Alaska days with John Muir

Alaska Days

Ich John Muir

. HALL YOUNG

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ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR

JOHN MUIR WITH ALASKA SPRUCE CONES

Alaska Days with John Muir

f

By

8. HALL YOUNG

Illustrated

New York Chicago Toronto

Fleming H. Revell Company

London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 191 5, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

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■8II60M

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

CONTENTS

I

The Mountain

. II

II

The Rescue . . . .

. 37

III

The Voyage . . . .

. 59

IV

The Discovery

. 95

V

The Lost Glacier .

. 125

VI

The Dog and the Man .

. 163

VII

The Man in Perspective

. 201

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

John Muir with Alaska Spruce Cones

Title

Fort Wrangell 12

The Mountain 24

One of the Marvelous Array of Lakes . 40

Glacier — Stickeen Valley .... 54

Chilcat Woman Weaving a Blanket . . 82

Muir Glacier 114

Davidson Glacier 128

Taku Glacier 150

The Front of Muir Glacier . . . 168

Glacial Crevasses 186

John Muir in Later Life . . . . 200

Map 70

(Voyages of Muir and Young)

THE MOUNTAIN

THUNDER BAY

Deep calm from God enfolds the land;
Light on the mountain top I stand;
How peaceful all, but ah, how grand!

Low lies the bay beneath my feet;

The bergs sail out, a white-winged fleet,

To where the sky and ocean meet.

Their glacier mother sleeps between
Her granite walls. The mountains lean
Above her, trailing skirts of green.

Each ancient brow is raised to heaven:
The snow streams always, tempest-driven,
Like hoary locks, o'er chasms riven

By throes of Earth. But, still as sleep,
No storm disturbs the quiet deep
Where mirrored forms their silence keep.

A heaven of light beneath the sea!
A dream of worlds from shadow free !
A pictured, bright eternity!

The azure domes above, below
(A crystal casket), hold and show.
As precious jewels, gems of snow,

Dark emerald islets, amethyst

Of far horizon, pearls of mist

In pendant clouds, clear icebergs, kissed

By wavelets, — sparkling diamonds rare
Quick flashing through the ambient air.
A ring of mountains, graven fair

In lines of grace, encircles all.
Save where the purple splendors fall
On sky and ocean's bridal-hall.

The yellow river, broad and fleet.
Winds through its velyet meadows sweet—
A chain of gold for jewels meet.

Pours over all the sun's broad ray;
Power, beauty, peace, in one array !
My God, I thank Thee for this day.

I

THE MOUNTAIN

IN the summer of 1879 I was sta-
tioned at Fort Wrangell in south-
eastern Alaska, whence I had
come the year before, a green young
student fresh from college and semi-
nary— very green and very fresh — to
do what I could towards establishing
the white man's civilization among
the Thlinget Indians. I had very
many things to learn and many more
to unlearn.

Thither came by the monthly mail
steamboat in July to aid and counsel
me in my work three men of national
reputation — Dr. Henry Kendall of
New York; Dr. Aaron L. Lindsley
of Portland, Oregon, and Dr. Sheldon
Jackson of Denver and the West.
11

12 Alaska Days with John Muir

Their wives accompanied them and
they were to spend a month with
us.

Standing a little apart from them
as the steamboat drew to the dock,
his peering blue eyes already eagerly
scanning the islands and mountains,
was a lean, sinewy man of forty, with
waving, reddish-brown hair and
beard, and shoulders slightly stooped.
He wore a Scotch cap and a long,
gray tweed ulster, which I have al-
ways since associated with him, and
which seemed the same garment, un-
soiled and unchanged, that he wore
later on his northern trips. He was
introduced as Professor Muir, the
Naturalist. A hearty grip of the
hand, and we seemed to coalesce at
once in a friendship which, to me at
least, has been one of the very best
things I have known in a life full of
blessings. From the first he was the
strongest and most attractive of

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The Mountain 13

these four fine personalities to me,
and I began to recognize him as my
Master who was to lead me into en-
chanting regions of beauty and mys-
tery, which without his aid must
forever have remained unseen by the
eyes of my soul. I sat at his feet;
and at the feet of his spirit I still sit,
a student, absorbed, surrendered, as
this " priest of Nature's inmost
shrine " unfolds to me the secrets of
his " mountains of God."

Minor excursions culminated in
the chartering of the little steamer
Cassiar, on which our party, aug-
mented by two or three friends,
steamed between the tremendous gla-
ciers and through the columned can-
yons of the swift Stickeen River
through the narrow strip of Alaska's
cup-handle to Glenora, in British
Columbia, one hundred and fifty miles
from the river's mouth. Our captain
was Nat. Lane, a grandson of the

14 Alaska Days with John Muir

famous Senator Joseph Lane of Ore-
gon. Stocky, broad-shouldered, mus-
cular, given somewhat to strange
oaths and strong liquids, and eying
askance our group as we struck the
bargain, he was withal a genial, good-
natured man, and a splendid river
pilot.

Dropping down from Telegraph
Creek (so named because it was a
principal station of the great pro-
jected trans-American and trans-
Siberian line of the Western Union,
that bubble pricked by Cyrus Field's
cable), we tied up at Glenora about
noon of a cloudless day.

'' Amuse yourselves," said Captain
Lane at lunch. " Here we stay till
two o'clock to-morrow morning.
This gale, blowing from the sea,
makes safe steering through the Can-
yon impossible, unless we take the
morning's calm."

I saw Muir's eyes light up with a

The Mountain 15

peculiar meaning as he glanced
quickly at me across the table. He
knew the leading strings I was in;
how those well-meaning D.D.s and
their motherly wives thought they
had a special mission to suppress all
my self-destructive proclivities to-
ward dangerous adventure, and es-
pecially to protect me from " that
wild Muir " and his hare-brained
schemes of mountain climbing.

" Where is it? " I asked, as we met
behind the pilot house a moment
later.

He pointed to a little group of
jagged peaks rising right up from
where we stood — a pulpit in the cen-
ter of a vast rotunda of magnificent
mountains. " One of the finest view-
points in the world," he said.

" How far to the highest point? "

" About ten miles."

"How high?"

" Seven or eight thousand feet."

16 Alaska Days with John Muir

That was enough. I caught the
D.D.s with guile. There were Stick-
een Indians there catching salmon,
and among them Chief Shakes, who
our interpreter said was " The
youngest but the headest Chief of
all." Last night's palaver had whet-
ted the appetites of both sides for
more. On the part of the Indians, a
talk with these " Great White Chiefs
from Washington '' offered unlimited
possibilities for material favor; and
to the good divines the " simple faith
and childlike docility " of these chil-
dren of the forest were a constant
delight. And then how well their
high-flown compliments and flowery
metaphors would sound in article
and speech to the wondering East!
So I sent Stickeen Johnny, the in-
terpreter, to call the natives to an-
other hyou wawa (big talk) and,
note-book in hand, the doctors " went
gayly to the fray." I set the speeches

The Mountain 17

a-going, and then slipped out to join
the impatient Muir.

" Take off your coat," he com-
manded, " and here's your supper."

Pocketing two hardtacks apiece
we were off, keeping in shelter of
house and bush till out of sight of
the council-house and the flower-
picking ladies. Then we broke out.
What a matchless climate! What
sweet, lung-filling air! Sunshine
that had no weakness in it — as if we
were springing plants. Our sinews
like steel springs, muscles like India
rubber, feet soled with iron to grip
the rocks. Ten miles? Eight thou-
sand feet? Why, I felt equal to
forty miles and the Matterhorn!

" Eh, mon ! " said Muir, lapsing
into the broad Scotch he was so fond
of using when enjoying himself,
" ye'll see the sicht o' yer life the
day. Ye'll get that'll be o' mair use
till ye than a' the gowd o' Cassiar."

18 Alaska Days with John Muir

From the first, it was a hard climb.
Fallen timber at the mountain's foot
covered with thick brush swallowed
us up and plucked us back. Beyond,
on the steeper slopes, grew dwarf
evergreens, five or six feet high — the
same fir that towers a hundred feet
with a diameter of three or four on
the river banks, but here stunted by
icy mountain winds. The curious
blasting of the branches on the side
next to the mountain gave them the
appearance of long-armed, hump-
backed, hairy gnomes, bristling with
anger, stretching forbidding arms
downwards to bar our passage to
their sacred heights. Sometimes an
inviting vista through the branches
would lure us in, when it would nar-
row, and at its upper angle we would
find a solid phalanx of these grumpy
dwarfs. Then we had to attack
boldly, scrambling over the obstinate,
elastic arms and against the clusters

The Mountain 19

of stiff needles, till we gained the
upper side and found another green
slope.

Muir led, of course, picking with
sure instinct the easiest way. Three
hours of steady work brought us
suddenly beyond the timber-line, and
the real joy of the day began. No-
where else have I see anything ap-
proaching the luxuriance and variety
of delicate blossoms shown by these
high, mountain pastures of the
North. *' You scarce could see the
grass for flowers." Everything that
was marvelous in form, fair in color,
or sweet in fragrance seemed to
be represented there, from daisies
and campanulas to Muir's favorite,
the cassiope, with its exquisite little
pink-white bells shaped like lilies-of-
the-valley and its subtle perfume.
Muir at once went wild when we
reached this fairyland. From cluster
to cluster of flowers he ran, falling

20 Alaska Days with John Muir

on his knees, babbling in unknown
tongues, prattling a curious mixture
of scientific lingo and baby talk, wor-
shiping his little blue-and-pink god-
desses.

''Ah! my blue-eyed darling little
did I think to see you here. How
did you stray away from Shasta?''

"Well, well! Who'd 'a' thought
that you'd have left that niche in
the Merced mountains to come
here!"

" And who might you be, now,
with your wonder look? Is it pos-
sible that you can be (two Latin
polysyllables)? You're lost, my dear;
you belong in Tennessee."

" Ah ! I thought I'd find you, my
homely little sweetheart," and so on
unceasingly.

So absorbed was he in this ama-
tory botany that he seemed to forget
my existence. While I, as glad as
he, tagged along, running up and

The Mountain 21

down with him, asking now and
then a question, learning something
of plant life, but far more of that
spiritual insight into Nature's lore
which is granted only to those who
love and woo her in her great out-
door palaces. But how I anathema-
tized my short-sighted foolishness
for having as a student at old Woos-
ter shirked botany for the " more
important" studies of language and
metaphysics. For here was a man
whose natural science had a thor-
ough technical basis, while the super-
structure was built of " lively stones,''
and was itself a living temple of
love!

With all his boyish enthusiasm,
Muir was a most painstaking stu-
dent; and any unsolved question lay
upon his mind like a personal griev-
ance until it was settled to his full
understanding. One plant after an-
other, with its sand-covered roots,

22 Alaska Days with John Muir

went into his pockets, his handker-
chief and the " full '' of his shirt,
until he was bulbing and sprouting
all over, and could carry no more.
He was taking them to the boat to
analyze and compare at leisure.
Then he began to requisition my
receptacles. I stood it while he
stuffed my pockets, but rebelled
when he tried to poke the prickly,
scratchy things inside my shirt. I
had not yet attained that sublime
indifference to physical comfort, that
Nirvana of passivity, that Muir had
found.

Hours had passed in this entranc-
ing work and we were progressing
upwards but slowly. We were on
the southeastern slope of the moun-
tain, and the sun was still staring at
us from a cloudless sky. Suddenly
we were in the shadow as we worked
around a spur of rock. Muir looked
up, startled. Then he jammed home

The Mountain 28

his last handful of plants, and hast-
ened up to where I stood.

" Man ! '' he said, '' I was forget-
ting. We'll have to hurry now or
we'll miss it, we'll miss it."

"Miss what?" I asked.

" The jewel of the day," he an-
swered; "the sight of the sunset
from the top."

Then Muir began to slide up that
mountain. I had been with moun-
tain climbers before, but never one
like him. A deer-lope over the
smoother slopes, a sure instinct for
the easiest way into a rocky fortress,
an instant and unerring attack, a ser-
pent-glide up the steep; eye, hand
and foot all connected dynamically;
with no appearance of weight to his
body — as though he had Stockton's
negative gravity machine strapped
on his back.

Fifteen years of enthusiastic study
among the Sierras had given him the

24 Alaska Days with John Muir

same pre-eminence over the ordinary
climber as the Big Horn of the
Rockies shows over the Cotswold.
It was only by exerting myself to
the limit of my strength that I was
able to keep near him. His example
was at the same time my inspiration
and despair. I longed for him to
stop and rest, but would not have
suggested it for the world. I would
at least be game, and furnish no hint
as to how tired I was, no matter how
chokingly my heart thumped. Muir's
spirit was in me, and my " chief end,''
just then, was to win that peak with
him. The impending calamity of
being beaten by the sun was not to
be contemplated without horror.
The loss of a fortune would be as
nothing to that!

We were now beyond the flower
garden of the gods, in a land of
rocks and cliffs, with patches of short
grass, caribou moss and lichens be-

The Mountain 25

tween. Along a narrowing arm of
the mountain, a deep canyon flumed
a rushing torrent of icy water from
a small glacier on our right. Then
came moraine matter, rounded peb-
bles and boulders, and beyond them
the glacier. Once a giant, it is noth-
ing but a baby now, but the ice is
still blue and clear, and the crevasses
many and deep. And that day it had
to be crossed, which was a ticklish
task. A misstep or slip might land
us at once fairly into the heart of the
glacier, there to be preserved in cold
storage for the wonderment of fu-
ture generations. But glaciers were
Muir's special pets, his intimate com-
panions, with whom he held sweet
communion. Their voices were plain
language to his ears, their work, as
God's landscape gardeners, of the wis-
est and best that Nature could offer.

No Swiss guide was ever wiser in
the habits of glaciers than Muir, or

26 Alaska Days with John Muir

proved to be a better pilot across their
deathly crevasses. Half a mile of
careful walking and jumping and we
were on the ground again, at the base
of the great cliff of metamorphic
slate that crowned the summit.
Muir's aneroid barometer showed a
height of about seven thousand
feet, and the wall of rock towered
threateningly above us, leaning out in
places, a thousand feet or so above
the glacier. But the earth-fires that
had melted and heaved it, the ice
mass that chiseled and shaped it, the
wind and rain that corroded and
crumbled it, had left plenty of bricks
out of that battlement, had covered
its face with knobs and horns, had
ploughed ledges and cleaved fissures
and fastened crags and pinnacles
upon it, so that, while its surface was
full of man-traps and blind ways, the
human spider might still find some
hold for his claws.

The Mountain 27

The shadows were dark upon us,
but the lofty, icy peaks of the main
range still lay bathed in the golden
rays of the setting sun. There was
no time to be lost. A quick glance
to the right and left, and Muir, who
had steered his course wisely across
the glacier, attacked the cliff, simply
saying, " We must climb cautiously
here."

Now came the most wonderful dis-
play of his mountain-craft. Had I
been alone at the feet of these crags
I should have said, " It can't be
done,*' and have turned back down
the mountain. But Muir was my
" control," as the Spiritists say, and
I never thought of doing anything
else but following him. He thought
he could climb up there and that
settled it. He would do what he
thought he could. And such climb-
ing! There was never an instant
when both feet and hands were not in

28 Alaska Days with John Muir

play, and often elbows, knees, thighs,
upper arms, and even chin must grip
and hold. Clambering up a steep
slope, crawling under an overhang-
ing rock, spreading out like a flying
squirrel and edging along an inch-
wide projection while fingers clasped
knobs above the head, bending about
sharp angles, pulling up smooth rock-
faces by sheer strength of arm and
chinning over the edge, leaping fis-
sures, sliding flat around a dangerous
rock-breast, testing crumbly spurs
before risking his weight, always
going up, up, no hesitation, no pause
— that was Muir! My task was the
lighter one; he did the head-work, I
had but to imitate. The thin frag-
ment of projecting slate that stood
the weight of his one hundred and
fifty pounds would surely sustain
my hundred and thirty. As far as
possible I did as he did, took his
hand-holds, and stepped in his steps.

The Mountain 29

But I was handicapped in a way
that Muir was ignorant of, and I
would not tell him for fear of his
veto upon my climbing. My legs
were all right — hard and sinewy;
my body light and supple, my wind
good, my nerves steady (heights did
not make me dizzy) ; but my arms —
there lay the trouble. Ten years be-
fore I had been fond of breaking
colts — till the colts broke me. On
successive summers in West Vir-
ginia, two colts had fallen with me
and dislocated first my left shoulder,
then my right. Since that both arms
had been out of joint more than once.
My left was especially weak. It
would not sustain my weight, and I
had to favor it constantly. Now
and again, as I pulled myself up some
difficult reach I could feel the head
of the humerus move from its socket.

Muir climbed so fast that his
movements were almost like flying,

30 Alaska Days with John Muir

legs and arms moving with perfect
precision and unfailing judgment. I
must keep close behind him or I
would fail to see his points of van-
tage. But the pace was a killing one
for me. As we neared the summit
my strength began to fail, my breath
to come in gasps, my muscles to
twitch. The overwhelming fear of
losing sight of my guide, of being
left behind and failing to see that
sunset, grew upon me, and I hurled
myself blindly at every fresh ob-
stacle, determined to keep up. At
length we climbed upon a little shelf,
a foot or two wide, that corkscrewed
to the left. Here we paused a mo-
ment to take breath and look around
us. We had ascended the cliff some
nine hundred and fifty feet from the
glacier, and were within forty or
fifty feet of the top.

Among the much-prized gifts of
this good world one of the very rich-

The Mountain 31

est was given to me in that hour. It
is securely locked in the safe of my
memory and nobody can rob me of it
— an imperishable treasure. Stand-
ing out on the rounded neck of the
cliff and facing the southwest, we
could see on three sides of us. The
view was much the finest of all my
experience. We seemed to stand on
a high rostrum in the center of the
greatest amphitheater in the world.
The sky was cloudless, the level sun
flooding all the landscape with
golden light. From the base of the
mountain on which we stood
stretched the rolling upland. Strik-
ing boldly across our front was the
deep valley of the Stickeen, a line of
foliage, light green cottonwoods and
darker alders, sprinkled with black
fir and spruce, through which the
river gleamed with a silvery sheen,
now spreading wide among its isl-
ands, now foaming white through

32 Alaska Days with John Muir

narrow canyons. Beyond, among
the undulating hills, was a marvel-
ous array of lakes. There must
have been thirty or forty of them,
from the pond of an acre to the wide
sheet two or three miles across. The
strangely elongated and rounded hills
had the appearance of giants in bed,
wrapped in many-colored blankets,
while the lakes were their deep, blue
eyes, lashed with dark evergreens,
gazing steadfastly heavenward. Look
long at these recumbent forms and
you will see the heaving of their
breasts.

The whole landscape was alert,
expectant of glory. Around this
great camp of prostrate Cyclops
there stood an unbroken semicircle
of mighty peaks in solemn grandeur,
some hoary-headed, some with locks
of brown, but all wearing white gla-
cier collars. The taller peaks seemed
almost sharp enough to be the hel-

The Mountain 88

mets and spears of watchful senti-
nels. And the colors! Great
stretches of crimson fireweed, acres
and acres of them, smaller patches
of dark blue lupins, and hills of
shaded yellow, red, and brown, the
many-shaded green of the woods, the
amethyst and purple of the far hori-
zon— who can tell it? We did not
stand there more than two or three
minutes, but the whole wonderful
scene is deeply etched on the tablet
of my memory, a photogravure never
to be effaced.

THE RESCUE

THE MOUNTAIN'S FAITH

At eventide, upon a dreary sea,

I watched a mountain rear its hoary head

To look with steady gaze in the near heaven.

