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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Alaska Days with John Muir, by Samuel Hall Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Alaska Days with John Muir
+
+Author: Samuel Hall Young
+
+Release Date: December 17, 2009 [eBook #30697]
+[Most recently updated: October 24, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Greg Bergquist, Chris Curnow, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note
+The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved.
+
+
+
+
+ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR
+
+[Illustration: JOHN MUIR WITH ALASKA SPRUCE CONES]
+
+
+ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR
+
+by
+
+S. HALL YOUNG
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York Chicago Toronto
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+London and Edinburgh
+
+Copyright, 1915, by
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+
+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                   11
+
+  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 velvet 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 stationed at Fort Wrangell in southeastern
+Alaska, whence I had come the year before, a green young student fresh
+from college and seminary--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. 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 always since associated with him, and
+which seemed the same garment, unsoiled 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 these four fine personalities to
+me, and I began to recognize him as my Master who was to lead me into
+enchanting regions of beauty and mystery, 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."
+
+[Illustration: FORT WRANGELL
+
+Near the mouth of the Stickeen--the starting point of the expeditions]
+
+Minor excursions culminated in the chartering of the little steamer
+_Cassiar_, on which our party, augmented by two or three friends,
+steamed between the tremendous glaciers and through the columned canyons
+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
+famous Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon. Stocky, broad-shouldered,
+muscular, 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 projected 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 Canyon impossible, unless we take the morning's
+calm."
+
+I saw Muir's eyes light up with a 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 toward
+dangerous adventure, and especially 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 center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
+mountains. "One of the finest viewpoints in the world," he said.
+
+"How far to the highest point?"
+
+"About ten miles."
+
+"How high?"
+
+"Seven or eight thousand feet."
+
+That was enough. I caught the D.D.s with guile. There were Stickeen
+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 whetted 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
+children 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
+interpreter, to call the natives to another _hyou wawa_ (big talk) and,
+note-book in hand, the doctors "went gayly to the fray." I set the
+speeches a-going, and then slipped out to join the impatient Muir.
+
+"Take off your coat," he commanded, "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
+thousand 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."
+
+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, humpbacked, 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 narrow, 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 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. Nowhere else have I see anything approaching
+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 on his knees, babbling in unknown tongues,
+prattling a curious mixture of scientific lingo and baby talk,
+worshiping his little blue-and-pink goddesses.
+
+"Ah! my blue-eyed darlin', 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 possible 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 amatory botany that he seemed to forget my
+existence. While I, as glad as he, tagged along, running up and 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 outdoor palaces.
+But how I anathematized my short-sighted foolishness for having as a
+student at old Wooster shirked botany for the "more important" studies
+of language and metaphysics. For here was a man whose natural science
+had a thorough technical basis, while the superstructure was built of
+"lively stones," and was itself a living temple of love!
+
+With all his boyish enthusiasm, Muir was a most painstaking student; and
+any unsolved question lay upon his mind like a personal grievance until
+it was settled to his full understanding. One plant after another, with
+its sand-covered roots, went into his pockets, his handkerchief 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 entrancing work and we were progressing upwards
+but slowly. We were on the southeastern slope of the mountain, 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 his last handful of plants, and hastened up to
+where I stood.
+
+"Man!" he said, "I was forgetting. 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 answered; "the sight of the sunset from the
+top."
+
+Then Muir began to _slide_ up that mountain. I had been with mountain
+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 serpent-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
+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!
+
+[Illustration: THE MOUNTAIN
+
+He pointed to a little group of jagged peaks rising right up from where
+we stood--a pulpit in the center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
+mountains]
+
+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
+between. 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 pebbles and boulders, and beyond them the
+glacier. Once a giant, it is nothing 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 future generations. But
+glaciers were Muir's special pets, his intimate companions, with whom he
+held sweet communion. Their voices were plain language to his ears,
+their work, as God's landscape gardeners, of the wisest and best that
+Nature could offer.
+
+No Swiss guide was ever wiser in the habits of glaciers than Muir, or
+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 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 display 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 climbing! There was never
+an instant when both feet and hands were not in play, and often elbows,
+knees, thighs, upper arms, and even chin must grip and hold. Clambering
+up a steep slope, crawling under an overhanging 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 fissures, 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 fragment 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.
