A Letter From The Yosemite Valley.
JOHN MUIR gathering season, and the owner of the orchard was found by the messenger, at his post among heavily-laden trees. A shade of mock despair passed over his face, and picking a cherry, he exclaimed in his native dialect: "Dinna ye see that, mon? That red-faced, bald- headed, sleek, one-l...
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| Language: | English |
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Scholarly Commons
1905
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| Online Access: | https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/288 https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1287&context=jmb |
| Summary: | JOHN MUIR gathering season, and the owner of the orchard was found by the messenger, at his post among heavily-laden trees. A shade of mock despair passed over his face, and picking a cherry, he exclaimed in his native dialect: "Dinna ye see that, mon? That red-faced, bald- headed, sleek, one-legged wretch? I'm an absolute slave to that diwil. So, I can na go, I can na go." From this example and from many others of the kind which might be. adduced, it is plain that the life which we have now considered at some length runs the whole gamut of existence, each note sounding clear and full: the austere, the strenuous and the sorrowful up to the highest notes of pure and simple gayety. * It remains but to accentuate two points: first, his responsiveness to the inspiring source of his endeavor, as witnessed in a descriptive letter to the lady previously mentioned, and here printed for the first :ime; second, his heroism, which, in an instance related by a friend, jhows him to be of the purest blood of Alpine climbers: one in whom cowardice and selfishness have been eliminated through the contemplation of Nature clothed in her divine majesty.' Reading this story of courage and devotion, one hears rising in his mind the themes of Beethoven's Heroic Symphony, and certain words of Robert Browning recur also to the memory as a fitting epitaph to John Muir, when he shall have "passed over to the majority": "He did too many grandnesses to note Much of the meaner things along his way." A LETTER FROM THE YOSEMITE VALLEY HERE again (in the Yosemite Valley) are pine trees, and the wind, and living rock and water. I have met two of my ousels on one of the pebbly ripples of the river, where I used :o be with them. Most of the meadow gardens are disenchanted and lead, yet I found a few mint spikes, and asters, and brave sunful jolden-rod, and a patch of the tiny minusculus that has two spots on tach lip. The fragrance, and the color, and the form, and the whole ipiritual expression of golden-rod are hopeful and strength-giving :eyond any other flower that I know. A single spike is sufficient to heal unbelief and melancholy. 154 ,j THE THREE BROTHERS "No wonder the Indians loved the Yosemite Valley. No wonder they ramed every salient dome and spire and lake and waterfall. No wonder they fought hard for its possession and wailed loud and long when strong and warlike foes dispossessed them. Pompompesus—the leaping frogs—which we call The Three Brothers, with the quietly flowing Merced at its feet, afforded the Indian rhapsodists a fine theme for one of their imaginative stories." Photograph by W. E. Dassonville, San Francisco II JOHN MUIR M . YOSEMITE FALLS FROM THE MEADOW "I have been wandering about among the falls and rapids studying the grand instruments of slopes and curves and echoing caves upon which those divine harmonies are played. Only a thin flossy veil sways and bends over Yosemite now and Pcrbono too is a web of waving mist. New songs are sung, forming parts of the one grand anthem composed and written 'in the beginning.'" John Muir. Photograph by W. E. Dassonville, San Francisco 'i I T nm : i i f On leaving Oakland I was so excited over my escape that of course I forgot and left all the accounts I was to collect. No wonder and no matter. I am beneath the grand old pine that I have heard so often in storms, both in the night and in the day. It sings grandly now, every needle sun-thrilled, and shining, and responding tunefully to the azure wind. When I left, I was in a dreaming, exhausted daze. Yet from mere habit or instinct I tried to observe and study. From the car window I watched the gradual transitions from muddy water, spongy tule, marsh, and level field, as we shot up the San Jose Valley, and marked, as best I could, the forms of the stream canyons as they opened to the plain, and the outlines of the undulating hillocks and headlands between. Interest increased at every mile, until it seemed unbearable to be thrust so flyingly onward, even toward the blessed Sierras. I shall study them yet, free from time and wheels. When we turned suddenly and dashed into the narrow mouth of the Liver- more Pass, I was looking out of the right side of the car. The window was closed on account of the cinders and smoke from the locomotive. All at once; my eye seized a big hard rock not a hundred yards away, every line