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Reminiscences of John Muir John Muir Papers
July 2021
Reminiscence of John Muir by Moores, Merrill, "Recollections of John Muir as a Young Man"
Merrill Moores
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COLLECTIONS OF JOHN MUIR AS A YOUNG MAN By Morrill Mcores J Ten years ago, my cousin Merrill Moores of Indianapolis, Indiana, sent me the story of his acquaintance with John Muir. If my cousin were living today, I am sure that he would be glad to give this account to the Sierra Club and the general public.
The AQOth anniversary of John Muir•s birth is an appropriate
time to give this interesting story to the world. , •„ . (f. # Samuel Merrill
"At the age of ten, I was living in Indianapolis, Indiana,with \ P ' i .3 - liY\^Q'i * V.> -^1 -.t) '• . f':\\ • ' •> my mother and her sister, Miss Catharine Merrill, at the southwest corner of Alabama and Merrill Streets in a little briok house which is still standing and which had been given in 183C by my grandfather Merrill to these two daughters. One beautiful evening in the early summer of 1866, a tall sturdy man with blue eyes and a clear, ruddy complexion as well as handsome hair and beard such as goes with such a color approached and asked if Mrs. Moores and Miss Merrill lived there. He had a marked Scottish accent and was obviously a wording man, but was plainly and neatly dressed; and he at once impressed me
as the handsomest man I had ever met. He had with him a letter Ox tA introduction from a Professor James D. Butler, formerly of Vabash
College, but at that time of Wisconsin University. He told me that his name was John Muir and that he wished to call
on my mother and aunt, to whom he bore, a letter from Professor Butler
under whom he had studied in Wisconsin University.
- 1 -
09/^2. Fortunately the ladies were at home and I was permitted to listen to the conversation, in which I was vastly interested, as Mr. Muir told of his pilgrimage of 500 miles through the everlasting bog to the south of the Georgian Bay in search of the extremely rare orchid, Calypso borealis, which at last he was able to find. He told of the mill in Canada, which made brooms and rates and other wood products, and of the invention he had made by the construction of a lathe with, appliances, so that one might feed timber into the broom stick machine and it would discharge a broom handle fully completed, as well as telling of the wooden rate machine into which one might feed the same sort of timber, but which would transform the timber into a fully completed rate. I remember astlng him whether he had secured letters patent for the two machines; and was amazed to learn that he thought that all improvements and inventions should be the property of the human race, and that no inventor had a right to profit by an invention for whioh he deserved no bredit, as the idea really was inspired by the Almighty. To this policy, although the designer of many improvements in machinery, Muir consistently adhered all of his life. Among other things he told us that evening was that, he was employed at the Woodburn-Sarven wheel Works, which maintained a large factory south of the union Station; and that he had gone to the proprietors and asked permission to construct at their expense a machine, which would automatically make wooden hubs, spokes and felloes and assemble them into a fully completed wheel, lacking only the metal tire, to be attached by hand. This machine was a success and I am told that all wooden wheels to this day are made by machines following the plan on which Muir's unpatented wheel-making machine was designed. He also told us where he lived, which was on the south side of LcCarty street, Just Hast of Union, with a family named
Sutherland, A few days later I called at the Sutherland's on a Saturday afternoon, and saw one of the wooden clocks which he had whittled out as a hoy and which is so well described in the last chapter of The Story of my Boyhood and Youth, (Seirra Kd., vol, 1, P, 201-6;
