Chapter V: Part 5

In a relatively short time I received the manuscript of his Romanes Lecture. It was full of analogies between the extinct animal kingdom and the kingdoms and principalities of the human world, in which he compared one moribund government in Europe to the _Megatherium_ and another that had ceased to progress about three centuries ago to the _Glyptodon_! I drew heavy blue pencil lines across these pages, with the word “omit” in the margin, and wrote: “I have left out certain passages that are likely to bring on war between the United States and the governments referred to.” It developed later that the expurgated passages were quite dear to the author, but in keeping with his character he thanked me warmly and assured me that

I have profited by your advice to at once change what I said about the
Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish, and I think I now have it so that no
legitimate offense can be taken. But you rather frighten me by
speaking of the importance which you say will be attached to my
speech. I am speaking purely as a layman and as a private citizen, and
when I accepted the invitation it never occurred to me that any more
importance would be attached to what I said than, for instance, to
what Curzon or Bryce said in their lectures.

Shortly afterward, at a White House luncheon, I was surprised when President Roosevelt informed the entire table that I had been reviewing his Romanes Lecture and softening some of his favorite war-provoking passages. I had already read the manuscript twice, but I told him I would be glad to look it over again. I shall never forget his reply; with a broad sweep of his hand, ending with his fist on the luncheon table, he said:

No, I am not going to touch that lecture again. I shall put it away,
send it to London, and entirely dismiss it from my mind until I take
the train for Oxford—that Romanes Lecture is finished!

He kept this resolution and instead of taking the manuscript of his three great European addresses with him, as other authors would have done, he went to Africa with only the Dark Continent in his mind. This was one of the secrets of his extraordinary success, namely, his power to concentrate all his thought and energy for the time being on a single object.

Some years after Roosevelt’s return from Africa and his triumphal tour of Europe, including the reception at Oxford, in conversation with the Archbishop of York our talk turned on Theodore Roosevelt and this Romanes Lecture of 1910. Said His Grace: “I heard Roosevelt, and in the way of grading which we have at Oxford we agreed to mark the lecture ‘beta minus’ but the lecturer ‘alpha plus.’ While we felt that the lecture was not a very great contribution to science we were sure that the lecturer was a very great man, to be ranked in the plus A class. After the lecture Colonel Roosevelt asked me how I liked it. I may have expressed rather qualified admiration and seeing my hesitation he said: ‘Well, that lecture would have been a great deal stronger had not one of my scientific friends in America _blue-penciled the best part of it_.’”

While perhaps strongest in his knowledge of birds, Theodore Roosevelt also gained an extraordinary knowledge of mammals, especially of North America and of Africa. In preparing for his African trip he called upon me for all the books I could supply from the Osborn Library in the American Museum, which in many respects is one of the most complete in the country, if not in the world. For several weeks he consumed five books a week, sitting up to the small hours of the morning to complete his reading or until Mrs. Roosevelt insisted upon his retiring. Thus in the course of a few weeks he had read all that had been written about the great mammals of Africa from Sclater to Selous. He read so rapidly that it did not seem possible that he could absorb it all, yet when we gathered at Sagamore Hill to talk over his expedition—a group of the very best naturalists familiar with African life whom he could get together for luncheon—he displayed a knowledge of the genera and species and of the precise localities where each might be found which was equal or superior to that of any man in the room. To cite only one instance of his marvelous memory and of his thoroughness of preparation: a question arose as to the locality of a particular subspecies, Grevy’s zebra (_Equus grevyi foai_). Roosevelt went to the map, pointed out directly the particular and only spot where it could be found and said that he thought the expedition could not possibly get down in that direction.

Equipped with this knowledge and aided by three or four exceptional men like Heller and Akeley, he conducted, under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, by far the most successful expedition that has ever penetrated Africa, the chief collections from which are now housed in our National Museum in Washington, a few fine specimens coming to the American Museum. Not content with his magazine articles in _Scribner’s_ about the African trip, Roosevelt set to work with Heller and wrote one of the finest books we have, “African Game Trails,” a volume replete from cover to cover with accurate, original information—in fact, a real contribution.

Roosevelt’s return from Africa and triumphal progress through Germany, France, and England, which reached a climax in the boisterous welcome he received in the avenues of New York, left his personality utterly untouched by a trace of vanity. A few days afterward, at a very quiet lunch at the Museum, I spoke of the great opportunity afforded by the detachment of his life in Africa to gain a true perspective of his life and career, such as it is impossible to gain in the crowded conditions of the modern world. I shall always remember his gesture and reply. Partly raising his hands in front of his face, as if to shut out the inner vision, he said, “I never want to look at or think about myself.”

In the many conversations and conferences which we enjoyed together and in the correspondence of the succeeding years, the impression which Roosevelt made upon me was one of innate modesty, of full consciousness of the limitations of his powers and of sincere deference to the opinions of more experienced men, especially in his own beloved field of natural history. The same desire to be accurate and to be right displayed in the preparation of his Romanes Lecture reappeared from time to time in the submission of his opinions and theories to other naturalists.