of which is as strictly and outspokenly glacial as any of the most alphabetic of the high and young Sierra. That one sure glacial word thrilled and overjoyed me more than you will ever believe. Town smokes and shadows had not dimmed my vision, for I had passed this glacial rock twice before, without reading its meaning- As we proceeded, the general glacialness of the range became more and more apparent, until we reached Pleasanton, where once there was a great mer de glace. Here, the red sun went down in a cloudless glow, and I leaned back, happy and weary, and possessed of a life full of noble problems. At Lathrop, we had supper and changed cars. The last of the daylight had long faded, and I sauntered away from the din, while the baggage was being transferred. The young moon hung like a sickle above the shorn wheatfields. Ursa Major pictured the Northern sky; the milky way curved sublimely through the broadcast stars, like some grand celestial moraine with planets for bowlders; and the whole night shone resplendent, adorned with that calm, imperishable beauty it has worn unchanged from the beginning. 657 JOHN MUIR I slept at Turlock, and, next morning, faced the Sierra, and set cut through the sand on foot. The freedom I felt was exhilarating, rnd the burning heat, and thirst, and faintness could not make it less. Before I had walked ten miles, I was wearied and footsore, but it was isal earnest work and I liked it. Any kind of simple, natural destruction is preferable to the numb, dumb apathetic deaths of a town. Before I was out of sight of Turlock, I found a handful of glori- :us hemizonia virgata and a few specimens of the patient, steadfast dgonum, that I had learned to love around the slopes of Twenty- Hill Hollow. While I stood with these old dear friends, we were i:tned by a lark, and, in a few seconds more, Harry Edwards came fapping by with spotted wings. Just think of the completeness of nat reunion: Twenty Hill Hollow Hemizonia, Erigonum, Lark, lutterfly and I, and lavish outflows of genuine Twenty Hill Hollow iungold. I threw down my coat and one shirt in the sand; forgetting nopeton, and heedless that the sun was becoming hotter every min- ire. I was wild once more, and let my watch warn and point as it jteased. Heavy wagon loads of wheat had been hauled along the r:ad, and the wheels had sunken deeply and left smooth, beveled fur- nws in the sand. Upon the slopes of these sand furrows, I soon observed a most beautiful and varied embroidery: evidently tracks of s:me kind. At first, I thought of mice, but I soon saw they were to light and delicate even for the tracks of these little animals. Then, a tiny lizard darted into the stubble ahead of me, and I care- fillyexamined the track he made, but it was entirely unlike the fine irint-embroidery I was studying. However, I knew that he might nake very different tracks, if walking leisurely; therefore I deter- Tiined to catch one and experiment. I found in Florida that lizards, hrweVe*swift, are short winded; so I gave chase and soon captured a thy gray- fellow, and carried him to a smooth sand-bed where he csuld embroider, without getting away into grass tufts or holes. He vis so wearied that he could not skim, and was compelled to walk, Hid I was. excited with delight in seeing an exquisitely beautiful strip cc embroidery about five-eighths of an inch wide, drawn out in .flow- iig curves behind him as from a loom. The riddle was solved. I Mew that mountain bowlders move in music. So also do lizards, and tleir written music printed by their feet (moved so swiftly as to be irnsible) covers the hot sands with beauty wherever they go. But V JOHN MUIR my sand embroidery-lesson was by no. means finished. I speedily discovered a yet more delicate pattern on thesands, woven into that of the lizards. I examined the strange combination oTbari and dots. No five-toed lizard had printed that music. I watched narrowly, down on my knees, following the strange and beautiful pattern along the wheel furrows, and out into the stubble. Occasionally, the pattern would suddenly end in a shallow, pit half an inch across and an eighth of an inch deep. I was fairly puzzled, picked up my bundle and trudged discontentedly away; but my eyes were hungrily awake and I watched all the ground. At length, a gray grasshopper rattled and flew up, and the truth flashed upon me that he was the complementary embroiderer of the lizard. Then followed long, careful observation, but I never could see the grasshopper until he jumped, and after he alighted he invariably stood watching me with his legs set ready for another jump in case of danger. Nevertheless, I soon made sure that he was my man; for I found that, in jumping, he rrfade the shallow pits I had observed at the termination of the pattern I was studying. But no matter how patiently I waited he wouldn't waik, while I was sufficiently near to observe—they are so nearly the color of the sand. I therefore caught one, and lifted his wing covers, and cut off about half of each wing with my penknife, and carried him to