The earth was cold and still. No sound was heard

But the dream-voices of the sleeping sea.

The mountain drew its gray cloud-mantle close,

Like Roman senator, erect and old,

Raising aloft an earnest brow and calm,

With upward look intent of steadfast faith.

The sky was dim; no glory-light shone forth

To crown the mountain's faith ; which faltered not,

But, ever hopeful, waited patiently.

At morn I looked again. Expectance sat

Of immanent glory on the mountain's brow.

And, in a moment, lo ! the glory came!

An angel's hand rolled back a crimson cloud.

Deep, rose-red light of wondrous tone and power —

A crown of matchless splendor — graced its head.

Majestic, kingly, pure as Heaven, yet warm

With earthward love. A motion, like a heart

With rich blood beating, seemed to sway and pulse,

With might of ecstasy, the granite peak.

A poem grand it was of Love Divine —

An anthem, sweet and strong, of praise to God —

A victory-peal from barren fields of death.

Its gaze was heavenward still, but earthward too —

For Love seeks not her own, and joy is full,

Only when freest given. The sun shone forth.

And now the mountain doffed its ruby crown

For one of diamonds. Still the light streamed down;

No longer chill and bleak, the morning glowed

With warmth and light, and clouds of fiery hue

Mantled the crystal glacier's chilly stream.

And all the landscape throbbed with sudden joy.

II

THE RESCUE

MUIR was the first to awake
from his trance. Like Schil-
ler's king in " The Diver/'
" Nothing could slake his wild thirst
of desire."

'' The sunset," he cried ; " we must
have the whole horizon."

Then he started running along the
ledge like a mountain goat, working
to get around the vertical cliff above
us to find an ascent on the other
side. He was soon out of sight, al-
though I followed as fast as I could.
I heard him shout something, but
could not make out his words. I
know now he was warning me
of a dangerous place. Then I came
to a sharp-cut fissure which lay

87

38 Alaska Days with John Muir

across my path — a gash in the rock,
as if one of the Cyclops had struck
it with his axe. It sloped very
steeply for some twelve feet below,
opening on the face of the precipice
above the glacier, and was filled to
within about four feet of the surface
with flat, slaty gravel. It was only
four or five feet across, and I could
easily have leaped it had I not been
so tired. But a rock the size of my
head projected from the slippery
stream of gravel. In my haste to
overtake Muir I did not stop to make
sure this stone was part of the cliff,
but stepped with springing force
upon it to cross the fissure. In-
stantly the stone melted away be-
neath my feet, and I shot with it
down towards the precipice. With
my peril sharp upon me I cried out
as I whirled on my face, and struck
out both hands to grasp the rock on
either side.

The Rescue 89

Falling forward hard, my hands
struck the walls of the chasm, my
arms were twisted behind me, and
instantly both shoulders were dislo-
cated. With my paralyzed arms
flopping helplessly above my head, I
slid swiftly down the narrow chasm.
Instinctively I flattened down on the
sliding gravel, digging my chin and
toes into it to check my descent;
but not until my feet hung out over
the edge of the cliff did I feel that I
had stopped. Even then I dared not
breathe or stir, so precarious was
my hold on that treacherous shale.
Every moment I seemed to be slip-
ping inch by inch to the point when
all would give way and I would go
whirling down to the glacier.

After the first wild moment of
panic when I felt myself falling, I
do not remember any sense of fear.
But I know what it is to have a thou-
sand thoughts flash through the

40 Alaska Days with John Muir

brain in a single instant — an an-
guished thought of my young wife
at Wrangell, with her immanent
motherhood; an indignant thought of
the insurance companies that refused
me policies on my life; a thought of
wonder as to what would become of
my poor flocks of Indians among the
islands; recollections of events far
and near in time, important and
trivial; but each thought printed
upon my memory by the instanta-
neous photography of deadly peril. I
had no hope of escape at all. The
gravel was rattling past me and pil-
ing up against my head. The jar of
a little rock, and all would be over.
The situation was too desperate for
actual fear. Dull wonder as to how
long I would be in the air, and the
hope that death would be instant —
that was all. Then came the wish
that Muir would come before I fell,
and take a message to my wife.

The Rescue 41

Suddenly I heard his voice right
above me. " My God ! " he cried.
Then he added, " Grab that rock,
man, just by your right hand/'

I gurgled from my throat, not
daring to inflate my lungs, " My
arms are out."

There was a pause. Then his
voice rang again, cheery, confident,
unexcited, "Hold fast; Vm going to
get you out of this. I can't get to
you on this side; the rock is sheer,
ril have to leave you now and cross
the rift high up and come down to
you on the other side by which we
came. Keep cool."

Then I heard him going away,
whistling " The Blue Bells of Scot-
land," singing snatches of Scotch
songs, calling to me, his voice now
receding, as the rocks intervened,
then sounding louder as he came out
on the face of the cliff. But in me
hope surged at full tide. I enter-

42 Alaska Days with John Muir

tained no more thoughts of last mes-
sages. I did not see how he could
possibly do it, but he was John Muir,
and I had seen his wonderful rock-
work. So I determined not to fall
and made myself as flat and heavy
as possible, not daring to twitch a
muscle or wink an eyelid, for I still
felt myself slipping, slipping down
the greasy slate. And now a new
peril threatened. A chill ran through
me of cold and nervousness, and I
slid an inch. I suppressed the grow-
ing shivers with all my will. I
would keep perfectly quiet till Muir
came back. The sickening pain in
my shoulders increased till it was
torture, and I could not ease it.

It seemed like hours, but it was
really only about ten minutes before
he got back to me. By that time I
hung so far over the edge of the
precipice that it seemed impossible
that I could last another second.

The Rescue 43

Now I heard Muir's voice, low and
steady, close to me, and it seemed a
little below.

'' Hold steady,^' he said. " Til have
to swing you out over the cliff.''

Then I felt a careful hand on my
back, fumbling with the waistband of
my pants, my vest and shirt, gather-
ing all in a firm grip. I could see
only with one eye and that looked
upon but a foot or two of gravel on
the other side.

"Now!" he said, and I slid out
of the cleft with a rattling shower
of stones and gravel. My head
swung down, my impotent arms
dangling, and I stared straight at
the glacier, a thousand feet below.
Then my feet came against the cliff.

'' Work downwards with your
feet."

I obeyed. He drew me close to
him by crooking his arm and as my
head came up past his level he caught

44 Alaska Days with John Muir

me by my collar with his teeth ! My
feet struck the little two-inch shelf
on which he was standing, and I
could see Muir, flattened against the
face of the rock and facing it, his
right hand stretched up and clasping
a little spur, his left holding me with
an iron grip, his head bent sideways,
as my weight drew it. I felt as alert
and cool as he.

" Tve got to let go of you," he
hissed through his clenched teeth.
" I need both hands here. Climb up-
ward with your feet."

How he did it, I know not. The
miracle grows as I ponder it. The
wall was almost perpendicular and
smooth. My weight on his jaws
dragged him outwards. And yet,
holding me by his teeth as a panther
her cub and clinging like a squirrel
to a tree, he climbed with me straight
up ten or twelve feet, with only the
help of my iron-shod feet scrambling

The Rescue 45

on the rock. It was utterly impossi-
ble, yet he did it !

When he landed me on the little
shelf along which we had come, my
nerve gave way and I trembled all
over. I sank down exhausted, Muir
only less tired, but supporting me.

The sun had set; the air was icy
cold and we had no coats. We would
soon chill through. Muir's task of
rescue had only begun and no time
was to be lost. In a minute he was
up again, examining my shoulders.
The right one had an upward dislo-
cation, the ball of the humerus rest-
ing on the process of the scapula,
the rim of the cup. I told him how,
and he soon snapped the bone into its
socket. But the left was a harder
proposition. The luxation was
downward and forward, and the
strong, nervous reaction of the mus-
cles had pulled the head of the
bone deep into my armpit. There

46 Alaska Days with John Muir

was no room to work on that narrow
ledge. All that could be done was
to make a rude sling with one of my
suspenders and our handkerchiefs, so
as to both support the elbow and
keep the arm from swinging.

Then came the task to get down
that terrible wall to the glacier, by
the only practicable way down the
mountain that Muir, after a careful
search, could find. Again I am at
loss to know how he accomplished
it. For an unencumbered man to
descend it in the deepening dusk was
a most difficult task; but to get a tot-
tery, nerve-shaken, pain-wracked
cripple down was a feat of positive
wonder. My right arm, though in
place, was almost helpless. I could
only move my forearm; the muscles
of the upper part simply refusing to
obey my will. Muir would let him-
self down to a lower shelf, brace him-
self, and I would get my right hand

The Rescue 47

against him, crawl my fingers over
his shoulder until the arm hung in
front of him, and falling against him,
would be eased down to his standing
ground. Sometimes he would pack
me a short distance on his back.
Again, taking me by the wrist, he
w^ould swing me down to a lower
shelf, before descending himself. My
right shoulder came out three times
that night, and had to be reset.

It was dark when we reached the
base; there was no moon and it was
very cold. The glacier provided an
operating table, and I lay on the ice
for an hour while Muir, having slit
the sleeve of my shirt to the collar,
tugged and twisted at my left arm
in a vain attempt to set it. But the
ball was too deep in its false socket,
and all his pulling only bruised and
made it swell. So he had to do up
the arm again, and tie it tight to my
body. It must have been near mid-

48 Alaska Days with John Muir

night when we left the foot of the
cliff and started down the mountain.
We had ten hard miles to go, and
no supper, for the hardtack had dis-
appeared ere we were half-way up
the mountain. Muir dared not take
me across the glacier in the dark; I
was too weak to jump the crevasses.
So we skirted it and came, after a
mile, to the head of a great slide of
gravel, the fine moraine matter of
the receding glacier. Muir sat down
on the gravel; I sat against him with
my feet on either side and my arm
over his shoulder. Then he began
to hitch and kick, and presently we
were sliding at great speed in a cloud
of dust. A full half-mile we flew,
and were almost buried when we
reached the bottom of the slide. It
was the easiest part of our trip.

Now we found ourselves in the
canyon, down which tumbled the gla-
cial stream, and far beneath the ridge

The Rescue 49

along which we had ascended. The
sides of the canyon were sheer cliffs.

" We'll try it," said Muir. " Some-
times these canyons are passable."

But the way grew rougher as we
descended. The rapids became falls
and we often had to retrace our steps
to find a way around them. After
we reached the timber-line, some
four miles from the summit, the go-
ing was still harder, for we had a
thicket of alders and willows to fight.
Here Muir offered to make a fire and
leave me while he went forward for
assistance, but I refused. " No," I
said, " Fm going to make it to the
boat."

All that night this man of steel
and lightning worked, never resting
a minute, doing the work of three
men, helping me along the slopes,
easing me down the rocks, pulling
me up cliffs, dashing water on me
when I grew faint with the pain;

50 Alaska Days with John Muir

and always cheery, full of talk and
anecdote, cracking jokes with me,
infusing me with his own indomi-
table spirit. He was eyes, hands,
feet, and heart to me — my care-
taker, in whom I trusted absolutely.
My eyes brim with tears even now
when I think of his utter self-aban-
don as he ministered to my infirmi-
ties.

About four o'clock in the morning
we came to a fall that we could not
compass, sheer a hundred feet or
more. So we had to attack the steep
walls of the canyon. After a hard
struggle we were on the mountain
ridges again, traversing the flower
pastures, creeping through openings
in the brush, scrambling over the
dwarf fir, then down through the
fallen timber. It was half-past seven
o'clock when we descended the last
slope and found the path to Glenora.
Here we met a straggling party

The Rescue 51

of whites and Indians just start-
ing out to search the mountain for
us.

As I was coming wearily up the
teetering gang-plank, feeling as if I
couldn't keep up another minute, Dr.
Kendall stepped upon its end, barring
my passage, bent his bushy white
brows upon me from his six feet of
height, and began to scold:

" See here, young man; give an ac-
count of yourself. Do you know
you've kept us waiting "

Just then Captain Lane jumped
forward to help me, digging the old
Doctor of Divinity with his elbow in
the stomach and nearly knocking
him off the boat.

"Oh, hell!" he roared. "Can't
you see the man's hurt?"

Mrs. Kendall was a very tall, thin,
severe-looking old lady, with face
lined with grief by the loss of her
children. She never smiled. She

52 Alaska Days with John Muir

had not gone to bed at all that night,
but walked the deck and would not
let her husband or the others sleep.
Soon after daylight she began to lash
the men with the whip of her tongue
for their " cowardice and inhuman-
ity '' in not starting at once to search
for me.

" Mr. Young is undoubtedly lying
mangled at the foot of a cliff, or
else one of those terrible bears has
wounded him; and you are lolling
around here instead of starting to
his rescue. For shame!''

When they objected that they did
not know where we had gone, she
snapped: "Go everywhere until you
find him.''

Her fierce energy started the men
we met. When I came on board she
at once took charge and issued her
orders, which everybody jumped to
obey. She had blankets spread on
the floor of the cabin and laid me on

The Rescue 58

them. She obtained some whisky
from the captain, some water, por-
ridge and coffee from the steward.
She was sitting on the floor with my
head in her lap, feeding me coffee
with a spoon, when Dr. Kendall came
in and began on me again:

" Suppose you had fallen down
that precipice, what would your poor
wife have done? What would have
become of your Indians and your
new church ? "

Then Mrs. Kendall turned and
thrust her spoon like a sword at
him. " Henry Kendall," she blazed,
*' shut right up and leave this room.
Have you no sense? Go instantly, I
say ! " And the good Doctor went.

My recollections of that day are
not very clear. The shoulder was
in a bad condition — swollen, bruised,
very painful. I had to be strength-
ened with food and rest, and Muir
called from his sleep of exhaustion,

54 Alaska Days with John Muir

so that with four other men he
could pull and twist that poor arm
of mine for an hour. They got it
into its socket, but scarcely had Muir
got to sleep again before the strong,
nervous twitching of the shoulder
dislocated it a second time and seem-
ingly placed it in a worse condition
than before. Captain Lane was now
summoned, and with Muir to direct,
they worked for two or three hours.
Whisky was poured down my throat
to relax my stubborn, pain-convulsed
muscles. Then they went at it with
two men pulling at the towel knotted
about my wrist, two others pulling
against them, foot braced to foot,
Muir manipulating my shoulder with
his sinewy hands, and the stocky
Captain, strong and compact as a
bear, with his heel against the yarn
ball in my armpit, takes me by the
elbow and says, " I'll set it or pull
the arm off!"

The Rescue 55

Well, he almost does the latter. I
am conscious of a frightful strain, a
spasm of anguish in my side as his
heel slips from the ball and kicks in two
of my ribs, a snap as the head of the
bone slips into the cup — then kindly
oblivion.

I was awakened about five o'clock
in the afternoon by the return of the
whole party from an excursion to
the Great Glacier at the Boundary
Line. Muir, fresh and enthusiastic
as ever, had been the pilot across
the moraine and upon the great ice
mountain; and I, wrapped like a
mummy in linen strips, was able to
join in his laughter as he told of the
big D.D.'s heroics, when, in the mid-
dle of an acre of alder brush, he
asked indignantly, in response to the
hurry-up calls : " Do you think Fm
going to leave my wife in this for-
est?"

One overpowering regret — one

56 Alaska Days with John Muir

only — abides in my heart as I think
back upon that golden day with
John Muir. He could, and did, go
back to Glenora on the return trip
of the Cassiar, ascend the mountain
again, see the sunset from its
top, make charming sketches, stay
all night and see the sunrise, filling
his cup of joy so full that he could
pour out entrancing descriptions for
days. While I — well, with entreating
arms about one's neck and pleading,
tearful eyes looking into one's own,
what could one do but promise to
climb no more? But my lifelong
lamentation over a treasure forever
lost, is this: " I never saw the sunset
from that peak."

THE VOYAGE

TOW-A-ATT

You are a child, old Friend — a child!
As light of heart, as free, as wild;
As credulous of fairy tale;
As simple in your faith, as frail
In reason; jealous, petulant;
As crude in manner ; ignorant.
Yet wise in love; as rough, as mild —
You are a child!

You are a man, old Friend — a man!
Ah, sure in richer tide ne'er ran
The blood of earth's nobility,
Than through your veins; intrepid, free;
In counsel, prudent; proud and tall;
Of passions full, yet ruling all;
No stauncher friend since time began;
You are a MAN !

Ill

THE VOYAGE

THE summer and fall of 1879
Muir always referred to as the
most interesting period of his
adventurous life. From about the
tenth of July to the twentieth of
November he was in southeastern
Alaska. Very little of this time did
he spend indoors. Until steamboat
navigation of the Stickeen River was
closed by the forming ice, he made
frequent trips to the Great Glacier —
thirty miles up the river, to the Hot
Springs, the Mud Glacier and the in-
terior lakes, ranges, forests and
flower pastures. Always upon his re-
turn (for my house was his home the
most of that time) he would be full
to intoxication of what he had seen,

69

60 Alaska Days with John Muir

and dinners would grow cold and
lamps burn out while he held us en-
tranced with his impassioned stories.
Although his books are all master-
pieces of lucid and glowing English,
Muir was one of those rare souls who
talk better than they write; and he
made the trees, the animals, and es-
pecially the glaciers, live before us.
Somehow a glacier never seemed
cold when John Muir was talking
about it.

On September nineteenth a little
stranger whose expected advent was
keeping me at home arrived in the
person of our first-born daughter.
For two or three weeks preceding and
following this event Muir was busy
writing his summer notes and finish-
ing his pencil sketches, and also
studying the flora of the islands. It
was a season of constant rains when
the saanah, the southeast rain-wind,
blew a gale. But these stormy days

The Voyage 61

and nights, which kept ordinary peo-
ple indoors, always lured him out into
the woods or up the mountains.

One wild night, dark as Erebus, the
rain dashing in sheets and the wind
blowing a hurricane, Muir came from
his room into ours about ten o'clock
with his long, gray overcoat and his
Scotch cap on.

"Where now?" I asked.

" Oh, to the top of the mountain,*'
he replied. *' It is a rare chance to
study this fine storm."

My expostulations were in vain.
He rejected with scorn the proffered
lantern: "It would spoil the effect."
I retired at my usual time, for I had
long since learned not to worry about
Muir. At two o'clock in the morning
there came a hammering at the front
door. I opened it and there stood a
group of our Indians, rain-soaked and
trembling — Chief Tow-a-att, Moses,
Aaron, Matthew, Thomas.

62 Alaska Days with John Muir

'^Why, men," I cried, ^^ whaf s
wrong? What brings you here? "

" We want you play (pray)," an-
swered Matthew.

I brought them into the house, and,
putting on my clothes and lighting
the lamp, I set about to find out the
trouble. It was not easy. They were
greatly excited and frightened.

"We scare. All Stickeen scare;
plenty cly. We want you play God;
plenty play."

By dint of much questioning I gath-
ered at last that the whole tribe were
frightened by a mysterious light wav-
ing and flickering from the top of
the little mountain that overlooked
Wrangell; and they wished me to
pray to the white man's God and avert
dire calamity.

" Some miner has camped there," I
ventured.

An eager chorus protested; it was
not like the light of a camp-fire in

The Voyage 68

the least; it waved in the air like the
wings of a spirit. Besides, there was
no gold on the top of a hill like that;
and no human being would be so fool-
ish as to camp up there on such a
night, when there were plenty of com-
fortable houses at the foot of the
hill. It was a spirit, a malignant
spirit.