+
+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 before I had been fond of breaking colts--till
+the colts broke me. On successive summers in West Virginia, 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, 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 vantage. 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 obstacle, 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 moment 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 richest
+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. Standing
+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. Striking 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 islands, now foaming white through narrow
+canyons. Beyond, among the undulating hills, was a marvelous 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 glacier collars. The taller peaks seemed almost
+sharp enough to be the helmets and spears of watchful sentinels. 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 horizon--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 Schiller'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, although 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 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.
+Instantly the stone melted away beneath 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.
+
+Falling forward hard, my hands struck the walls of the chasm, my arms
+were twisted behind me, and instantly both shoulders were dislocated.
+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 slipping
+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 thousand
+thoughts flash through the brain in a single instant--an anguished
+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 instantaneous photography of deadly peril. I had no hope of escape
+at all. The gravel was rattling past me and piling 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.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE MARVELOUS ARRAY OF LAKES]
+
+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; I'm going to get you out of this. I can't get to
+you on this side; the rock is sheer. I'll 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 Scotland,"
+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 entertained no more
+thoughts of last messages. 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 growing 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.
+Now I heard Muir's voice, low and steady, close to me, and it seemed a
+little below.
+
+"Hold steady," he said. "I'll 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, gathering 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 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.
+
+"I've got to let go of you," he hissed through his clenched teeth. "I
+need both hands here. Climb upward 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 on
+the rock. It was utterly impossible, 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 dislocation, the ball of the humerus resting 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 muscles had pulled the head of the bone deep into my armpit.
+There 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 tottery, 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 himself down to a
+lower shelf, brace himself, and I would get my right hand 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 would 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 midnight 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 disappeared 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 glacial
+stream, and far beneath the ridge along which we had ascended. The
+sides of the canyon were sheer cliffs.
+
+"We'll try it," said Muir. "Sometimes 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 going 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, "I'm 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; and always cheery, full of talk and anecdote,
+cracking jokes with me, infusing me with his own indomitable spirit. He
+was eyes, hands, feet, and heart to me--my caretaker, in whom I trusted
+absolutely. My eyes brim with tears even now when I think of his utter
+self-abandon as he ministered to my infirmities.
+
+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 of
+whites and Indians just starting 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 account 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 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 inhumanity"
+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 them.
+She obtained some whisky from the captain, some water, porridge 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 strengthened
+with food and rest, and Muir called from his sleep of exhaustion, 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 seemingly 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!"
+
+[Illustration: GLACIER--STICKEEN VALLEY
+
+Muir, fresh and enthusiastic as ever, was the pilot of the party across
+the moraine and upon the great ice mountain]
+
+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 middle of an acre of alder brush, he asked
+indignantly, in response to the hurry-up calls: "Do you think I'm going
+to leave my wife in this forest?"
+
+One overpowering regret--one 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!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+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 interior lakes, ranges, forests and flower pastures.
+Always upon his return (for my house was his home the most of that time)
+he would be full to intoxication of what he had seen, and dinners would
+grow cold and lamps burn out while he held us entranced with his
+impassioned stories. Although his books are all masterpieces 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 especially 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 finishing 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 and nights, which kept ordinary people 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.
+
+"Why, men," I cried, "what's wrong? What brings you here?"
+
+"We want you play (pray)," answered 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 gathered at last that the whole tribe were
+frightened by a mysterious light waving 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 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 foolish as to camp up there on such a night, when there were
+plenty of comfortable 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 natives,
+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 mountains on
+stormy nights?" they asked. "Why does he wander alone on barren peaks
+or on dangerous ice-mountains? There is no gold up there and he never
+takes a gun with him or a pick. _Icta 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 navigator, Vancouver, in 1807. It was a wonderful chart,
+considering what an absurd little sailing vessel he had in which to
+explore those intricate waters with their treacherous winds and tides.
+
+But Vancouver's chart was hastily made, after all, in a land of fog and
+rain and snow. He had not the modern surveyor's instruments, boats or
+other helps. And, besides, this region 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 rivers were opening new passages and
+closing old ones; and, more than all, those mightiest tools of the great
+Engineer, the glaciers, were furrowing 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 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 voyage of discovery was to locate and visit
+the tribes and villages of Thlingets to the north and west of Wrangell,
+to take their census, confer with their chiefs and report upon their
+condition, with a view to establishing schools and churches among them.
+The most of these tribes had never had a visit from a missionary, and I
+felt the eager zeal an Eliot or a Martin at the prospect of telling 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 with me--so
+our plans fitted into each other well.
+
+"We are going to write some history, my boy," Muir would say to me.