a favorable place on the sand. At first, he did nothing but jump and make dimples, but soon became weary and walked in common rhythm with all his six legs. My interest you may guess, while I watched the embroidery: the written music, laid down in a beautiful ribbonlike strip behind him. I glowed with wild joy, as if I had found a new glacier, copied specimens of the precious fabric into my note book, and strode away with my own feet sinking with a dull craunch, craunch, craunch, in the hot gray sand, glad to believe that the dark and cloudy vicissitudes of the Oakland period had not dimmed my vision in the least. Surely, Mother Nature pitied the poor boy and showed him pictures 1 Happen what would, fever-thirst or sunstroke, my joy for that day was complete. Yet I was to receive still more. A train of curving tracks, with a line in the middle, next fixed my'attention, and almost before I had time to make a guess concerning their author, a small hawk came shooting down vertically out of the sky, a few steps ahead of me, and picked up something in his talons. After rising thirty or forty feet overhead, he dropped it by the roadside, as if to show me 659 JOHN MUIR what it was. I ran forward and found a little bunchy field mouse, and, at once, suspected him of being embroiderer number three. After an exciting chase through stubble-heaps and weed-thickets, I wearied and captured him without being bitten, and turned him free to make his mark in a favorable sand bed. He also embroidered better than he knew, and at once claimed the authorship of the new trackwork. I soon learned to distinguish the pretty sparrow-track from that of the magpie and the lark, with their three delicate branches and the straight scratch behind, made by the back curving claw dragged loosely like the spur of a Mexican vacquero. The cushioned, elastic feet of the hare frequently were seen mixed with the pattering, scratchy prints of the squirrels. I was now wholly trackful. I fancied I could see the air whirling in dimpled eddies from sparrow- and lark- wings, earthquake bowlders descending in a song of curves, snowflakes •glinting songfully hither and thither. "The water in music the oar forsakes." The air in music the wing forsakes. All things move in music and write it. The mouse, lizard, and grasshopper sing together on the Turlock sands, sing with the morning stars. Scarcely had I begun to catch the eternal harmonies of Nature, when I heard the hearty goddamning din of the mule driver; dust whirled into the sungold, and I could see the sweltering mules leaning forward, dragging the heavily piled wheat-wagons deep sunken in the sand. My embroidery perished by the mile, but the grasshoppers never wearied, nor the gray lizards, nor the larks, and the coarse confusion of man was speedily healed. About noon, I found a family of grangers feeding, and remembering your admonition anent my health, requested leave to join them. My head ached with fever and sunshine, and I could not dare the ancient brown bacon, or the beans and cakes, but water and splendid buttermilk came in perfect affinity and made me strong. Toward evening, after passing through miles of blooming hemizonia, I reached Hopeton, on the edge of the oak fringe of the Merced. Here, all were yellow and woe-begone with malarial fever. I rested one day, spending the time in examining the remarkably flat, water-eroded Valley of the Merced, and the geological sections which it offers. In going across to the river, I had a suggestive time, breaking my way mrough tangles of blackberry and brier-rose, and willow. I admire c6o V. JOHN MUIR delicate plants that are well prickled, and, therefore, took my scratched face and hands patiently. I bathed in the sacred stream, seeming to catch all its mountain tones while it softly murmured and rippled over the shallows of brown pebbles. The whole river, back to its icy sources, seemed to rise in clear vision with its countless cascades, and falls, and blooming meadows, and gardens. Its pine groves, too, and the winds that play them, all appeared and sounded. In the cool of the evening, I caught Browny and cantered across to the Tuolumne; the whole way being fragrant and golden with hemizonia. A breeze swept in from your Golden Gate regions over the passes,, and across the plains, fanning the hot ground and drooping plants, and refreshing every beast and bird and weary plodding man. It was dark before I reached my old friend Delaney, but I was instantly recognized by.my voice, and welcomed in the old, good, uncivilized way, not to be misunderstood. All the region adjacent to the Tuolumne River, where it sweeps out into the plain, after its long eventful journey in the mountains, is exceedingly picturesque. Round terraced hills, brown and yellow with grasses and compositae and adorned with open groves of darkly foliaged live-oak, are grouped in a most open, tranquil manner, and laid upon a smooth, level base of purple plain; while the river bank is lined with nooks of great beauty and variety, in which the river has swept and curled, shifting