Suddenly the true explanation
flashed into my brain, and I shocked
my Indians by bursting into a roar of
laughter. In imagination I could see
him so plainly — John Muir, wet but
happy, feeding his fire with spruce
sticks, studying and enjoying the
storm! But I explained to my na-
tives, who ever afterwards eyed Muir
askance, as a mysterious being whose
ways and motives were beyond all
conjecture.

" Why does this strange man go
into the wet woods and up the moun-
tains on stormy nights ? " they asked.

64 Alaska Days with John Muir

" Why does he wander alone on bar-
ren peaks or on dangerous ice-moun-
tains? There is no gold up there and
he never takes a gun with him or
a pick. Ida mamook — what make?
Why— why?"

The first week in October saw the
culmination of plans long and eagerly
discussed. Almost the whole of the
Alexandrian Archipelago, that great
group of eleven hundred wooded
islands that forms the southeastern
cup-handle of Alaska, was at that time
a terra incognita. The only seaman's
chart of the region in existence was
that made by the great English navi-
gator, Vancouver, in 1807. It was a
wonderful chart, considering what an
absurd little sailing vessel he had in
which to explore those intricate wa-
ters with their treacherous winds and
tides.

But Vancouver's chart was hastily
made, after all, in a land of fog and

I

The Voyage 65

rain and snow. He had not the mod-
ern surveyor's instruments, boats or
other helps. And, besides, this re-
gion was changing more rapidly
than, perhaps, any other part of the
globe. Volcanic islands were being
born out of the depths of the ocean;
landslides were filling up channels
between the islands; tides and riv-
ers were opening new passages and
closing old ones; and, more than all,
those mightiest tools of the great
Engineer, the glaciers, were furrow-
ing valleys, dumping millions of tons
of silt into the sea, forming islands,
promontories and isthmuses, and by
their recession letting the sea into
deep and long fiords, forming great
bays, inlets and passages, many of
which did not exist in Vancouver's
time. In certain localities the living
glacier stream was breaking off
bergs so fast that the resultant bays
were lengthening a mile or more

66 Alaska Days with John Muir

each year. Where Vancouver saw
only a great crystal wall across the
sea, we were to paddle for days up
a long and sinuous fiord; and where
he saw one glacier, we were to find
a dozen.

My mission in the proposed voy-
age of discovery was to locate and
visit the tribes and villages of Thlin-
gets to the north and west of Wran-
gell, to take their census, confer with
their chiefs and report upon their
condition, with a view to establish-
ing schools and churches among
them. The most of these tribes had
never had a visit from a missionary,
and I felt the eager zeal of an Eliot
or a Martin at the prospect of tell-
ing them for the first time the Good
News. Muir's mission was to find
and study the forests, mountains and
glaciers. I also was eager to see
these and learn about them, and
Muir was glad to study the natives

The Voyage 67

with me — so our plans fitted into
each other well.

" We are going to write some his-
tory, my boy," Muir would say to
me. "Think of the honor! We
have been chosen to puj; some inter-
esting people and some of Nature's
grandest scenes on the page of hu-
man record and on the map. Hurry!
We are daily losing the most impor-
tant news of all the world."

In many respects we were most
congenial companions. We both
loved the same poets and could re-
peat, verse about, many poems of
Tennyson, Keats, Shelley and Burns.
He took with him a volume of
Thoreau, and I one of Emerson, and
we enjoyed them together. I had
my printed Bible with me, and he
had his in his head — the result of a
Scotch father's discipline. Our stud-
ies supplemented each other and our
tastes were similar. We had both

68 Alaska Days with JoHn Muir

lived clean lives and our conversa-
tion together was sweet and high,
while we both had a sense of humor
and a large fund of stories.

But Muir's knowledge of Nature
and his insight into her plans and
methods were so far beyond mine
that, while I was organizer and com-
mander of the expedition, he was
my teacher and guide into the inner
recesses and meanings of the islands,
bays and mountains we explored to-
gether.

Our ship for this voyage of dis-
covery, while not so large as Van-
couver's, was much more shapely
and manageable — a kladushu etlan
(six fathom) red-cedar canoe. It be-
longed to our captain, old Chief
Tow-a-att, a chief who had lately
embraced Christianity with his whole
heart — one of the simplest, most
faithful, dignified and brave souls I
ever knew. He fully expected to

The Voyage 69

meet a martyr's death among his
heathen enemies of the northern
islands; yet he did not shrink from
the voyage on that account.

His crew numbered three. First
in importance was Kadishan, also a
chief of the Stickeens, chosen be-
cause of his powers of oratory, his
kinship with Chief Shathitch of the
Chilcat tribe, and his friendly rela-
tions with other chiefs. He was a
born courtier, learned in Indian lore,
songs and customs, and able to in-
struct me in the proper Thlinget
etiquette to suit all occasions. The
other two were sturdy young men —
Stickeen John, our interpreter, and
Sitka Charley. They were to act
as cooks, camp-makers, oarsmen,
hunters and general utility men.

We stowed our baggage, which
was not burdensome, in one end of
the canoe, taking a simple store of
provisions — flour, beans, bacon, su-

70 Alaska Days with John Muir

gar, salt and a little dried fruit. We
were to depend upon our guns, fish-
hooks, spears and clamsticks for
other diet. As a preliminary to our
palaver with the natives we followed
the old Hudson Bay custom, then
firmly established in the North. We
took materials for a potlatch, — leaf-
tobacco, rice and sugar. Our Indian
crew laid in their own stock of pro-
visions, chiefly dried salmon and seal-
grease, while our table was to be
separate, set out with the white
man's viands.

We did not get off without trou-
ble. Kadishan's mother, who looked
but little older than himself, strongly
objected to my taking her son on so
perilous a voyage and so late in the
fall, and when her scoldings and en-
treaties did not avail she said: ''If
anything happens to my son, I will
take your baby as mine in payment."

One sunny October day we set our

The Voyage 71

prow to the unknown northwest.
Our hearts beat high with anticipa-
tion. Every passage between the
islands was a corridor leading into
a new and more enchanting room of
Nature's great gallery. The lapping
waves whispered enticing secrets,
while the seabirds screaming over-
head and the eagles shrilling from
the sky promised wonderful adven-
tures.

The voyage naturally divides it-
self into the human interest and the
study of nature; yet the two con-
stantly blended throughout the
whole voyage. I can only select a
few instances from that trip of six
weeks whose every hour was new
and strange.

Our captain, taciturn and self-
reliant, commanded Muir's admira-
tion from the first. His paddle was
sure in the stern, his knowledge of
the wind and tide unfailing. When-

72 Alaska Days with John Muir

ever we landed the crew would be-
gin to dispute concerning the best
place to make camp. But old Tow-a-
att, with the mast in his hand, would
march straight as an arrow to the
likeliest spot of all, stick down his
mast as a tent-pole and begin to set
up the tent, the others invariably ac-
quiescing in his decision as the best
possible choice.

At our first meal Muir's sense of
humor cost us one-third of a roll
of butter. We invited our captain
to take dinner with us. I got out
the bread and other viands, and set
the two-pound roll of butter beside
the bread and placed both by Tow-a-
att. He glanced at the roll of but-
ter and at the three who were to
eat, measured with his eye one-third
of the roll, cut it off with his hunt-
ing knife and began to cut it into
squares and eat it with great gusto.
I was about to interfere and show

The Voyage 73

him the use we made of butter, but
Muir stopped me with a wink. The
old chief calmly devoured his third
of the roll, and rubbing his stomach
with great satisfaction pronounced it
*^ hyas klosh (very good) glease."

Of necessity we had chosen the
rainiest season of the year in that
dampest climate of North America,
where there are two hundred and
twenty-five rainy days out of the
three hundred and sixty-five. Dur-
ing our voyage it did not rain every
day, but the periods of sunshine
were so rare as to make us hail them
with joyous acclamation.

We steered our course due west-
ward for forty miles, then through
a sinuous, island-studded passage
called Rocky Strait, stopping one
day to lay in a supply of venison
before sailing on to the village
of the Kake Indians. My habit
throughout the voyage, when com-

74 Alaska Days with John Muir

ing to a native town, was to find
where the head chief lived, feed him
with rice and regale him with to-
bacco, and then induce him to call
all his chiefs and head men together
for a council. When they were all
assembled I would give small pres-
ents of tobacco to each, and then
open the floodgate of talk, proclaim-
ing my mission and telling them in
simplest terms the Great New Story.
Muir would generally follow me, un-
folding in turn some of the won-
ders of God's handiwork and the
beauty of clean, pure living; and then
in turn, beginning with the head
chief, each Indian would make his
speech. We were received with joy
everywhere, and if there was suspi-
cion at first old Tow-a-att's tearful
pleadings and Kadishan's oratory
speedily brought about peace and
unity.

These palavers often lasted a

The Voyage 75

whole day and far into the night,
and usually ended with our being
feasted in turn by the chief in whose
house we had held the council. I
took the census of each village, get-
ting the heads of the families to
count their relatives with the aid of
beans, — the large brown beans rep-
resenting men, the large white ones,
w^omen, and the small Boston beans,
children. In this manner the first
census of southeastern Alaska was
taken.

Before starting on the voyage, we
heard that there was a Harvard
graduate, bearing an honored New
England name, living among the
Kake Indians on Kouyou Island. On
arriving at the chief town of that
tribe we inquired for the white man
and were told that he was camping
with the family of a sub-chief at
the mouth of a salmon stream. We
set off to find him. As we neared

76 Alaska Days with John Muir

the shore we saw a circular group
of natives around a fire on the beach,
sitting on their heels in the stoical
Indian way. We landed and came
up to them. Not one of them
deigned to rise or show any excite-
ment at our coming. The eight or
nine men who formed the group
were all dressed in colored four-
dollar blankets, with the exception
of one, who had on a ragged frag-
ment of a filthy, two-dollar, Hudson
Bay blanket. The back of this man
was towards us, and after speaking
to the chief, Muir and I crossed to
the other side of the fire, and saw
his face. It was the white man, and
the ragged blanket was all the cloth-
ing he had upon him! An effort to
open conversation with him proved
futile. He answered only with
grunts and mumbled monosyllables.
Thus the most filthy, degraded,
hopelessly lost savage that we found

The Voyage 77

in this whole voyage was a college
graduate of great New England
stock!

" Lift a stone to mountain height
and let it fall," said Muir, "and it
will sink the deeper into the mud."

At Angoon, one of the towns of
the Hootz-noo triUe, occurred an in-
cident of another type. We found
this village hilariously drunk. There
was a very stringent prohibition law
over Alaska at that time, which ab-
solutely forbade the importation of
any spirituous liquors into the Ter-
ritory. But the law was deficient
in one vital respect — it did not pro-
hibit the importation of molasses;
and a soldier during the military oc-
cupancy of the Territory had in-
structed the natives in the art of
making rum. The method was sim-
ple. A five-gallon oil can was taken
and partly filled with molasses as
a base; into that alcohol was placed

78 Alaska Days with John Muir

(if it were obtainable), dried apples,
berries, potatoes, flour, anything that
would rot and ferment; then, to give
it the proper tang, ginger, cayenne
pepper and mustard were added.
This mixture was then set in a warm
place to ferment. Another oil can
was cut up into long strips, the
solder melted out and used to make
a pipe, with two or three turns
through cool water, — forming the
worm, and the still. Talk about
your forty-rod whiskey — I have seen
this " hooch," as it was called be-
cause these same Hootz-noo natives
first made it, kill at more than forty
rods, for it generally made the na-
tives fighting drunk.

Through the large company of
screaming, dancing and singing na-
tives we made our way to the chiefs
house. By some miracle this majes-
tic-looking savage was sober. Per-
haps he felt it incumbent upon him

The Voyage 79

as host not to partake himself of
the luxuries with which he regaled
his guests. He took us hospitably
into his great community house of
split cedar planks with carved totem
poles for corner posts, and called
his young men to take care of our
canoe and to bring wood for a fire
that he might feast us. The wife of
this chief was one of the finest look-
ing Indian women I have ever met, —
tall, straight, lithe and dignified.
But, crawling about on the floor on
all fours, was the most piteous tra-
vesty of the human form I have
ever seen. It was an idiot boy, six-
teen years of age. He had neither
the comeliness of a beast nor the
intellect of a man. His name was
Hootz-too (Bear Heart), and indeed
all his motions were those of a bear
rather than of a human being.
Crossing the floor with the swing-
ing gait of a bear, he would crouch

80 Alaska Days with John Muir

back on his haunches and resume his
constant occupation of sucking his
wrist, into which he had thus formed
a livid hole. When disturbed at this
horrid task he would strike with the
claw-like fingers of the other hand,
snarling and grunting. Yet the
beautiful chieftainess was his mother,
and she loved him. For sixteen years
she had cared for this monster, feed-
ing him with her choicest food, put-
ting him to sleep always in her arms,
taking him with her and guarding
him day and night. When, a short
time before our visit, the medicine
men, accusing him of causing the ill-
ness of some of the head men of the
village, proclaimed him a witch, and
the whole tribe came to take and
torture him to death, she fought
them like a lioness, not counting her
own life dear unto her, and saved her
boy.

When I said to her thoughtlessly.

The Voyage 81

'' Oh, would you not be relieved at
the death of this poor idiot boy?"
she saw in my words a threat, and T
shall never forget the pathetic,
hunted look with which she said:

"Oh, no, it must not be; he shall
not die. Is he not my son, uh-yeet-
kutsku (my dear little son) ? "

If our voyage had yielded me noth-
ing but this wonderful instance of
mother-love, I should have counted
myself richly repaid.

One more human story before I
come to Muir's part. It was during
the latter half of the voyage, and
after our discovery of Glacier Bay.
The climax of the trip, so far as the
missionary interests were concerned,
was our visit to the Chilcat and Chil-
coot natives on Lynn Canal, the
most northern tribes of the Alexan-
drian Archipelago. Here reigned
the proudest and worst old' savage
of Alaska, Chief Shathitch. His

82 Alaska Days with John Muir

wealth was very great in Indian
treasures, and he was reputed to have
cached away in different places sev-
eral houses full of blankets, guns,
boxes of beads, ancient carved pipes,
spears, knives and other valued heir-
looms. He was said to have stored
away over one hundred of the ele-
gant Chilcat blankets woven by hand
from the hair of the mountain goat.
His tribe was rich and unscrupulous.
Its members were the middle-men
between the whites and the Indians
of the Interior. They did not allow
these Indians to come to the coast,
but took over the mountains articles
purchased from the whites — guns,
ammunition, blankets, knives and so
forth — and bartered them for furs.
It was said that they claimed to
be the manufacturers of these wares
and so charged for them what prices
they pleased. They had these In-
dians of the Interior in a bondage of

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The Voyage 88

fear, and would not allow them to
trade directly with the white men.
Thus they carried out literally the
story told of Hudson Bay traffic, —
piling beaver skins to the height of
a ten-dollar Hudson Bay musket as
the price of the musket. They were
the most quarrelsome and warlike of
the tribes of Alaska, and their vil-
lages were full of slaves procured
by forays upon the coasts of Van-
couver Island, Puget Sound, and as
far south as the mouth of the Colum-
bia River. I was eager to visit these
large and untaught tribes, and es-
tablish a mission among them.

About the first of November we
came in sight of the long, low-built
village of Yin-des-tuk-ki. As we
paddled up the winding channel of
the Chilcat River we saw great ex-
citement in the town. We had
hoisted the American flag, as was
our custom, and had put on our best

84 Alaska Days with John Mnir

apparel for the occasion. When we
got within long musket-shot of the
village we saw the native men come
rushing from their houses with their
guns in their hands and mass in
front of the largest house upon the
beach. Then we were greeted by
what seemed rather too warm a re-
ception— a shower of bullets falling
unpleasantly around us. Instinc-
tively Muir and I ceased to paddle,
but Tow-a-att commanded, '' Ut-ha,
ut'ha! — pull, pull ! " and slowly, amid
the dropping bullets, we zigzagged
our way up the channel towards the
village. As we drew near the shore
a line of runners extended down the
beach to us, keeping within shouting
distance of each other. Then came
the questions like bullets — '' Gusu-
wa-eh? — Who are you? Whence do
you come? What is your business
here?" And Stickeen John shouted
back the reply:

The Voyage 85

''A great preacher-chief and a
great ice-chief have come to bring
you a good message."

The answer was shouted back
along the line, and then returned
a message of greeting and welcome.
We were to be the guests of the
chief of Yin-des-tuk-ki, old Don-na-
wuk (Silver Eye), so called because
he was in the habit of wearing on
all state occasions a huge pair of
silver-bowed spectacles which a Rus-
sian officer had given him. He con-
fessed he could not see through
them, but thought they lent dignity
to his countenance. We paddled
slowly up to the village, and Muir
and I, watching with interest, saw
the warriors all disappear. As our
prow touched the sand, however,
here they came, forty or fifty of
them, without their guns this time,
but charging down upon us with
war-cries, *^ Hoo-hooh, hoo-hooh," as

86 Alaska Days with John Muir

if they were going to take us pris-
oners. Dashing into the water they
ranged themselves along each side
of the canoe; then lifting up our
canoe with us in it they rushed with
excited cries up the bank to the
chiefs house and set us down at his
door. It was the Thlinget way of
paying us honor as great guests.

Then we were solemnly ushered
into the presence of Don-na-wuk.
His house was large, covering about
fifty by sixty feet of ground. The
interior was built in the usual fash-
ion of a chiefs house — carved corner
posts, a square of gravel in the cen-
ter of the room for the fire sur-
rounded by great hewn cedar planks
set on edge; a platform of some six
feet in width running clear around
the room; then other planks on edge
and a high platform, where the chief-
tain's household goods were stowed
and where the family took their re-

The Voyage 87

pose. A brisk fire was burning in
the middle of the room; and after
a short palaver, with gifts of to-
bacco and rice to the chief, it was
announced that he would pay us the
distinguished honor of feasting us
first.

It was a never-to-be-forgotten
banquet. We were seated on the
lower platform with our feet to-
wards the fire, and before Muir and
me were placed huge washbowls of
blue Hudson Bay ware. Before each
of our native attendants was placed
a great carved wooden trough, hold-
ing about as much as the washbowls.
We had learned enough of Indian
etiquette to know that at each course
our respective vessels were to be
filled full of food, and we were ex-
pected to carry off what we could not
devour. It was indeed a " feast of
fat things." The first course was
what, for the Indian, takes the place

88 Alaska Days with John Muir

of bread among the whites, — dried
salmon. It was served, a whole
washbowlful for each of us, with a
dressing of seal-grease. Muir and I
adroitly manoeuvred so as to get our
salmon and seal-grease served sepa-
rately; for our stomachs had not
been sufficiently trained to endure
that rancid grease. This course fin-
ished, what was left was dumped
into receptacles in our canoe and
guarded from the dogs by young
men especially appointed for that
purpose. Our washbowls were
cleansed and the second course
brought on. This consisted of the
back fat of the deer, great, long
hunks of it, served with a gravy of
seal-grease. The third course was
little Russian potatoes about the size
of walnuts, dished out to us, a wash-
bowlful, with a dressing of seal-
grease. The final course was the
only berry then in season, the long

The Voyage B9

fleshy apple of the wild rose mel-
lowed with frost, served to us in the
usual quantity with the invariable
sauce of seal-grease.

" Mon, mon ! " said Muir aside to
me, " I'm fashed we'll be floppin*
aboot i' the sea, whiles, wi' flippers
an' forked tails."

When we had partaken of as much
of this feast of fat things as our
civilized stomachs would stand, it
was suddenly announced that we
were about to receive a visit from
the great chief of the Chilcats and
the Chilcoots, old Chief Shathitch
(Hard-to-Kill). In order to prop-
erly receive His Majesty, Muir and
I and our two chiefs were each given
a whole bale of Hudson Bay blan-
kets for a couch. Shathitch made us
wait a long time, doubtless to im-
press us with his dignity as supreme
chief.