+"Think of the honor! We have been chosen to put some interesting people
+and some of Nature's grandest scenes on the page of human record and on
+the map. Hurry! We are daily losing the most important news of all the
+world."
+
+In many respects we were most congenial companions. We both loved the
+same poets and could repeat, 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 studies supplemented each other and our tastes were similar. We had
+both lived clean lives and our conversation 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
+commander of the expedition, he was my teacher and guide into the inner
+recesses and meanings of the islands, bays and mountains we explored
+together.
+
+Our ship for this voyage of discovery, while not so large as
+Vancouver's, was much more shapely and manageable--a _kladushu etlan_
+(six fathom) red-cedar canoe. It belonged 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 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 because of his powers of oratory, his kinship
+with Chief Shathitch of the Chilcat tribe, and his friendly relations
+with other chiefs. He was a born courtier, learned in Indian lore, songs
+and customs, and able to instruct 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, sugar,
+salt and a little dried fruit. We were to depend upon our guns,
+fishhooks, 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 provisions, 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 trouble. 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
+entreaties did not avail she said: "If anything happens to my son, I
+will take your baby as mine in payment."
+
+[Illustration: VOYAGES OF MUIR AND YOUNG 1879 and 1880 IN SOUTHEASTERN
+ALASKA]
+
+One sunny October day we set our prow to the unknown northwest. Our
+hearts beat high with anticipation. 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 overhead and the eagles shrilling from the sky
+promised wonderful adventures.
+
+The voyage naturally divides itself into the human interest and the
+study of nature; yet the two constantly 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 admiration from
+the first. His paddle was sure in the stern, his knowledge of the wind
+and tide unfailing. Whenever we landed the crew would begin 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 acquiescing 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 butter and
+at the three who were to eat, measured with his eye one-third of the
+roll, cut it off with his hunting knife and began to cut it into squares
+and eat it with great gusto. I was about to interfere and show 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. During
+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 westward 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 coming to a native town,
+was to find where the head chief lived, feed him with rice and regale
+him with tobacco, 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 presents of tobacco to each, and then open the floodgate of talk,
+proclaiming my mission and telling them in simplest terms the Great New
+Story. Muir would generally follow me, unfolding in turn some of the
+wonders 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 suspicion
+at first old Tow-a-att's tearful pleadings and Kadishan's oratory
+speedily brought about peace and unity.
+
+These palavers often lasted a 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, getting the
+heads of the families to count their relatives with the aid of
+beans,--the large brown beans representing men, the large white ones,
+women, 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 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 excitement 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 fragment 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 clothing 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 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 tribe, occurred an incident
+of another type. We found this village hilariously drunk. There was a
+very stringent prohibition law over Alaska at that time, which
+absolutely forbade the importation of any spirituous liquors into the
+Territory. But the law was deficient in one vital respect--it did not
+prohibit the importation of molasses; and a soldier during the military
+occupancy of the Territory had instructed the natives in the art of
+making rum. The method was simple. A five-gallon oil can was taken and
+partly filled with molasses as a base; into that alcohol was placed (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 because
+these same Hootz-noo natives first made it, kill at more than forty
+rods, for it generally made the natives _fighting_ drunk.
+
+Through the large company of screaming, dancing and singing natives we
+made our way to the chief's house. By some miracle this majestic-looking
+savage was sober. Perhaps he felt it incumbent upon him 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 looking Indian women I
+have ever met,--tall, straight, lithe and dignified. But, crawling about
+on the floor on all fours, was the most piteous travesty of the human
+form I have ever seen. It was an idiot boy, sixteen 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 swinging
+gait of a bear, he would crouch 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, feeding him with her choicest
+food, putting 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 illness 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, "Oh, would you not be relieved at the
+death of this poor idiot boy?" she saw in my words a threat, and I 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 nothing 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 Chilcoot natives on Lynn Canal, the
+most northern tribes of the Alexandrian Archipelago. Here reigned the
+proudest and worst old savage of Alaska, Chief Shathitch. His wealth
+was very great in Indian treasures, and he was reputed to have cached
+away in different places several houses full of blankets, guns, boxes of
+beads, ancient carved pipes, spears, knives and other valued heirlooms.
+He was said to have stored away over one hundred of the elegant 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 Indians of the Interior in a bondage of 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 villages were full of slaves procured by
+forays upon the coasts of Vancouver Island, Puget Sound, and as far
+south as the mouth of the Columbia River. I was eager to visit these
+large and untaught tribes, and establish a mission among them.
