Creator
John Muir
Recipient
[Katharine Hooker]
Transcription
[1]Para, Brazil, Sep 19, 1911Ill in bed, dear dear friend no wonder to those who know the cruel burdens Fate has heaped on head & heart those long weary years.Yet this news seems almost incredible for your bodily strength always appeared to be beyond change or disease like crystals or sunshine. Of course you need absolute rest. Lie down among the pines for a while then get to plain pure white love-work with Marian, to help humanity and other mortals and the Lord, heal the sick, cheer the sorrowful, break the jaws of the wicked etc. But this Amazon delta sermon is growing too long. How glad I am that Marian was
[2]not with me, on account of Yellow fever & the most rapidly deadly of the malarial kinds so prevalent up the river.Nevertheless Ive had a most glorious time on this trip, dreamed of nearly half a century, have seen more than a thousand miles of the noblest of Earth's streams & gained far more telling views of the wonderful forests than I ever hoped for. The Amazon as you know is immensely broad, but for hundreds of mles the streams ran so close to the bossy leafy banks I could almost touch the outreaching branches, fancy how I stared & sketched.I was a week at Manaus on the Rio Negro tributary wandered in the wonderful woods, got acquainted with the best of the citizens through Mr Sanford a graduate of Yale, was dined & guided & guarded & befriended in the most wonderful way,
[3]and had a grand telling time in general. I have no end of fine things for you in the way of new beauty The only fevers have had so far are burning enthusiasm but there's no space for them in lettersHere however is something that I must tell right now. Away up in that wild Manaus region, in the very heart of the vast Amazon basin I found a little case of books in a lonely house. Glancing over the titles none attracted me except a soiled volume at the end of one of the shelves, the blurred title of which I was unable to read, so I opened the glass door, opened the books & out of it like magic jumped Katharine & Marian Hooker, apparently in the very flesh. The book needless to say was "Wayfarers in Italy" This joy-shock I must not try to tell in detail for medical Marian might call the whole story an equatorial fever dream.
3 [4]Dear dear friend again Goodby. Rest in God's peaceAffectionatelyJohn Muir
Location
Para, Brazil
Date Original
1911 Sep 19
Source
Original letter dimensions unknown.
Recommended Citation
Muir, John, "Letter from John Muir to [Katharine Hooker], 1911 Sep 19." (1911). John Muir Correspondence (PDFs). 6174.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/6174
Resource Identifier
muir20_0639-let.tif
File Identifier
Reel 20, Image 0639
Collection Identifier
Online finding aid for the microform version of the John Muir Correspondence http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0w1031nc
Copyright Status
Copyrighted
Copyright Statement
The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust. To purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish or exhibit them, see http://www.pacific.edu/Library/Find/Holt-Atherton-Special-Collections/Fees-and-Forms-.html
Owning Institution
The Huntington Library, Muir Family Papers, HM 57349-57497. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Copyright Holder
Muir-Hanna Trust
Copyright Date
1984
Pages
4 pages
Keywords
Environmentalist, naturalist, travel, conservation, national parks, John Muir, Yosemite, California, history, correspondence, letters