The heat of the fire after the wind

90 Alaska Days with John Muir

and cold of the day made us very
drowsy. We fought off sleep, how-
ever, and at last in came stalking the
biggest chief of all Alaska, clothed
in his robe of state, which was an
elegant chinchilla blanket; and upon
its yellow surface, as the chief slowly
turned about to show us what was
written thereon, we were aston-
ished to see printed in black letters
these words, " To Chief Shathitch,
from his friend, William H. Sew-
ard ! " We learned afterwards that
Seward, in his voyage of investiga-
tion, had penetrated to this far-off
town, had been received in royal
slate by the old chief and on his
return to the States had sent back
this token of his appreciation of
the chief's hospitality. Whether
Seward was regaled with viands
similar to those offered to us, his-
tory does not relate.

To me the inspiring part of that

The Voyage 91

voyage came next day, when I
preached from early morning until
midnight, only occasionally relieved
by Muir and by the responsive
speeches of the natives.

"More, more; tell us more,'* they
would cry. "It is a good talk; we
never heard this story before." And
when I would inquire, " Of what do
you wish me now to talk?" they
would always say, " Tell us more of
the Man from Heaven who died for
us."

Runners had been sent to the Chil-
coot village on the eastern arm of
Lynn Canal, and twenty-five miles
up the Chilcat River to Shathitch's
town of Klukwan; and as the day
wore away the crowd of Indians had
increased so greatly that there was
no room for them in the large house.
I heard a scrambling upon the roof,
and looking up I saw a row of black
heads around the great smoke-hole

92 Alaska Days with John Muir

in the center of the roof. After a
little a ripping, tearing sound came
from the sides of the building. They
were prying off the planks in order
that those outside might hear.
When my voice faltered with long
talking Tow-a-att and Kadishan
took up the story, telling what they
had learned of the white man's reli-
gion; or Muir told the eager natives
wonderful things about what the
great one God, whose name is Love,
was doing for them. The all-day
meeting was only interrupted for an
hour or two in the afternoon, when
we walked with the chiefs across the
narrow isthmus between Pyramid
Harbor and the eastern arm of Lynn
Canal, and I selected the harbor,
farm and townsite now occupied by
Haines mission and town and Fort
William H. Seward. This was the
beginning of the large missions of
Haines and Klukwan.

THE DISCOVERY

MOONLIGHT IN GLACIER BAY

To heaven swells a mighty psalm of praise;

Its music-sheets are glaciers, vast and white.
Sky-piercing peaks the voiceless chorus raise,

To fill with ecstasy the wond'ring night.

Complete, with every part in sweet accord,
Th' adoring breezes waft it up, on wings

Of beauty-incense, giving to the Lord
The purest sacrifice glad Nature brings.

The list'ning stars with rapture beat and glow;

The moon forgets her high, eternal calm
To shout her gladness to the sea below,

Whose waves are silver tongues to join the psalm.

Those everlasting snow-fields are not cold;

This icy solitude no barren waste.
The crystal masses burn with love untold ;

The glacier-table spreads a royal feast.

Fairweather ! Crillon ! Warders at Heaven's gate !

Hoar-headed priests of Nature's inmost shrine !
Strong seraph forms in robes immaculate !

Draw me from earth ; enlighten, change, refine ;

Till I, one little note in this great song,
Who seem a blot upon th' unsullied white,

No discord make — a note high, pure and strong —
Set in the silent music of the night.

IV
THE DISCOVERY

THE nature-study part of the
voyage was woven in with the
missionary trip as intimately
as warp with woof. No island, rock,
forest, mountain or glacier which we
passed, near or far, was neglected.
We went so at our own sweet will,
without any set time or schedule,
that we were constantly finding ob-
jects and points of surprise and in-
terest. When we landed, the algae,
which sometimes filled the little har-
bors, the limpets and lichens of the
rocks, the fucus pods that snapped
beneath our feet, the grasses of the
beach, the moss and shrubbery
among the trees, and, more than all,
the majestic forests, claimed atten-

95

1

96 Alaska Days with John Muir

tion and study. Muir was one of
the most expert foresters this coun-
try has ever produced. He was
never at a loss. The luxuriant vege-
tation of this wet coast filled him
with admiration, and he never took
a walk from camp but he had a
whole volume of things to tell me,
and he was constantly bringing in
trophies of which he was prouder
than any hunter of his antlers. Now
it was a bunch of ferns as high as
his head; now a cluster of minute
and wonderfully beautiful moss blos-
soms; now a curious fungous growth;
now a spruce branch heavy with
cones; and again he would call me
into the forest to see a strange and
grotesque moss formation on a dead
stump, looking like a tree standing
upon its head. Thus, although his
objective was the glaciers, his thor-
ough knowledge of botany and his
interest in that study made every

The Discovery 97

camp just the place he wished to be.
He always claimed that there was
more of pure ethics and even of
moral evil and good to be learned
in the wilderness than from any book
or in any abode of man. He was
fond of quoting Wordsworth's
stanza :

" One impulse from a vernal wood
Will teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can."

Muir was a devout theist. The
Fatherhood of God and the Unity of
God, the immanence of God in na-
ture and His management of all the
affairs of the universe, was his con-
stantly reiterated belief. He saw de-
sign in many things which the ordi-
nary naturalist overlooks, such as
the symmetry of an island, the bal-
ancing branches of a tree, the har-
mony of colors in a group of flowers,

98 Alaska Days with John Muir

the completion of a fully rounded
landscape. In his view, the Creator
of it all saw every beautiful and sub-
lime thing from every viewpoint,
and had thus formed it, not merely
for His own delight,- but for the
delectation and instruction of His
human children.

" Look at that, now," he would
say, when, on turning a point, a
wonderful vista of island-studded sea.
between mountains, with one of
Alaska's matchless sunsets at the
end, would wheel into sight. '' Why,
it looks as if these giants of God's
great army had just now marched
into their stations; every one placed
just right, just right! What land-
scape gardening! What a scheme of
things! And to think that He should
plan to bring us feckless creatures
here at the right moment, and then
flash such glories at us! Man, we're
not worthy of such honor! "

The Discovery 99

Thus Muir was always discovering
to me things which I would never
have seen myself and opening up to
me new avenues of knowledge, de-
light and adoration. There was
something so intimate in his theism
that it purified, elevated and broad-
ened mine, even when I could not
agree with him. His constant ex-
clamation when a fine landscape
would burst upon our view, or a
shaft of light would pierce the clouds
and glorify a mountain, was, " Praise
God from whom all blessings flow!"

Two or three great adventures
stand out prominently in this wonder-
ful voyage of discovery. Two weeks
from home brought us to Icy Straits
and the homes of the Hoonah tribe.
Here the knowledge of the way on
the part of our crew ended. We put
into the large Hoonah village on
Chichagof Island. After the usual
preaching and census-taking, we took

100 Alaska Days with John Muir

aboard a sub-chief of the Hoonahs,
who was a noted seal hunter and,
therefore, able to guide us among
the ice-floes of the mysterious Gla-
cier Bay of which we had heard.
Vancouver's chart gave us no inti-
mation of any inlet whatever; but
the natives told of vast masses of
floating ice, of a constant noise of
thunder when they crashed from the
glaciers into the sea; and also of
fearsome bays and passages full of
evil spirits which made them very
perilous to navigate.

In one bay there was said to be
a giant devil-fish with arms as long
as a tree, lurking in malignant pa-
tience, awaiting the passage that
way of an unwary canoe, when up
would flash those terrible arms with
their thousand suckers and, seizing
their prey, would drag down the
men to the bottom of the sea, there
to be mangled and devoured by the

The Discovery 101

horrid beak. Another deep fiord was
the abode of Koosta-kah, the Otter-
man, the mischievous Puck of Indian
lore, who was waiting for voyagers
to land and camp, when he would
seize their sleeping forms and trans-
port them a dozen miles in a mo-
ment, or cradle them on the tops of
the highest trees. Again there was
a most rapacious and ferocious killer-
whale in a piece of swift water,
whose delight it was to take into
his great, tooth-rimmed jaws whole
canoes with their crews of men, man-
gling them and gulping them down
as a single mouthful. Many were
these stories of fear told us at the
Hoonah village the night before we
started to explore the icy bay, and
our credulous Stickeens gave us
rather broad hints that it was time
to turn back.

" There are no natives up in that
region; there is nothing to hunt;

102 Alaska Days with John Muir

there is no gold there; why do you
persist in this cultus coly (aimless
journey) ? You are likely to meet
death and nothing else if you go into
that dangerous region."

All these stories made us the more
eager to explore the wonders beyond,
and we hastened away from Hoonah
with our guide aboard. A day's sail
brought us to a little, heavily wooded
island near the mouth of Glacier Bay.
This we named Pleasant Island.

As we broke camp in the morning
our guide said: "We must take on
board a supply of dry wood here, as
there is none beyond."

Leaving this last green island we
steered northwest into the great
bay, the country of ice and bare
rocks. Muir's excitement was in-
creasing every moment, and as the
majestic arena opened before us and
the Muir, Geicke, Pacific and other
great glaciers (all nameless as yet)

The Discovery 103

began to appear, he could hardly
contain himself. He was impatient
of any delay, and was constantly
calling to the crew to redouble their
efforts and get close to these won-
ders. Now the marks of recent gla-
ciation showed plainly. Here was a
conical island of gray granite, whose
rounded top and symmetrical shoul-
ders were worn smooth as a Scotch
monument by grinding glaciers.
Here was a great mountain slashed
sheer across its face, showing sharp
edge and flat surface as if a slab of
mountain size had been sawed from
it. Yonder again loomed a granite
range whose huge breasts were
rounded and polished by the resist-
less sweep of that great ice mass
which Vancouver saw filling the
bay.

Soon the icebergs were charging
down upon us with the receding tide
and dressing up in compact phalanx

104 Alaska Days with John Muir

when the tide arose. First would
come the advance guard of smaller
bergs, with here and there a house-
like mass of cobalt blue with streaks
of white and deeper recesses of ul-
tramarine; here we passed an eight-
sided, solid figure of bottle-green ice;
there towered an antlered formation
like the horns of a stag. Now we
must use all caution and give the
larger icebergs a wide berth. They
are treacherous creatures, these ice-
bergs. You may be paddling along
by a peaceful looking berg, sleeping
on the water as mild and harmless
as a lamb; when suddenly he will
take a notion to turn over, and up
under your canoe will come a spear
of ice, impaling it and lifting it and
its occupants skyward; then, turning
over, down will go canoe and men
to the depths.

Our progress up the sixty miles of
Glacier Bay was very slow. Three

The Discovery 105

nights we camped on the bare gran-
ite rock before we reached the limit
of the bay. All vegetation had dis-
appeared; hardly a bunch of grass
was seen. The only signs of former
life were the sodden and splintered
spruce and fir stumps that projected
here and there from the bases of
huge gravel heaps, the moraine mat-
ter of the mighty ice mass that had
engulfed them. They told the story
of great forests which had once cov-
ered this whole region, until the
great sea of ice of the second gla-
cial period overwhelmed and ground
them down, and buried them deep
under its moraine matter. When we
landed there were no level spots on
which to pitch our tent and no sandy
beaches or gravel beds in which to
sink our tent-poles. I learned from
Muir the gentle art of sleeping on
a rock, curled like a squirrel around
a boulder.

106 Alaska Days with John Muir

We passed by Muir Glacier on the
other side of the bay, seeking to
attain the extreme end of the great
fiord. We estimated the distance by
the tide and our rate of rowing,
tracing the shore-line and islands as
we went along and getting the points
of the compass from our little pocket
instrument.

Rain was falling almost constantly
during the week we spent in Glacier
Bay. Now and then the clouds
would lift, showing the twin peaks
of La Perouse and the majestic sum-
mits of Mts. Fairweather and Crillon.
These mighty summits, twelve thou-
sand, fifteen thousand and sixteen
thousand feet high, respectively,
pierced the sky directly above us;
sometimes they seemed to be hang-
ing over us threateningly. Only
once did the sky completely clear;
and then was preached to us the
wonderful Sermon of Glacier Bay.

The Discovery 107

Early that morning we quitted our
camp on a barren rock, steering to-
wards Mt. Fairweather. A night of
sleepless discomfort had ushered in
a bleak gray morning. Our Indians
were sullen and silent, their scowling
looks resenting our relentless pur-
pose to attain to the head of the
bay. The air was damp and raw,
chilling us to the marrow. The for-
bidding granite mountains, showing
here and there through the fog,
seemed suddenly to push out threat-
ening fists and shoulders at us. All
night long the ice-guns had bom-
barded us from four or five direc-
tions, when the great masses of ice
from living glaciers toppled into the
sea, crashing and grinding with the
noise of thunder. The granite walls
hurled back the sound in reiterated
peals, multiplying its volume a
hundredfold.

There was no Love apparent on

108 Alaska Days with John Muir

that bleak, gray morning: Power was
there in appalling force. Visions of
those evergreen forests that had once
clung trustingly to these mountain
walls, but had been swept, one and
all, by the relentless forces of the ice
and buried deep under mountains of
moraine matter, but added to the
present desolation. We could not
enjoy; we could only endure. Death
from overturning icebergs, from
charging tides, from mountain ava-
lanche, threatened us.

Suddenly I heard Muir catch his
breath with a fervent ejaculation.
''God, Almighty!" he said. Fol-
lowing his gaze towards Mt. Crillon,
I saw the summit highest of all
crowned with glory indeed. It was
not sunlight; there was no appear-
ance of shining; it was as if the Great
Artist with one sweep of His brush
had laid upon the king-peak of all
a crown of the most brilliant of all

The Discovery 109

colors — as if a pigment, perfectly
made and thickly spread, too deli-
cate for crimson, too intense for
pink, had leaped in a moment upon
the mountain top ; " An awful rose
of dawn." The summit nearest
Heaven had caught a glimpse of its
glory! It was a rose blooming in
ice-fields, a love-song in the midst of
a stern epic, a drop from the heart
of Christ upon the icy desolation and
barren affections of a sin-frozen
world. It warmed and thrilled us in
an instant. We who had been dull
and apathetic a moment before, shiv-
ering in our wet blankets, were glow-
ing and exultant now. Even the
Indians ceased their paddling, gazing
with faces of awe upon the wonder.
Now, as we watched that kingly
peak, we saw the color leap to one
and another and another of the
snowy summits around it. The
monarch had a whole family of royal

110 Alaska Days with John Muir

princes about him to share his glory.
Their radiant heads, ruby crowned,
were above the clouds, which seemed
to form their silken garments.

As we looked in ecstatic silence we
saw the light creep down the moun-
tains. It was changing now. The
glowing crimson was suffused with
soft, creamy light. If it was less
divine, it was more warmly human.
Heaven was coming down to man.
The dark recesses of the mountains
began to lighten. They stood forth
as at the word of command from
the Master of all; and as the chang-
ing mellow light moved downward
that wonderful colosseum appeared
clearly with its battlements and
peaks and columns, until the whole
majestic landscape was revealed.

Now we saw the design and pur-
pose of it all. Now the text of this
great sermon was emblazoned across
the landscape — '' God is Love '' ; and

The Discovery 111

we understood that these relentless
forces that had pushed the molten
mountains heavenward, cooled them
into granite peaks, covered them
with snow and ice, dumped the
moraine matter into the sea, filling
up the sea, preparing the world for
a stronger and better race of men
(who knows?), were all a part of
that great " All things " that " work
together for good/'

Our minds cleared with the land-
scape; our courage rose; our In-
dians dipped their paddles silently,
steering without fear amidst the dan-
gerous masses of ice. But there was
no profanity in Muir's exclamation,
''We have met with God!" A life-
long devoutness of gratitude filled
us, to think that we were guided into
this most wonderful room of God's
great gallery, on perhaps the only
day in the year when the skies were
cleared and the sunrise, the atmos-

112 Alaska Days with John Mmr

pheric conditions and the point of
view all prepared for the matchless
spectacle. The discomforts of the
voyage, the toil, the cold and rain
of the past weeks were a small price
to pay for one glimpse of its surpass-
ing loveliness. Again and again
Muir would break out, after a long
silence of blissful memory, with ex-
clamations:

"We saw it; we saw it! He sent
us to His most glorious exhibition.
Praise God, from whom all bless-
ings flow! "

Two or three inspiring days fol-
lowed. Muir must climb the most
accessible of the mountains. My
weak shoulders forbade me to as-
cend more than two or three thou-
sand feet, but Muir went more than
twice as high. Upon two or three
of the glaciers he climbed, although
the speed of these icy streams was
so great and their '' frozen cataracts "

The Discovery 118

were so frequent, that it was difficult
to ascend them.

I began to understand Muir's
whole new theory, which theory
made Tyndall pronounce him the
greatest authority on glacial action
the world had seen. He pointed out
to me the mechanical laws that gov-
erned those slow-moving, resistless
streams; how they carved their own
valleys; how the lower valley and
glacier were often the resultant in
size and velocity of the two or
three glaciers that now formed the
branches of the main glaciers; how
the harder strata of rock resisted
and turned the masses of ice; how
the steely ploughshares were often
inserted into softer leads and a
whole mountain split apart as by a
wedge.

Muir would explore all day long,
often rising hours before daylight
and disappearing among the moun-

114 Alaska Days with John Muir

tains, not coming to camp until after
night had fallen. Again and again
the Indians said that he was lost; but
I had no fears for him. When he
would return to camp he was so full
of his discoveries and of the new
facts garnered that he would talk
until long into the night, almost for-
getting to eat.

Returning down the bay, we
passed the largest glacier of all,
which was to bear Muir's name. It
was then fully a mile and a half in
width, and the perpendicular face
of it towered from four to seven hun-
dred feet above the surface of the
water. The ice masses were break-
ing off so fast that we were forced
to put off far from the face of the
glacier. The great waves threat-
ened constantly to dash us against
the sharp points of the icebergs. We
wished to land and scale the glacier
from the eastern side. We rowed

The Discovery 115

our canoe about half a mile from
the edge of the glacier, but, attempt-
ing to land, were forced hastily to
put off again. A great wave, formed
by the masses of ice breaking off
into the water, threatened to dash
our loaded canoe against the boul-
ders on the beach. Rowing further
away, we tried it again and again,
with the same result. As soon as
we neared the shore another huge
wave would threaten destruction.
We were fully a mile and a half
from the edge of the glacier before
we found it safe to land.

Muir spent a whole day alone on
the glacier, walking over twenty
miles across what he called the gla-
cial lake between two mountains. A
cold, penetrating, mist-like rain was
falling, and dark clouds swept up
the bay and clung about the shoul-
ders of the mountains. When night
approached and Muir had not re-

116 Alaska Days with John Muir

turned, I set the Indians to digging
out from the bases of the gravel hills
the frazzled stumps and logs that
remained of the buried forests.
These were full of resin and burned
brightly. I made a great fire and
cooked a good supper of venison,
beans, biscuit and coffee. When
pitchy darkness gathered, and still
Muir did not come, Tow-a-att made
some torches of fat spruce, and tak-
ing with him Charley, laden with
more wood, he went up the beach a
mile and a half, climbed the base of
the mountain and kindled a beacon
which flashed its cheering rays far
over the glacier.

