John Muir as I Knew Him 



13 



friend who in 1906 made an inquiry about a mine in California 



he wrote : "I don't know anything about the X mine or any 



other. Nor do I know any mine owners. All this $ geology is out 

 of my line." It was in his name that the appeal was made for 

 the creation of the Yosemite National Park in 1890, and for six 

 years he was the leader of the movement for the retrocession by 

 California of the Valley reservation, to be merged in the sur- 

 rounding park, a result which, by the timely aid of Edward H. 

 Harriman, was accomplished in 1905. 



In 1896-7, when the Forestry Commission of the National 

 Academy of Sciences, under the chairmanship of Professor 

 Charles S. Sargent, of Harvard, was making investigations to 

 determine what further reservations ought to be made in the 

 form of national parks, Muir accompanied it over much of its 

 route through the far west and the northwest, and gave it his 

 assistance and counsel. March 27, 1899, he wrote: "I've spent 

 most of the winter on forest protection — at least I've done little 

 beside writing about it." From its inception to its lamentable 

 success in December, 191 3, he fought every step of the scheme 

 to grant to San Francisco for a water reservoir the famous 

 Hetch Hetchy Valley, part of the Yosemite National Park, 

 which, as I have said, had been created largely through his in- 

 strumentality. In the last stages of the campaign his time was 

 almost exclusively occupied with this contest. He opposed the 

 project as unnecessary, as objectionable intrinsically, and as a 

 dangerous precedent, and he was greatly cast down when it be- 

 came a law. But he was also relieved. Writing to a friend, he 

 said: "I'm glad the fight for the Tuolumne Yosemite is finished. 

 It has lasted twelve years. Some compensating good must sure- 

 ly come from so great a loss. With the New Year comes new 

 work. I am now writing on Alaska. A fine change from faithless 

 politics to crystal ice and snow." It is also to his credit that he 

 first made known to the world the wonder and glory of the Big 

 Trees ; those that have been rescued from the saw of the sordid 

 lumbermen owe their salvation primarily to his voice. 



Muir's death, on Christmas Eve of 1914, though it occurred 

 at the ripe age of seventy-six and though it closed a life of dis- 

 tinguished achievement, was yet untimely, for his work was by 

 no means finished. For years I had been imploring him to 



