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The Yo-semite; its history, its scenery, its development by LESTER, John Erastus
Book Description
Providence: Printed for the Author, 1873. First edition. Octavo. 40 pp. Uncut and unopened in original printed wrappers (with minimal edge chipping). Clean and excellent. A fine copy of a very scarce Yosemite pamphlet. John Erastus Lester, a Rhode Island lawyer, traveled west in 1872 in hopes of improving his health, visiting Yosemite and other areas. During his visit to Yosemite the author met several pioneers, including John Muir, Galen Clark, James Hutchings, James Lamon, and John Smith (of the Cosmopolitan Saloon). After his return in late 1872, he presented a paper before the Rhode Island Historical Society. Due to demand from his friends, he revised it and printed this short book the following year [presented here]. It includes a rare early glimpse of Muir in Yosemite. "There is and has been for two years past, living in the Valley, a gentleman of of Scottish parentage, by name John Muir, who, Hugh Miller like, is studying the rocks in and around the Valley. He told me that he is trying to read the great book spread out before him. He is by himself pursuing a course of geological studies, and is making careful drawings of the different parts of the gorge. No doubt he is more thoroughly acquainted with this Valley than anyone else. He has been far up the Sierras where glaciers are now in action, ploughing deep depressions in the mountains". Muir was, of course, the champion of the theory of the formation of the Valley by glacial action (no longer a theory). Currey & Kruska #236. Farquhar 13.
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