Transcription:
Original letter in mounted set of letters to Mrs. Carr, 48 . Tuolumne river, two miles below La Grange, Nov. 4th, 1870
. Dear friend Mrs. Carr: Yours of Oct. 2d reached me a few days since. The Amazon and Andes have been in all my thoughts
for many years, and I am sure that I shall meet them some day ere I die, or become settled and civilized and useful.I am obliged
to you for all of this information. I have studied many paths and plans for the interior of South America, but none so easy
and sure ever appeared as this of your letter. I thought of landing at Guayaquil and crossing the mountains to the Amazon,
float to Para, subsisting on berries and quinine, but to steam along the palmy shores with company and comforts is perhaps
more practical, though not so pleasant. Haw thorne says that steam spiritualizes travel, but I think that it squarely degrades
and materializes travel. However flies and fevers have to be considered in this case. I am glad that Ned has gone. The woods
of the Purus will be a grand place for the growth of men. It must be that I am going soon, for you have shown me the way.
People say that my Wanderings are very mazy and methodless, but they are all known to you in some way before I think of them.You
are a prophet in the concerns of my little outside life, and pray what says the spirit about my final escape from Yosemite?
You saw me at these rock altars years ago, and I think I shall main among them until you take me away. I reached this place
last month by following the Merced out of the valley and through all its ca ons to the plains above Snelling - a most glorious
walk. I intended returning to the Valley ere this, but Mr.Delaney, the man with whom I am stopping at present, would not allow
me to leave before I had plowed his field and so I will not be likely to see Yosemite again before January,when I shall have
a grand journey over the snow. Mrs. Yelerton told me before I started upon my river explorations that she would likely be
in Oakland in two weeks, and so I made up a package for you of lily bulbs, cones, ferns, etc., but she wrote me a few days
ago that she was still in the Valley. I find that a portion of my specimens collected in the last two years and left at this
place and Hopeton are not very well cared for, and I have concluded to send them to you. I will ship them in a few days by
express, and I will be down myself perhaps in about a year. If there is anything in these specimens that the Dr. can make
use of in his lectures tell him to do so, freely, of course. The purple of these plains and of this whole round sky is very
impressively glorious after a year in the deep rocks. People all throughout this section are beginning to hear of Dr. Carr.
He accomplishes a wonderful amount of work. My love to Allie and to the Dr., and I am, Ever most cordially yours, John
Muir Year 1870 supplied because of reference to Mrs. Yelverton