Original Bd. P. 251 et seq,) He explained the clock: to me and showed me his wonderful bed. He slept on the most remarkable bed I had ever seen. In the south east corner of his room he had built against the wall three bed posts; while the fourth at the northwest corner of the bed had a ourious mechanical contraption at the top, with a ratchet wheel of at least four spokes with a radius of 3 or 4 inches at the end of each of which was attached a match with its business end resting on sand-paper. The mattress and bed clothes was attached to the east wall by clamps; and the body of the bed was on hinges attached to the east wall. He told me that he was accustomed to rise at six o'clock that he might be at his work at seven. Immediately beneath the bed was a rectangular tank of the dimension of 2 x 3 x 6 feet rather more than half filled with cold water. The body of the ted was about four feet above the tans, which was made of wood. On the west side of the bed its body rested on a trigger, which, like the ratchet v;heel, was connected with the wooden clock standing in the northeast corner of the room, and which kept acourate time. Muir slept every night between clean sheets; but wore no bedclothes when he slept in this bed. At six o'clock in the morning, the clock pulled the trigger and
m
09;2 x- moved the ratchet 90 degrees, where the match automatically lighted the oandle, the body of the bed, its west side released by the trigger and its east side supported on hinges and the bed clothes by clamps, fell against the east wall and the ocoupant of the bed was precipitated unceiemoniously into the cold water# He told me that, when he was a student at college, he had become convinced that every student should so ooncentrate his mind on his studies, that it should not require more than fifteen minutes to learn any lesson in the college course# To the end that he might be compelled to concentrate on his college work, he had constructed a student's destc, which was under control of his wooden clock and which at 7:15 in the morning forced from the locked interior the volume used in his first recitation for the day, and.the book automatically opened at the page of the days lesson, and at the end of the mauvaise fluatre d'heur. automatically returned to its prison in the locked chamber of the desk, while the text book for the next recitation at once succeeded it on the desk# He was able by the help of this machine to get all of a day's lessons in one hour; and to spend many happy hours afoot in the exquisitely beautiful country around Imperial Madison with its incompar able chain of lakes. There was no room in his narrow quarters here ior this desk, which he had left stored in his father's attic at Port Hope; but there is a fine picture of it with a full description at P. £26 of the Sierra Edition of the ^tory of my Boyhood and Youth. It was in the little crowded room on MoGarty street that he told me the story of his boyhood in Dunbar, on the ^ast coast of Scotland, of the ambition of his father to come to America and become the laird of an entailed estate, on which under the law of primogeniture he might found a family of landed proprietors, when John was eleven years of age, his father sold his apothecary shop for enough to bring
- 4 - 09>z-^ his large and rapidly growing family to Wisconsin and purchase a section (640 acres) of land and build a commodious home for them. Only a few weeks after toy visit to Mr. Muir's apartment, word came to us from a small Sutherland girl called 'Lutie' that Mr. Muir had put out his right eye and must remain in a dark room for months
in the bed I have described. Gathering together a party consisting of ray sister, my Graydon
cousins, and a Keteham cousin and two Merrill cousins, all little girls, having first obtained Mr. Muir*s consent, I took: the party to oall on him, having fully posted them on the wonderful wooden clock: and the marvelous bathing-bed. The girls offered to bring flowers; but Mr. Muir told them that he cared nothing for cultivated flowers, which he regarded with much "the contempt he felt for artificial flowers; but asked them to go to the woods and bring him *God's posies*, with the result that he kept the little maids hunting wild flowers through the woods not far away at that time to the bouth of where we all lived. I offered to read to him daily while he was laid up for an hour or more. He asked what I was reading at the time and I told him that I had dust finished Prescott's Conquest of Mexico and of Peru and was reading Irving's Columbus. He said that he had read the Columbus book and knew all he wished about the brutality of Cortez and Pizarro; and that he wished me to read Irving's Knickerbockers to him, which I did, following it with other readings until he recovered his eyesight.
