Creator

John Muir

Preview

image preview

Circa Date

circa 1887

Transcription

91

The main gold storm is over. Calm enough now are the gray old minders scratching a bare living in waste diggings here and there. Thundering underground blasting is still going on to feed pounding quartz mills, but their influence on landscapes is light as [[scarce a sound to break the silence in the old gullies here & there [on the long margin of the bank] once so rich & crowded.

Well content at last to earning barely sufficient to buy] enough for flour & bacon & tobacco for his pipe Mills are pounding quartz, working night & day but even these are tame in deeds] that tell upon the landscape]] compared to the pick & shovel storms waged a few years ago [battles waged so short a time ago]. Fortunately for Sierra beauty the gold-bearing slates are mostly restricted to the foothills [of the range with few important exceptions & the wooded slopes

The region about our camp is still wild and higher lies the snow about as trackless as the sky. [[seen in general views seem as virgin as the purest wilderness with only the sheep dust [to] cause alarm, & higher [lies the snow] up the range we shall find the blessed snow as pure & trackless as the white clouds miles of clouds [land] untouched in the frosty sky. (here insert Clouds, winds etc now on page 87)

An Indian got into our [came to the] camp this morning unobserved [when] I was sitting on a stone making a sketch & happened to look up [& I] was startled to see [when [I] chanced to look from my paper & found him standing grim & silent within a few steps of me before me motionless & [we]ather stained as if like]]

Date Occurred

1869

Resource Identifier

MuirReel31 Notebook05 Img050.jpg

Contributing Institution

Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library

Rights Management

To view additional information on copyright and related rights of this item, such as to purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish them, click here to view the Holt-Atherton Special Collections policies.

Share

 
COinS