Perhaps the finest illustration of his lack of self-deception came out in a private testimonial dinner given him by his friend Robert Collier. The dinner was by far the most brilliant one of the kind I have ever attended; the guests came from various parts of the country and included only his warm personal friends and admirers. When it came Roosevelt’s turn to speak he leaned forward, resting both closed hands on the table after the manner of Clemenceau, and spoke very quietly, with the utmost simplicity and directness, expressing with brief candor his own feelings regarding his reception abroad and at home. Briefly rehearsing his experiences abroad, he said that he was far more gratified by his reception at home and welcome to America than by any of the acclamation he had received abroad. Then, lowering his voice and his head, he continued:

But, my friends—you all are my friends—I am not deceived for one
moment. I know the American people; they have a way of erecting a
triumphal arch, and after the Conquering Hero has passed beneath it he
may expect to receive a shower of bricks on his back at any moment!
Yes, my friends, I am having a bully time. I am swimming on the very
crest of the wave and enjoying it immensely, but I am not for a moment
deceived; next week or next month I may be again in the trough of the
wave, but I assure you I shall be swimming just as hard and enjoying
life just as much as I now am.

None of his friends at that time believed that such a prophecy could possibly be realized, yet it came true with amazing suddenness. Within a few weeks his name had apparently left the headlines for good; it appeared only in small type in brief paragraphs on inside pages. To the superficial observer, to those who did not know the real Roosevelt and his powers of resilience his career was ended.

The lull in publicity gave him the quiet he needed to devote to three volumes of natural history and to prepare for his last and altogether greatest period of exploration. His manifold ability and the marked characteristics of his multiple personality came out in the course of his plans for the great expedition to South America projected in the spring of 1913 and executed between October, 1913, and June, 1914. He had selected an unknown and particularly dangerous region, where the native tribes had never been thoroughly subdued by the Brazilian government. He marked out this region as his first choice for a South American expedition. I sent word to him through our mutual friend, Frank M. Chapman, that I would never consent to his going to this particular region under the American Museum flag, that I would not assume even part of the responsibility for his entering such a dangerous country and not returning alive. With a smile he sent back to me through Chapman a characteristic reply:

Tell Osborn I have already lived and enjoyed as much of life as any
nine other men I know; I have had my full share, and if it is
necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite ready
to do so.

Although more prudent plans prevailed and we finally determined upon a route which resulted in the discovery of the Rio Roosevelt, yet the exposure, the excessively moist climate, the dearth of food, clothing and supplies, and the malarial infection very nearly cost Roosevelt his life. There is no doubt that the hazard of the trip meant nothing to him. While never reckless, he was absolutely fearless. His plans were made with the utmost intelligence and thoroughness, and with the trained assistance of his son Kermit, the South American experience and stalwart courage of George K. Cherrie, and the devoted companionship of Colonel Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon and Leo E. Miller, he led the most important expedition that has ever gone from North into South America. As a result of this expedition through Paraguay and the wilderness of Brazil more than 450 mammal and 1375 bird specimens were added to the American Museum collections, in addition to the geographic results, which aroused such a chorus of discussion and diversity of opinion. Roosevelt was so impressed with the importance of continuing the exploration that on his return he personally contributed two thousand dollars from his literary earnings to send his companion naturalists back to the field.

An American statesman, who should have known better, once characterized Roosevelt as “one who knew a little about more things than any one else in this country.” This gives an entirely false impression of Roosevelt’s mind, which was of quite the contrary order. What Roosevelt did know in history and in natural history he knew thoroughly; he went to the very bottom of things, if possible, and no one was more conscientious than he where his knowledge was limited or merely that of the intelligent layman. His thorough research in preparing for the African and South American expeditions was not that of the amateur or of the sportsman but of the trained naturalist who desires to learn as much as possible from previous students and explorers.

The State of New York will erect a splendid memorial to Theodore Roosevelt the Naturalist and Explorer which will perpetuate the idealistic and courageous aspects of his character and life as a naturalist. It will adjoin the American Museum of Natural History, which he loved and which inspired him to the activities of his youth and his mature years, where he sought the companionship of men of kindred ambitions and to which he repaired, in the intervals of politics and of pressing duties of every kind, for keen and concentrated discussions on animal coloration, the geographic distribution of mammals and birds, the history of human races, evolution of special groups of animals, and the furtherance of his expeditions. The memorial will remind boys and girls of all generations of Americans of Theodore Roosevelt’s spirit of self-effacement, of love, of zeal, of fearlessness, of energy, of intelligence with which they should approach nature in all of its wonderful aspects.

JOHN BURROUGHS—JUNE, 1896
]

THE TWO JOHNS

JOHN BURROUGHS
1837–1919

JOHN MUIR
1838–1914

“The two Johns,” as they were affectionately known by their comrades
on the Harriman Expedition to Alaska, were alike in their Christian
names, in their love of nature, and, to a certain extent, in their
powers of expression, but they were profoundly different in every
other respect. I had the privilege of knowing John Muir much more
intimately than I knew John Burroughs. I learned through
correspondence and through long and intimate conversations thoroughly
to understand his Scotch soul, which had a strong Norse element in it
and a moral fervor drawn from the Bible of the Covenanters. It is
interesting to contrast this Scotch type of soul with the English type
of soul seen in John Burroughs.

