WCP4498

[1]

Stockton, Cal[ifornia]

June 19^th. [18]87

My dear Meldola

Yours dated April 28^th. reached me here, and its high-foluting glorification of the American Eagle was duly appreciated by the family of my brother, born & raised in this City.

Now for myself. I have crossed this mighty continent from Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate. I have crossed the Alleghanies & the Rockies & the Sierra Nevada; I have wandered on the mighty prairie where the bodies of the now almost extinct buffalo lie in heaps upon ^the ground. I have gazed upon the mighty Niagara, and on the liquid torrent of mud[?] that "mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea". I have looked up with aching eyes and breaking back at the Washington Monument and at the huge precipices of the Yosemite, and lastly & most recently — I have wandered for days in the glorious pine-forests where grow the majestic Sequioas — the one thing that [2] that [sic] has more impressed and satisfied me than anything else I have seen in America. Amid all the exaggerations of guidebooks & popular writers, they remain one of the living wonders of the world, perhaps more than anything else to a lover of nature, worth a journey across America to see.

And amid all my wanderings I have been impressed with the truth and insight of Dickens in his estimate of the American character. "We air a great people, — and we require to be cracked up", — is as true now as ever. It is implied in the eternally repeated questions — "And how do you like America." — "How do you like our beautiful country" — "What do you think of our great Country, Sir?" And there is everywhere the suggested implication that a poor down-trodden Britisher ought to be filled with unalloyed admiration, and even envy, of this great & free and glorious people, who are the [3] smartest, cutest, cussingest, and most dollar-making people in the universe.

My own impression hitherto is, that America is a splendid country to travel [word deleted] in, but a very poor country (for an Englishman) to live in. In the east the winters and springs are unendurable in their severity and changeability, here the summers are equally unendurable, for their drought, heat, and dust. Here in California the ground is all bare or yellow with burned up herbage. I have travelled 500 miles through it already & have seen no green spot. My final conclusion is — "England with all thy faults I love thee still".

I hope to be back in August, after a week in the high Sierras, another in the high Rockies, another in the Adirondacks.

I have gathered much information & may perhaps perpetrate another book (a small one) on America. Kind remembrances to your wife & to all friends. I hear Willie is getting on well at School.

Yours very faithfully| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

^{Melting all day [}illeg.^{] 98◦ in shade! My Darwin lecture} was ^{appreciated by many audiences to others it was simply unintelligible!1}