Muir came stumbling into camp
with these two Indians a little be-
fore midnight, very tired but very
happy. "Ah!" he sighed, " Tm
glad to be in camp. The glacier
almost got me this time. If it had
not been for the beacon and old

The Discovery 117

Tow-a-att, I might have had to spend
the night on the ice. The crevasses
were so many and so bewildering In
their mazy,, crisscross windings that
I was actually going farther into
the glacier when I caught the flash
of light."

I brought him to the tent and
placed the hot viands before him.
He attacked them ravenously, but
presently was talking again:

'* Man, man; you ought to have
been with me. You'll never make
up what you have lost to-day. IVe
been wandering through a thousand
rooms of God's crystal temple. I've
been a thousand feet down in the
crevasses, with matchless domes and
sculptured figures and carved ice-
work all about me. Solomon's mar-
ble and ivory palaces were nothing
to it. Such purity, such color, such
delicate beauty! I was tempted to
stay there and feast my soul, and

118 Alaska Days with John Muir

softly freeze, until I would become
part of the glacier. What a great
death that would be ! "

Again and again I would have to
remind Muir that he was eating his
supper, but it was more than an hour
before I could get him to finish
the meal, and two or three hours
longer before he stopped talking and
went to sleep. I wish I had taken
down his descriptions. What splen-
did reading they would make!

But scurries of snow warned us
that winter was coming, and, much
to the relief of our natives, we turned
the prow of our canoe towards Chat-
ham Strait again. Landing our
Hoonah guide at his village, we took
our route northward again up Lynn
Canal. The beautiful Davison Gla-
cier with its great snowy fan drew
our gaze and excited our admiration
for two days; then the visit to the
Chilcats and the return trip com-

The Discovery 119

menced. Bowling down the canal
before a strong north wind, we en-
tered Stevens Passage, and visited
the two villages of the Auk Indians,
a squalid, miserable tribe. We
camped at the site of what is now
Juneau, the capital of Alaska, and
no dream of the millions of gold
that were to be taken from those
mountains disturbed us. If we had
known, I do not think that we would
have halted a day or staked a claim.
Our treasures were richer than gold
and securely laid up in the vaults of
our memories.

An excursion into Taku Bay, that
miniature of Glacier Bay, with its
then three living glaciers; a visit to
two villages of the Taku Indians;
past Ft. Snettisham, up whose arms
we pushed, mapping them; then to
Sumdum. Here the two arms of
Holkham Bay, filled with ice, en-
ticed us to exploration, but the con-

120 Alaska Days with John Muir

stant rains of the fall had made the
ice of the glaciers more viscid and
the glacier streams more rapid;
hence the vast array of icebergs
charging down upon us like an army,
spreading out in loose formation
and then gathering into a barrier
when the tide turned, made explora-
tion to the end of the bay impossi-
ble. Muir would not give up his
quest of the mother glacier until the
Indians frankly refused to go any
further; and old Tow-a-att called our
interpreter, Johnny, as for a counsel
of state, and carefully set forth to
Muir that if he persisted in his pur-
pose of pushing forward up the bay
he would have the blood of the whole
party on his hands.

Said the old chief: "My life is of
no account, and it does not matter
whether I live or die; but you shall
not sacrifice the life of my min-
ister."

The Discovery 121

I laughed at Muir's discomfiture
and gave the word to retreat. This
one defeat of a victorious expedition
so weighed upon Muir's mind that it
brought him back from the California
coast next year and from the arms
of his bride to discover and climb
upon that glacier.

On down now through Prince
Frederick Sound, past the beautiful
Norris Glacier, then into Le Conte
Bay with its living glacier and ice-
bergs, across the Stickeen flats, and
so joyfully home again, Muir to take
the November steamboat back to his
sunland.

I have made many voyages in that
great Alexandrian Archipelago since,
traveling by canoe over fifteen thou-
sand miles — not one of them a dull one
— through its intricate passages; but
none compared, in the number and
intensity of its thrills, in the variety
and excitement of its incidents and

122 Alaska Days with John Muir

in its lasting impressions of beauty
and grandeur, with this first voyage
when we groped our way northward
with only Vancouver's old chart as
our guide.

THE LOST GLACIER

NIGHT IN A CANOE

A dreary world! The constant rain

Beats back to earth blithe fancy's wings;
And life — a sodden garment — clings

About a body numb with pain.

Imagination ceased with light;

Of Nature's psalm no echo lingers.

The death-cold mist, with ghostly fingers,
Shrouds world and soul in rayless night.

An inky sea, a sullen crew,

A frail canoe's uncertain motion;

A whispered talk of wind and ocean.
As plotting secret crimes to do!

The vampire-night sucks all my blood;

Warm home and love seem lost for aye ;

From cloud to cloud I steal away,
Like guilty soul o'er Stygian flood.

Peace, morbid heart! From paddle blade
See the black water flash in Hght;
And bars of moonbeams streaming white,

Have pearls of ebon raindrops made.

From darkest gea of deep despair

Gleams Hope, awaked by Action's blow;
And Faith's clear ray, though clouds hang low,

Slants up to heights serene and fair.

THE LOST GLACIER

JOHN MUIR was married in the
spring of 1880 to Miss Strentzel,
the daughter of a Polish physi-
cian who had come out in the great
stampede of 1849 to California, but
had found his gold in oranges, lem-
ons and apricots on a great fruit
ranch at Martinez, California. A
brief letter from Muir told of his
marriage, with just one note in it,
the depth of joy and peace of which
I could fathom, knowing him so well.
Then no word of him until the
monthly mailboat came in Septem-
ber. As I stood on the wharf with
the rest of the Wrangell population,
as was the custom of our isolation,
watching the boat come in, I was

125

126 Alaska Days with John Muir

overjoyed to see John Muir on deck,
in that same old, long, gray ulster
and Scotch cap. He waved and
shouted at me before the boat
touched the wharf.

Springing ashore he said, " When
can you be ready? ''

"Aren't you a little fast?" I re-
plied. ''What does this mean?
Where's your wife?"

" Man," he exclaimed, " have you
forgotten? Don't you know we lost
a glacier last fall? Do you think I
could sleep soundly in my bed this
winter with that hanging on my con-
science? My wife could not come,
so I have come alone and you've got
to go with me to find the lost. Get
your canoe and crew and let us be
off."

The ten months since Muir had
left me had not been spent in idleness
at Wrangell. I had made two long
voyages of discovery and missionary

The Lost Glacier 127

work on my own account, — one in
the spring, of four hundred fifty
miles around Prince of Wales
Island, visiting the five towns of
Hydah Indians and the three vil-
lages of the Hanega tribe of Thlin-
gets. Another in the summer down the
coast to the Cape Fox and Tongass
tribes of Thlingets, and across Dixon
entrance to Ft. Simpson, where there
was a mission among the Tsimphe-
ans, and on fifteen miles further to
the famous mission of Father Dun-
can at Metlakahtla. I had written
accounts of these trips to Muir; but
for him the greatest interest was in
the glaciers and mountains of the
mainland.

Our preparations were soon made.
Alas! we could not have our noble
old captain, Tow-a-att, this time. On
the tenth of January, 1880, — the
darkest day of my life, — this '' no-
blest Roman of them all " fell dead

128 Alaska Days with John Muir

at my feet with a bullet through his
forehead, shot by a member of that
same Hootz-noo tribe where he had
preached the gospel of peace so sim-
ply and eloquently a few months be-
fore. The Hootz-noos, maddened by
the fiery liquor that bore their name,
came to Wrangell, and a preliminary
skirmish led to an attack at daylight
of that winter day upon the Stickeen
village. Old Tow-a-att had stood for
peace, and rather than have any
bloodshed had offered all his blan-
kets as a peace offering, although
in no physical fear himself; but when
the Hootz-noos, encouraged by the
seeming cowardice of the Stickeens,
broke into their houses, and the
Christianized tribe, provoked beyond
endurance, came out with their guns,
Tow-a-att came forth armed only
with his old carved spear, the em-
blem of his position as chief, to see
if he could not call his tribe back

i
1

i

,1*

%-

1

,dM

f^ft'

i

The Lost Glacier 129

again. At my instance, as I stood
with my hand on his shoulder, he
lifted up his voice to recall his peo-
ple to their houses, when, in an in-
stant, the volley commenced on both
sides, and this Christian man, one
of the simplest and grandest souls
I ever knew, fell dead at my feet, and
the tribe was tumbled back into bar-
barism; and the white man, who had
taught the Indians the art of mak-
ing rum, and the white man's gov-
ernment, which had afforded no safe-
guard against such scenes, were
responsible.

Muir mourned with me the fate of
this old chief; but another of my men,
Lot Tyeen, was ready with a swift
canoe. Joe, his son-in-law, and Billy
Dickinson, a half-breed boy of seven-
teen who acted as interpreter, formed
the crew. When we were about to
embark I suddenly thought of my
little dog Stickeen and made the

130 Alaska Days with John Muir

resolve to take him along. My wife
and Muir both protested and I al-
most yielded to their persuasion. I
shudder now to think what the world
would have lost had their arguments
prevailed! That little, long-haired,
brisk, beautiful, but very independ-
ent dog, in co-ordination with Muir's
genius, was to give to the world one
of its greatest dog-classics. Muir's
story of '' Stickeen " ranks with
" Rab and His Friends," '' Bob, Son
of Battle,'^ and far above " The Call
of the Wild." Indeed, in subtle
analysis of dog character, as well
as beauty of description, I think it
outranks all of them. All over the
world men, women and children are
reading with laughter, thrills and
tears this exquisite little story.

I have told Muir that in his book
he did not do justice to my puppy's
beauty. I think that he was the
handsomest dog I have ever known.

The Lost Glacier 181

His markings were very much like
those of an American Shepherd dog
— black, white and tan; although he
was not half the size of one; but his
hair was so silky and so long, his
tail so heavily fringed and beauti-
fully curved, his eyes so deep and
expressive and his shape so perfect
in its graceful contours, that I have
never seen another dog quite like
him; otherwise Muir's description of
him is perfect.

When Stickeen was only a round
ball of silky fur as big as one's fist,
he was given as a wedding present to
my bride, two years before this voy-
age. I carried him in my overcoat
pocket to and from the steamer as
we sailed from Sitka to Wrangell.
Soon after we arrived a solemn dele-
gation of Stickeen Indians came to
call on the bride; but as soon as they
saw the puppy they were solemn no
longer. His gravely humorous an-

132 Alaska Days with John Muir

tics were irresistible. It was Moses
who named him Stickeen after their
tribe — an exceptional honor. There-
after the whole tribe adopted and
protected him, and woe to the In-
dian dog which molested him. Once
when I was passing the house of
this same Lot Tyeen, one of his
large hunting dogs dashed out at
Stickeen and began to worry him.
Lot rescued the little fellow, deliv-
ered him to me and walked into his
house. Soon he came out with his
gun, and before I knew what he
was about he had shot the offend-
ing Indian dog — a valuable hunting
animal.

Stickeen lacked the obtrusively af-
fectionate manner of many of his
species, did not like to be fussed
over, would even growl when our
babies enmeshed their hands in his
long hair; and yet, to a degree I
have never known in another dog,

The Lost Glacier 133

he attracted the attention of every-
body and won all hearts.

As instances: Dr. Kendall, "The
Grand Old Man " of our Church, dur-
ing his visit of 1879 used to break
away from solemn counsels with the
other D.D.s and the carpenters to
run after and shout at Stickeen.
And Mrs. McFarland, the Mother of
Protestant missions in Alaska, often
begged us to give her the dog; and,
when later he was stolen from her
care by an unscrupulous tourist and
so forever lost to us, she could hardly
afterwards speak of him without
tears.

Stickeen was a born aristocrat,
dainty and scrupulously clean. From
puppyhood he never cared to play
with the Indian dogs, and I was
often amused to see the dignified but
decided way in which he repulsed all
attempts at familiarity on the part of
the Indian children. He admitted

134 Alaska Days with John Muu'

to his friendship only a few of the
natives, choosing those who had
adopted the white man's dress and
mode of living, and were devoid of
the rank native odors. His likes
and dislikes were very strong and
always evident from the moment of
his meeting with a stranger. There
was something almost uncanny
about the accuracy of his judgment
when '^ sizing up " a man.

It was Stickeen himself who really
decided the question whether we
should take him with us on this trip.
He listened to the discussion, pro
and con, as he stood with me on the
wharf, turning his sharp, expressive
eyes and sensitive ears up to me or
down to Muir in the canoe. When
the argument seemed to be going
against the dog he suddenly turned,
deliberately walked down the gang-
plank to the canoe, picked his steps
carefully to the bow, where my seat

The Lost Glacier 135

with Muir was arranged, and curled
himself down on my coat. The dis-
cussion ended abruptly in a general
laugh, and Stickeen went along.

Then the acute little fellow set
about, in the wisest possible way, to
conquer Muir. He was not obtru-
sive, never " butted in " ; never of-
fended by a too affectionate tongue.
He listened silently to discussions on
his merits, those first days; but when
Muir's comparisons of the brilliant
dogs of his acquaintance with Stick-
een grew too '' odious " Stickeen
would rise, yawn openly and retire
to a distance, not slinkingly, but with
tail up, and lie down again out of
earshot of such calumnies. When
we landed after a day's journey
Stickeen was always the first ashore,
exploring for field mice and squir-
rels ; but when we would start to the
woods, the mountains or the glaciers
the dog would join us, coming mys-

136 Alaska Days with John Muir

teriously from the forest. When our
paths separated, Stickeen, looking to
me for permission, would follow
Muir, trotting- at first behind him,
but gradually ranging alongside.

After a few days Muir changed his
tone, saying, '' There's more in that
wee beastie than I thought''; and
before a week passed Stickeen's vic-
tory was complete; he slept at Muir's
feet, went with him on all his ram-
bles; and even among dangerous
crevasses or far up the steep slopes
of granite mountains the little dog's
splendid tail would be seen ahead of
Muir, waving cheery signals to his
new-found human companion.

Our canoe was light and easily
propelled. Our outfit was very sim-
ple, for this was to be a quick voyage
and there were not to be so many
missionary visits this time. It was
principally a voyage of discovery;
we were in search of the glacier that

The Lost Glacier 137

we had lost. Perched in the high
stern sat our captain, Lot Tyeen,
massive and capable, handling his
broad steering paddle with power
and skill. In front of him Joe and
Billy pulled oars, Joe, a strong young
man, our cook, hunter and best oars-
man; Billy, a lad of seventeen, our
interpreter and Joe's assistant. To-
wards the bow, just behind the mast,
sat Muir and I, each with a paddle
in his hands. Stickeen slumbered
at our feet or gazed into our faces
when our conversation interested
him. When we began to discuss a
landing place he would climb the high
bow and brace himself on the top of
the beak, an animated figure-head,
ready to jump into the water when
we were about to camp.

Our route was different from that
of '79. Now we struck through
Wrangell Narrows, that tortuous
and narrow passage between Mitkof

138 Alaska Days with John Muir

and Kupreanof Islands, past Norris
Glacier with its far-flung shaft of
ice appearing above the forests as if
suspended in air; past the bold Pt.
Windham with its bluff of three
thousand feet frowning upon the wa-
ters of Prince Frederick Sound;
across Port Houghton, whose deep
fiord had no ice in it and, therefore,
was not worthy of an extended visit.
We made all haste, for Muir was, as
the Indians said, '' always hungry
for ice," and this was more espe-
cially his expedition. He was the
commander now, as I had been the
year before. He had set for him-
self the limit of a month and must
return by the October boat. Often
we ran until late at night against
the protests of our Indians, whose
life of infinite leisure was not ac-
customed to such rude interruption.
They could not understand Muir at
all, nor in the least comprehend his

The Lost Glacier 139

object in visiting icy bays where
there was no chance of finding gold
and nothing to hunt.

The vision rises before me, as my
mind harks back to this second trip
of seven hundred miles, of cold, rainy
nights, when, urged by Muir to make
one more point, the natives passed
the last favorable camping place and
we blindly groped for hours in pitchy
darkness, trying to find a friendly
beach. The intensely phosphores-
cent water flashed about us, the only
relief to the inky blackness of the
night. Occasionally a salmon or a
big halibut, disturbed by our canoe,
went streaming like a meteor
through the water, throwing off
coruscations of light. As we neared
the shore, the waves breaking upon
the rocks furnished us the only illu-
mination. Sometimes their black
tops with waving seaweed, sur-
rounded by phosphorescent breakers,

140 Alaska Days with John Muir

would have the appearance of mouths
set with gleaming teeth rushing at
us out of the dark as if to devour
us. Then would come the landing
on a sandy beach, the march through
the seaweed up to the wet woods, a
fusillade of exploding fucus pods ac-
companying us as if the outraged
fairies were bombarding us with tiny
guns. Then would ensue a tedious
groping with the lantern for a camp-
ing place and for some dry, fat spruce
wood from which to coax a fire ; then
the big camp-fire, the bean-pot and
coffee-pot, the cheerful song and
story, and the deep, dreamless sleep
that only the weary voyageur or
hunter can know.

Four or five days sufficed to bring
us to our first objective — Sumdum or
Holkham Bay, with its three won-
derful arms. Here we were to find
the lost glacier. This deep fiord has
two great prongs. Neither of them

The Lost Glacier 141

figured in Vancouver's chart, and
so far as records go we were the
first to enter and follow to its end
the longest of these, Endicott Arm.
We entered the bay at night, caught
again by the darkness, and groped
our way uncertainly. We probably
would have spent most of the night
trying to find a landing place had not
the gleam of a fire greeted us, flash-
ing through the trees, disappearing
as an island intervened, and again
opening up with its fair ray as we
pushed on. An hour's steady pad-
dling brought us to the camp of some
Cassiar miners — my friends. They
were here at the foot of a glacier
stream, from the bed of which they
had been sluicing gold. Just now
they were in hard luck, as the con-
stant rains had swelled the glacial
stream, burst through their wing-
dams, swept away their sluice-boxes
and destroyed the work of the sum-

142 Alaska Days with John Muu-

men Strong men of the wilderness
as they were, they were not discour-
aged, but were discussing plans for
prospecting new places and trying it
again here next summer. Hot cof-
fee and fried venison emphasized
their welcome, and we in return
could give them a little news from
the outside world, from which they
had been shut off completely for
months.

Muir called us before daylight the
next morning. He had been up since
two or three o'clock, '' studying the
night effects," he said, listening to
the roaring and crunching of the
charging ice as it came out of Endi-
cott Arm, spreading out like the skir-
mish line of an army and grinding
against the rocky point just below us.
He had even attempted a moonlight
climb up the sloping face of a high
promontory with Stickeen as his
companion, but was unable to get to

The Lost Glacier 143

the top, owing to the smoothness of
the granite rock. It was newly gla-
ciated— this whole region — and the
hard rubbing ice-tools had polished
the granite like a monument. A
hasty meal and we were off.

''We'll find it this time/' said
Muir.

A miner crawled out of his blan-
kets and came to see us start. " If
it's scenery you're after," he said,
'* ten miles up the bay there's the
nicest canyon you ever saw. It has
no name that I know of, but it is sure
some scenery."

The long, straight fiord stretched
southeast into the heart of the gran-
ite range, its funnel shape producing
tremendous tides. When the tide
was ebbing that charging phalanx
of ice was irresistible, storming down
the canyon with race-horse speed;
no canoe could stem that current.
We waited until the turn, then get-

144 Alaska Days with John Muir

ting inside the outer fleet of ice-
bergs we paddled up with the flood
tide. Mile after mile we raced past
those smooth mountain shoulders;
higher and higher they towered, and
the ice, closing in upon us, threat-
ened a trap. The only way to navi-
gate safely that dangerous fiord was
to keep ahead of the charging ice.
As we came up towards the end of
the bay the narrowing walls of the
fiord compressed the ice until it
crowded dangerously around us.
Our captain, Lot, had taken the pre-
caution to put a false bow and stern
on his canoe, cunningly fashioned out
of curved branches of trees and hol-
lowed with his hand-adz to fit the
ends of the canoe. These were
lashed to the bow and stern by
thongs of deer sinew. They were
needed. It was like penetrating an
arctic ice-floe. Sometimes we would
have to skirt the granite rock and

The Lost Glacier 145

with our poles shove out the ice-
cakes to secure a passage. It was
fully thirty miles to the head of the
bay, but we made it in half a day,
so strong was the current of the ris-
ing tide.

