Yosemite, the Big Trees and the High Sierra: A Selective Bibliography, by Francis P. Farquhar. 104 pages, illustrations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948. Price, $7.50.

The shortest definition of bibliography is that it is the description and history of books. But here Francis P. Farquhar gives double measure. He presents us with the description and history of 25 notable books which in turn deal with the description and history of our greatest single mountain range—California’s Sierra Nevada. So, when we have finished reading this delightful bibliography, we have not only gained considerable knowledge of the exploration and human development of Yosemite and the High Sierra, but also met and become acquainted with the men and women who wrote on these subjects from 1833 to 1915. And it is clear that they were an interesting group of people.

Farquhar leads off with “The Adventures of Zenas Leonard,” first published in 1839. This is the diary of a young Pennsylvanian, member of Joseph Reddeford Walker’s expedition, which made the second crossing of the Sierra in 1833. The party consisted of trappers and mountain men scouting from Great Salt Lake to California in the employ of Captain Bonneville’s fur-trading company. Leonard was the first man to report on the precipices and waterfalls of Yosemite and the giant sequoias of the Sierra Nevada. As such, he deserves high place on the roster of Western explorers. However, it was not until 1851 that the valley was “discovered,” named and presented to the world, and a year later that California’s Big Trees made their public debut.

Farquhar then proceeds to trace the world’s literary reaction to these Far Western marvels with discussions of such classics as Hutchings’ Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California (1860) and In the Heart of the Sierras (1886), Whitney’s Yosemite Book( and Guide Books (1868-1874), King’s Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1872), Bunnell’s Discovery of the Yosemite (1880), and some 19 other books, pamphlets and portfolios of pictures.

John Muir is represented by his Letters to a Friend, written between 1866 and 1879 and published posthumously in 1915. They were addressed to Mrs. Jeanne C. Carr, a lady of broad understanding and tact who had great influence upon Muir’s career. At first blush, it might seem that the author of My First Summer in the Sierra and The Mountains of California had been slighted. But, after all, this is a selective bibliography, ably explained and defended in a preface, and to do full justice to Muir’s prolific literary output would require a separate volume. Possibly such a project is on Farquhar’s writing schedule.

The world’s startled reaction to the Big Trees is shown in three rare booklets from the author’s own remarkable collection of Western Americana. Several sequoia gigantea in the Calaveras Grove were stripped of bark for more than a hundred feet, sections numbered and sent around the Horn to Boston, New York, Philadelphia and London. The bark sections were reassembled in those cities to give amazed citizens an idea of the true size of these “vegetable monsters”—at a price, of course.

One book on the list has never before, to my knowledge, been included in a Sierra Nevada bibliography. This is The Conquest of Mount Whitney, by Shuki Nakamura (Tokyo, 1931). This account, which reads from front to back and right to left, records the first Japanese ascent of the highest peak in the United States. One of Nakamura’s two companions, Tadasu Kinoshita, wrote a more ambitious book, profusely illustrated, on the mountains of Western America from the Canadian Rockies to Southern California, including chapters on climbing Mount Whitney and trail packing in Sequoia National Park. A map of the Park with characters in Japanese looks slightly like an Oriental print. Farquhar lists the title of this book as Record of the American Alps (Tokyo, 1931). The title of my own copy has been translated for me as Crossing the American Alps. But since neither Farquhar’s nor my accomplishments include a knowledge of Japanese we have no solid basis for argument. But we appear to be in violent conflict as to the name of the “John Muir of Japan” to whom the book was dedicated: Farquhar’s translator makes it Ojima Torimizu; mine, Usui Kojima. You can take your pick. At any rate, these volumes with Kinoshita’s The National Parks of the United States make an interesting addition to books about the mountains of the American West.

Farquhar is an authority on the exploration and climbing records of our Western mountains and probably the foremost historian of the Sierra Nevada. Therefore, one is puzzled at one point to find this meticulous chronicler using a vague supposition when a pertinent and interesting historical fact was available. On page 62 he writes, “Although Walker’s party, in 1833, had undoubtedly looked into Yosemite Valley from the rim above, and more than one prospector in 1849 or 1850 had had a glimpse of it from some point of vantage, the effective discovery dates from March, 1851 … (italics mine). Whether prospectors saw Yosemite or not is conjectural, but a diary was discovered several years ago, written by an itinerant millwright named William Penn Abrams, which accurately describes an accidental visit to the valley on 18 October 1849. A notice of this diary appeared in the Sierra Club Bulletin for May 1947. Although judged by everyone who has seen it to be authentic, there seems to be some reluctance to include this interesting old journal, with the second recorded account of the valley, in the documented history of Yosemite.

As usual, the University of California Press has turned out a beautiful book and the nine illustrations—reproductions of title pages and portraits of authors—are excellent. We look forward to more volumes by Francis Farquhar on the history and lore of the Sierra Nevada, but we do entertain a faint hope that they may be produced at a slightly lower cost.

Weldon F. Heald