Transcription:
ARNOLD ARBORETUM, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Jamaica Plain, Mass., January 13, 1897. My dear Muir: Much obliged for your letters
and sympathy about the fire. It was not a very serious matter alter ail, although it might have been had it come later in
the evening or even the next night which was stormy. The burnt end is already roofed in and we shall be re-established, I
hope, in a couple of months or so, and certainly in time to welcome you if you will come to Brookline again with the opening
of the spring. I am still pretty lame but have been down to Washington looking over the field for new reservations. I found
there that a good deal of land north of the Yosemite Park and near the Sierra summits has been surveyed why I don't know unless
it was to give some needy Government employee work. There are also considerable bodies of this land entered, but I believe
it is possible to secure a small reserve comparatively free of entries immediately north of the Yosemite Park and covering
the headwaters of a number of important streams. I cannot ten you today how large such a reserve would be, although I should
say it might contain roughly something like a million acres. I was rather bothered to find the designation of such a reserve
as they all have to be named in the presidential proclamations. The Stanislaus River seems to be the most important stream
within its limits and so 02217