The Scenery of California.

Authors

John Muir

Files

Kimes Entry Number

205

Original Date

1-1-1897

William and Maymie Kimes Annotation

The purpose of this booklet was to entice Easterners to the Golden State. Muir was reluctant to contrast the spectacular scenery of California with that of the East. He writes: ""Each has its own beauty, like two sides of a rainbow; but to defrauded toilers, grown dull and blind in duty and business, the need is different. Like sick children who can no longer eat bread or recognize their own mothers, the wearied workers of civilization ... stupefied by doing good and making money, recreation for body and soul is found only in what is novel."" Muir then gives a composite picture of California's ""grand"" and varied scenery, finishing with a brief resume of its emerging from the geological ages. He closes saying, ""And now man has come with science and religion, arts and crafts, preaching, plowing, planting, building. Farms and towns ... are spreading over the fertile lowlands, and wildness is going away. The dawn of a new day is breaking. Like the features of a landscape emerging from floods of fire and ice, the mountain tops of civilization, rather barren as yet, are rising over ignorance and vice, to develop, we hope, as harmoniously in accordance with divine law as did the noble scenery of California.""

Publication

California Early History: Commercial Position: Climate: Scenery. San Francisco: California State Board of Trade, 1897

Page/Column

pp. 16-21

Location

C

Recommended Citation

Muir, John, "The Scenery of California." (1897). John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes (Muir articles 1866-1986). 230.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/230