I had in mind for some time this idea of the racial soul as something
more profound in its influence than either the racial temperament or
the racial mind. If the body had a long history in the past, so has
the soul of man. In reading Wordsworth’s noble “Ode on the Intimations
of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” it flashed
across my mind that along an entirely different path I had reached the
same conclusion as Wordsworth: namely, that the human soul is full of
reminiscences and that it responds to conditions and experiences long
bygone.

THE RACIAL SOUL OF JOHN BURROUGHS

Indelibly stamped on my mind is the celebration of John Burroughs’s seventy-fifth birthday in the Bird Hall of the American Museum of Natural History, when six hundred children of the New York East Side schools, Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, no trace of American stock among them, came to tell Burroughs how they loved him and his writings. Twelve bright girls and boys, each representing a volume of the edition of his collected works and wearing the name of the volume suspended in front, came forward and recited a verse or a bit of prose from the volume represented. Tears came into the eyes of “the good gray poet,” Burroughs’s own designation of Walt Whitman, as the love and admiration of the spirited children poured in upon him. The scene reflected the high purpose of literature, the interpretation of the spiritual and moral influences of nature.

With a large following of grown men, a circle of admirers which included such extremes as Henry Ford and Theodore Roosevelt, Burroughs was preeminently the poet of the school children of America, his ability for humanizing his dumb friends of the animal world having caught the fancy of the children, thus giving him one of his claims to immortality in America, if not in other countries. It was his part in America to throw the light of nature into the “prison-house,” to use Wordsworth’s phrase, which civilization throws around our youth:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

His fellow poet of nature, John Muir, though in his way a writer of large imagination, did not humanize his birds and mammals as Burroughs did—a legitimate means of charming young and old with the habits and moralities of animal life, provided one makes it clear that it is an interpretation and an analogy and not a real resemblance being pictured. Burroughs loved nature of the East—of New York and New England—as Muir, his junior by only a year, cast over us the spell of the Pacific Coast, from Alaska to southern California, in all its virgin grandeur. On the voyages to Alaska in 1899 “the two Johns,” as they were affectionately called by their companions, met day by day. Alike in their disregard of conventions, in absent-mindedness in such trivial matters as clothing and food, and in their readiness to absorb and to pour out their nature-philosophy, it would appear that one steamer was not quite large enough for two such great men, accustomed as each was, in his advancing years, to unchecked discourse and to reverent attention and interest!

In my intimacy with Muir I learned that his views did not entirely harmonize with those of Burroughs; the difference was more or less traceable, I believe, to the Scotch ancestry of Muir and to his severe and rugged bringing up as contrasted with the more equable environment of Burroughs’s youth. Muir chose for observation those aspects of nature which present the greatest obstacles, glaciers and mountain tops, although he had tender moments with birds and found a personality in trees. He wrote about trees as has no one else in the whole history of trees, chiefly because he loved them as he loved men and women, and his powers of expression were gathered from classic British sources, such as the King James version of the Bible, Milton, Shakespeare, and Carlyle, with little influence from Thoreau and none from Whitman.

In feature and in spirit of the Nordic stock, with a dash of Celtic temperament, Burroughs was true to his heredity. From the paternal side of his ancestry Burroughs received, according to a close student of his forebears, his religious and moral nature, his stubbornness, his persistence, his emotional tendencies, his love of beauty, his curiosity as to causes and explanations; these were the Nordic traits of his pedigree. Of English ancestry on his mother’s side, he inherited from the Kelly line, perhaps Celtic, his slight melancholy and his care-free love of nature. There are numerous divines on the paternal Burroughs side, given to Bible reading; on the maternal Kelly side are country folk, lovers of the outdoors, fishermen, foxhunters, one hermit, and one Bible reader, “Granther Kelly.” Thus Burroughs’s intellectual and spiritual pedigree recalls what Goethe says of his own parents:

To my father I owe my stature,
My impulse to the serious life;
To my mother dear my joyous nature,
My love of story-telling.

At various times in Burroughs’s life one set of impulses and then another predominated, but his genius manifested itself in three ways: first, in the possession of what may be called the _nature supersense_, a rare endowment observed also in Wordsworth, Thoreau, and Emerson, and recorded by them in some of their most beautiful sentences:

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and
imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange
liberty in nature, a part of itself. (Thoreau: “Walden.”)

... We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night
and morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their
bosom. How willingly we would escape the barriers which render them
comparatively impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought,
and suffer nature to entrance us.... These enchantments are medicinal,
they sober and heal us. (Emerson: “Nature.”)

Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and
stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest
hour of the day. And as the hermit’s evening hymn goes up from the
deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of
sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint
types and symbols. (Burroughs: “In the Hemlocks.”)

Of the reality of this nature supersense there is as little doubt as of its rarity.