He himself describes the injury to his eye thus: 'I had put in a countershaft for a new circular saw; and, as the belt connecting it with the main shaft was new, it stretched considerably after running a few hours and had to be shortened, , I was unlacing it, making use of tHe nail-like end of a file to draw - 5 - 6 ?y-z out the stitches, it slipped and pierced my right eye on the edge of the cornea. After the first shock was over, I closed my eye, and, when I lifted the lid of the injured one, the aqueous humor dripped on my hand — the sight gradually failed and in a few minutes came perfect darkness, "My right eye is gone,*' I murmured, 'closed for ever to all of God's beauty.n At first, I felt no particular weak ness. I walked steadily enough to the house where I was boarding, tut in a few hours, the shock 3ent me trembling to bed, and very soon by sympathy the other eye became blind, so that I was in total darkness- and feared that I would become permanently blind.' Saying that Professor Butler had sent a letter of Introduction to an Indianapolis family, Muir continues: "In some way they heard of the accident and came to see me and brought an oculist, who had studied abroad, to examine the pierced e^e. He told me that on account of the blunt point of the file having pushed aside the iris, it would never again be perfect, tut that, if I should chance to lose the left .eye, the wounded one, though imperfect, would then be very precious. 'You are young and healthy,' he said,'and the lost aqueous humor will be restored and the sight also to some extent: and your left eye after the inflammation has gone down, and the nerve shock is overcome -- you will be able to see about as well as ever, and in two or three months bid the dark room good-bye.'" By the following June, a year later, when I uir was £9 and I was eleven, we both celebrating April 21 as our birthday, he wrote to a friend: 'I have been reading and botanizing for some weeks, and find that for such work I em not very much disabled. I leave this city for home tomorrow, accompanied by Merrill Mooros, a little friend of - 8 - O'-r.n v mine. e will go to ~ecatur, Illinois, thence northward through the wild prairies, botanizing a few weeks by the way.' A few weeks later he briefly describes our journey. I quote. (Sierra Ed. Vol.1, P. 254.) *1 was eager to see the Illinois prairies on my way home, so we went to Deoatur, near the center of the State, thence north (to Portage) by hoctcford and Janesville. I botanized one week on the prairie seven miles southwest of Pecatonica. ... fo xne all plants are more precious than before. 1y poor eye is not better nor worse. A cloud is over it, but in gazing over the wildest landscapes I am not always sensible of its presence.' Well do I remember this delightful trip, following as a meek and small disciple and learning the love of Nature at the feet of the Uaster of Nature study, who was less than thirty at the time. It seemed, to me that we walked interminable miles across the prairies, Muir teaching me botany and geology and above all the love of primitive nature. At night, I was hungry and desperately tired with the tremendous walks he made me follow him, and when we had eaten ^ and disrobed for bed, I then was, but confess with humiLiution that I am not now ashamed to confess that when we knelt before retiring, vvhile hulr prayed aloud to the Almighty, I had to be awakened on my kneea night after night with stern rebukes and put in bed for the night's rest. From xtoctcfoi'd to Portage we went by rail but by what railroad 1 have forgotten. Portage Is about SO miles, as the crow xlies, north of Aadison and is where a four mile oanel takes the place of the ancient portage between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, which was used as a portage as long ago as the days of Pore Marquette and connected / - 7 - the St. Lawrence with the Father of Waters from time immemorial as Indian tradition tells us. Daniel Muir lived some ten or twelve miles from Portage and near a small but extremely attractive lake called Muir's Lake by the neighbors and Fountain Lake by the Muir family. There lived Daniel Muir and his v.ife and three of their un married daughters; all of the eight children were born in Scotland excepting the youngest, Joanna, - at that time about 16 years olu. None of the three boys remained oh the farm and two of the girls were married, the husband of one of them,David Galloway, also Scotch, later buying the Fountain Lake farm. I remember Daniel Muir with great distinctness. He was tall and very slender and looked to me very old, although he was only 63 at the time. Almost totally without education, Daniel Muir had been in turn an apothecary, farmer and a revivalist; and was a narrov; and bigoted fundamentalist, who made no secret of his belief that the study of geology was blasphemous and with his pious wife was accustomed to rebuke John unoeasingly for his study of geology; and I regretted to discover that they regarded botany as almost as wicked as geology, although they were unable to give me any reasons for this belief. About the house had originally been an opening of white oaks, which the old gentleman had cut down for the apparent reason that none grew on the shores of the North -aea, in Scotland, to be replaced by Daniel with homely and unattractive Lombaruy poplars,-at the time, dead from the top half way to the ground. Under one of these poplars, Daniel was used on fair days to sit in a rocking-chair in the narrow strip of shade, moving his chair about every quarter of an hour to retain the shade; and there he was copying a huge quarto tome of Fox's Book of Martyrs on legal cap paper. - 8 - C?