from side to side, retreating and returning, as determined by floods, and the gradual erosion and removal of drift- beds formerly laid down. A few miles above here, at the village of La Grange, the wild river had made some astonishing deposits in its young days, through which it now flows with the manners of stately old age, apparently disclaiming all knowledge of them. But a thousand thousand bowlders, gathered from many a moraine, swashed and ground in pot-holes, record their history, and tell of white floods of a grandeur not easily conceived. Noble sections, nearly a hundred feet deep, are laid bare like a book, by the Mining Company. Water is drawn from the river, several miles above, and conducted by ditches and pipes, and made to play upon these deposits for the gold they contain. Thus the Tuolumne of to-day is compelled to unravel and lay bare its own ancient history, which is a thousandfold more important than the handfuls of gold sand it chances to contain. I mean to return to these magnificent records in a week or two, 661 JOHN MUIR JOHN MUIR and turn the gold disease of the La Grangers to account, in learning the grand old story of the Sierra flood period. If these hundred laborious hydraulickers were in my employ, they could not do me better service, and, all along the Sierra flank, thousands of strong arms are working for me, incited by the small golden bait. Who shall say that I am not rich? On I went up through the purple foothills to Coulterville, where I met many hearty, shaggy mountaineers, glad to see me. Strange to say, The Overland "Studies" have been read and discussed in the most unlikely places. Some numbers have found their way through the Bloody Canyon pass to Mono. In the evening, Black and I rode together up into the sugar pine forests, and through the moonlight on to his old ranch. The grand, priest-like pines held their arms above us in blessing; the wind sang songs of welcome; the cool glaciers and the running crystal fountains added their greetings. I was no longer on, but in the mountains: home again, and my pulses were filled. On and on reveling in white moonlight spangles on the streams, shadows in rock hollows and briery ravines, tree architecture on the sky, more divine than ever stars in their spires, leafy mosaic on meadow and bank. Never had the Sierra seemed so inexhaustible. Mile on mile onward in the forest through groves old and young. Pine tassels overarched and brushed both cheeks at once. The chirping of crickets only deepened the stillness. About eight o'clock, a strange mass of tones came surging and waving through the pines. "That's the death song" said Black, as he reined up his horse to listen. "Some Indian is dead." Soon, two glaring watch-fires shone red through the forest, marking the place of congregation. The fire glare and the wild wailing came with indescribable impressiveness through the still, dark woods. I listened eagerly as the weird curves of woe swelled and cadenced, now rising steep like glacial precipices, now swooping low in polished slopes. Falling bowlders, and rushing streams, and wind tones caught from rock and tree were in it. When at length we rode away, and the heaviest notes were lost in distance, I wondered that so much of mountain nature should well out from such a source. Miles away, we met Indian groups slipping through the shadows on their way to join the death wail. Farther on, a harsh grunting and growling seemed to come from the opposite bank of a brook along which we 662 i rode. "What? Hush! That's a bear" ejaculated Black, in a gruff, bearish undertone. "Yes" he said, "some rough old Bruin is sauntering this fine night, seeking some wayside sheep lost from migrating flocks." Of course, all night-sounds, otherwise unaccountable, are accredited to bears. On ascending a sloping hillock, less than a mile from the first, we heard another grunting bear, but whether or not daylight would transform our bears to pigs, may well be counted into the story. Past Bower Cave we went and along a narrow winding trail in deep shadow. It was so dark that I had to throw the reins on Browny's neck and trust to his skill; for I could not see the ground, and the hillside was steep. A fine, bright tributary of the Merced sang far beneath us, as we climbed higher, higher, through the hazels and dogwoods that fringed the rough, black boles of spruces and pines. We were now nearing the old camping ground of the Pilot Peak region, where I learned to know the large nodding lilies (L. par- dalium), so abundant along these streams, and the groups of alder- shaded cataracts, so characteristic of the North Merced Fork. Moonlight whitened all the long fluted slopes of the opposite bank, but we rode in continuous shadow. The rush, and gurgle, and prolonged a-a-a of the stream coming up, sifting into the wind, was very impressive and solemn. It was here that you first seemed to join me. I reached up as Browny carried me underneath a big Douglas spruce, and plucked one of its long, plumy sprays which brought you in a moment from the Oakland