Burroughs may be called a natural philosopher—a nature-lover more than a naturalist, for the latter term is reserved for the few gifted ones, like Darwin and Fabre. His powers of original observation of nature were not great powers such as would entitle him to be called a great naturalist, but powers of intimate, truthful, and sympathetic observation joined with a love of expression that made him a prolific producer, and that suggested the title of his first paper, “Expression,” published in 1860. The naturalist instinct has certainly been rare among other poets and men of letters. Emerson’s “Nature,” published in 1835, might have been written at his library table, gazing into the firelight, although his poems, “May-Day,” “To the Humble Bee,” “The Rhodora,” and “Titmouse,” are full of the nature vision. Maeterlinck’s delightful naturalistic writings are rather the mastery of the observations of Fabre than of a single original observation on his own part. Similarly, the natural philosophy so beautifully expressed by Tennyson in 1850 in his “In Memoriam” was drawn from conversations in a Darwinian club. Wordsworth was richly endowed with the nature supersense, perhaps more so than Burroughs, but he was neither observer, naturalist, nor natural philosopher; he was preeminently the spiritual interpreter. On the other hand, the naturalistic poetry of Erasmus Darwin at the end of the eighteenth century, his “Botanic Garden,” his “Loves of the Plants,” were the rhythmic expression of original and philosophical thought of a high order. This is true also of Goethe’s natural history writings and poetic allusions to nature which sprang from original work in botany and anatomy and brought him near a conception of the theory of evolution a half-century before Charles Darwin.

We look to Gilbert White as one of Burroughs’s prototypes in the union of observation and expression, to Izaak Walton in the joy of outdoor life, and especially to the truly great Americans, Thoreau and Walt Whitman. That Burroughs fell under Whitman’s influence very early, his poem “Waiting,” written at the age of twenty-five, would seem to indicate.

My own attention, at the age of twenty-two, was called to Whitman in a memorable manner, when he was not considered fit reading for the young. It was in 1879, in the rooms of Francis Balfour, younger brother of Arthur, at Cambridge University, where there were weekly dinners at which one met wits and celebrities from London and Oxford, as well as from Cambridge. One evening I was approached by a tall youth with a handsome face, long hair, flowing collar, and sensuous mouth, who began immediately to offer an opinion of American literature. He said: “You have no real poets in America. To me Longfellow, Whittier, and the others are mere echoes of English singers. You Americans have only one sweet and true songster, whom you do not appreciate, and that is Walt Whitman.” These words and young Oscar Wilde’s appearance are indelibly impressed upon my memory because they first brought home to me the idea that the all-essential quality in a writer of eminence is that he must be of his country, of his soil. This quality, preeminent in Whitman, was possessed in no less degree by Burroughs, although Burroughs was by no means so poetic. Americanism in Americans is essential for the fundamental biological reason that our spiritual and intellectual powers, to reach their highest development, must react to our own environment and not to some other distant or bygone environment. Welcome as British, French, or classical reactions may be among us, they are not of our soil.

These are interpretations of Burroughs’s genius, not explanations; we may examine and compare him with other men, but we cannot explain him any more than we can explain the prehistoric artists of the cave period. In each case the genius arrives, assumes leadership, and lifts an entire community of less gifted souls to a little higher level.

This brings us to the sources of the racial soul. Why did the soul of John Burroughs react throughout his life to the genial conditions of our East, to its birds and plants and flowers, to its seasons, to its few retreats still accessible where Nature has preserved some of her unrestrained beauty in her contest with the ruthless destroyer that we call Civilization? Why was he the poet of our robins, of our apple-trees, of the beauties of our forests and farms? Why was he the ardent and sometimes violent prophet of conservation?

Whence the poet’s soul, whence the soul of a race, of a people, of a nation? Have we not reason to believe that there is _a racial soul_ as well as a racial mind, a racial system of morals, a racial anatomy? This is the thought to which I have been led in trying to penetrate to the inner meaning of the life and works of John Burroughs, because, eager as I am about anatomy, I am far more eager about the origin and development of the moral, spiritual, and intellectual nature of man—the mystery of mysteries in biology at the present time. When Huxley in his Romanes Lecture held that Darwinism fails to throw light on the moral nature of man, he was, in my opinion, wrong; yet the origin of the anatomy and even of the moral nature of man is relatively simple when compared with the origin of the spirit and mind of man. The peculiar mystery about the origin of our spiritual and intellectual powers is that they appear to arise before they are needed—they are ready to play their part before the time and opportunity arise.

Moreover, we have long since abandoned Herbert Spencer’s teaching that our spiritual and intellectual faculties are developed through the inherited effects of use, and we now adhere to Weismann’s teaching that the use or disuse of our spiritual and intellectual powers has no effect whatever on our offspring, except in so far as it tends to keep us in a normal state of mind and health. The death-blow to Herbert Spencer’s view was given in the discoveries of prehistoric art within the last quarter of a century, from which it appears that a race of men of spiritual and intellectual powers arose in which the art spirit had little to do with the struggle for existence and may have run counter to it, as it does at the present time. These discoveries also appear to give pause to the Darwinian theory of the origin of our spiritual and intellectual powers through Natural Selection, for the periods in man’s history and prehistory when the artist or the man of letters has been best fitted to survive have been few and far between.

Again, this sudden emergence of our spiritual and intellectual nature from the man of the environing woods, forests, streams, plains, and deserts of primeval Asia and Europe does not favor Bergson’s view of the creative evolution of an internal spiritual and intellectual impulse which must flower out in time, because if Bergson were right we should have spiritual and intellectual genius appearing out of season and entirely out of accord with environment. This is not the case, because there is always an adjustment, a relation, between the internal spiritual and intellectual powers and the external nature of the time, the beauty or the ugliness, the ease or the hardship. It is through this reciprocal relation of the inner man and the environing world that there are so few misfits. If Bergson were right, our western world would be full of disharmonies; we should find Mediterranean geniuses springing up in Scandinavian atmospheres, as is never the case. The _racial_ creative spirit of man always reacts to its own historic racial environment, into the remote past.

