John Muir 217 



of hotels, and in going from place to place cling to their precious 

 trains and stages like wrecked sailors to rafts. When an excur- 

 sion into the woods is proposed, all sorts of dangers are imagined 

 — snakes, bears, Indians. Yet it is far safer to wander in God's 

 woods than to travel on black highways or to stay at home. The 

 snake danger is so slight it is hardly worth mentioning. Bears 

 are a peaceable people and mind their own business instead of 

 going about like the devil seeking whom they may devour. Poor 

 fellows, they have been poisoned, trapped and shot at until they 

 have lost confidence in brother man, and it is not now easy to 

 make their acquaintance. As to Indians, most of them are dead 

 or civilized into useless innocence. No American wilderness 

 that I know of is so dangerous as a city home 'with all the 

 modern improvements.' One should go to the woods for safety, 

 if for nothing else." 



Had John Muir said nothing else, done nothing else, written 

 nothing else except the words below, he would still be remem- 

 bered as the friend of American conservation : 



"Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away ; and if 

 they could, they would still be destroyed, — chased and hunted 

 down as long as fun or a dollar could be gotten out of their bark 

 hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few 

 that fell trees plant them ; nor would planting avail much towards 

 getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. During 

 a man's life only saplings can be grown in the place of the old 

 trees — tens of centuries old — that have been destroyed. It took 

 more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in 

 these Western woods, — trees that are still standing in perfect 

 strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests 

 of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries 

 since Christ's time — and long before that — God has cared for 

 these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and 

 a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods ; but he cannot 

 save them from fools, only Uncle Sam can do that." 