+
+[Illustration: CHILCAT WOMAN WEAVING A BLANKET
+
+Chief Shathitch was said to have over one hundred of the elegant Chilcat
+blankets, woven by hand, from the hair of the mountain goat]
+
+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 excitement in the town. We had hoisted the
+American flag, as was our custom, and had put on our best 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 reception--a shower of
+bullets falling unpleasantly around us. Instinctively 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:
+
+"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 Russian officer had given him. He confessed 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 if they were going to take us prisoners. 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
+chief's 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 fashion of a chief's house--carved corner posts,
+a square of gravel in the center of the room for the fire surrounded 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 chieftain's household goods were stowed and
+where the family took their repose. A brisk fire was burning in the
+middle of the room; and after a short palaver, with gifts of tobacco 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 towards 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, holding about as
+much as the washbowls. We had learned enough Indian etiquette to know
+that at each course our respective vessels were to be filled full of
+food, and we were expected 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 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 separately; for our stomachs had not been
+sufficiently trained to endure that rancid grease. This course finished,
+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 washbowlful, with a dressing of
+seal-grease. The final course was the only berry then in season, the
+long fleshy apple of the wild rose mellowed 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 properly
+receive His Majesty, Muir and I and our two chiefs were each given a
+whole bale of Hudson Bay blankets for a couch. Shathitch made us wait a
+long time, doubtless to impress us with his dignity as supreme chief.
+
+The heat of the fire after the wind and cold of the day made us very
+drowsy. We fought off sleep, however, 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
+astonished to see printed in black letters these words, "To Chief
+Shathitch, from his friend, William H. Seward!" We learned afterwards
+that Seward, in his voyage of investigation, had penetrated to this
+far-off town, had been received in royal state 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, history does not relate.
+
+To me the inspiring part of that 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 Chilcoot 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 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 religion; 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 objects and points of surprise and interest. When we
+landed, the algæ, which sometimes filled the little harbors, 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 attention and
+study. Muir was one of the most expert foresters this country has ever
+produced. He was never at a loss. The luxuriant vegetation 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 blossoms; 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 thorough knowledge
+of botany and his interest in that study made every 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 nature and His management of all the affairs of
+the universe, was his constantly reiterated belief. He saw design in
+many things which the ordinary naturalist overlooks, such as the
+symmetry of an island, the balancing branches of a tree, the harmony of
+colors in a group of flowers, the completion of a fully rounded
+landscape. In his view, the Creator of it all saw every beautiful and
+sublime 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 landscape
+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!"
+
+Thus Muir was always discovering to me things which I would never have
+seen myself and opening up to me new avenues of knowledge, delight and
+adoration. There was something so intimate in his theism that it
+purified, elevated and broadened mine, even when I could not agree with
+him. His constant exclamation 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 wonderful
+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 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 Glacier Bay of
+which we had heard. Vancouver's chart gave us no intimation 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 patience, 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 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 transport them a
+dozen miles in a moment, 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, mangling 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;
+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 increasing
+every moment, and as the majestic arena opened before us and the Muir,
+Geicke, Pacific and other great glaciers (all nameless as yet) 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 wonders. Now the marks of recent glaciation showed
+plainly. Here was a conical island of gray granite, whose rounded top
+and symmetrical shoulders 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 resistless 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 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
+ultra-marine; 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 icebergs. 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
+nights we camped on the bare granite rock before we reached the limit of
+the bay. All vegetation had disappeared; 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 matter of the mighty ice mass that had
+engulfed them. They told the story of great forests which had once
+covered this whole region, until the great sea of ice of the second
+glacial 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.
+
+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 summits of Mts. Fairweather and Crillon. These
+mighty summits, twelve thousand, fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand
+feet high, respectively, pierced the sky directly above us; sometimes
+they seemed to be hanging over us threateningly. Only once did the sky
+completely clear; and then was preached to us the wonderful Sermon of
+Glacier Bay.
+
+Early that morning we quitted our camp on a barren rock, steering
+towards 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 purpose to attain to the head of the bay.
+The air was damp and raw, chilling us to the marrow. The forbidding
+granite mountains, showing here and there through the fog, seemed
+suddenly to push out threatening fists and shoulders at us. All night
+long the ice-guns had bombarded us from four or five directions, 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 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 avalanche, threatened us.
