In the Heart of the California Alps.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1880
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; pamphlets; journal articles; speeches; writing; annotation; Homestead; Indian; Norway; Petty; glacier
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/191; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmb/article/1190/viewcontent/100.pdf

HEART OF THE CALIFORNIA ALPS. 345 and, in the guise of the republican prince, he announces his own allegiance to the republic. Singular as it may seem, his popularity in Norway lias suffered severely by his refusal to believe in a personal devil. His political heterodoxy lias long been tolerated, and he has had innumerable partisans, always ready to shout for him and to raise him y upon their shoulders; but his disrespect for Satan has frightened the majority of these away, and the petty persecution of the reactionary press and the official Philistines has made his life at home during the last year very bitter to him. He has, therefore, resolved to sell his homestead in Guld- brandsdale and to live henceforth permanently abroad. CU M IN THE HEART OF THE CALIFORNIA Early one bright morning in the middle of Indian summer, while the glacier meadows were still crisp with frost crystals, I set out from the foot of Mount Lyell, on my way clown to Yosemite Valley./ I had spent the past summer, and many preceding ones, exploring the glaciers that lie on the head-waters of the San Joaquin, Tuolumne, Merced, and Owen's rivers; measuring and studying their movements, trends, crevasses, moraines, etc., and the part they had played during the period of their greater extension in the creation and development of the landscapes of this Alpine wonderland/ Having-been cold and-hungry so-many times, and worked so hard, I was .wear.y.,,.and began to look forward with delight to the approaching winter,- when [ would be warmly snow-bound in my osemite cabin, with plenty of bread and books; but a tinge of regret came on when I considered that possibly I was now looking on all this fresh wilderness for the last time., .1. ' . To describe these glorious Alp's, with their thousand peaks and spires dipping far into the thin- sky, the vice and snow and avalanches, glad torrents and lakes, woods and gardens, the bears in the groves, wild sheep on the dizzy heights—these would require the love-work of a whole life. The lessons and enjoyments ...