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Preface
TWENTY years after the first
companies of forty-niners arrived in California, a unique type of Argonaut
landed in San Francisco, crossed the Coast Range and the San Joaquin plain,
and, passing through the gold-diggings, went up the Merced until he reached
Yosemite Valley. Not the gold of California's placers and mines, but the
plant gold and beauty of her still unwasted mountains and plains, were the
lure that drew and held John Muir. Forty-six years later, in the closing
days of fateful 1914, this widely traveled explorer and observer of the
world we dwell in faced the greatest of all adventures, dying as bravely and
cheerfully as he had lived.
Not only from his large
circle of devoted personal friends, but from among the thousands who had
been thrilled by his eloquent pen, arose insistent demands for a fuller
presentation of the facts of his life than is available in his incomplete
autobiography, "The Story of My Boyhood and Youth," and in his other
published works. When the present writer, at the request of Mr. Muir's
daughters, undertook to edit some of his unpublished journals and to prepare
his life and letters, he had no adequate conception of the size and
complexity of the task. The amount of the manuscript material to be examined
made it vastly more time-consuming than was at first anticipated.
Throughout his life John Muir
carried on a prolific and wide-ranging correspondence. his own letters were
written by hand, and, with the exception of an occasional preliminary draft,
he rarely kept copies. In calendaring the many thousands of letters received
from his friends, a systematic effort was made to secure from them and their
descendants the originals or copies of Muir's letters for the purposes of
this work. The success of this effort was in part thwarted, in part impeded,
by the Great War. To the many who responded, the writer expresses his
grateful acknowledgments. The Carr series, with some exceptions like the
Sequoia letter, was obtained from Mr. George Wharton James, to whose keeping
the correspondence had been committed by Mrs. Carr. The preponderance of
letters addressed to women correspondents is partly explained by the fact
that Muir's men friends did not preserve his letters as generally as the
women. It should be added, also, that several valuable series were lost in
the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.
At the time of his death Muir
had in preparation a second volume of his autobiography. Though very
incomplete, it was found so important that it seemed best to incorporate it
in the present work, whose form of presentation and selection of materials
had to be accommodated somewhat to make this possible. It is chiefly in the
letters, however, that the reader will find revealed the charm of Muir's
personality and the spontaneity of his nature enthusiasms.
In conclusion, the writer
desires to acknowledge special obligations to William E. Colby for frequent
suggestions and assistance in verifying facts, to Elizabeth Gray Potter for
working out a valuable and convenient system of arrangement and indexing for
the collection of Muiriana, and to his wife, Elizabeth LeBreton Bade, for
much practical help and advice.
WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
September 23, 1923
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