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Sierra Club Bulletin 



devote himself to the completion of his record. The material 

 for many contemplated volumes exists in his numerous note- 

 books, and though, I believe, these notes were to a great de- 

 gree written in extenso rather than scrappily, and thus con- 

 tain much available literary treasure, yet where is the one 

 that could give them the roundness of presentation and the 

 charm of style which are found in Muir's best literary work? 

 One almost hesitates to use the word "great" of one who has 

 just passed away, but I believe that history will give a very 

 high place to the indomitable explorer who discovered the 

 great glacier named for him, and whose life for eleven years 

 in the High Sierra resulted in a body of writing of marked 

 excellence, combining accurate and carefully co-ordinated 

 scientific observation with poetic sensibility and expression. 

 His chief books, The Mountains of California, Our National 

 Parks and The Yosemite, are both delightful and convincing, 

 and should be made supplemental reading for schools. When he 

 rhapsodizes it is because his subject calls for rhapsody, and not 

 to cover up thinness of texture in his material. He is likely to 

 remain the one historian of the Sierra; he imported into his 

 view the imagination of the poet and the reverence of the wor- 

 shiper. 



Muir was not without wide and affectionate regard in his 

 own state, but California was too near to him to appreciate 

 fully his greatness as a prophet, or the service he did in try- 

 ing to recall her to the gospel of beauty. She has, however, 

 done him and herself honor in providing for a path in the 

 High Sierra, from the Yosemite to Mount Whitney, to be 

 called the John Muir trail. William Kent, during Muir's life, 

 paid him a rare tribute in giving to the nation a park of red- 

 woods with the understanding that it should be named Muir 

 Woods. But the nation owes him more. His work was not 

 sectional but for the whole people, for he was the real father 

 of the forest reservations of America. The National Gov- 

 ernment should create from the great wild Sierra forest re- 

 serve a national park, to include the Kings River Cafion, to 

 be called by his name. This recognition would be, so to 

 speak, an overt act, the naming of the Muir Glacier being 

 automatic by his very discovery of it. It is most appropriate 