Our conclusion is that distinctive spiritual and intellectual powers originate along lines of slow racial evolution in climate and surroundings of distinct kinds. In the south were the Mediterranean lines of migration along sunny seas, formidable enough in the winter season, favorable to rapid development of maritime powers, together with artistic powers, the Mycenæans, the Phœnicians, the early Italian races. The Mediterraneans take nature for granted. In the centre of Europe were the lines of Alpine or Celtic invaders, kept entirely away from the sea, races of agriculturalists and of miners, rich in mechanical talent, neither adventurous nor sea-loving. To the north lived a race of hunters, of seafaring adventurers, resolutely contending with the forces of nature, fond of the open, curious and inquisitive about the causes of things; deliberate in spiritual development, very gradually they reach the greatest intellectual heights and depths.

The racial aptitudes in these three environments of the past twenty thousand years are now revealed in anatomy and will be no less clearly revealed in the predispositions of morals, of intellect, and of spirit. Here nature, religion, and beauty, kept apart by the superficial vision of man in science, theology, and æsthetics, are one in the eternal vision and purpose of the Creator. In the marvelous continuity of heredity a thousand years are as yesterday.

This is my idea of the origin of the racial soul, this is my interpretation of Wordsworth’s immortal lines:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

Burroughs, the poet of today, found himself at home in the environment of his remote flint-making ancestors of northern Europe. The soul that rose with him had its setting for countless generations in the north; it came from afar, not in forgetfulness, reflecting and recalling the northern clouds of nature’s glory.

JOHN MUIR
]

JOHN MUIR

I believe that John Muir’s name is destined to be immortal through his writings on mountains, forests, rivers, meadows and the sentiment of the animal and plant life they contain. I believe that no one else has ever lived with just the same sentiment toward trees and flowers and the works of nature in general as that which John Muir manifested in his life, his conversations and his writings.

In the splendid journey which I had the privilege of taking with him to Alaska in 1896 I first became aware of his passionate love of nature in all its forms and his reverence for it as the direct handiwork of the Creator. He retained from his early religious training under his father this belief, which is so strongly expressed in the Old Testament, that all the works of nature are directly the works of God. In this sense I have never known any one whose nature-philosophy was more thoroughly theistic; at the same time he was a thorough-going evolutionist and always delighted in my own evolutionary studies, which I described to him from time to time in the course of our journeyings and conversations.

It was in Alaska that he quoted the lines from Goethe’s “Wilhelm Meister” which inspired all his travels:

Keep not standing fixed and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam;
Head and hand, where’er thou foot it,
And stout heart are still at home.
In each land the sun doth visit,
We are gay whate’er betide,
To give room for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide.

Another sentiment of his regarding trees and flowers always impressed me: that was his attributing to them a personality, an individuality, such as we associate with certain human beings and animals, but rarely with plants. To him a tree was something not only to be loved but to be respected and revered. I well remember his intense indignation over the proposal by his friend Charles S. Sargent to substitute the name _Magnolia fœtida_ for _Magnolia grandiflora_ on the ground of priority. He quoted Sargent as saying, “After all, ‘what’s in a name?’” and himself as replying, “There is everything in the name; why inflict upon a beautiful and defenseless plant for all time the stigma of such a name as _Magnolia fœtida_? You yourself would not like to have your own name changed from Charles S. Sargent to ‘the malodorous Sargent.’”

John Muir’s incomparable literary style did not come to him easily, but as the result of the most intense effort. I observed his methods of writing in connection with two of his books upon which he was engaged during the years 1911 and 1912. He came to our home on the Hudson in June, 1911, after the Yale commencement, where he had received the degree of LL.D. on June 21. He brought with him his new silken hood, in which he said he had looked very grand in the commencement parade. On Friday, June 21, he was established in Woodsome Lodge, a log cabin on a secluded mountain height, to complete his volume on the Yosemite. Daily he rose at 4.30 o’clock, and after a simple cup of coffee labored incessantly on his two books, “The Yosemite” and “Boyhood and Youth.” It was very interesting to watch how difficult it was for him. In my diary of the time I find the following notes: “Knowing his beautiful and easy style it is very interesting to learn how difficult it is for him; he groans over his labors, he writes and rewrites and interpolates. He loves the simplest English language and admires most of all Carlyle, Emerson, and Thoreau. He is a very firm believer in Thoreau and starts my reading deeply of this author. He also loves his Bible and is constantly quoting it, as well as Milton and Burns. In his attitude toward nature, as well as in his special gifts and abilities, Muir shares many qualities with Thoreau. First among these is his mechanical ability, his fondness for the handling of tools; second, his close identification with nature; third, his interpretation of the religious spirit of nature; fourth, his happiness in solitude with nature; fifth, his lack of sympathy with crowds of people; sixth, his intense love of animals.” Thoreau’s quiet residence at Walden is to be contrasted with Muir’s world-wide journeyings from Scotland to Wisconsin; his penniless journey down the Mississippi to Louisiana, Florida, across Panama, and northward into California in its early grandeur; his establishment of the sawmill, showing again his mechanical ability, as a means of livelihood in the Yosemite; his climbs in the high Sierras and discovery of still living glaciers; his eagerness to see the largest glaciers of Alaska and his several journeys and sojourns there; his wandering all over the great western and eastern forests of the United States; his visits to special forests in Europe; his world tour, without preconceived plan, including the wondrous forests of Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Asia. Finally, his very last great journey.

