Galen Clark did great things, but apparently fame accompanied him to the grave. Few know of him today. One of the most kindly of men, he had a simplicity so intense that at times it appeared ridiculous to men of sense and candor. Never offending by superiority, modesty composed the very fabric of his being. To be rather than to appear was the ruling passion of his long life. Having an insuperable aversion for bluster and bombast, he talked about himself rarely, and then only with the greatest of reticence. It was only after much persuasion on the part of friends that he was induced to write his charming and authoritative account of the _Indians of Yosemite_ in 1904. Doing nothing for the sake of personal display, he never forced himself into the limelight. Unobtrusive and unpretentious, he had all that unaffected humility that some believe to be the essence of Lincoln’s greatness. No account of Galen Clark would be complete if it failed to touch on his love of Nature. “He was fond of scenery,” testifies John Muir, “and once told me that he liked ‘nothing in the world better than to climb to the top of a high ridge or mountain and look off.’ Oftentimes he would take his rifle, a few pounds of bacon, a little flour and a single blanket and go off hunting, for no other reason than to explore and get acquainted with the most beautiful points of view. On these trips he was always alone and indulged in the tranquil enjoyment of Nature to his heart’s content.” Few, indeed, have been more sincere in their love of Nature. He loved not only all her moods, both beauteous and terrible, but all her forms from the lowliest flower in the dust by the roadside to the loftiest of Yosemite’s cloud-caressed cliffs. But he lacked the power of expressing his affections. Like Muir, he “read the great book spread out before him;” unlike Muir, he was not gifted with a magic pen. Probably he was too sensitive to his poverty of language to attempt to describe the fairy-like beauty, the rare delicacy, and the wondrous tints of an Alpine blossom—“that beautiful creature that catches the smile of God from out the sky and preserves it.” Twenty summers in the Yosemite formed in Galen Clark an attachment for the Valley that was deep and lasting. Nearing the sunset of his life, like the patriarchs of old, he dug his own grave in the little cemetery near Yosemite Falls. With his hands he hewed his own tombstone from one of the granite blocks the elements had plucked from the cliff over which the snowy flood of the grand Yosemite Falls descend sonorous, and soft, and slow. Taking up a few seedling Sequoias from the Mariposa Grove, he transplanted them at the four corners of his last resting place so that they would shade the grave of their blessed benefactor in the years to come. A man of great age, he must have brooded on death and become familiar with its mystery so that the end did not come as a surprise.