dead. You are more spruce than pine, though I never definitely knew it until now. Here were miles and miles of tree scripture, along the sky: a Bible that will one day be read. The beauty of its letters and sentences, have burned me like fire, through all these Sierra seasons. Yet I cannot interpret their hidden thoughts. They are terrestrial expressions of sun, pure as water and snow. Heavens! listen to the wind song! ' I am still writing beneath that grand old pine in Black's yard; and that other companion scarcely less noble, back of which I took shelter during the earthquake, is just a few yards beyond. The shadows of their boles lie like charred logs on the gray sand; while half the yard is embroidered with their branches and leaves. There goes a woodpecker with an acorn to drive into its thick bark for winter, and well it may gather its stores, for I can myself detect winter in the wind! 663 JOHN MUIR Few nights of my mountain life have been more eventful than that of my ride in the woods from Coulterville, when I made my reunion with the winds and pines. It was eleven o'clock when we reached Black's ranch. I was weary, and soon died in sleep. How cool, and vital, and re-creative was the hale young mountain air! On, higher, higher, up into the holy of holies of the woods. Pure, white, lustrous clouds overshadowed the massive congregations of silver fir and pine. We entered, and a thousand living arms were waved in solemn blessing. An infinity of mountain life. How complete is the absorption of one's life into the spirit of mountain woods! No one can love or hate an enemy here, for no one can conceive of such a creature as an enemy. Nor can one have any distinctive love of friends. The dearest and best of you all seemed of no special account, mere trifles. Hazel green water, famous among mountaineers, distilled from the pores of an ancient moraine, spiced and toned in a maze of fragrant roots. Winter does not cool it, nor summer warm it. Shadows over shadows keep its fountains always cool. Moss and felted leaves guard from spring and autumn frosts; while a woolly robe of snow protects from the intenser cold of winter. Bears, deer, birds, and Indians love alike the water and the nuts of hazel green; while the pine squirrel reigns supreme and haunts its incomparable groves like a spirit. Here a grand old glacier swept over from the Tuolumne ice fountains, into the basin of the Merced, leaving the hazel-green moraine for the food of her coming trees, and the fountains of her predestined waters. Along the Merced divide, to the ancient glacial lake-bowl of Crane's Flat, was ever fir or pine more perfect? What groves! What combinations of green and silver-gray and glowing white of glinting sunbeams! Where is leaf or limb wanting; and is this the upshot of the so-called "mountain glooms and mountain storms?" If so, is Sierra forestry aught beside an outflow of Divine Love? These round-bottomed grooves sweeping across the divide, and adown whose sides our hones canter with accelerated speed, are the pathways of ancient ice-currents, and it is just where these crushing glaciers have borne down most heavily, that the greatest loveliness of grove and forest appears. A deep canyon filled with blue air now comes in view'on the right. 664 v* JOHN MUIR That is the valley of theMerced, and the highest rocks visibfe through the trees belong to the Yosemite Valley. More miles of glorious forest, then out into free light and down, down, down, into the groves and meadows of Yosemite. The new wagon road has opened out some very striking views both up and down the Valley. How simple all the problems are that I studied last winter! Yet how hopeless seems the work of opening other eyes by mere words! No one will ever know the grandeur of this Sierra sculpture in its entirety, without the same study on the spot. No one of the rocks seems to call me now, nor any of the distant mountains. Surely this Merced and Tuolumne chapter of my life is done. I have been out on the river bank with my letters. How good and wise they seem to be! You wrote better than you know. All together they form a precious volume whose sentences are more intimately connected with my mountain work than any one will ever be able to appreciate. AN ACT OF HEROISM IN certain of his wanderings in Alaska, undertaken to further his study of glaciers, Mr. Muir was accompanied by the Reverend S. Hall Young, then a Presbyterian Missionary. Companions in privation and danger, the two men formed for each other a strong, close friendship which was destined to be tested by a dramatic incident nearly approaching the tragic. It happened in Southern Alaska. On their approach to a mountain, twelve thousand feet, or more, in height, they decided to ascend it in order to observe the surrounding country. They left their canoe cached on the river banks below, and, visiting an Indian village near, asked the best way to make the summit. By this time, day was far spent and they resolved to stop for the night. They found good pasture for their horses, and, close