Prefatory Note 



HEN John Muir was a student in the 

 University of Wisconsin he was a fre 

 quent caller at the house of Dr. Ezra S. Carr. 

 The kindness shown him there, and especially 

 the sympathy which Mrs. Carr, as a botanist 

 and a lover of nature, felt in the young man's in 

 terests and aims, led to the formation of a lasting 

 friendship. He regarded Mrs. Carr, indeed, as 

 his "spiritual mother," and his letters to her in 

 later years are the outpourings of a sensitive 

 spirit to one who he felt thoroughly understood 

 and sympathized with him. These letters are 

 therefore peculiarly revealing of their writer's 

 personality. Most of them were written from 

 the Yosemite Valley, and they give a good no 

 tion of the life Muir led there, sheep-herding, 

 guiding, and tending a sawmill at intervals to 

 earn his daily bread, but devoting his real self 

 to an ardent scientific study of glacial geology 

 and a joyous and reverent communion with 

 Nature. 