>Z 7. „hen i asked him why he did not buy a copy he answered that it was beyond his means. Loosing over his copy one day, I asiced him the reasons for frequent omissions of words; and he answered: "Aboot a half of the buiee is in Layton; and I dinna sen Layton and the words would be of small use to me." He possessed a small orchard of apple trees , which he calleu. "Aypels" and he spoke only the broadest variety of Scottish dialect. He retired at night promptly at seven o'clock and went to sleep at once, rising at 9:00 P. M. for a tub-bath in cold water, after which he again went to bed. He was opposed to what he called the Papacy; tut attended most devoutly all religious services excepting those of the Roman Catholics and unitarians. John Mulr and I made many hikes through the raagnifioent oatc a openings around Fountain Laae, and one day tookAtrain for kiiuourn to the northwest of Portage. At this place the Wisconsin River runs through a lofty gorge, and descends a number of casoades. ,.e went there because someone haa tola Ilr. Muir that at she Dells, which was the name of the gorge, grew a fragrant fern, growing nowhere in America excepting in the white Mountains ana at the Dells, we founo the fern and pronounced its odor most entrancing. At the Dells we built a raft from logs lying about one of the cascades, and we rafted the lisconsin River for thirty miles to Portage. It vas one of the most enjoyable days in my life. Not long after, we returned to Indianapolis, and fir. Muir started on his Thousand miles walk to the Dull. it the end of this walk he took steerage passage for California via the Isthmus of Panama; and I heard from him only by occasional letters for some five years. - 9 - C '"2 -i- When I was a boy of 16, Mr. Mulr wrote my mother from the Yosemite Valley asking that X be sent est to spend the summer with him; and in May, I left Indianapolis by the recently \ completed X., 3. & »«. hallway for Galesburg, and Omaha and the Pacific Coast over the Union and Central Pacific roads. On the train with me were Judge John o. Tarklngton, his wite and his daughter Haute, with whom I traveled as far as Ogden, .^here they went on to San Francisco and I went to Salt Lake City to spend two or three weeks with cousins at Fort Souglas, and incidentally to hear Brigham Young preach in the kormon Tabernacle. From Salt Lake City, X went to San Francisco by rail, and after a brief visit with cousins, I purchased a sturdy and serviceable mustang Tor 4*20.00, and a saddle and bridle for ;1L.00 and took the boat for Stockton, a city on the san Joaquin River, a little less than half way to the Valley. Arriving in the morning, I mounted my bronco and started on my three day ride up through the foothills and mountains to my goal, Yosemite. I v:as alone and had very little money, and X learned almost a.t once that ferry and bridge tolls were always a dollar, and that the 3ame price was exacted for horse feed. I made up my mind at once to eat nothing on the .journey; to feed my cayuse once a day, and felt sure of making it with the ~>7.J0 I had. I had an army blanket strapped at the back of my saddle, which was a saddle of massive workmanship and of exceeding comfort, attached to the pony by a cinch tightly girded about the middle of his belly after the reasonable Mexican and Spanish fashion. The nights were pleasant and with darkness, I "staked, out'' my mustang, * spread my blanket on the ground, using my saddle as a pillow, and slept until sunrise, while the bronco grazed. - 1§ - 0'?/2 7_ I was not hungry as there was abundant delicious water to arink and X had a good strong belt which I tightened, morning and evening* On the evening of the third day, I arrived at Gentry s Hotel not far from the valley and stabled my horse and saw him fed and paid my last dollar, and walked over to the hostelry to be surprised to see oh the balcony old friends, Mr. Richard Smith and his daughter Mollis, who invited'me to dine with them: I was eating an apple I had picked up on the trail, about the first bit of sustenance I had had in three days. Rating with the attractive and interesting Mollie, who was of my age, I hope no one will doubt my statement that X did full justice to that delicious dinner. The next morning at Tamarack: Flat, which is 8,000 feet above sea level, I bled rather freely from the nose, something which is by no means rare with people coming from lower levels; and a little beyond we desoended something like 4,000 feet by a narrow and tortuous, as well as