+
+Suddenly I heard Muir catch his breath with a fervent ejaculation. "God,
+Almighty!" he said. Following his gaze towards Mt. Crillon, I saw the
+summit highest of all crowned with glory indeed. It was not sunlight;
+there was no appearance 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 colors--as if a pigment, perfectly made and
+thickly spread, too delicate 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, shivering in our wet
+blankets, were glowing 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
+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
+mountains. 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 changing 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 purpose of it all. Now the text of this great
+sermon was emblazoned across the landscape--"_God is Love_"; and 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 landscape; our courage rose; our Indians
+dipped their paddles silently, steering without fear amidst the
+dangerous masses of ice. But there was no profanity in Muir's
+exclamation, "We have met with God!" A lifelong 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 atmospheric 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 surpassing loveliness. Again and again
+Muir would break out, after a long silence of blissful memory, with
+exclamations:
+
+"We saw it; we saw it! He sent us to His most glorious exhibition.
+Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!"
+
+Two or three inspiring days followed. Muir must climb the most
+accessible of the mountains. My weak shoulders forbade me to ascend more
+than two or three thousand 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" 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 governed 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 mountains, 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 forgetting 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 hundred feet
+above the surface of the water. The ice masses were breaking off so fast
+that we were forced to put off far from the face of the glacier. The
+great waves threatened 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 our canoe about half a mile from the edge of the glacier,
+but, attempting 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 boulders 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.
+
+[Illustration: MUIR GLACIER
+
+Returning down Glacier Bay, we visited the largest glacier of all, which
+was to bear Muir's name]
+
+Muir spent a whole day alone on the glacier, walking over twenty miles
+across what he called the glacial lake between two mountains. A cold,
+penetrating, mist-like rain was falling, and dark clouds swept up the
+bay and clung about the shoulders of the mountains. When night
+approached and Muir had not returned, 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 taking 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 before
+midnight, very tired but very happy. "Ah!" he sighed, "I'm glad to be in
+camp. The glacier almost got me this time. If it had not been for the
+beacon and old 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. I've 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 marble 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 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 splendid
+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 Chatham
+Strait again. Landing our Hoonah guide at his village, we took our route
+northward again up Lynn Canal. The beautiful Davison Glacier 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 commenced. Bowling
+down the canal before a strong north wind, we entered 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, enticed us to
+exploration, but the constant 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 exploration to the end of the bay impossible. 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 purpose 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
+minister."
+
+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 icebergs,
+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 thousand 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 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 light;
+     And bars of moonbeams streaming white,
+ Have pearls of ebon raindrops made.
+
+ From darkest sea 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.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE LOST GLACIER
+
+
+John Muir was married in the spring of 1880 to Miss Strentzel, the
+daughter of a Polish physician who had come out in the great stampede of
+1849 to California, but had found his gold in oranges, lemons 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 September. 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 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 replied. "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 conscience? 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 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 villages of the Hanega tribe of Thlingets. 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 Tsimpheans, and on fifteen miles further to the famous mission
+of Father Duncan 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 "noblest Roman of them all" fell dead 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 simply
+and eloquently a few months before. 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 blankets 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 emblem of his position as chief, to see if he could not call
+his tribe back again. At my instance, as I stood with my hand on his
+shoulder, he lifted up his voice to recall his people to their houses,
+when, in an instant, 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 barbarism; and the
+white man, who had taught the Indians the art of making rum, and the
+white man's government, which had afforded no safeguard against such
+scenes, were responsible.
+
+[Illustration: DAVIDSON GLACIER
+
+The beautiful Davidson Glacier, with its great snow-white fan, drew our
+gaze and excited our admiration for two days]
+
+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 seventeen who acted as interpreter,
+formed the crew. When we were about to embark I suddenly thought of my
+little dog Stickeen and made the resolve to take him along. My wife and
+Muir both protested and I almost 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
+independent 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. 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 beautifully
+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
+voyage. 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
+delegation 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
+antics were irresistible. It was Moses who named him Stickeen after
+their tribe--an exceptional honor. Thereafter the whole tribe adopted
+and protected him, and woe to the Indian 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, delivered 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 offending Indian dog--a valuable hunting animal.
+
+Stickeen lacked the obtrusively affectionate 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, he attracted the attention of
+everybody and won all hearts.
