Creator
C[harles] S. Sargent
Recipient
John Muir
Transcription
ARNOLD ARBORETUM, HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
Jamaica Plain, Mass., December 25, 1896.
My dear Muir:
I was delighted this morning to get your letter of the 17th. a It is proposed and hoped that a number of additional forest reservations will be made before the coming of spring. I have already been to Washington once about this and may go again as soon as my ankle makes a little more headway. It gets on very slowly and I am beginning to feel that I shall never be good for very much hard walking again.
You speak of an additional reservation in the Sierras north of the Yosemite. I have not considered the possibility of this but it can be recommended if it is desirable to do so. Can you at once designate or find any one to designate the boundaries of such a reservation? Unfortunately the boundaries of such reservations have to be laid down and described quite accurately before the authorities will do any thing about them. I am rather inclined to fear that we do not know enough about this particular region to take it up now with any prospect of success, but if you think differently and can send on amap embracing your ideas of what such a reservation should be I will see what can be done$ there is not much time to waste as this whole matter has got to be settled in the next few weeks. Indeed I should have been in Washington at work on it the 1st of December if I had.
02196 ARNOLD ARBORETUM.
2
been able to. On top of the ankle came the partial burning of my house. This occurred in the evening ten days, ago. All the new part is gone and the rest is badly injured by smoke and fire; the contents, however, are fortunately all safe and practically uninjured, so by spring I hope we shall me as good as new. All this is very interrupting but not so much so as the ankle which keeps me from anything like serious or steady work and is going to make a sad delay, I fear, in the completion of The Silva. But I have written enough about my own troubles.
I have today a very interesting letter from Carl Purdy who speaks enthusiastically of the region between Snow Mountain in Lake County and the Siskiyous as a region for exploration, "with many high peaks absolutely virgin land to botanists." "It would take," he says "not less than two months to make such a trip but a botanists would be well repaid." What a pity we did not do this last autumn. Some one ought to go along this range and see what is growing there. Why not interest some of your young men in this part of the state---some one who if he could not collect could at least make intelligent notes on the distribution of the trees, etc.
I hope that you and your children are going to have a Merry Christmas tomorrow and that the New Year will bring you nothing but health, happiness and contentment.
Always faithfully yours,
[illegible]02195
yrs is not a mind to cower or [illegible] by anything
Feb 82
Location
Jamaica Plain, Mass
Date Original
1896 Dec 25
Source
Original letter dimensions: 26 x 20.5 cm.
Recommended Citation
Sargent, Charles Sprague, "Letter from C[harles] S. Sargent to John Muir, 1896 Dec 25." (1896). John Muir Correspondence (PDFs). 885.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/885
Resource Identifier
muir09_0562-let.tif
File Identifier
Reel 09, Image 0562
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
Copyright status unknown
Copyright Statement
Some letters written to John Muir may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.
Owning Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Pages
3 pages
Keywords
Environmentalist, naturalist, travel, conservation, national parks, John Muir, Yosemite, California, history, correspondence, letters