precipitous saddle path, into the ted ox the ™ t most beautiful valley in the world. From where the trail strucsc the bed of the valley, a level dirt road ran some three miles up the valley to Black's Hotel, where I met John Mulr, looking as young; and really handsomer than he had looked on our Wisconsin ramble. .after a day at Black's, we went to the upper end of the valley and into camp not far from James Lemon's orchard. Our camp consisted of a dutch oven, a sack of potatoes, a pint cup of sour dough, which I used in the oven to make bread, a minute quantity of bacon, and our respective blankets. . e had no cover of any sort and slept in the open from June until October. Muir was a poor cook, and I made all of our bread from sour dough in the dutch oven. Muir professed to like my bread: I must confess that I did not lite it and all that I can say in its favor is that if wqs better than the stuff he bated once or twice while I was away from the camp# e also had near our camping place, if it is worthy to be called a camp, a corral in which horses were kept, A misguided admirer of John Muir, named Eaglesfield, who had a ranch in the San Joaquin Valley near Merced, and bred fine saddle horses, had sent Muir seven superb saacile horses, which he tept in a corral near our Locus dormi in which he also tept the disreputable nog he owned and rode on his frequent trips through the mountains. Into this corral I turned my cayuse. Mult knew nothing and cared oven less for horses, regarding them as a necessary nuisance. His own horse, the only one he ever rode, had few merits, most of them negative. He was sure footed; but he was intolerably lazy and distressingly slow; he could subsist on sedge grass and manzsnita shrubs and go three or four days without feed; but he was good natured and forgiving and never seemed to resent neglect. Furthermore, he would remain faithfully to the spot where Muir placed him, as Casablanca did, and required neither hobbling nor stascing out. Muir asced me to, loot: after the Eagles- field horses, which were superb saddle horses and did not suffer under my care; and he let me ride any one I liked and I habitually rode the one I chose for any purpose. The care of them was really a great treat to me; and to put them in my charge was a real relief to John Muir. Our nearest neighbor was a most interesting character, James Lamon, who was the first white settler in the valley. Mr. Lamon was born in Virginia in 1817 and at the time was 65 years old. He had visited the valley first about three years after it had been discovered and was there during the summers of 1857 and 16d8, and - 12 - located there in the summer of 1859 and lived there the rest of his life, maintaining himself by the finest orchard of varied fruits as I \ * ever saw. His cabin was a mere shack some 10 x 12 feet, and he was supposed to have constructed a small fortress up in a ravine which could only be approached by a narrow precipitous trail over which but one person could pick his precarious way at a time. Tradition, which I never heard him verify, reports that at his first settlement of the Valley, the Yosemlte or Grizzly Bear Indians, a branch of the Pfciutes, raided him, and he retired to his castle and killed some 30 of the: before they drew off. The Indians were, however, entirely reconciled to him when after a great flood in the valley Lamon saved • \ * • / " : • ^ • . many lives of the Indians by acts of heroism. Another most interesting character was another nature lover, Galen Clark, who lived ^ust back of the rim of the Valley and was one of the very test men I have ever met. After the government, first of California and later of the Jnited States, took over the Yosemite reservation and made it a pars, Galen Clark was appointed Guardian of The Yosemite, and continued in his command many years until his death. Muir had many distinguished visitors in the Valley, and that summer the one who made the greatest impression on m3 was Asa Gray, a Harvard professor and author of a standard work on botany. As I remember him, he was an unusually handsome man, oho, like Uuir, wore a full beard, and presented a most Impressive appearance. He spent about a week in the Valley and was with kuir all day long every day. fcuir had discovered among the tall grass in an upland glacier basin an elm tree, a dwarf, which attains a height of less than six inches, and grows at an altitude of about 10,000 feet, which Dr. Gray gave - 13 - Ot'T. Muir's name. Its given name was of course Ulmus; but for the family name I cannot recall how Dr. Gray Latinized Muir. One day prior to Dr. Gray's visit, Muir wished to examine the glaoler near the top of Mount Lyell, the tallest mountain in the vicinity of the Yosemite, the top of which had been pronounced as inaccessible by the surveyors and other authorities. I accompanied him. starting early in the morning on our horses, we made our way around the Half Dome to Tenaya Creek ana followed it up as far as Coda Spring, where the purest of cold water pours forth from the earth heavily charged with carbonic-acid gas. at night, we tethered