When starting out on this South American journey, from which I among other friends tried to dissuade him, he often quoted the phrase, “I never turn back.” Although he greatly desired to have a comrade on this journey and often urged me to accompany him, he finally was compelled to start out alone, quoting Milton: “I have chosen the lonely way.” On July 26 I said good-by to this very dear friend, leaving him to work on his books and prepare for the long journey to South America, especially to see the forests of Araucaria. I know that at this time he had little intention of going on to Africa. It was impulse that led him from the east coast of South America to take a long northward journey in order to catch a steamer for the Cape of Good Hope.

Among the personal characteristics which stand out like crystal in the minds and hearts of his friends were his hatred of shams and his scorn of the conventions of life, his boldness and fearlessness of attack, well illustrated in his assault on the despoilers of the Hetch Hetchy Valley of the Yosemite, whom he loved to characterize as “thieves and robbers.” It was a great privilege to be associated with him in this campaign. But certainly his chief characteristic was his intimacy with nature and passionate love of its beauties; also, I believe, his marvelous insight into the creative powers of nature, closely interwoven with his deep religious sentiments and beliefs. Like John Burroughs in many of his characteristics, in others he was totally different, and these differences I attribute to the racial antecedents of the two men, as studied in the “Racial Soul of John Burroughs.”

There were published in the New York _Evening Mail_ some verses by Charles L. Edson with which I would close this all too brief tribute:

John o’ the mountains, wonderful John,
Is past the summit and traveling on:
The turn of the trail on the mountain side,
A smile and “Hail!” where the glaciers slide,
A streak of red where the condors ride,
And John is over the Great Divide.

John o’ the mountains camps to-day
On a level spot by the Milky Way;
And God is telling him how He rolled
The smoking earth from the iron mold,
And hammered the mountains till they were cold,
And planted the Redwood trees of old.

And John o’ the mountains says: “I knew,
And I wanted to grapple the hand o’ you;
And now we’re sure to be friends and chums
And camp together till chaos comes.”

HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER
]

HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER
1872–1922

Like Theodore Roosevelt, Butler was a man of many talents and each
talent was in the nature of a surprise to his friends. Under his
extremely quiet and gentle personality lay force of idealism and of
resolution, of courage and persistence which led him to great heights
as investigator, teacher, and explorer. It is in respect to this last
talent only that this “Impression” is written, because I spoke in the
memorial service at Graduate College with others who dwelt on his
other talents. As an archæological explorer Butler showed his
resourcefulness and powers of command in the most remarkable way.
Bedouins, Arabs, native Turks yielded to his quiet and persuasive
power, though he rarely raised his voice above a low monotone. Again
we turn to the language of Dante and of Homer to express appreciation
of this great man.

HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER, EXPLORER

In the “Divine Comedy,” Dante speaks of Ulysses, of exploration of the western seas and lands, of braving dangers, of overcoming obstacles, of offering home, family, friends, life itself, in the quest of the great unknown, its wonders, its beauties, its riches.

“O brothers!” I began, “who to the west
Through perils without number now have reach’d;
To this the short remaining watch, that yet
Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof
Of the unpeopled world, following the track
Of Phœbus. Call to mind from whence ye sprang:
Ye were not form’d to live the lives of brutes,
But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.”[12]

For two thousand years our ancestors, thus inspired, were facing the setting sun, until the whole earth had been encircled by explorers. Then, only a brief hundred years ago, the indomitable human spirit turned eastward, toward the rising sun, the Orient, toward the buried treasures and past beauties of the very peoples and civilizations which had been pressing westward from the dawn of history.

Led by Layard, Schliemann, Evans, and a host of others, and chiefly inspired by de Vogué, Howard Crosby Butler became a crusader in this eastward tide of exploration. As a follower in his youthful Princeton days, and in the broad and deep discipline of his graduate years, he prepared himself. A short seven years after graduation, namely, in the year 1899, we find him in the deserts of north central Syria in full command—no longer a follower, but a leader, imaginative, determined, successful, soon becoming distinguished. No one of us who knew the gentle and almost too gentlemanly student of art and the classics under Marquand and Frothingham would have divined his latent powers to command Orientals, whether Arabs, Bedouins, or Turks. _Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re_, he was first trusted, then almost idolized, by his workmen.

It was the sterling integrity, as well as the consummate skill, of Butler’s work in Syria (1899–1909) which led to the highest distinction ever offered to an American and Christian explorer by a Mohammedan government, namely, the unsolicited _invitation_ to enter and take command of the excavation of Sardis. The Turks knew they could trust Butler; they knew that he was absolutely honorable. The difficulties of Sardis exploration had seemed insurmountable to others; the great period of civilization and culture of Asia Minor, just older than the Syrian and extending back to the Lydian and beyond, was buried fathoms deep. These deeply buried ruins were to be entered under his brilliant leadership between 1910 and 1922. His was the secret of self-forgetfulness in a great cause. He never spoke to us of himself, always of the workmen, of the colleagues, of the students, of the most beloved Alma Mater. He was driven on, not by ambition, but by love—love of his fellow men, love of his profession, love of beauty and truth.

