Creator

John Muir

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I have dealt with Falls for many a year & I feel their white water in all my [bones] [Land] cascading rhetoric that abounds in newspaper descriptions of Yosemite Falls & [walls] & domes are becoming wearisome to most readers who are now perhaps ready to listen to a few plain words from one who has been observing in silence for some yrs [years] in this wonderful region.

In this paper I will describe the Yosemite Falls in its Winter & Summer aspects. Afterwards go out of the Valley to give some general ideas of the basin from wh [which] Yosem Crk derives its waters & follow the [ ] of the [ ] [ ] [stream] in the ice & snow to its grand leap at full, through [groves] & [meadows] & [lakes]

x a plain unmysterious conception of the character of the whole stream will thus be obtained.

1 As a [botanist] Like a [botanist] who has climbed among the branches of a new kind of tree [gathering] studying its fruit & flowers so have we climbed among the branches of this [river/rare] Yo Sem Crk tree [studying] its splendid fruit of ripe (sunny lakes) & its flowing [rain] of [round] rainbows and blossoms falls, & moreover as a botanist often examines his new tree on [ ] [away] naturally [turns] [round] at a little distance [from it] to obtain a general view of it in full [proportions]. So we must [try] endeavor to gain a like general view [of] [our] water [ ] & without the aid of imagination [our] will be difficult to obtain because our tree is lying slant against the mtn [mountain] side half hidden in rocks & many of its limbs overgrown with pine trees and grass.

But let us suppose that we have raised it straight up on end so that we can see it against the sky just as a farmer raises an apple tree that has been blown down by the

Date Original

1873

Source

Original journal dimensions: 10 x 16.5 cm.

Resource Identifier

MuirReel23Journal12P01.tif

Publisher

Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library

Rights Management

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Keywords

John Muir, journals, drawings, writings, travel, journaling, naturalist

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