our horses with long lariats, and built a fire to keep off the coyotes, Keeping it up, of course, all night; and lay down to sleep each in his army blanket and pillowed in his saddle. It was cold; and we waked from time to time to replenish the fire, seeing at the distance of some hundred yards the bright eyes of a great number of coyotes, with their eyes on the fire, and barising continuously. As the fire would die down the circle would narrow in until one of us would rise and put more fuel on the fire, when the little devils would retreat and the circle of bright eyes spread out. The next night v;e pursued the same tactics protected by a circle of guardian angel coyotes; but as "we were much higher up, we slept in the snow and in consequence were much warmer than we had been the previous night. an diuir handed meAaneroid barometer given him by Professor John Tindall to carry and with it I moasui'ed the heights at various points the next day. Muir also told me the strange experience he had had in his first summer in the Cierra, when he was a shepherd for Delaney, a brilliant Irish sheep raiser, and greatly distinguished mathematician, - 14 - who hearded sheep all summer in the meadow on the high Sierra to the North of the Valley. ,/ith the morning, the coyotes left us end we breakfasted on some of my villianous sour-dough bread, whioh was all that we had except oat meal which we boiled and ate Sootch fashion, without sugar. e staked our horses. Mr. Mulr agreed with me that, if I.would assist him to run a line of stakes across the glacier on a line drawn transversely aoross it at • - <9 about the middle, he would go with me to see if the peak oould be surmounted. Ye inspected the terminal-moraine and both of the lateral moraines, as far up as half way. The glacier was then about a mile wide and very nearly as long, iiuir sat on the lateral moraine on a huge boulder, and gave directions as I crossed the glacier driving a stake in at every hundred yards. In October we returned and found the rate of speed of the glacier at various points and as the straight line of stakes had become the arc of an enormous circle, we had absolute proof that it was a living glacier; and this was absolutely the first proof ever given that the canons of the lower Sierra are of glacial origin, kuir had previously found other proofs, suoh as glacial mud at the terminal moraines; but this was the final and convincing proof; and Muir's contention as to their origin which he held alone for some years is now universally conceded, .^fter I had barely escaped falling into a crevasse, which I estimated as from 40 to 60 feet in depth, we started on to climb the peak. It was hard wortc, and at several places where the glacial ice was thinnest and rocics protruded, we found mountain daisies growing and not far away from the apex and tde glacier, we found - 15 - the red snow of the arctics. At last we reached the top, and saw the superb landsoape extending for hundreds of miles around; but to my infinite disgust, at the very topmost point, I found a huge cairn evidently erected by human hands, and removing the topmost boulder, I found a visiting card of J. JS. Hutchings, with the written inscription "Nil De3perandum Hutchings", and with John Muir, T struggled back aorosa that agonizing glacier with a heavy heart end e broken spirit to our camping place. The next day we started on our three day trip back. Later in the summer, John Muir, Professor Joseph Leconte, Theodore Chestor Weed, a nephew of Thurlow Weed, Fred Brightman, a guide and I went through the Hetch. Hotehy and up the Tuolumne to the foot of Mount Lyell; but the story of that trip is too long to relate at this time. I shall tell you only that for three days the party left me at a point impassable for the horses, to protect them, while they climbed. On the second day, being absolutely alone, as I was for the whole time, I left camp for a stroll and went upstream for a quarter of a mile, when I came face to face with a grizzly bear, who gazed at me bashfully and turning in an embarrassed way scuttled rapidly away in the underbrush. Feeling relieved but not wishing to leave Hie Ursine Majesty between me and the horses, I executed an about face, and walked about half a mile downstream, when in a very narrow passage way, I met a very handsome skunk, and I promptly followed the example of my ursine friend and went back to the camp, and when my party returned they-found the horses intact and smelling as sweetly of a fragrant barnyard scent as they had sine lied when the party left. Latsr Mulr and I took two eminent artists, nilliam Keith - 16 - 0 NOTE: Mr. Muir'a prophecy in regard to his .young friend proved to be true, fox* while Merrill ignores never became an eminent naturalist, he did become a prominent member of the Bar of Indiana, and represented the Indianapolis district in Congress for ten years. He served on the National Parks' Committee at his own request, that he might advance the conservation plans so dear to the heart of John Muir. Mr. Moores was a classmate at Yale of the late President raft. - 17