I shall never forget the view that
burst upon us as we rounded the last
point. The face of the glacier where
it discharged its icebergs was very
narrow in comparison with the gi-
ants of Glacier Bay, but the ice cliff
was higher than even the face of
Muir Glacier. The narrow canyon
of hard granite had compressed the
ice of the great glacier until it had
the appearance of a frozen torrent
broken into innumerable crevasses,
the great masses of ice tumbling over
one another and bulging out for a
few moments before they came
crashing and splashing down into
the deep water of the bay. The
fiord was simply a cleft in high

146 Alaska Days with John Muir

mountains, and the depth of the wa-
ter could only be conjectured. It
must have been hundreds of feet,
perhaps thousands, from the sur-
face of the water to the bottom of
that fissure. Smooth, polished, shin-
ing breasts of bright gray granite
crowded above the glacier on every
side, seeming to overhang the ice and
the bay. Struggling clumps of ever-
greens clung to the mountain sides
below the glacier, and up, away up,
dizzily to the sky towered the walls
of the canyon. Hundreds of other
Alaskan glaciers excel this in masses
of ice and in grandeur of front, but
none that I have seen condense
beauty and grandeur to finer results.
" What a plucky little giant! " was
Muir's exclamation as we stood on
a rock-mound in front of this gla-
cier. " To think of his shouldering
his way through the mountain range
like this! Samson, pushing down

The Lost Glacier 147

the pillars of the temple at Gaza, was
nothing to this fellow. Hear him
roar and laugh ! "

Without consulting me Muir
named this " Young Glacier," and
right proud was I to see that name
on the charts for the next ten years
or more, for we mapped Endicott
Arm and the other arm of Sumdum
Bay as we had Glacier Bay; but later
maps have a different name. Some
ambitious young ensign on a survey-
ing vessel, perhaps, stole my glacier,
and later charts give it the name of
Dawes. I have not found in the
Alaskan statute books any penalty
attached to the crime of stealing
a glacier, but certainly it ought to
be ranked as a felony of the first
magnitude, the grandest of grand
larcenies.

A couple of days and nights spent
in the vicinity of Young Glacier were
a period of unmixed pleasure. Muir

148 Alaska Days with John Muir

spent all of these days and part of
the nights climbing the pinnacled
mountains to this and that view-
point, crossing the deep, narrow and
dangerous glacier five thousand feet
above the level of the sea, explor-r
ing its tributaries and their side
canyons, making sketches in his
note-book for future elaboration.
Stickeen by this time constantly fol-
lowed Muir, exciting my jealousy by
his plainly expressed preference. Be-
cause of my bad shoulder the higher
and steeper ascents of this very
rugged region were impossible to
me, and I must content myself with
two thousand feet and even lesser
climbs. My favorite perch was on
the summit of a sugar-loaf rock
which formed the point of a promon-
tory jutting into the bay directly
in front of my glacier, and distant
from its face less than a quarter of
a mile. It was a granite fragment

The Lost Glacier 149

which had evidently been broken
off from the mountain; indeed, there
was a niche five thousand feet above
into which it would exactly fit. Tho
sturdy evergreens struggled half-
way up its sides, but the top was
bare.

On this splendid pillar I spent
many hours. Generally I could see
Muir, fortunate in having sound arms
and legs, scaling the high rock-faces,
now coming out on a jutting spur,
now spread like a spider against the
mountain wall. Here he would be
botanizing in a patch of g-reen that
relieved the gray of the granite,
there he was dodging in and out of
the blue crevasses of the upper gla-
cial falls. Darting before him or
creeping behind was a little black
speck which I made out to be Stick-
een, climbing steeps up which a fox
would hardly venture. Occasionally
I would see him dancing about at

150 Alaska Days with John Muir

the base of a cliff too steep for him,
up which Muir was climbing, and
his piercing howls of protest at be-
ing left behind would come echoing
down to me.

But chiefly I was engrossed in the
great drama which was being acted
before me by the glacier itself. It
was the battle of gravity with flinty
hardness and strong cohesion. The
stage setting was perfect; the great
hall formed by encircling mountains;
the side curtains of dark-green for-
est, fold on fold; the gray and brown
top-curtains of the mountain heights
stretching clear across the glacier,
relieved by vivid moss and flower
patches of yellow, magenta, violet
and crimson. But the face of the
glacier was so high and rugged and
the ice so pure that it showed a va-
riety of blue and purple tints I have
never seen surpassed — baby-blue,
sky-blue, sapphire, turquoise, co-

The Lost Glacier 151

bait, indigo, peacock, ultra-marine,
shading at the top into lilac and
amethyst. The base of the glacier-
face, next to the dark-green water
of the bay, resembled a great mass
of vitriol, while the top, where it
swept out of the canyon, had the
curves and tints and delicate lines
of the iris.

But the glacier front was not still;
in form and color it was changing
every minute. The descent was so
steep that the glacial rapids above
the bay must have flowed forward
eighty or a hundred feet a day. The
ice cliff, towering a thousand feet
over the water, would present a
slight incline from the perpendicular
inwards toward the canyon, the face
being white from powdered ice, the
result of the grinding descent of the
ice masses. Here and there would
be little cascades of this fine ice
spraying out as they fell, with glints

152 Alaska Days with John Muir

of prismatic colors when the sun-
light struck them. As I gazed I
could see the whole upper part of
the cliff slowly moving forward un-
til the ice-face was vertical. Then,
foot by foot it would be pushed out
until the upper edge overhung the
water. Now the outer part, denuded
of the ice powder, would present a
face of delicate blue with darker
shades where the mountain peaks
cast their shadows. Suddenly from
top to bottom of the ice cliff two
deep lines of prussian blue appeared.
They were crevasses made by the
ice current flowing more rapidly in
the center of the stream. Fasci-
nated, I watched this great pyramid
of blue-veined onyx lean forward
until it became a tower of Pisa, with
fragments falling thick and fast
from its upper apex and from the
cliffs out of which it had been split.
Breathless and anxious, I awaited

The Lost Glacier 158

the final catastrophe, and its long
delay became almost a greater strain
than I could bear. I jumped up and
down and waved my arms and
shouted at the glacier to " hurry
up."

Suddenly the climax came in a sur-
prising way. The great tower of
crystal shot up into the air two hun-
dred feet or more, impelled by the
pressure of a hundred fathoms of
water, and then, toppling over, came
crashing into the water with a roar
as of rending mountains. Its weight
of thousands of tons, falling from
such a height, splashed great sheets
of water high into the air, and a
rainbow of wondrous brilliance
flashed and vanished. A mighty
wave swept majestically down the
bay, rocking the massive bergs like
corks, and, breaking against my
granite pillar, tossed its spray half-
way up to my lofty perch. Muir's

154 Alaska Days with John Muir

shout of applause and Stickeen's
sharp bark came faintl}^ to my ears
when the deep rumbling of the newly
formed icebergs had subsided.

That night I waited supper long
for Muir. It was a good supper —
a mulligan stew of mallard duck,
with biscuits and coffee. Stickeen
romped into camp about ten o'clock
and his new master soon followed.

"Ah!" sighed Muir between sips
of coffee, " what a Lord's mercy it
is that we lost this glacier last fall,
when we were pressed for time, to
find it again in these glorious days
that have flashed out of the mists
for our special delectation. This
has been a day of days. I have
found four new varieties of moss,
and have learned many new and
wonderful facts about world-shaping.
And then, the wonder and glory!
Why, all the values of beauty and
sublimity — form, color, motion and

The Lost Glacier 155

sound — have been present to-day at
their very best. My friend, we are
the richest men in all the world
to-night."

Charging down the canyon with
the charging ice on our return, we
kept to the right-hand shore, on the
watch for the mouth of the canyon
of " some scenery." We had not
been able to discover it from the
other side as we ascended the fiord.
We were almost swept past the
mouth of it by the force of the cur-
rent. Paddling into an eddy, we
were suddenly halted as if by a
strong hand pushed against the bow,
for the current was flowing like a
cataract out of the narrow mouth of
this side canyon. A rocky shelf af-
forded us a landing place. We
hastily unloaded the canoe and pulled
it up upon the beach out of reach of
the floating ice, and there we had
to wait until the next morning be-

156 Alaska Days with John Muir

fore we could penetrate the depths
of this great canyon.

We shot through the mouth of the
canyon at dangerous speed. In-
deed, we could not do otherwise; we
were helpless in the grasp of the
torrent. At certain stages the surg-
ing tide forms an actual fall, for the
entrance is so narrow that the wa-
ter heaps up and pours over. We
took the beginning of the flood tide,
and so escaped that danger; but our
speed must have been, at the nar-
rows, twenty miles an hour. Then,
suddenly, the bay widened out, the
water ceased to swirl and boil and
the current became gentle.

When we could lay aside our pad-
dles and look up, one of the most
glorious views of the whole world
" smote us in the face," and Muir's
chant arose, " Praise God from whom
all blessings flow.''

Before entering this bay I had ex-

The Lost Glacier 157

pressed a wish to see Yosemite
Valley. Now Muir said : '' There is
your Yosemite; only this one is on
much the grander scale. Yonder
towers El Capitan, grown to twice
his natural size; there are the Senti-
nel, and the majestic Dome; and
see all the falls. Those three have
some resemblance to Yosemite Falls,
Nevada and Bridal Veil; but the
mountain breasts from which they
leap are much higher than in Yo-
semite, and the sheer drop much
greater. And there are so many
more of these and they fall into the
sea. We'll call this Yosemite Bay —
a bigger Yosemite, as Alaska is big-
ger than California."

Two very beautiful glaciers lay at
the head of this canyon. They did
not descend to the water, but the
narrow strip of moraine matter with-
out vegetation upon it between the
glaciers and the bay showed that

158 Alaska Days with John Muir

it had not been long since they were
glaciers of the first class, sending
out a stream of icebergs to join those
from the Young Glacier. These gla-
ciers stretched away miles and miles,
like two great antennae, from the
head of the bay to the top of the
mountain range. But the most strik-
ing features of this scene were the
wonderfully rounded and polished
granite breasts of these great heights.
In one stretch of about a mile on
either side of the narrow bay par-
allel mouldings, like massive cor-
nices of gray granite, five or six
thousand feet high, overhung the
water. These had been fluted and
rounded and polished by the glacier
stream, until they seemed like the
upper walls and Corinthian capitals
of a great temple. The power of
the ice stream could be seen in the
striated shoulders of these cliffs.
What awful force that tool of steel-

The Lost Glacier 159

like ice must have possessed, driven
by millions of tons of v^eight, to
mould and shape and scoop out these;
flinty rock faces, as the carpenter's
forming plane flutes a board !

When wt were half-way up this
wonderful bay the sun burst through
a rift of cloud. " Look, look ! " ex-
claimed Muir. '* Nature is turning
on the colored lights in her great
show house."

Instantly this severe, bare hall of
polished rock was transformed into
a fairy palace. A score of cascades,
the most of them invisible before,
leapt into view, falling from the
dizzy mountain heights and spraying
into misty veils as they descended;
and from all of them flashed rain-
bows of marvelous distinctness and
brilliance, waving and dancing — a
very riot of color. The tinkling wa-
ter falling into the bay waked a
thousand echoes, weird, musical and

160 Alaska Days with John Muir

sweet, a riot of sound. It was an
enchanted palace, and we left it with
reluctance, remaining only six hours
and going out at the turn of the flood
tide to escape the dangerous rapids.
Had there not been so many things
to see beyond, and so little time in
which to see them, I doubt if Muir
would have quit Yosemite Bay for
days.

THE DOG AND THE MAN

MY FRIENDS

Two friends I have, and close akin are they.

For both are free

And wild and proud, full of the ecstasy
Of life untrammeled; living, day by day,
A law unto themselves; yet breaking none

Of Nature's perfect code.
And far afield, remote from man's abode,
They roam the wilds together, two as one.

Yet, one's a dog— a wisp of silky hair,

Two sharp black eyes,
A face alert, mysterious and wise,
A shadowy tail, a body lithe and fair.
And one's a man — of Nature's work the best,

A heart of gold,
A mind stored full of treasures new and old,
Of men the greatest, strongest, tenderest.

They love each other— these two friends of mine —

Yet both agree
In this— with that pure love that's half divine

They both love me.

VI

THE DOG AND THE MAN

THERE is no time to tell of all
the bays we explored; of
Holkham Bay, Port Snet-
tisham, Tahkou Harbor; all of which
we rudely put on the map, or
at least extended the arms be-
yond what was previously known.
Through Gastineau Channel, now
famous for some of the greatest
quartz mines and mills in the world,
we pushed, camping on the site of
what is now Juneau, the capital city
of Alaska.

An interesting bit of history is to
be recorded here. Pushing across
the flats at the head of the bay at
high tide the next morning (for the
narrow, grass-covered flat between

163

164 Alaska Days with John Muir

Gastineau Channel and Stevens
Passage can only be crossed with
canoes at flood tide), we met two old
gold prospectors whom I had fre-
quently seen at Wrangell — ^Joe Har-
ris and Joe Juneau. Exchanging
greetings and news, they told us
they were out from Sitka on a
leisurely hunting and prospecting
trip. Asking us about our last camp-
ing place, Harris said to Juneau,
" Suppose we camp there and try the
gravel of that creek."

These men found placer gold and
rock '' float " at our camp and made
quite a clean-up that fall, returning
to Sitka with a " gold-poke '' suffi-
ciently plethoric to start a stampede
to the new diggings. Both placer
and quartz locations were made and
a brisk '' camp " was built the next
summer. This town was first called
Harrisburg for one of the prospect-
ors, and afterwards Juneau for the

The Dog and the Man 165

other. The great Treadwell gold
quartz mine was located three miles
from Juneau in 1881, and others sub-
sequently. The territorial capital
was later removed from Sitka to
Juneau, and the city has grown in
size and importance, until it is one
of the great mining and commercial
centers of the Northwest.

Through Stevens Passage we pad-
dled, stopping to preach to the Auk
Indians; then down Chatham Strait
and into Icy Strait, where the crystal
masses of Muir and Pacific glaciers
flashed a greeting from afar. We
needed no Hoonah guide this time,
and it was well we did not, for both
Hoonah villages were deserted. The
inhabitants had gone to their
hunting, fishing or berry-picking
grounds.

At Pleasant Island we loaded, as
on the previous trip, with dry wood
for our voyage into Glacier Bay.

166 Alaska Days with John Muir

We were not to attempt the head
of the bay this time, but to confine
our exploration to Muir Glacier,
which we had only touched upon the
previous fall. Pleasant Island was
the scene of one of Stickeen's many
escapades. The little island fairly
teemed with big field mice and pine
squirrels, and Stickeen went wild.
We could hear his shrill bark, now
here, now there, from all parts of
the island. When we were ready
to leave the next morning he was
not to be seen. We got aboard as
usual, thinking that he would fol-
low. A quarter of a mile's paddling
and still no little black head could be
discovered in our wake. Muir, who
was becoming very much attached to
the little dog, was plainly worried.

'' Row back,'' he said.

So we rowed back and called, but
no Stickeen. Around the next
point we rowed and whistled; still

The Dog and the Man 167

no Stickeen. At last, discouraged,
I gave the signal to move off. So we
rounded the curving shore and
pushed towards Glacier Bay. At the
far point of the island, a mile from
our camping place, we suddenly dis-
covered Stickeen away out in the
water, paddling calmly and confi-
dently towards our canoe. How he
had ever got there I cannot imagine.
I think he must have been taking
a long swim out on the bay for the
mere pleasure of it. Muir always in-
sisted that he had listened to our
discussion of the route to be taken,
and, with an uncanny intuition that
approached clairvoyance, knew just
where to head us off.

When we took him aboard he
went through his usual performance,
making his way, the whole length of
the canoe, until he got under Muir's
legs, before shaking himself. No
protests or discipline availed, for

168 Alaska Days with John Muir

Muir's kicks always failed of their
pretended mark. To the end of his
acquaintance with Muir, he always
chose the vicinity of Muir's legs as
the place to shake himself after a
swim.

At Muir Glacier we spent a week
this time, making long trips up the
mountains that overlooked the gla-
cier and across its surface. On one
occasion Muir, with the little dog at
his heels, crossed entirely in a di-
agonal direction the great glacial
lake, a trip of some thirty miles,
starting before daylight in the morn-
ing and not appearing at camp until
long after dark. Muir always car-
ried several handkerchiefs in his
pockets, but this time he returned
without any, having used them all
up making moccasins for Stickeen,
whose feet were cut and bleeding
from the sharp honeycomb ice of the
glacial surface. This mass of ice is

The Dog and the Man 169

so vast and so comparatively still
that it has but few crevasses, and
Muir's day for traversing it was a
perfect one — warm and sunny.

Another day he and I climbed the
mountain that overlooked it and
skirted the mighty ice-field for some
distance, then walked across the face
of the glacier just back of the rap-
ids, keeping away from the deep
crevasses. We drove a straight line
of stakes across the glacial stream
and visited them each day to watch
the deflection and curves of the
stakes, and thus arrive at some con-
ception of the rate at which the ice
mass was moving. In some parts
of the glacial stream this ice current
flowed as fast as fifty or sixty feet
a day, and we could understand the
constant breaking off and leaping up
and smashing down of the ice and
the formation of that great mass of
bergs.

170 Alaska Days with John Muir

Shortly before we left Muir Gla-
cier, I saw Muir furiously angry for
the first and last time in my ac-
quaintance with him. We had no-
ticed day after day, whenever the
mists admitted a view of the moun-
tain slopes, bands of mountain goats
looking like little white mice against
the green of the high pastures. I
said to Joe, the hunter, one morn-
ing: "Go up and get us a kid.
It will be a great addition to our
larder."

He took my breech-loading rifle
and went. In the afternoon he re-
turned with a fine young buck on his
shoulders. While we were examin-
ing it he said:

" I picked the fattest and most
tender of those that I killed."

"What!" I exclaimed, "did you
kill more than this one?"

He put up both hands with fingers
extended and then one finger:

The Dog and the Man 171

'' Tatlum-pe-ict (eleven)/' he re-
plied.

Muir's face flushed red, and with
an exclamation that was as near to
an oath as he ever came, he started
for Joe. Luckily for that Indian he
saw Muir and fled like a deer up the
rocks, and would not come down un-
til he was assured that he would not
be hurt. I shared Muir's indignation
and would have enjoyed seeing
him administer the richly deserved
thrashing.

Muir had a strong aversion to
taking the life of any animal; al-
though he would eat meat when pre-
pared, he never killed a wild ani-
mal; even the rattlesnakes he did not
molest during his rambles in Cali-
fornia. Often his softness of heart
was a source of some annoyance and
a great deal of astonishment to our
natives; for he would take pleasure
in rocking the canoe when they were

172 Alaska Days with John Muir

trying to get a bead on a flock of
ducks or a deer standing on the
shore.

On leaving the mouth of Glacier
Bay we spent a week or more ex-
ploring the inlets and glaciers to
the west. These days were rainy
and cold. We groped blindly into
unknown, unmapped, fog-hidden fi-
ords and bayous, exploring them
to their ends and often making ex-
cursions to the glaciers above them.

