John Muir — President of the Sierra Club 



3 



essentials, mere trifles by comparison. He was willing to sub- 

 ordinate everything in life to this work which he had set out to 

 do supremely well, and it is little wonder that he attained his 

 goal. 



His latter days were so full of the rich experiences of these 

 earlier years of devotion to his chosen work and he looked with 

 such calm and serenity out upon the feverish haste and turmoil 

 of those about him, engaged in making everything within reach 

 " dollarable," that he seemed to be living in a world apart — 3. 

 world created by his own wonderful spirit and efforts. 



To those who thought him impractical and visionary, it is 

 only necessary to point out his early skill as an inventor, which, 

 if continued, would have made him world famous, or to his suc- 

 cess as an orchardist, making his friends, the trees, bear as they 

 had never been known to bear before or since. But these activi- 

 ties were chosen mainly because they seemed the duty of the 

 hour and when finished were left for the nobler pursuits that lay 

 nearest his heart. 



His true position as a geologist will never be adequately rec- 

 ognized because his writings on his geological studies were so 

 minimized by contrast with that greater field of beautiful litera- 

 ture in which he excelled. But any one who has read his 

 "Studies in the Sierra" (now being reprinted in the Sierra 

 Club Bulletin), and who realizes that his views on glaciation 

 as bearing on the origin of Yosemite Valley were written at a 

 time when geologists of great eminence were advancing other 

 theories, and had no patience with any glacial theory, will ap- 

 preciate that John Muir was no ordinary student of the physi- 

 cal laws of nature. I ran across the following extract from a 

 little pamphlet on the Yosemite, published in 1872: 



"There is and has been for two years past, living in the Valley, 

 a gentleman of Scottish parentage, by name John Muir, who, 

 Hugh Miller Hke, is studying the rocks in and around the Val- 

 ley. He told me that he was trying to read the great book 

 spread out before him. He is by himself pursuing a course of 

 geological studies, and is making careful drawings of the dif- 

 ferent parts of the gorge. No doubt he is more thoroughly ac- 

 quainted with this valley than any one else. He has been far up 

 the Sierras where glaciers are now in action, ploughing deep 



