If you ever write to C. Norton in Italy, send him my kind remembrances.

—­T.  C. (with about the velocity of Engraving—­on lead!)*

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* The letter was dictated, but the postscript, from the first
signature, was written in a tremulous hand by Carlyle himself.
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CLXXXVIII.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 June, 1871

My Dear Carlyle,—­’T is more than time that you should hear from me whose debts to you always accumulate.  But my long journey to California ended in many distractions on my return home.  I found Varioloid in my house... and I was not permitted to enter it for many days, and could only talk with wife, son, and daughter from the yard....  I had crowded and closed my Cambridge lectures in haste, and went to the land of Flowers invited by John M. Forbes, one of my most valued friends, father of my daughter Edith’s husband.  With him and his family and one or two chosen guests, the trip was made under the best conditions of safety, comfort, and company, I measuring for the first time one entire line of the Country.

California surprises with a geography, climate, vegetation, beasts, birds, fishes even, unlike ours; the land immense; the Pacific sea; Steam brings the near neighborhood of Asia; and South America at your feet; the mountains reaching the altitude of Mont Blanc; the State in its six hundred miles of latitude producing all our Northern fruits, and also the fig, orange, and banana.  But the climate chiefly surprised me.  The Almanac said April; but the day said June;—­and day after day for six weeks uninterrupted sunshine.  November and December are the rainy months.  The whole Country, was covered with flowers, and all of them unknown to us except in greenhouses.  Every bird that I know at home is represented here, but in gayer plumes.

On the plains we saw multitudes of antelopes, hares, gophers,—­ even elks, and one pair of wolves on the plains; the grizzly bear only in a cage.  We crossed one region of the buffalo, but only saw one captive.  We found Indians at every railroad station,—­the squaws and papooses begging, and the “bucks,” as they wickedly call them, lounging.  On our way out, we left the Pacific Railroad for twenty-four hours to visit Salt Lake; called on Brigham Young—­just seventy years old—­who received us with quiet uncommitting courtesy, at first,—­a strong-built, self-possessed, sufficient man with plain manners.  He took early occasion to remark that “the one-man-power really meant all-men’s-power.”  Our interview was peaceable enough, and rather mended my impression of the man; and, after our visit, I read in the Descret newspaper his Speech to his people on the previous Sunday.  It avoided religion, but was full of Franklinian good sense.  In one point, he says:  “Your fear of the Indians is nonsense.  The Indians like the white men’s food.  Feed them well, and they will surely die.”  He is clearly a sufficient ruler, and perhaps civilizer of his kingdom of blockheads ad interim; but I found that the San Franciscans believe that this exceptional power cannot survive Brigham.