The climax of the trip, however,
was the last glacier we visited, Tay-
lor Glacier, the scene of Muir's
great adventure with Stickeen. We
reached this fine glacier in the after-
noon of a very stormy day. We
were approaching the open Pacific,
and the saanah, the southeast rain-
wind, was howling through the nar-
row entrance into Cross Sound. For
twenty miles we had been facing
strong head winds and tidal waves

The Dog and the Man 173

as we crept around rocky points and
along the bases of dizzy cliffs and
glacier-scored rock-shoulders. We
were drenched to the skin; indeed,
our clothing and blankets had been
soaking wet for days. For two hours
before we turned the point into the
cozy harbor in front of the glacier
we had been exerting every ounce of
our strength; Lot in the stern wield-
ing his big steering paddle, now on
this side, now on that, grunting with
each mighty stroke, calling encour-
agement to his crew, *' Ut-ha, ut-ha!
hlitsin! hlitsin-tin! (pull, pull, strong,
with strength!) "; Joe and Billy ris-
ing from their seats with every
stroke and throwing their whole
weight and force savagely into their
oars; Muir and I in the bow bent
forward with heads down, butting
into the slashing rain, paddling for
dear life; Stickeen, the only idle one,
looking over the side of the boat as

174 Alaska Days with John Muir

though searching the channel and
then around at us as if he would like
to help. All except the dog were
exhausted when we turned into the
sheltered cove.

While the men pitched the tents
and made camp Muir and I walked
through the thick grass to the front
of the large glacier, which front
stretched from a high, perpendicular
rock wall about three miles to a nar-
row promontory of moraine boulders
next to the ocean.

" Now, here is something new,"
exclaimed Muir, as we stood close to
the edge of the ice. " This glacier
is the great exception. All the oth-
ers of this region are receding; this
has been coming forward. See the
mighty ploughshare and its fur-
row!"

For the icy mass was heaving up
the ground clear across its front, and,
on the side where we stood, had evi-

The Dog and the Man 175

dently found a softer stratum under
a forest-covered hill, and inserted its
shovel point under the hill, heaved
it upon the ice, cracking the rocks
into a thousand fragments; and was
carrying the v^^hole hill upon its back
towards the sea. The large trees
were leaning at all angles, some of
them submerged, splintered and
ground by the crystal torrent, some
of the shattered trunks sticking out
of the ice. It was one of the most
tremendous examples of glacial
power I have ever seen.

" I must climb this glacier to-mor-
row," said Muir. " I shall have a
great day of it; I wish you could
come along.''

I sighed, not with resignation, but
with a grief that was akin to despair.
The condition of my shoulders was
such that it would be madness to
attempt to join Muir on his longer
and more perilous climbs. I should

176 Alaska Days with John Muir

only spoil his day and endanger his
life as well as my own.

That night I baked a good batch
of camp bread, boiled a fresh kettle
of beans and roasted a leg of venison
ready for Muir's breakfast, fixed the
coffee-pot and prepared dry kindling
for the fire. I knew he would be up
and off at daybreak, perhaps long
before.

" Wake me up,'' I admonished him,
" or at least take time to make hot
coffee before you start." For the
wind was rising and the rain pour-
ing, and I knew how imperative the
call of such a morning as was prom-
ised would be to him. To traverse
a great, new, living, rapidly moving
glacier would be high joy; but to
have a tremendous storm added to
this would simply drive Muir wild
with desire to be himself a part of
the great drama played on the
glacier-stage,

The Dog and the Man 177

Several times during the night I
was awakened by the flapping of the
tent, the shrieking of the wind in the
spruce-tops and the thundering of
the ocean surf on the outer barrier
of rocks. The tremulous howling of
a persistent wolf across the bay-
soothed me to sleep again, and I did
not wake when Muir arose. As I
had feared, he was in too big a hurry
to take time for breakfast, but pock-
eted a small cake of camp bread and
hastened out into the storm-swept
woods. I was aroused, however, by
the controversy between him and
Stickeen outside of the tent. The
little dog, who always slept with one
eye and ear alert for Muir's move-
ments, had, as usual, quietly left his
warm nest and followed his adopted
master. Muir was scolding and ex-
postulating with him as if he were
a boy. I chuckled to myself at the
futility of Muir's efforts; Stickeen

178 Alaska Days with John Muir

would now, as always, do just as he
pleased — and he would please to go
along.

Although I was forced to stay at
the camp, this stormy day was a
most interesting one to me. There
was an old Hoonah chief camped at
the mouth of the little river which
flowed from under Taylor Glacier.
He had with him his three wives and
a little company of children and
grandchildren. The many salmon
weirs and summer houses at this
point showed that it had been at one
time a very important fishing place.

But the advancing glacier had
played havoc with the chiefs salmon
stream. The icy mass had been for
several years traveling towards the
sea at the rate of at least a mile
every year. There were still silver
hordes of fine red salmon swimming
in the sea outside of the river's
mouth. But the stream was now so

The Dog and the Man 179

short that the most of these salmon
swam a little ways into the mouth
of the river and then out into the
salt water again, bewildered and cir-
cling about, doubtless wondering
what had become of their parent
stream.

The old chief came to our camp
early, followed by his squaws bear-
ing gifts of salmon, porpoise meat,
clams and crabs; and at his command
two of the girls of his family picked
me a basketful of delicious wild
strawberries. He sat motionless by
my fire all the forenoon, smoking my
leaf tobacco and pondering deeply.
After the noon meal, which I shared
with him, he called Billy, my inter-
preter, and asked for a big talk.

With all ceremony I made prepa-
rations, gave more presents of leaf
tobacco and hardtack and composed
myself for the palaver. After the
usual preliminaries, in which he told

180 Alaska Days with John Muir

me at great length what a great man
I was, how like a father to all the
people, comparing me to sun, moon,
stars and all other great things; I
broke in upon his stream of compli-
ments and asked what he wanted.

Recalled to earth he said: '' I wish
you to pray to your God/'

" For what do you wish me to
pray? " I asked.

The old man raised his blanketed
form to its full height and waved
his hand with a magnificent gesture
towards the glacier. " Do you see
that great ice mountain?"

" Yes.''

'' Once," he said, '' I had the finest
salmon stream upon the coast."
Pointing to a point of rock five or
six miles beyond the mouth of the
glacier he continued: "Once the
salmon stream extended far beyond
that point of rock. There was a
great fall there and a deep pool be-

The Dog and the Man 181

low it, and here for years great
schools of king salmon came crowd-
ing up to the foot of that fall. To
spear them or net them was very
easy; they were the fattest and best
salmon among all these islands. My
household had abundance of meat
for the winter's need. But the cruel
spirit of that glacier grew angry
with me, I know not why, and drove
the ice mountain down towards the
sea and spoiled my salmon stream.
A year or two more and it will be
blotted out entirely. I have done
my best. I have prayed to my gods.
Last spring I sacrificed two of my
slaves, members of my household,
my best slaves, a strong man and
his wife, to the spirit of that glacier
to make the ice mountain stop; but
it comes on, and now I want you
to pray to your God, the God of the
white man, to see if He will make
the glacier stop ! "

182 Alaska Days with John Muir

I wish I could describe the pathetic
earnestness of this old Indian, the
simplicity with which he told of the
sacrifice of his slaves and the eager
look with which he awaited my an-
swer. When I exclaimed in horror
at his deed of blood he was aston-
ished; he could not understand.

" Why, they were my slaves," he
said, " and the man suggested it him-
self. He was glad to go to death to
help his chief.''

A few years after this our mission-
ary at Hoonah had the pleasure of
baptizing this old chief into the
Christian faith. He had put away
his slaves and his plural wives, had
surrendered the implements of his
old superstition, and as a child em-
braced the new gospel of peace and
love. He could not get rid of his
superstition about the glacier, how-
ever, and about eight years after-
wards, visiting at Wrangell, he told

The Dog and the Man 183

me as an item of news which he ex-
pected would greatly please me that,
doubtless as a result of my prayers,
Taylor Glacier was receding again
and the salmon beginning to come
into that stream.

At intervals during this eventful
day I went to the face of the glacier
and even climbed the disintegrating
hill that was riding on the glacier's
ploughshare, in an effort to see the
bold wanderers; but the jagged ice
peaks of the high glacial rapids
blocked my vision, and the rain driv-
ing passionately in horizontal sheets
shut out the mountains and the up-
per plateau ol ice. I could see that
it was snowing on the glacier, and
imagined the weariness and peril of
dog and man exposed to the storm
in that dangerous region. I could
only hope that Muir had not ven-
tured to face the wind on the glacier,,
but had contented himself with trac-

184 Alaska Days with John Muir

ing its eastern side, and was some-
where in the woods bordering it,
beside a big fire, studying storm and
glacier in comparative safety.

When the shadows of evening
were added to those of the storm
I had my men gather materials for
a big bonfire, and kindle it well out
on the flat, where it could be seen
from mountain and glacier. I placed
dry clothing and blankets in the fly
tent facing the camp-fire, and got
ready the best supper at my com-
mand: clam chowder, fried porpoise,
bacon and beans, ^' savory meat "
made of mountain kid with potatoes,
onions, rice and curry, camp bis-
cuit and coffee, with dessert of
wild strawberries and condensed
milk.

It grew pitch-dark before seven,
and it was after ten when the dear
wanderers staggered into camp out
of the dripping forest. Stickeen did

The Dog and the Man 185

not bounce in ahead with a bark, as
was his custom, but crept silently
to his piece of blanket and curled
down, too tired to shake himself.
Billy and I laid hands on Muir with-
out a word, and in a trice he was
stripped of his wet garments, rubbed
dry, clothed in dry underwear,
wrapped in a blanket and set down
on a bed of spruce twigs with a plate
of hot chowder before him. When
the chowder disappeared the other
hot dishes followed in quick succes-
sion, without a question asked or a
word uttered. Lot kept the fire blaz-
ing just right, Joe kept the victuals
hot and baked fresh bread, while
Billy and I waited on Muir.

Not till he came to the coffee and
strawberries did Muir break the si-
lence. " Yon's a brave doggie,'' he
said. Stickeen, who could not yet
be induced to eat, responded by a
glance of one eye and a feeble pound-

186 Alaska Days with John Muir

ing of the blanket with his heavy
tail.

Then Muir began to talk, and lit-
tle by little, between sips of coffee,
the story of the day was unfolded.
Soon memories crowded for utter-
ance and I listened till midnight, en-
tranced by a succession of vivid de-
scriptions the like of which I have
never heard before or since. The
fierce music and grandeur of the
storm, the expanse of ice with its
bewildering crevasses, its mysterious
contortions, its solemn voices were
made to live before me.

When Muir described his maroon-
ing on the narrow island of ice sur-
rounded by fathomless crevasses,
with a knife-edged sliver curving
deeply " like the cable of a suspen-
sion bridge " diagonally across it as
the only means of escape, I shud-
dered at his peril. I held my breath
as he told of the terrible risks he

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The Dog and the Man 187

ran as he cut his steps down the
wall of ice to the bridge's end,
knocked off the sharp edge of the
sliver, hitched across inch by inch
and climbed the still more difficult
ascent on the other side. But when
he told of Stickeen's cries of despair
at being left on the other side of
the crevasse, of his heroic deter-
mination at last to do or die, of his
careful progress across the sliver as
he braced himself against the gusts
and dug his little claws into the ice,
and of his passionate revulsion to the
heights of exultation when, intoxi-
cated by his escape, he became a liv-
ing whirlwind of joy, flashing about
in mad gyrations, shouting and
screaming " Saved ! saved ! '* my tears
streamed down my face. Before the
close of the story Stickeen arose,
stepped slowly across to Muir and
crouched down with his head on
Muir's foot, gazing into his face and

188 Alaska Days with John Muir

murmuring soft canine words of
adoration to his god.

Not until 1897, seventeen years
after the event, did Muir give to the
public his story of Stickeen. How
many times he had written and re-
written it I know not. He told me
at the time of its first publication
that he had been thinking of the
story all of these years and jotting
down paragraphs and sentences as
they occurred to him. He was never
satisfied with a sentence until it bal-
anced well. He had the keenest
sense of melody, as well as of har-
mony, in his sentence structure, and
this great dog-story of his is a re-
markable instance of the growth to
perfection of the great production
of a great master.

The wonderful power of endurance
of this man, whom Theodore Roose-
velt has well called a " perfectly nat-
ural man,'' is instanced by the fact

The Dog and the Man 189

that, although he was gone about
seventeen hours on this day of his
adventure with Stickeen, with only
a bite of bread to eat, and never
rested a minute of that time, but
was battling with the storm all day
and often racing at full speed across
the glacier, yet he got up at daylight
the next morning, breakfasted with
me and was gone all day again, with
Stickeen at his heels, climbing a high
mountain to get a view of the snow
fountains and upper reaches of the
glacier; and when he returned after
nightfall he worked for two or three
hours at his notes and sketches.

The latter part of this voyage was
hurried. Muir had a wife waiting
for him at home and he had prom-
ised to stay in Alaska only one
month. He had dallied so long with
his icy loves, the glaciers, that we
were obliged to make all haste to
Sitka, where he expected to take the

190 Alaska Days with John Muir

return steamer. To miss that would
condemn him to Alaska and absence
from his wife for another month.
Through a continually pouring rain
we sailed by the then deserted town
of Hoonah, ascended with the rising
tide a long, narrow, shallow inlet,
dragged our canoe a hundred yards
over a little hill and then descended
with the receding tide another long,
narrow passage down to Chatham
Strait; and so on to the mouth of
Peril Strait which divided Baranof
from Chichagof Island.

On the other side of Chatham
Strait, opposite the mouth of Peril,
we visited again Angoon, the village
of the Hootz-noos. From this town
the painted and drunken warriors
had come the winter before and at-
tacked the Stickeens, killing old
Tow-a-att, Moses and another of our
Christian Indians. The trouble was
not settled yet, and although the two

The Dog and the Man 191

tribes had exchanged some pledges
and promised to fight no more, I
feared a fresh outbreak, and so
thought it wise to pay another visit
to the Hootz-noos. As we ap-
proached Angoon, however, I heard
the war-drums beating with their pe-
culiar cadence, " tum-tum " — a beat
off — " tum-tum, tum-tum." As we
came up to the beach I saw what
was seemingly the whole tribe danc-
ing their war-dances, arrayed in their
war-paint with their fantastic war-
gear on. So earnestly engaged were
they in their dance that they at first
paid no attention whatever to me.
My heart sank into my boots.
" They are going back to Wrangell
to attack the Stickeens,'' I thought,
" and there will be another bloody
war."

Driving our canoe ashore, we hur-
ried up to the head chief of the
Hootz-noos, who was alternately ha-

192 Alaska Days with John Muir

ranguing his people and directing
the dances.

"Anatlask," I called, "what does
this mean? You are going on the
warpath. Tell me what you are
about. Are you going back to
Stickeen?"

He looked at me vacantly a little
while, and then a grin spread from
ear to ear. It was the same chief
in whose house I had seen the idiot
boy a year before.

" Come with me," he said.

He led us into his house and
across the room to where in state,
surrounded by all kinds of chieftain's
gear, Chilcat blankets, totemic carv-
ings and paintings, chieftain's hats
and cunningly woven baskets, there
lay the body of a stalwart young man
wrapped in a button-embroidered
blanket. The chief silently removed
the blanket from the face of the
dead. The skull was completely

The Dog and the Man 193

crushed on one side as by a heavy
blow. Then the story came out.

The hootz, or big brown bear of
that country, is as large and savage
as the grizzly bear of the Rockies.
At certain seasons he is, as the na-
tives say, ^^ quonsum-sollex " (always
mad). The natives seldom attack
these bears, confining their attention
to the more timid and easily killed
black bears. But this young man
with a companion, hunting on Bar-*
anof Island across the Strait, found
himself suddenly confronted by an
enormous hootz. The young man
rashly shot him with his musket,
wounding him sufficiently to make
him furious. The tremendous brute
hurled his thousand pounds of fe-
rocity at the hunter, and one little
tap of that huge paw crushed his
skull like an egg-shell. His compan-
ion brought his body home; and now
the whole tribe had formally de-

194 Alaska Days with John Muir

clared war on that bear, and all this
dancing and painting and drumming
was in preparation for a war party,
composed of all the men, dogs and
guns in the town. They were going
on the warpath to get that bear.
Greatly relieved, I gave them my
blessing and sped them on thein
way.

We had been rowing all night be-
fore this incident, and all the next
night we sailed up the tortuous Peril
Strait, going upward with the flood,
one man steering while the other
slept, to the meeting place of the
waters; then down with the receding
tide through the islands, and so on
to Sitka. Here we met a warm re-
ception from the missionaries, and
also from the captain and officers
of the old man-of-war Jamestown,
afterwards used as a school ship for
the navy in the harbor of San
Francisco.

The Dog and the Man 195

Alaska at that time had no vestige
of civil government, no means of
punishing crime, no civil officers ex-
cept the customs collectors, no mag-
istrate or police, — everyone was a
law to himself. The only sign of
authority was this cumbersome sail-
ing vessel with its marines and sail-
ors. It could not move out of Sitka
harbor without first sending by the
monthly mail steamer to San Fran-
cisco for a tug to come and tow it
through these intricate channels to
the sea where the sails could be
spread. Of course, it was not of
much use to this vast territory. The
officers of the Jamestown were sup-
posed to be doing some surveying,
but, lacking the means of travel,
what they did amounted to very
little.

They were interested at once in
our account of the discovery of Gla-
cier Bay and of the other unmapped

196 Alaska Days with John Muir

bays and inlets that we had entered.
At their request, from Muir's notes
and our estimate of distances by our
rate of sailing, and of directions from
observations of our little compass,
we drew a rough map of Glacier Bay.
This was sent on to Washington by
these officers and published by the
Navy Department. For six or seven
years it was the only sailing chart
of Glacier Bay, and two or three
steamers were wrecked, groping
their way in these uncharted pas-
sages, before surveying vessels be-
gan to make accurate maps. So from
its beginning has Uncle Sam neg-
lected this greatest and richest of all
his possessions.

Our little company separated at
Sitka. Stickeen and our Indian crew
were the first to leave, embarking for
a return trip to Wrangell by canoe.
Stickeen had stuck close to Muir,,
following him everywhere, crouching

The Dog and the Man 197

at his feet where he sat, sleeping in
his room at night. When the time
came for him to leave Muir explained
the matter to him fully, talking to
and reasoning with him as if he were
human. Billy led him aboard the
canoe by a dog-chain, and the last
Muir saw of him he was standing
on the stern of the canoe, howling
a sad farewell.

Muir sailed south on the monthly
mail steamer; while I took passage
on a trading steamer for another
missionary trip among the northern
tribes.

So ended my canoe voyages with
John Muir. Their memory is fresh
and sweet as ever. The flowing
stream of years has not washed away
nor dimmed the impressions of those
great days we spent together.
Nearly all of them were cold, wet
and uncomfortable, if one were
merely an animal, to be depressed or

198 Alaska Days with John Muir

enlivened by physical conditions.
But of these so-called '' hardships "
Muir made nothing, and I caught his
spirit; therefore, the beauty, the
glory, the wonder and the thrills of
those weeks of exploration are with
me yet and shall endure — a rustless,
inexhaustible treasure.

THE MAN IN PERSPECTIVE

JOHN MUIR

He lived aloft, exultant, unafraid.