by, scented beds of pine spiculae for themselves. In the morning, they planned to ascend as far as their horses could climb, then, to camp again for the night, and, on the following morning to push on, leaving the horses hobbled. They could return to camp by the next nightfall. They were successful the first clay, and the next morning found them at the fire, preparing the meal 665 JOHN MUIR which was to fortify them for the ascent. "Those clouds over yon have a stor-rm inside their black coats, which, like as not, they'll spill before the day's over; but, mon, I ken ye luve a stor-rm in the mountains as I do mysel'" exclaimed Muir, lapsing into brogue, as he is wont to do, when his imagination is fired, or his heart touched. Fearlessly, even gaily, the two made their way over steep slopes of basic rock, distintegrating lava, and rough scoriae, pausing now and then to talk about some treasure trove, or to enjoy the superb vistas revealed by breaking clouds below. Presently, other dark clouds gathered and scurried in armies over the heavens; the winds almost whirled the two travelers off their feet; rain, sleet, hail, and snow were poured upon them; but they pushed on, shouldering the storm, which buffeted them like a human adversary. Several times, the missionary was tempted to suggest their return, but one glance at his companion trudging ahead killed his impulse. He said nothing, and followed, until a still fiercer blast swept down the mountain and threw him off his feet, upon the face of a glacier, or sloping mass of frozen snow. Its slippery surface afforded him no hold, and it was impossible to arrest his rapid downward slide. Unconscious of what had happened, Muir pushed on. At length, receiving no answer to a question twice repeated, he turned round and found himself alone, with no trace of his companion. He called aloud, but there was no response. Returning, he came to the tell-tale sliding tracks, and shouted again. Still there was no answer. Then, slowly, and realizing that upon each step depended both their lives, he cut his way along the tracks, which led to the edge of a precipice. He looked into the profound chasm and his heart sank, for no one, it seemed, could fall into that fearful place and escape. "Young, me friend, are ye there?" he called. A low moan answered him, and, suddenly, a rift in the storm permitted him to see on the face of the precipice, a kind of shelf, an out-thrust mass of rock or snow, upon which lay the body of his friend. With masterly care and skill, step by step, Muir cut his way. Roused from his swoon, the missionary looked up, and tried to move, but his legs were paralyzed. He tried to stir his hand, but both shoulders were dislocated. "What would you do?" he wailed. "Go 666 JOHN MUIR I Don't risk your "Well, mon, ye're back. I'm nearly dead. You can not get me out. life! • For God's sake, go back!" Another step was cut by the man above, "I'll gang back, me friend, by and by, when I'm ready. I'm no ready yet." Nearer and nearer he came, and at length stood by Young's side. "It is folly, it is madness, to come here" moaned the disabled man. "It will be worse to try to get me out. Go, and save yourself." Muir knelt beside him, feeling out the hurts certainly in a bad fix, but I'll get ye out. Can ye stand it if I hurt ye a little?" "Don't, John, don't try. Go back and save yourself" pleaded the other. But the stout-hearted Scot bent over him. "So" he said, and turned the wounded man on his face. Gripping Young's collar with his teeth, and getting astride of him, he slowly lifted his burden, as a panther lifts her young, and began to drag it up the sloping shelf. It was the only way. Then the struggle began, in silence, save for the raging of the storm, the panting of Muir, the stifled moans of the man he was carrying. One step, two, three, four—his breath grew more labored; five, •six, seven, eight—his fingers bled; nine—his right hand gripped the hole above, his left foot felt for its resting place, dislodging a piece of ice, which went bounding down to the depths below. In spite of the cold, his forehead and cheeks streamed with sweat. Heavier grew the now insensible load. Four more steps, each a convulsive effort. Now, there are but two,—can he go on? One more! It is taken! Rescuer and rescued roll over together beyond the bulwark of a protecting stone. Then, when Muir, himself unconscious for a time, recovered, he placed his friend under shelter, packed the snow about him to ward off the storm, piled up a heap of stones as a landmark, and went for aid, which, having procured, he led the rescuers from the valley straight to the spot where Young lay, so unerring was his instinct and mountain wisdom. The missionary was carried below into the valley, where he was nursed back to health by Muir, who then returned to his work, unaware, like all heroes, that he had transcended the ordinary man in courage, kindness and constancy. 667 https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/1287/thumbnail.jpg |
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