C. albus...I think the very loveliest of all the lily family,- a spotless soul, plant saint, that every one must love and so be made better. It puts … - John Muir

"At half-past two o'clock of a moonlit morning in March, I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble earthquake! A noble earthquake!" feeling sure I was going to learn something.

The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded one another so closely, that I had to balance myself carefully in walking as if on the deck of a ship among waves, and it seemed impossible that the high cliffs of the Valley could escape being shattered. In particular, I feared that the sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, towering above my cabin, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a large yellow pine, hoping that it might protect me from at least the smaller outbounding boulders.

For a minute or two the shocks became more and more violent — flashing horizontal thrusts mixed with a few twists and battering, explosive, upheaving jolts — as if Nature were wrecking her Yosemite temple, and getting ready to build a still better one."

Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit — the cosmos?

As we sat by the camp-fire the brightness of the sky brought on a long talk with the Indians about the stars; and their eager childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.