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July 1869. 436 Five miles west of YoSemite July 11 1869 Dear Mrs Carr I need not try to tell you how sorely I am
pained by this letter disappointment Your Mariposa note of June 24 did not reach Blacks untill July 3d I did not receive it
untill the 6th I met a shepherd a few miles from here yesterday who told me that a letter from the YoSem' for me was at Hardings
Mill, - I have not yet received it so dependence can be illegible upon the motions of letters in the mts I feared this result
on my not receiving anything definite concerning your time of leaving Stockton before I left the plains. I wish now that I
had not been entangled with sheep at all but that I had remained among post offices joined your party at Snellings Thus far
all of my deepest purest enjoyments have been taken in solitude the fate seems hard that has hindered me from sharing YoSemite
with you We are camped this evening among a bundle of the Merceds crystal arteries which have just gone far enough away from
their silent fountains to be full of lakelets lims, the bleating of our flock can neither confuse nor hush the thousand notes
of their celestial song The sun has set these glorious shafts of the spruce pine shoot higher higher as the darkness come
on I must say Good- night whole bands of Natures sweetest influences are about me in these sacred mountain halls I know that
every chord of your being in margin: We will perhaps be here about two weeks then we will go the big meadows twelve miles
towards the summit? where we will remain untill we start for the plains some time near the end of Sept The kind of meeting
you have had with Yosemite? answers well enough for most people but it will not do for you. When will you return to the mountains
I had a letter from Prof Butler a short time ago saying that he would probably visit California this month in company with
a man of war. Remember me to the illegible and illegible . Please send me a letter by the middle of Sept to Snelling. I have
no hope of hearing from you after we start for Big Meadows.