Preview
Circa Date
circa 1887
Transcription
10
wider openings [displaing [displaying] fine health and condition.] [Trans pg 11 bottom] The nights are dewless & calm & a thousand voices proclaimed [the] abundance of life notwithstanding the desolation effects of [the sun] drouth on plants and the larger animals.
The hylas made [make] a delightfully pure and tranquil music [soothing to any human soul that is free.] How damp & fresh their little bodies are, & how bright & telling their innocent eyes!
Coyotes barked in chorus on the hilltops [every night [They are] – lean withered sapless looking brushes of hair without any appearance of a damp yellow brown or solid centre [of circulation.] But how hardy & hearty [they are] nevertheless [they are] the little despised dogs of the wilderness [are] [nevertheless]. Their [His] notes prick like slender lances [and] when three or four assemble [gather] to sing [to give voice to their affairs] on some opening on the hillsides they so crowd & hurry their prickly, glinting [glancing] arrowy [metallic needle sharp howls] notes that sky seems to be shot full of them as if a hundred or more [shrill metallic voices] [animals] were at work [screeching] with might & main, flashing forth [each voice going off by itself like a bushel of] sharp lancing musical notes in hasty succession like exploding firecrackers
[& leaving all the air hot & peppery long after they have dispersed & each gone its own way into the still darkness, mere tufts of dry withered] [sorely wounded]
11
But nobody loves the brave hearty singer save the [The coyote is a brave hardy animal] but nobody loves him except the [hair again, cared for & loved only by the] Father of us all – [the Divine Shephard - not at all by the shepherds of these mountains & plains.]
[Transpose to pg 21]
[Squirrels are already gathering nuts too gather pine nuts] On the upper edge of this torrid foothill region, [where] the curious Sabine pine grows & produces [a] plentiful crop Of nuts for bears & Indians as well as squirrels. [This pine] It is well fitted for the dry region it inhabits - requiring but little moisture blending harmoniously its long, [slender] thin gray [thin long slender] foliage with the heat haze of the sky [(While its general aspect is that of some sort of palm rather than pine.)] It casts scarcely any shade - the sunbeams sift freely through its loose slender needles & its [the] divided spreading trunk is not at all spiry in form. Alltogether it seems to belong to the [reg of the] tropics rather than to the
Coniferous brotherhood of the mtns [mountains] whose food is the snow.
After a short noon rest in a grove the poor dust choked flock was again driven ahead [from] over the [brown] brushy hills but [After allowing the sheep to pant & rest a few minutes in the shallow hot shade of a group of the oaks while we ate a piece of bread We put the big wooly rag which the flock resembled dusty mass was again set in motion again over the gently sloping hills which here looked like disturbed patches of the great plain we had left in the]
Date Occurred
1869
Resource Identifier
MuirReel31 Notebook05 Img008.jpg
Contributing Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
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