All things were good to him. The mountain old

Stretched gnarled hands to help him climb. The peak

Waved bHthe snow-banner greeting ; and for him

The rav'ning storm, aprowl for human life,

Purred like the lion at his trainer's feet.

The grizzly met him on the narrow ledge,

Gave gruff " good morning " — and the right of way.

The blue-veined glacier, cold of heart and pale,

Warmed, at his gaze, to amethystine blush.

And murmured deep, fond undertones of love.

He walked apart from men, yet loved his kind,

And brought them treasures from his larger store.

For them he delved in mines of richer gold.

Earth's messenger he was to human hearts.

The starry moss flower from its dizzy shelf.

The ouzel, shaking forth its spray of song,

The glacial runlet, tinkling its clear bell.

The rose-of-morn, abloom on snowy heights —

Each sent by him a jewel-word of cheer.

Blind eyes he opened and deaf ears unstopped.

He lived aloft, apart. He talked with God
In all the myriad tongues of God's sweet world;
But still he came anear and talked with us.
Interpreting for God to listn'ing men.

JOHN MUIR IN LATER LIFE

VII

THE MAN IN PERSPECTIVE

THE friendship between John
Muir and myself was of that
fine sort which grows and
deepens with absence almost as well
as with companionship. Occasional
letters passed from one to the other.
When I felt like writing to Muir I
obeyed the impulse without asking
whether I " owed '' him a letter, and
he followed the same rule — or
rather lack of rule. Sometimes an-
swers to these letters came quickly;
sometimes they were long delayed,
so long that they were not answers
at all. When I sent him '' news of
his mountains and glaciers '' that
contained items really novel to him
his replies were immediate and en-

201

202 Alaska Days with John Muir

thusiastic. When he had found in
his great outdoor museum some pe-
culiar treasure he talked over his
find with me by letter.

Muir's letters were never com-
monplace and sometimes they were
long and rich. I preserved them all;
and when, a few years ago, an
Alaska steamboat sank to the bot-
tom of the Yukon, carrying with it
my library and all my literary pos-
sessions, the loss of these letters
from my friend caused me more sor-
row than the loss of almost any
other of my many priceless treas-
ures.

The summer of 1881, the year fol-
lowing that of our second canoe voy-
age, Muir went, as scientific and lit-
erary expert, with the U. S. revenue
cutter Rogers, which was sent by
the Government into the Arctic
Ocean in search of the ill-fated De
Long exploring party. His pub-

The Man in Perspective 203

lished articles written on the revenue
cutter were of great interest; but in
his more intimate letters to me
there was a note of disappointment.

" There have been no mountains
to climb," he wrote, " although I
have had entrancing long-distance
views of many. I have not had a
chance to visit any glaciers. There
were no trees in those arctic regions,
and but few flowers. Of God's proc-
ess of modeling the world I saw but
little — nothing for days but that
limitless, relentless ice-pack. I was
confined within the narrow prison
of the ship; I had no freedom, I
went at the will of other men; not of
my own. It was very different from
those glorious canoe voyages with
you in your beautiful, fruitful wil-
derness."

A very brief visit at Muir's home
near Martinez, California, in the
spring of 1883 found him at what he

204 Alaska Days with John Muir

frankly said was very distasteful
work — managing a large fruit ranch.
He was doing the work well and
making his orchards pay large divi-
dends; but his heart was in the hills
and woods. Eagerly he questioned
me of my travels and of the " prog-
ress " of the glaciers and woods of
Alaska. Beyond a few short moun-
tain trips he had seen nothing for
two years of his beloved wilds.

Passionately he voiced his discon-
tent: '' I am losing the precious days.
I am degenerating into a machine
for making money. I am learning
nothing in this trivial world of men.
I must break away and get out into
the mountains to learn the news."

In 1888 the ten years' limit which
I had set for service in Alaska ex-
pired. The educational necessities
of my children and the feeling that
was growing upon me like a smoth-
ering cloud that if I remained much

The Man in Perspective 205

longer among the Indians I would
lose all power to talk or write good
English, drove me from the North-
west to find a temporary home in
Southern California.

I had not notified Muir of my
coming, but suddenly appeared in
his orchard at Martinez one day in
early summer. It was cherry-pick-
ing time and he was out among his
trees superintending a large force
of workmen. He saw me as soon
as I discovered him, and dropping
the basket he was carrying came
running to greet me with both hands
outstretched.

"Ah! my friend," he cried, "I
have been longing mightily for you.
You have come to take me on a
canoe trip to the countries beyond
— to Lituya and Yakutat bays and
Prince William Sound; have you
not? My weariness of this hum-
drum, work-a-day life has grown sq

206 Alaska Days with John Muir

heavy it is like to crush me. rm
ready to break away and go with
you whenever you say."

" No/' I replied, " I am leaving
Alaska."

''Man, man!" protested Muir,
"how can you do it? You'll never
carry out such a notion as that in
the world. Your heart will cry every
day for the North like a lost child;
and in your sleep the snow-banners
of your white peaks will beckon
to you.

'' Why, look at me," he said, '' and
take warning. I'm a horrible exam-
ple. I, who have breathed the moun-
tain air — who have really lived a life
of freedom — condemned to penal
servitude with these miserable little
bald-heads!" (holding up a bunch of
cherries). ''Boxing them up; put-
ting them in prison! And for
money! Man! I'm like to die of the
shame of it.

The Man in Perspective 207

"And then you're not safe a day
in this sordid world of money-grub-
bing men. I came near dying a
mean, civilized death, the other day.
A Chinaman emptied a bucket of
phosphorus over me and almost
burned me up. How different that
would have been from a nice white
death in the crevasse of a glacier!

" Gin it were na for my bairnies
Fd rin awa* frae a' this tribble an'
hale ye back north wi' me."

So Muir would run on, now in
English, now in broad Scotch; but
through all his raillery there ran a
note of longing for the wilderness.
" I want to see what is going on,"
he said. " So many great events
are happening, and I'm not there
to see them. Fm learning nothing
here that will do me any good."

I spent the night with him, and
we talked till long after midnight,
sailing anew our voyages of en-

208 Alaska Days with John Muir

chantment. He had just completed
his work of editing " Picturesque
California '' and gave me a set of the
beautiful volumes.

Our paths did not converge again
for nine years; but I was to have,
after all, a few more Alaska days
with John Muir. The itch of the
wanderlust in my feet had become a
wearisome, nervous ache, increasing
with the years, and the call of the
wild more imperative, until the fierce
yearning for the North was at times
more than I could bear.

The first of the great northward
gold stampedes — that of 1897 to the
Klondyke in Northwestern Canada
on the borders of Alaska — afforded
me the opportunity for which I was
longing to return to the land of
my heart. The latter part of Au-
gust saw me on The Queen, the
largest of that great fleet of pas-
senger boats that were traversing

The Man in Perspective 209

the thousand miles of wonder and
beauty between Seattle and Skag-
way. These steamboats were all
laden with gold seekers and their
goods. Seattle sprang into promi-
nence and wealth, doubling her pop-
ulation in a few months. From
every community in the United
States, from all Canada and from
many lands across the oceans came
that strange mob of lawyers, doc-
tors, clerks, merchants, farmers, me-
chanics, engineers, reporters, sharp-
ers— all gold-struck — all mad with
excitement — all rushing pell-mell into
a thousand new and hard experi-
ences.

As I stood on the upper deck of
the vessel, watching the strange
scene on the dock, who should come
up the gang-plank but John Muir,
wearing the same old gray ulster
and Scotch cap! It was the last
place in the world I would have

210 Alaska Days with John Muir

looked for him. But he was not
stampeding to the Klondyke. His
being there at that time was really
an accident. In company with two
other eminent " tree-men " he had
been spending the summer in the
study of the forests of Canada and
the three were " climaxing," as they
said, in the forests of Alaska.

Five pleasurable days we had to-
gether on board The Queen, Muir
was vastly amused by the motley
crowd of excited men, their various
outfits, their queer equipment, their
ridiculous notions of camping and
life in the wilderness. " A nest of
ants," he called them, '' taken to a
strange country and stirred up with
a stick."

As our steamboat touched at Port
Townsend, Muir received a long
telegram from a San Francisco
newspaper, offering him a large sum
if he would go over the mountains

The Man in Perspective 211

and down the Yukon to the Klon-
dyke, and write them letters about
conditions there. He brought the
telegram to me, laughing heartily at
the absurdity of anybody making
him such a proposition.

"Do they think Fm daft," he
asked, " like a' the lave o' thae puin
bodies? When I go into that wild
it will not be in a crowd like this or
on such a sordid mission. Ah! my
old friend, they'll be spoiling our
grand Alaska."

He offered to secure for me the re-
porter's job tendered to him. I re-
fused, urging my lack of train-
ing for such work and my more
important and responsible posi-
tion.

" Why, that same paper has a
host of reporters on the way to the
Klondyke now," I said. "There

is " (naming a noted poet and

author of the Coast). " He must be

212 Alaska Days with John Muir

half-way down to Dawson by this
time."

" doesn't count," replied

Muir, " for the patent reason that
everybody knows he can't tell the
truth. The poor fellow is not to
blame for it. He was just made that
way. Everybody will read with de-
light his wonderful tales of the trail,
but nobody will believe him. We all
know him too well."

Muir contracted a hard cold the
first night out from Seattle. The
hot, close stateroom and a cold blast
through the narrow window were
the cause. A distressing cough
racked his whole frame. When he
refused to go to a physician who
was on the boat I brought the doc-
tor to him. After the usual exami-
nation the physician asked, " What
do you generally do for a cold?"

"Oh," said Muir, "I shiver it
away."

The Man in Perspective 213

" Explain yourself," said the puz-
zled doctor.

"We-11," drawled Muir, "two or
three years ago I camped by the
Muir Glacier for a week. I had
caught just such a cold as this from
the same cause — a stuffy stateroom.
So I made me a little sled out of
spruce boughs, put a blanket and
some sea biscuit on it and set out up
the glacier. I got into a labyrinth
of crevasses and a driving snow-
storm, and had to spend the night
on the ice ten miles from land. I
sat on the sled all night or thrashed
about it, and had a dickens of a
time; I shivered so hard I shook the
sled to pieces. When morning came
my cold was all gone. That is my
prescription. Doctor. You are wel-
come to use it in your prac-
tice."

"Well," laughed the doctor, "if
I had such patients as you in such

214 Alaska Days with John Muir

a country as this I might try your
heroic remedy, but I am afraid it
would hardly serve in general
practice."

Muir and I made the most of
these few days together, and walked
the decks till late each night, for he
had much to tell me. He had at last
written his story of Stickeen; and
was working on books treating of
the Big Trees, the National Parks
and the glaciers of Alaska.

At Wrangell, as we went ashore,
we were greeted by joyful exclama-
tions from the little company of old
Stickeen Indians we found on the
dock. That sharp intaking of the
breath which is the Thlinget's note
of surprise and delight, and the
words Nuknate Ankow ka Glate
Ankow (Priest Chief and Ice Chief)
passed along the line. Death had
made many gaps in the old circle of
friends, both white and native, but

The Man in Perspective 215

the welcome from those who re-
mained warmed our hearts.

From Wrangell northward the
steamboat followed the route of our
canoe voyage of 1880 through Wran-
gell Narrows into Prince Freder-
ick Sound, past Norris Glacier and
Holkham Bay into Stevens Passage,
past Taku Bay to Juneau and on to
Lynn Canal — then on the track of
our voyage of 1879 up to Haines
and beyond fifteen miles to that new,
chaotic camp in the woods called
Skagway.

The two or three days which it
took The Queen to discharge her
load of passengers and cargo of their
outfits were spent by Muir and his
scientific companions in roaming the
forests and mountains about Skag-
way and examining the flora of that
region. They kept mostly off the
trail of the struggling, straggling
army of Cheechakoes (newcomers)

216 Alaska Days with John Muir

who were blunderingly trying to get
their goods and themselves across
the rugged, jagged mountains on
their way to the promised land of
gold; but Muir found time to spend
some hours with me in my camp
under a hemlock, where he ate
again of my cooking over a camp-
fire.

" You are going on a strange jour-
ney this time, my friend," he admon-
ished me. " I don't envy you.
You'll have a hard time keeping your
heart light and simple in the midst
of this crowd of madmen. Instead
of the music of the wind among the
spruce-tops and the tinkling of the
waterfalls, your ears will be filled
with the oaths and groans of these
poor, deluded, self-burdened men.
Keep close to Nature's heart, your-
self; and break clear away, once in
a while, and climb a mountain or
spend a week in the woods. Wash

The Man in Perspective 217

your spirit clean from the earth-
stains of this sordid, gold-seeking
crowd in God's pure air. It will
help you in your efforts to bring to
these men something better than
gold. Don't lose your freedom and
your love of the Earth as God
made it."

In 1899 it was my good fortune
to have one more Alaska day with
John Muir at Skagway. After a
year in the Klondyke I had spent the
winter of 1898-99 in the Eastern
States arousing the Christian pub-
lic to the needs of this newly discov-
ered Empire of the North; and was
returning with other ministers to
interior and western Alaska. The
White Pass Railroad was completed
only to the summit; and it was a
laborious task, requiring a month of
very hard work, to get our goods
from Skagway over the thirty miles
of mountains to Lake Bennett,

218 Alaska Days with John Muir

where we could load them on our
open boat for the voyage of two
thousand miles down the Yukon.

While I was engaged in this task
there came to Skagway the steam-
ship George W . Elder , carrying one
of the most remarkable companies
of scientific men ever gathered to-
gether in one expedition. Mr. Har-
riman, the great railroad magnate,
had chartered the steamer, and had
invited as his guests many men of
world reputation in various branches
of natural science. Among them
were John Burroughs, Drs. Merriam
and Dahl of the Smithsonian Insti-
tute, and, not least, John Muir. In-
deed he was called the Nestor of the
expedition and his advice followed
as that of no other.

The enticing proposition was
made me by Muir, and backed by
Mr. Harriman's personal invitation,
that I should join this distinguished

The Man in Perspective 219

company, share Muir's stateroom
and spend the summer cruising
along the southern and western
coasts of Alaska. However, the
new mining camps were calling with
a still more imperative voice, and I
had to turn my back to the Coast
and face the great, sun-bathed Inte-
rior. But what a joy and inspira-
tion it would have been to climb
Muir, Geicke and Taylor glaciers
again with Muir, note the rapid
progress God was making in His
work of landscape gardening by
means of these great tools, make at
last our deferred visits to Lituya
and Yakutat bays and the fine gla-
ciers of Prince William's Sound, and
renew my studies of this good world
under my great Master.

A letter from Muir about his sum-
mer's cruise, written in November,
1899, reached me at Nome in June,
1900; for those of us who had

220 Alaska Days with John Muir

reached that bleak, exposed north-
western coast and wintered there
did not get any mail for six months.
We were fifteen hundred miles from
a post-office.

In his letter Muir wrote: "The
voyage was a grand one, and I saw
much that was new to me and
packed full of interest and instruc-
tion. But, do you know, I longed
to break away from the steamboat
and its splendid company, get a
dugout canoe and a crew of Indians,
and, with you as my companion,
poke into the nooks and crannies of
the mountains and glaciers which
we could not reach from the steamer.
What great days we have had to-
gether, you and I ! "

This day at Skagway, in 1899,
was the last of my Alaska days with
John Muir, except as I bring them
back and live them over in my
thoughts. How often in my long

The Man in Perspective 221

voyages, by canoe or steamer,
among the thousand islands of
southeastern Alaska, the intricate
channels of Prince William's Sound,
the great rivers, and multitudinous
lakes of the Interior, and the tree-
less, windswept coasts of Bering Sea
and the Arctic Ocean; or in my
tramps in the summer over the
mountains and plains of Alaska, or
in the winter with my dogs over
the frozen wilderness fighting the
great battle with the fierce cold or
spellbound under the magic of the
Aurora — how often have I longed
for the presence of Muir to heighten
my enjoyment by his higher ecstasy,
or reveal to me what I was too dull
to see or understand. I have had
inspiring companions, and my life
has been blessed by many friend-
ships inestimably precious and rich;
but for me the world has produced
but one John Muir; and to no other

222 Alaska Days with John Muir

man do I feel that I owe so much;
for I was blind and he made me see !

Only once since 1899 did I meet
him, and then but for an hour at his
temporary home in Los Angeles in
1910. He was putting the finishing
touches on his rich volume, " The
Story of My Boyhood and Youth."
I submitted for his review and cor-
rection the article which forms the
first two chapters of this book. With
that nice regard for absolute verity
which always characterized him he
pointed out two or three passages
in which his recollection clashed
with mine, and I at once made the
changes he suggested.

Muir never grew old. After he
was sixty years of age (as men count
age) some of his most daring feats
of mountain climbing and some of
his longest journeys into the wilds
were undertaken. When he was
past seventy he was still tramping

The Man in Perspective 223

and camping in the forests and
among the hills. When he was sev-
enty-three he made long trips to
South America and Africa, and to
the very end he was exploring,
studying, working and enjoying.

All his writings exult with the
spirit of immortal youth. There
is in his books an intimate com-
panionship with the trees, the moun-
tains, the flowers and the animals,
that is altogether fine. Surely no
such books of mountains and for-
ests were ever written as his
" Mountains of California," " My
First Summer in the Sierra,'' '-The
Yosemite '' and " Our National
Parks." His brooks and trees are
the abode of dryads and hamadryads
— they live and talk.

And when he writes of the ani-
mals he has met in his rambles,
without any attempt to put into
their characters anything that does

224 Alaska Days with John Muir

not belong to them, without " manu-
facturing his data," he somehow
manages to do much more than in-
troduce them to you; he makes you
their intimate and admiring friends,
as he was. His ouzel bobs you a
cheery good morning and sprays you
with its " ripple of song "; his Doug-
las squirrel scolds and swears at you
with rough good-nature; and his
big-horn gazes at you with frank
and friendly eyes and challenges you
to follow to its splendid heights, not
as a hunter but as a companion.
You love them all, as Muir did.

As an instance of this power in
his writings, when I returned from
the Klondyke in 1898 the story of
Stickeen had been published in a
magazine a few months before. I
met in New York a daughter of the
great Field family, who when a child
had heard me tell of Muir's exploit
in rescuing me from the mountain

The Man in Perspective 225

top, and who had shouted with de-
light when I told of our sliding
down the mountain in the moraine
gravel. She asked me eagerly if I
was the Mr. Young mentioned in
Muir's story. When I said that I
was she called to her companions
and introduced me as the Owner of
Stickeen; and I was content to have
as my claim to an earthly immor-
tality my ownership of an immor-
talized dog.

I cannot think of John Muir as
dead, or as much changed from the
man with whom I canoed and
camped. He was too much a part
of nature — too natural — to be sepa-
rated from his mountains, trees and
glaciers. Somewhere, I am sure, he
is making other explorations, solv-
ing other natural problems, using
that brilliant, inventive genius to
good effect; and some time again I
shall hear him unfold anew, with

226 Alaska Days with John Muir

still clearer insight and more elo-
quent words, fresh secrets of his
*' mountains of God."

The Thlingets have a Happy
Hunting Ground in the Spirit Land
for dogs as well as for men; and
Muir used to contend that they were
right — that the so-called lower ani-
mals have as much right to a
Heaven as humans. I wonder if he
has found a still more beautiful — a
glorified — Stickeen; and if the little
fellow still follows and frisks about
him as in those great, old days. I
like to think so; and when I too
cross the Great Divide — and it can't
be long now — I shall look eagerly
for them both to be my companions
in fresh adventures. In the mean-
time I am lonely for them and think
of them often, and say, with The
Harvester, "What a dog! — and what
a MAN ! ! "

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