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Show 430. ties, but also that they would bring t h e i r own pressure to bear on Congress, and stop the creation of a Park. The l a t t er became the case, as he had feared. The proposal never got out of committee d e s p i t e Noble's recommendation for "favorable consideration and a c t i o n . " The a l t e r n a t i v e to lumbering or sheep herding was tourism, of course, and so Muir had to recommend that the t o u r i s t v i s it this place; for, "notwithstanding i t s tremendous rockiness, it is an Eden of plant-beauty from end to end." But the ways of this wilderness were not easy. On i t s mountain t r a i l s, one was "seldom compelled to travel more than two miles to make an advance of one, and l e s s than half of the miles are perpendicular." These were not the easy highways of Yosemite. Though he argued that "Almost every one able to cross a cobblestoned s t r e e t in a crowd may climb Mount Whitney," he also knew that few could enjoy the d i r e c t route from the east which entailed a 9,000 foot climb. So he recommended that "soft, succulent people should go the mule way." The mule way! This was the very way he had found so unpleasant in his excursion of 1875. But he was not writing to mountaineers; he was trying to persuade p o l i t i c i a n s. Consequently he was forced into recommending that a road be built into the region, thus destroying i t s appeal as a wilderness, he knew. Making t h i s proposal, he was conceding to the needs of soft succulent people. But he made the best of i t: But if instead of crossing every ridge-wave of these |