y. I am learning nothing
in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the
mountains to learn the news."

In 1888 the ten years' limit which I had set for service in Alaska
expired. The educational necessities of my children and the feeling that
was growing upon me like a smothering cloud that if I remained much
longer among the Indians I would lose all power to talk or write good
English, drove me from the Northwest to find a temporary home in
Southern California.

I had not notified Muir of my coming, but suddenly appeared in his
orchard at Martinez one day in early summer. It was cherry-picking time
and he was out among his trees superintending a large force of workmen.
He saw me as soon as I discovered him, and dropping the basket he was
carrying came running to greet me with both hands outstretched.

"Ah! my friend," he cried, "I have been longing mightily for you. You
have come to take me on a canoe trip to the countries beyond--to Lituya
and Yakutat bays and Prince William Sound; have you not? My weariness of
this hum-drum, work-a-day life has grown so heavy it is like to crush
me. I'm ready to break away and go with you whenever you say."

"No," I replied, "I am leaving Alaska."

"Man, man!" protested Muir, "how can you do it? You'll never carry out
such a notion as that in the world. Your heart will cry every day for
the North like a lost child; and in your sleep the snow-banners of your
white peaks will beckon to you.

"Why, look at me," he said, "and take warning. I'm a horrible example.
I, who have breathed the mountain air--who have really lived a life of
freedom--condemned to penal servitude with these miserable little
bald-heads!" (holding up a bunch of cherries). "Boxing them up; putting
them in prison! And for money! Man! I'm like to die of the shame of it.

"And then you're not safe a day in this sordid world of money-grubbing
men. I came near dying a mean, civilized death, the other day. A
Chinaman emptied a bucket of phosphorus over me and almost burned me up.
How different that would have been from a nice white death in the
crevasse of a glacier!

"Gin it were na for my bairnies I'd rin awa' frae a' this tribble an'
hale ye back north wi' me."

So Muir would run on, now in English, now in broad Scotch; but through
all his raillery there ran a note of longing for the wilderness. "I want
to see what is going on," he said. "So many great events are happening,
and I'm not t