I set out in a few minutes for the edge of the timber-line. Then upwards, if unstormy, in the early morning. If the snow proves to be mealy and loose, it is barely possible that I may be unable to urge my way through so many upward miles, as there is no intermediate camping-ground. Yet I am feverless and strong now and can spend two days with their intermediate nights in one deliberate, unstrained effort. I am the more eager to ascend to study the mechanical conditions of the fresh snow at so great an elevation; also to obtain clear views of the comparative quantities of lava inundation northward and southward; also general views of the channels of the ancient Shasta glaciers, etc.; many other lesser problems, besides the fountains of the rivers here and the living glaciers. I would like to remain a week or two and may have to return next year in summer. I wrote a short letter a few days ago which was printed in the “Evening Bulletin,” which I suppose you have seen. I wonder how you all are faring in your wilderness educational departmental institutional, etc. Write me a line here in care of Sisson. I think it will reach me on my return from icy Shasta. Farewell. Ever cordially yours, JOHN MUIR. Love to all,--Keith and the boys and McChesney, etc. Don’t forward any letters from the Oakland office. I want only mountains until my return to civilization. Sissons Station, December 9th, 1874. Coming in for a sleep and rest, I was glad to receive your card. I seem to be more than married to icy Shasta. One yellow, mellow morning six days ago, when Shasta snows were looming and blooming, I slept outside the bar-room door to gaze and was instantly drawn up over the meadows, over the forests, to the main Shasta glacier in one rushing cometic whizz, then, swooping to Shasta valley, whirled off around the base like a satellite of the grand icy sun. I have just completed my first revolution. Length of orbit, 100 miles; time, one Shasta day. For two days and a half I had nothing in the way of food, yet suffered nothing and was finely nerved for the most delicate work of mountaineering both among crevasses and lava cliffs. Now I am sleeping and _eating_. I found some geological facts that are perfectly glorious, and botanical ones too. I wish I could make the public be kind to Keith and his paint. And so you contemplate vines and oranges among the warm California angels. I wish you would all go a-granging among oranges and bananas and all such blazing, red-hot fruits, for you are a species of Hindoo sun fruit yourself. For me, I like better the huckleberries of cool glacial bogs and acid currants and benevolent, rosy, beaming apples and common Indian-summer pumpkins. I wish you could see the holy morning’s Alpen glow of Shasta. Farewell. I’ll be down into gray Oakland some time.