We returned here last week from the mountains, all in improved health, and find the weather agreeably cool and pleasant. Mary and the children had been in camp seven weeks, the last month in the Yo-Semite. I was with them most of the time but made three visits to the Estate and also a journey through the high Sierras to the Eastward of the Yo Semite reaching the brink of the Mono desert beyond them.

I wrote you soon after we arrived in the Yo Semite telling you that we found it much more beautiful than we had been led to anticipate. We had a very pleasant camp there and, spite of a good many difficulties from the distance of stores and markets and the inconveniences of transportation, managed to live quite healthfully and comfortably. The children enjoyed the life very much and seemed to gain health daily.

John accompanied me in my journey to the Eastward and we had with us Profr Brewer of the State Geological Survey (and lately appointed Professor of Practical Agriculture in Yale College). We also had a guide and drove a pack-mule, going mounted ourselves, of course. The first day out of the Valley we reached an elevation of nine thousand feet and came little below this again for a week. On the morning of the third day we reached the head of Bloody Canon which is the lowest pass that is known for some hundred miles each way across the high ridge of the Sierras: here we turned to the North and, John and the Professor walking, and I riding, ascended a mountain, at the summit of which we were over 12.500 feet above the level of the sea—and a thousand feet or more above the line of perpetual snow and of tree and shrub vegetation. We nevertheless suffered scarcely any inconvenience from cold or rarefied air. The view to the Eastward was very fine, the slope on that side being very abrupt, the desert plain of Mono 5.000 feet below us commencing not more than six miles away. In the midst of the desert there was a considerable lake and three or four cones and craters of volcanic ashes. The horizon was everywhere broken by mountain ridges, those on the North East being in Nevada Territory and those in the South East beyond the valley of Owen’s river, the most distant being more than 150 miles away. A few miles to the North of us was Mt. Dana, a very symmetrical peak 14.000 feet high; to the South, a group of peaks the center and highest being Mt. Lyell which is a little higher than Mt. Dana. The Geological Survey spent several days trying to get to the top of it last year without success. On its North side there was a snow bank six miles long in parts of which we could see the red snow described by Arctic travellers. Many Arctic plants and insects as well as birds and animals are found in this snowy [253]region. We saw several. The surface of the mountain was composed of boulders and splinters of slate and quartz which I found difficult, especially where we had to get up steep slopes, to ride over, but by making short tacks and resting my horse every fifteen or twenty feet, not impracticable. In coming down however I took the worst part on foot. Growing on and among these stones even to the very top we found some beautiful Alpine flowers most of them I believe indistinguishable from those found in the Alps. It freezes at this elevation and even some thousand feet below it every night in the year. There was no snow on the side where we ascended but John went down on the East side to a bank and brought us a snow-ball for our dinner. The chief inconvenience of the whole trip was the cold weather at night. Though we made great fires and had all the blankets we could lie under, the cold kept me awake more or less every night. Every morning I found the water in my canteen under my pillow frozen. We did not fairly test the temperature by the Thermometer but one morning half an hour after sunrise it stood at 14° F. During the day nevertheless the temperature was very agreeable.

The Sierra peaks are generally of a light grey granite though some are of slate like that which we ascended. Their form is that of snow-drifts after a very gusty storm, some being of grand simplicity while others are pinnacled, columnar castleated and fantastic. Between the peaks there are glacial valleys with morains, the granite often glistening with the polish left by the glacier. There are numerous small lakes which as they are frozen solid in the winter contain no fish and there are numerous small streams running for the most part through narrow grassy meadows: outside of these and below the line of perpetual snow there is a forest of pines and firs peculiar to the region, all but one disappearing at about 10.500 and this gradually becoming a mere shrub and then itself disappearing. I have given you a sort of catalogue of the more important elements but do not attempt to convey to you any impression of the scenery which is of a very peculiar character and much the grandest that I have ever seen.

On the Estate we have got our new Mill running at Mariposa. We have made no drafts on the Treasurer for a month or more and if our Mills were not likely to be stopped for want of water, I think I should have no occasion to draw again; but within a few days the effects of the drought have been alarming. You know this is our second very long dry season, little rain having fallen last winter. On the plains below us there is no pasturage and there has been scarcely any crop on the little ground where cultivation was attempted. We use barley and wheat straw for forage paying $55. a ton for it and cannot get what we need. Barley, which we use instead of oats, we are glad to get at $100 a ton, gold prices, of course. Family provisions are proportionately high.

I am going to San Francisco next week.

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Olmsted’s Mariposa and Yosemite

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I gained health constantly while in the mountains, felt better and could ride further without fatigue than before for a long time, but I find the old symptoms returning as soon as I come back to the desk.

As there was no evidence that one peak had ever been ascended by men before, we took the usual priveledge and named it Mount Gibbs, in respect to Profr Gibbs of Cambridge & the Sanitary Commission. Gibbs being the first Chemist as Dana is the first Geologist of America.

I wish you could see the children, they all look so well. We were amused on going into a log cabin, the whole of one end of which was a fire-place, with about two cords of pine-wood blazing in it, to hear Owen drawl: “Why that’s just like the fire place in grandfather’s parlor!” They made a considerable botanical collection & learned a good deal about rocks, glaciers &c., and John did some pretty stiff climbing. His eyes seem perfectly well. They have all come back into school and civilized habits more readily than I had expected.

I am not sure that I acknowlgd Yours of 24th July, which was received with much pleasure, in the Yo Semite.

We are in some apprehension of disturbances growing out of the political excitements. The Secessionists have a strong armed organization. They swallow McClellan with a bad grace, spite of his having swallowed the Peace platform. The Union men were never more resolute to fight it out, cost what it may.