Butler’s genial and idealistic view of life is reflected in the characters and personalities which he brought to life, and now that he has taken his place among the noble shades of the long period of 600 B. C. to 600 A. D., the artisans, the architects, the poets, the merchants, the rulers, the governors, even the shade of the supreme ruler, Crœsus, will be grateful to him. We hear them murmuring: “We have been charged with a mere love of gain and of the gold of Pactolus. You have shown the world that we loved beauty, that we kept our covenants, that we honored our deities.” Still more will the shades of ancient Syria and the shades of honorable men and women of the early Christian Church, from its very beginnings beneath the shadows of the ruined pillars of Sardis to the glorious temples of Syria, honor and welcome him.

The span of Butler’s life as an explorer was only twenty-two years; his name and his influence will endure as many centuries. So in _our_ bereavement we are consoled by _his_ immortality.

... That which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.[13]

BIOGRAPHIES BY THE AUTHOR
1883–1924

FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR, Embryologist. _Science_, vol. 2, no. 31,
Sept. 7, 1883, pp. 299–301.

ARNOLD GUYOT, Geologist. _The Princetonian_, vol. 8, 1883–84, p. 308.

THOMAS H. HUXLEY, Biologist.

Memorial address before the Biological Section of New York Academy
of Sciences, Nov. 11, 1895. _Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci._, vol. 15,
1895–96, Sig. dated Jan. 14, 15, 1896, pp. 40–50. _Science_, N.
S., vol. 3, no. 57, Jan. 31, 1896, pp. 147–154.

“A Student’s Reminiscences of Huxley.” Biol. Lectures, Marine
Biol. Lab. of Wood’s Hole. Ginn & Co., Boston, 1896, pp. 29–42.

G. BROWN GOODE, Zoologist. “Goode as a Naturalist.” Address at the G.
Brown Goode Memorial Meeting, U. S. National Museum, February 13.
_Science_, N. S., vol. 5, no. 114, March 5, 1897, pp. 373–378.

EDWARD DRINKER COPE, Palæontologist.

Memorial Biography. _Science_, N. S., vol. 5, no. 123, May 7,
1897, pp. 705–717.

“A Great Naturalist.” _The Century Magazine_, vol. 55, no. 1, Nov.
1897, pp. 10–15.

“Life and Works of Cope.” Introduction to Syllabus of Lectures on
the Vertebrata by E. D. Cope. Univ. of Penn., 1898, pp.
iii-xxxv.

“Work in the Mammals.” Address in memory of E. D. Cope, delivered
at the meeting in the hall of the American Philosophical Society
held in Philadelphia for promoting useful knowledge, Nov. 12,

1897. _Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc. Memorial Volume I_, 1900, pp. 296–303.

HENRY FILHOL, Palæontologist. _Science_, N. S., vol. 15, no. 388, June
6, 1902, p. 912.

KARL ALFRED VON ZITTEL, Palæontologist. _Science_, N. S., vol. 19, no.
474, Jan. 29, 1904, pp. 186–188.

JOHN BELL HATCHER, Palæontologist. “Explorations of John Bell Hatcher
for the Palæontological Monographs of the U. S. Geological Survey,
together with a statement of his contributions to American Geology
and Palæontology.” Monographs of the U. S. Geol. Survey, vol. 49,
“The Ceratopsia” by Hatcher, Marsh, Lull. Washington, 1907, pp.
17–26.

MORRIS KETCHAM JESUP, Administrator.

_Science_, N. S., vol. 27, no. 684, Feb. 7, 1908, pp. 235–236.

Address of Welcome at commemoration of the founding of the
American Museum of Natural History. Unveiling of the statue of
Morris K. Jesup. _Amer. Mus. Journ._, vol. 10, March, 1910, pp.
60–67.

CHARLES DARWIN, Biologist.

“Remarks on Darwin.” _The Evening Post_, New York, Feb. 12, 1909,
p. 3.

“Darwin Celebrations in the United States.” _Nature_, vol. 80, No.
2055, March 18, 1909, pp. 72–73.

“Life and Works of Darwin.” Address delivered Feb. 12, 1909, at
Columbia University on the hundredth anniversary of Darwin’s
birth, Feb. 12, 1809, as the first of a series of nine lectures
on “Charles Darwin and His Influence on Science.” _Pop. Sci.
Monthly_, vol. 74, no. 4, April, 1909, pp. 313–343.

“Acceptance of the Portrait of Darwin.” _Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci._,
vol. 19, no. 1, pt. 1, July 31, 1909, pp. 21–22.

“The Darwin Centenary.” Address in reply to the reception of
delegates, Cambridge, England, June

23, 1909. _Science_, N. S., vol. 30, no. 763, Aug. 13, 1909, pp.
199–200.

JOHN I. NORTHROP, Zoologist. Introduction to “A Naturalist in the
Bahama Islands.” A memorial volume. 8vo. Columbia University Press,
June 15, 1910, 276 pp.

