628 TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. [1872, 



next morning. Speeches were made on the summit, 

 and resolutions passed to confirm the names Gray's 

 and Torrey's peaks given in 1862 by Dr. Parry, who 

 was himself happily with the party. The ascent is 

 not as difficult as in most mountains of that height, as 

 one can ride on horseback to the top in August, when 

 the snow lies only in patches ; the trail is mostly over 

 the rough shale, and for a month or two the summit, 

 though over 14,000 feet, is almost bare. The view of 

 the innumerable peaks is very magnificent. 



At Dubuque he was the guest of an old Fair field 

 comrade. As the retiring president of the American 

 Association he gave his address, 1 written mostly in 

 the cars on the long overland journey, in which he 

 explained still further some of his long-meditated 

 conclusions on the distribution of the flora of West- 

 ern North America. 



TO R. W. CHURCH. 



CAMBRIDGE, October, 1872. 



MY DEAR CHURCH, I promised to myself, if I 

 did not to you, that I would write you from the other 

 side of this continent ; but writing and journeying are 

 incompatible, at least in case where the time for the 

 one is too short for your undertakings. But now we 

 have been a month at home, and more ; the accumu- 

 lation of things to be seen to is worked off or nearl} 7 , 

 and I mean now to tell you something of our sum- 

 mer's doings. 



As soon as we were free we set out. . . . At Chi- 

 cago we had two nights and a day in which to see 

 the desolated and fast rebuilding town. From this 



1 " Sequoia and its History ; the Relations of North American to 

 Northeast Asian and to Tertiary Vegetation," in Darwiniana, pp. 205- 

 235. 



