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Yosemite Valley Aug. 20 th '71 Mr. Clinton L. Merriam Dear Sir, I am much obliged to you for your letter of Aug. 2d,
which is so toned with the spirit of friendliness.I have no objection to your publishing what I have told you of the discovery
of Yosemite Creek glacier, trusting as I do in your judgement, and kindness of heart, but had I written forthe public I should
have been more full and exact in my figures and descriptions. I returned a few days ago from Mono Lake and the High Sierra
back of Yosemite, having spent a most delightful and instructive month, but I will start again for the same region tomorrow
because in the expedition of last month I was not entirely free, being joined to a party that was not congenial.So hard is
it to dwell even here, in the very grandest of the Lord's mountain gardens without some kind of human company and sympathy
that we are glad to take the first that offers, but tomorrow I go alone and shall read my half-studied lessons without disturbance.
I mean to spend a week or so upon the Yosemite glacier carefully tracing all of its tributaries and mapping their direction
and depth, etc. as fully as the evidence which is readable to me will allow. I shall then study for a few days about Lake
Tenaya, then proceed to the summit mountains in the region of the Mono pass Castle Peak, Mts. Dana, Gibbs, and Lyell, carefully
noting the relationship of the granite to the grand capping of metamorphic slate, which relationship bears directly upon the
question of the nature of granite and its origin. Whether