PREFACE

IN JUSTICE TO PROFESSOR LE Conte and to the reader a few words are necessary as to the origin of the following book and the respective parts of the author and the editor in its preparation.

During the illness of his daughter in California in 1900 Professor Le Conte had many long talks with her about his early experiences and was by her urged to write out an account of them for his family. He was then too busy preparing for a trip abroad to undertake the work; but later in the year, in his old home in Columbia, S. C., whither he had gone from New York to recuperate from a severe illness that interfered with his plan of visiting Europe, his thoughts reverted to her request, and in this period of enforced leisure he began to write his reminiscences. In the midst of the scenes in which the events that he was narrating occurred, and surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, for whom the manuscript was intended and to whom from time to time portions of it were read, he wrote con amore, and what was originally intended as a sketch became a detailed autobiography. On his return to California early in 1901 he continued the work, but with flagging interest, the latter years of his life being treated in a comparatively summary manner. Fortunately, however, the account was brought down to a few months before his death, and concluded with a statement of what he himself considered of most value in his life-work.

After his death a number of his colleagues were asked to prepare biographical memoirs for publication by the various scientific associations of which he was a member, and were permitted to use the “autobiographic sketch.” Their extracts from it attracted attention, and the family was urged to have the whole edited and published. Somewhat reluctantly they acceded to the request of his friends, and to me was given the honor of preparing for the press the last work of my old teacher.

The question of the future publication of the work had been suggested to Professor Le Conte by his daughter, and he had answered that it certainly could not be published in the shape in which he left it, but that it would be a rich store of material for any possible future biographer. No implied trust was violated, therefore, either in having the manuscript published or in having it edited.

My desire has been to treat the manuscript with all due reverence, but many changes have been necessary. Many omissions had to be made, as, owing to its origin and the purpose for which it was originally written, it contained much that was too intimately personal and much of too little general interest for publication. On the other hand, many lacunæ had to be filled, for in a number of instances Professor Le Conte merely referred to what he had written elsewhere. His personal experiences during the last days of the Confederacy, for instance, are told in briefest outline in a single paragraph in the manuscript and reference made to a detailed account written immediately after the events. An abstract of this journal, itself a manuscript as long as the autobiographic sketch, has therefore been substituted for the paragraph and forms Chapters VII and VIII of the book. In other similar instances use has been made of Professor Le Conte’s letters and published writings. A certain amount of rearrangement of the material in the manuscript, moreover, was necessitated by the division of the long, continuous narrative into chapters of approximately equal length. The titles of Professor Le Conte’s publications, which he, writing currente calamo and with no time for verification, frequently cited in the manuscript in general terms or somewhat inaccurately, are in the book taken directly from the articles, to which references are given in foot-notes for the convenience of those desiring to read them.

With all these changes it has been the editor’s desire to preserve the tone and spirit of the original. That the style is frequently colloquial seems to him no defect, for he wished so far as possible to retain all that would tend to reveal the man to those who knew only the author. To them he was the patient investigator, the wise scientist, the fearless, independent, truth-loving thinker; to those who knew him personally, and particularly to those who had the inestimable privilege of being numbered among his “boys and girls,” he was all this, but, first and foremost, he was the gentle, kindly spirit, the welcome companion and helpful friend, our beloved “Professor Joe.”

The manuscript was finished such a short time before Professor Le Conte’s death that there is but little to add as to the events of his life. His own account ends, “I still hope to finish my year of absence in Europe, but I know not. My son is to marry in June and much desires that I should be present at his wedding.” He yielded to the desire, gave up all thought of another European trip, and remained quietly in Berkeley until the marriage-day, June tenth. The departure of the young couple on a wedding-trip to the King’s River cañon and the High Sierra thereabouts awakened in him a longing for the mountains and a desire to show the wonders of the Yosemite to his daughter, Mrs. Davis, who had come from South Carolina to be present at her brother’s wedding. The Sierra Club, of which he had been an active and enthusiastic member since its organization, was planning a large excursion to the valley and he determined to join it, though warned by his devoted wife that his strength and power of endurance were by no means what they formerly were.

By an odd coincidence he met at the railway station in Oakland one of his companions on his first visit to the Yosemite, Professor Frank Soulé, and together they sped in luxurious cars and comfortable stages over the long, hot miles they had weariedly ridden thirty-one years before. In the January, 1902, number of the Sierra Club Bulletin Professor Soulé published an article on Joseph Le Conte in the Sierra, in which he gives the facts as to the last days of his old friend. He writes: “He was happy at the thought of revisiting (for the eleventh time) the great Yosemite, and of showing to his dear ones the unrivaled scenery of that mountain fastness.

“Standing upon the veranda of the hotel at Wawona, he said to me: ‘I have retraced in memory every day’s march of our excursion in 1870. Can you point out our camping-ground here at Wawona?’

“I looked around me and confessed that I could not; the place was so greatly changed and built upon.

“With a pleasant smile and a merry chuckle of triumphant recollection, he pointed along the front line of the veranda to the open field near the stream, and said: ‘Do you see those three trees standing together? Well, there were four of them thirty-one years ago, and you and I spread our blankets beneath their branches.’

“ ‘Yes, I recall it all now,’ I replied. And I marveled at his wonderful memory.”

He arrived at the camp at the base of Glacier Point on the third of July considerably fatigued but in his usual high spirits. For the next two days he was the life of the party, driving with his daughter all over the valley, walking to near-by points of interest, and explaining the geological phenomena to crowds of eager listeners. On the evening of the fifth, while very tired from a tramp, he ate a hearty dinner, and soon afterward complained of a severe pain in the region of the heart. A physician was at once summoned and diagnosed the trouble as angina pectoris, and with this diagnosis Professor Le Conte, himself a physician, agreed. Everything possible was done to relieve the sufferer, and in the morning he seemed much better. But about ten o’clock, while the physician was absent procuring additional remedies, he turned upon his left side, and at once his daughter saw a great change come over his countenance. “Do not lie upon your left side, father,” she cried. “You know it is not good for you.” With a smile he answered, “It does not matter, daughter.” They were his last words. Five minutes later the happy-starred, light-searching spirit had found its way to the source of all happiness and light.

That evening a coach slowly made its way across the floor of the valley. On one seat was the stricken daughter with a faithful friend, on the other a casket buried from sight beneath laurel wreaths, pine boughs, and the wild flowers of the Yosemite. Following it scores of California students and graduates walked with uncovered heads. Halting at the foot of the grade, they watched with straining eyes the coach with its mournful burden toil up the long, lonely mountain road till it disappeared in the darkness, then slowly returned to camp, each with a feeling of personal loss. Five days later the words of the funeral service were spoken in the presence of a vast throng that testified to the grief of all classes of citizens, and all that was mortal of Joseph Le Conte was laid away beside that beloved brother from whom he had so seldom been separated and for whom he had never ceased to mourn. There he rests in the beautiful Mountain View cemetery, his grave marked by a huge boulder from near the spot where he died in the Yosemite that he had loved so long and so well.

“When the Greeks made...