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, Naturalist.

“Scientific Worthies.” _Nature_, vol. 89, no. 2224, June 13, 1912,
pp. 367–370.

“Alfred Russel Wallace, 1823–1913.” _Pop. Sci. Monthly_, vol. 83,
no. 6, pp. 523–537.

“A Great Naturalist.” _Amer. Mus. Journ._, vol. 13, no. 8, pp.
331–333.

JOSEPH LEIDY, Anatomist. Biographical Memoir. Read by title at meeting
of National Academy of Sciences, April 18–20, 1911. Presented to the
Academy at the April Meeting, 1912. _Biographical Memoirs National
Acad. of Sciences_, part of vol. 7, Feb., 1913, pp. 339–396.

LOUIS PASTEUR, Bacteriologist. “The New Order of Sainthood.” _The
Churchman_, vol. 107, no. 15 (whole no. 3560), April 12, 1913, pp.
474–475. Reprinted by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 12mo, October, 1913,
17 pp.

EBERHARD FRASS, Palæontologist. _Science_, N. S., vol. 41, no. 1059,
April 16, 1915, pp. 571–572.

JOHN MUIR, Naturalist. _Sierra Club Bulletin_, vol. 10, no. 1,
January, 1916, pp. 29–32.

GUSTAV SCHWALBE, Anatomist. _Science_, N. S., vol. 44, no. 1125, July
21, 1916, p. 97.

JOEL ASAPH ALLEN, Zoologist.

Foreword to “Autobiographical Notes and a Bibliography of the
Scientific Publications of Joel Asaph Allen.” _Amer. Mus. Nat.
Hist. Publ._, 8vo, Dec. 26, 1916, xi and 215 pp.

“An Appreciation.” _Nat. Hist._, vol. 21, pp. 513–515.

WILLIAM BERRYMAN SCOTT, Palæontologist. “The Work of Professor William
Berryman Scott ’77.” _The Princeton Alumni Weekly_, vol. 17, no. 10,
Dec. 5, 1917, pp. 225–226.

JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE, Lawyer. A Tribute from the Trustees of the
American Museum. _Mus. Publ._ 4to, June 25, 1918, 34 pp.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Explorer.

“Colonel Roosevelt.” _The (New York) Evening Post_, vol. 118, no.
41, p. 7, Jan. 6, 1919.

“Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist.” _Nat. Hist._, vol. 19, no. 1,
March 28, 1919, pp. 9–10.

“Roosevelt the Student of Nature.” _The New York Sun_, vol. 89,
no. 55, Nov. 3, 1921, p. 24.

SAMUEL WENDELL WILLISTON, Palæontologist.

_Journ. of Geol._, vol. 26, no. 8, Nov.-Dec., 1918, pp. 673–689.
_Science_, N. S., vol. 49, no. 1264, pp. 274–278, March 21,
1919. _Bull. Geol. Soc. of Amer._, vol. 30, pp. 66–76.

“Samuel Wendell Williston—The man and the palæontologist.” _Sigma
Xi Quart._, vol. 7, no. 1, July 19, 1919, pp. 2–6.

JAMES BRYCE, Author. Address on Viscount Bryce at the Memorial Service
in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, March 5, 1922.

JOHN BURROUGHS, Naturalist. “The Racial Soul of John Burroughs.”
Address at the Memorial Meeting of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters, November 18, 1921.

HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER, Archæologist. Address at the Memorial Meeting in
Graduate College, Princeton University, October 21, 1922.

-----

Footnote 1:

The author has written fifty-seven biographic sketches, forty of which
are listed in the appendix of this volume.

Footnote 2:

See his principal work, entitled “Naturalist on the River Amazons,” 2
vols., 8vo, John Murray, London. 1863.

Footnote 3:

Alfred Tennyson, Edgar Allen Poe, Felix Mendelssohn, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, William Ewart Gladstone.

Footnote 4:

Vallery-Radot, René. “The Life of Pasteur.” Translation of Mrs. R. L.
Devonshire. (London, Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., 1906, pp. 416,
417.)

Footnote 5:

Osler, Sir Wm. “Man’s Redemption of Man.” 12mo. (Paul B. Hoeber, New
York.)

Footnote 6:

Aristotle (“Physics,” ii, 2). “Art mimics nature.”

Footnote 7:

Gen. 2:15; 3:19.

Footnote 8:

“The Vision of Dante Alighieri.” Translated by the Reverend H. F. Cary.
Canto XI, Hell, p. 47. “Dante’s Divine Comedy,” with an Introduction
and Notes by Edmund G. Gardner, M.A. (London, J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.
New York, E. P. Dutton & Co.)

Footnote 9:

Longfellow’s Translation, Inf., Vol. XI, pp. 97–108.

Footnote 10:

This passage probably indicates that he was sensitive to being laughed
at for his interest in these animals.

Footnote 11:

“The Smaller Birds of the Adirondacks in Franklin County, New York”
(jointly with H. D. Minot).

Footnote 12:

Dante Alighieri, “Inferno” XXVI, ll. 112–120. Translated by the Reverend
H. F. Cary, A.M.

Footnote 13:

Alfred Tennyson. “Ulysses.” Last four lines.

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