Transcription:
Portland, Oregon, Aug. 14, 1885. Dear Louie, I hope you are all well and that the work I left is not giving you undue
trouble. I suppose Wanda is having a glad good time tramping and walking with her grandfather. I was one day at Sissons and
arrived here this afternoon at 4:30. Walked out to Dr. Lindsey's but found nobody at home, Mr. and Mrs. gone east, the girls
scattered, etc. Also called on Mr. Alisky, whom I knew when here last, I found that he had gone to Europe. Then went to the
office of Dr. Chance and found his door locked. Tomorrow I shall hunt up John Muir and Paul Schulze, and then push on homeward.
The stage ride was very rough and dusty. I feel better now and hope to stand the journey home quite easily, and I no longer
dread it. I slept on the train last night, and breakfasted lightly on a peach and ?, then no lunch to speak of, it was so
bad, but had here a portion of the letter is torn away Dr. Gibbons gave me some pills and a bottle of brown powder made of
bisnuth, brass, brittamia metal, or something of the sort, which I may be compelled to take - wonder how grandma would admire
it. It looks like powdered lava or Red Bluff dust. I wrote you the night I spent with the Dr. and hope he did not fail to
mail it. I also wrote from Sissons telling you that I borrowed 50 from him, and asking you to send him that amount, addressed
J. H. Sisson, Sissons Station, Berryvale, Siskiyou Co., Cal. Mt. Shasta looked intensely impressive and inspiring --
a lovely green meadow in front, then the deep woods of pine and spruce swelling upward on its slopes, then the vast sweep
of lava and snow and ice into the sky. Hard, hard to pass it by on any errand. Jerome Fay is stopping at his father-in-law's
ranch fifteen miles beyond Sissons. I stopped there to see him for a few minutes, but he too was away. Wonder if father and
mother will have gone to Scotland here a portion of the letter is torn away . Only Shasta was at home. Half-past nine, must
to bed. Love to all, Ever y ou rs, John Muir.