and writing schedule and the trip has been credited with prolonging his life.
787.3 ‘gang tapsal-teerie.’] Go topsy-turvey, from Burns’ “Green grow the Rashes.”
787.4 ‘Good-by . . . home,’] “Good-Bye,” line 1, in Poems (1847).
787.24 “Come listen . . . saith,”] Cf. “Woodnotes II” in Poems (1847).
788.24 Galen Clark] Clark was appointed California’s state guardian of the Yosemite Grant in 1866. He was heavily involved in promoting the area for tourist use.
793.9–10 Major Powell] Explorer, geologist, conservationist, and teacher John Wesley Powell (1834–1902), a Union Army veteran who had lost his lower right arm at the battle of Shiloh, organized the first descent of the Grand Canyon in 1869.
794.13 “a’ through ither,”] All through one another.
803.3 Hance] John Hance was one of the earliest promoters of the canyon for tourists and was responsible for some of its earliest trails.
810.1 Hetch Hetchy Valley] This essay is Muir’s most important single piece on the Hetch Hetchy controversy. For it, Muir edited and expanded the closing section of his 1890 article “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park” (pp. 694–700 in this volume).
818.2 OCTOBER 23.] In 1867. Muir’s journal account of his walk to the Gulf of Mexico was posthumously edited and published by his friend, William Badè.
825.4–827.25 The world . . . beauty of Nature.] This is Muir’s most systematic and explicit attack on an anthropocentric view of the creation. In Muir’s own journal, the passage reads:
The world we are told was made for man. A presumption that is totally unsupported by facts.
There is a very numerous class of men who are cast into painfully fits of astonishment whenever they find anything living or dead in all Gods universe which they cannot eat or in some way render what they call useful to themselves. They have very precise & very dogmatic insight of the “intentions” of the Creator. It is not more hardly possible to be guilty of irreverence in speaking of their God any more than of the heathen idols institutions of the Hindoos. He is regarded as a civilized & law-abiding gentleman, in favor of a Republican form of government or of a limited monarchy, believes in the literature & language of England & is a warm supporter of the English constitution & of all wellgotten sabbath schools and missionary societies, & in all respects is a purely a manufactured article as any puppet of a halfpenny theatre & of course, with such views of the Creator, it is not surprising that very erroneous views should be entertained of the creation.
To such properly trimmed people the sheep for example is an easy problem,—“food & clothing for us.” Eating grass & daises white by Divine appointment, for this predestined purpose on perceiving the demand for wool that would be occasioned by the apple Fall
The horse also “to carry us” & to work & the ox for roast beef & the cow “to mother us” with milk, all this is plain, but the countless herds of wild horses & buffalo ought to be dragging gashing plowshares behind them “to conquer the stubborn evil.”
Dogs too to follow our foxes, & to bark for & preserve us, the good & bright & the wicked. Among birds we have hens for albumen for our puddings and cakes. All managed nicely “for us” by predestined intention in proper order etc.
Whales are storehouses of oil “for us” to help out the stars in lighting our nights, until the discovery of the Pennsylvania wells.
Among plants, to say nothing of the cereals, hemp is a plain case for the ships rigging wrapping of our packages, hanging the wicker & cotton is another plain case, of clothing.
Iron was made for hammers & plows & lead for bullets, All intended “for us” & so of another small handful of insignificant things. But if we should ask these profound expositors of Gods intentions, How about those maneating animals the lion, tiger, alligator, who smack their palates after eating lips over raw men, creations lords, or about those myriads of “noxious” insects that destroy his labors, & drink his blood, Doubtless man was “intended” food & drink for all these, Oh no! Not at all! These are unresolvable difficulties of Edens apples & the devil.
Why does water drown its load Why do so many minerals poison him, Why are so many plants & fishes deadly enemys to him Why is the lord of creation subjected to the same laws of life as his subjects. Oh! All these things are Satanic, or in some way connected with the first garden. Now it does not occur to these farseeing intentionists that the Lords primary object in constructing all of his creatures was at least might be the happiness first of all of each one, not the mere provident creation of all for the happiness of one. Why ought man to value himself as more than an infinitely small composing unit of the one great unit of creation, & what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make, is less not essential to the grand completeness of that unit.
The universe would be incomplete without lord man but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes. “From the dust of the earth,”—from the common elementary fund The Creator has made lord homo From the same material he has made every creature however noxious & insignificant to us. They are “earthborn companions & fellow mortals.
The fearfully good—the orthodox Godlikes of this laborious patchwork of modern civilization cry Heresy! upon every one whose sympathies are allowed to reach out a single hairsbreadth beyond the boundary epidermis of their our own species, Not content with taking all of earth—they also claim the celestial country, as they of course are the only possessors of the kind of souls for which that imponderable empire was planned.
This star made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, & entire kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence & returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them & when human beings have also played their little part in creations plan. They too shall may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.
Plants are credited with but dim & uncertain sensation, & minerals with positively none at all, but why may not even mineral arrangements of matter be endowed with sensation of a kind that we in our exclusive perfection can have no manner of communication with.
Well I have wandered from my object,—I stated a page or two back that man claimed that the earth was made for him & I was going to say that enormous beasts & thorny plants & deadly malarias dwelling in certain portions of the earth prove that the whole earth was not made from him. When an animal from a tropic clime is taken to high latitudes & they it perishes of cold we say “That animal was “never intended” for so severe a climate. But when but when man is taken to humid portions of the tropics & perishes amid deadly malarias, he cannot see that he was “never intended” for such climates. No, he will rather accuse his first mother of the difficulty who never once beheld a fever district. Or will consider it as providential chastisement for some self invented form of what is called sin & all uneatable & uncivilizable animals & all plants which carry prickles are deplorable evils, which according to closet researches of clergy require the cleansing chemistry of universal planetary combustion. But only mankind require burning & if that transmundane furnace can be so applied & regulated as to smelt us to conformity with the rest of the terrestrial creation, the tophetization of the erratic genus were a consumation devoutly to be prayed for,—but, glad to leave these ecclesiastical fires, & joyfully return to the immortal truth & immortal beauty of unmanageable Nature.
(The John Muir Papers, 1858–1954. Series Two, Journals and Sketchbooks, 1867–1873, Reel No. 23 [Alexandria: Chadwyck-Healey Inc. with The University of the Pacific, 1986], ed. Ronald H. Limbaugh and Kirsten E. Lewis. Reprinted by permission of John Muir Papers, Holt-Atherton Department of Special Collections, University of the Pacific. Copyright 1984 Muir-Hanna Trust.)
828.19–20 “Forgive . . . do.”] Cf. Luke 23:34.