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Introduction

two separate elaborations of his experiences in Savannah when he camped there for a week in the Bonaventure graveyard. Throughout my work upon the primary and secondary materials I was impressed with the scrupulous fidelity with which he adhered to the facts and impressions set down in the original journal.

Readers of Muir’s writings need scarcely be told that this book, autobiographically, bridges the period between The Story of my Boyhood and Youth and My First Summer in the Sierra. However, one span of the bridge was lacking, for the journal ends with Mr. Muir’s arrival in San Francisco about the first of April, 1868, while his first summer in the Sierra was that of 1869. By excerpting from a letter a summary account of his first visit to Yosemite, and including a description of Twenty Hill Hollow, where he spent a large part of his first year in California, the connection is made complete. The last chapter was first published as an article in the Overland Monthly of July, 1872.

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