And more. The earth is no wanton to give up all her
best to every comer, but keeps a sweet, separate in-
timacy for each. But if you do not find it all as I write,
think me not less dependable nor yourself less clever.
There is a sort of pretense allowed in matters of the
heart, as one should say by way of illustration, "I know
a man who . . . ," and so give up his dearest experi-
ence without betrayal. And I am in no mind to direct
you to delectable places toward which you will hold
yourself less tenderly than I. So by this fashion of nam-
ing I keep faith with the land and annex to my own
estate a very great territory to which none has a surer
title.

The country where you may have sight and touch
of that which is written lies between the high Sierras
south from Yosemite--east and south over a very great
assemblage of broken ranges beyond Death Valley,
and on illimitably into the Mojave Desert. You may
come into the borders of it from the south by a stage
journey that has the effect of involving a great lapse
of time, or from the north by rail, dropping out of the
overland route at Reno. The best of all ways is over the
Sierra passes by pack and trail, seeing and believing.
But the real heart and core of the country are not to
be come at in a month's vacation. One must summer
and winter with the land and wait its occasions. Pine
woods that take two and three seasons to the ripening
of cones, roots that lie by in the sand seven years
awaiting a growing rain, firs that grow fifty years be-
fore flowering,--these do not scrape acquaintance. But
if ever you come beyond the borders as far as the town
that lies in a hill dimple at the foot of Kearsarge, never
leave it until you have knocked at the door of the
brown house under the willow-tree at the end of the
village street, and there you shall have such news of

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