+
+As instances: Dr. Kendall, "The Grand Old Man" of our Church, during 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
+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 with Muir was arranged, and curled
+himself down on my coat. The discussion 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 obtrusive, never "butted in"; never offended 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 Stickeen 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 squirrels; but when we would start to the
+woods, the mountains or the glaciers the dog would join us, coming
+mysteriously 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 victory
+was complete; he slept at Muir's feet, went with him on all his rambles;
+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 simple,
+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 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
+oarsman; Billy, a lad of seventeen, our interpreter and Joe's assistant.
+Towards 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 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 waters 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 especially his expedition. He was the commander now, as I had been
+the year before. He had set for himself 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
+accustomed to such rude interruption. They could not understand Muir at
+all, nor in the least comprehend his 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 phosphorescent 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
+illumination. Sometimes their black tops with waving seaweed, surrounded
+by phosphorescent breakers, 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
+accompanying us as if the outraged fairies were bombarding us with tiny
+guns. Then would ensue a tedious groping with the lantern for a camping
+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 wonderful arms. Here we were to find the
+lost glacier. This deep fiord has two great prongs. Neither of them
+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, flashing
+through the trees, disappearing as an island intervened, and again
+opening up with its fair ray as we pushed on. An hour's steady paddling
+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 constant
+rains had swelled the glacial stream, burst through their wing-dams,
+swept away their sluice-boxes and destroyed the work of the summer.
+Strong men of the wilderness as they were, they were not discouraged,
+but were discussing plans for prospecting new places and trying it again
+here next summer. Hot coffee 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
+Endicott Arm, spreading out like the skirmish 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 top, owing to the
+smoothness of the granite rock. It was newly glaciated--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 blankets 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
+granite 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 getting inside the outer fleet of
+icebergs 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, threatened a trap. The only way to
+navigate 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 precaution to put a false bow and stern on
+his canoe, cunningly fashioned out of curved branches of trees and
+hollowed 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 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 rising 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 giants 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 mountains, and the
+depth of the water could only be conjectured. It must have been hundreds
+of feet, perhaps thousands, from the surface of the water to the bottom
+of that fissure. Smooth, polished, shining breasts of bright gray
+granite crowded above the glacier on every side, seeming to overhang the
+ice and the bay. Struggling clumps of evergreens 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 glacier. "To think of his shouldering his
+way through the mountain range like this! Samson, pushing down 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 surveying 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 spent all of these days and part of
+the nights climbing the pinnacled mountains to this and that viewpoint,
+crossing the deep, narrow and dangerous glacier five thousand feet above
+the level of the sea, exploring its tributaries and their side canyons,
+making sketches in his note-book for future elaboration. Stickeen by
+this time constantly followed Muir, exciting my jealousy by his plainly
+expressed preference. Because 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 promontory 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 which had evidently been broken off from the
+mountain; indeed, there was a niche five thousand feet above into which
+it would exactly fit. The 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 green that
+relieved the gray of the granite, there he was dodging in and out of the
+blue crevasses of the upper glacial falls. Darting before him or
+creeping behind was a little black speck which I made out to be
+Stickeen, climbing steeps up which a fox would hardly venture.
+Occasionally I would see him dancing about at the base of a cliff too
+steep for him, up which Muir was climbing, and his piercing howls of
+protest at being 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 forest, 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 variety of blue and purple tints I have never seen
+surpassed--baby-blue, sky-blue, sapphire, turquoise, cobalt, 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.
+
+[Illustration: TAKU GLACIER
+
+There followed an excursion into Taku Bay, that miniature of Glacier
+Bay, with its three living glaciers]
+
+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 of prismatic colors when the
+sunlight struck them. As I gazed I could see the whole upper part of the
+cliff slowly moving forward until 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. Fascinated, 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 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 surprising way. The great tower of crystal
+shot up into the air two hundred 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 shout of
+applause and Stickeen's sharp bark came faintly 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 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 current. 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 afforded 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 before we could penetrate the
+depths of this great canyon.
+
+We shot through the mouth of the canyon at dangerous speed. Indeed, we
+could not do otherwise; we were helpless in the grasp of the torrent. At
+certain stages the surging tide forms an actual fall, for the entrance
+is so narrow that the water 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 narrows, 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 paddles 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 expressed 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 Sentinel, 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 Yosemite, 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 bigger 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 without
+vegetation upon it between the glaciers and the bay showed that 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 glaciers
+stretched away miles and miles, like two great antennæ, from the head of
+the bay to the top of the mountain range. But the most striking 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 parallel mouldings, like massive cornices 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-like ice must have
+possessed, driven by millions of tons of weight, to mould and shape and
+scoop out these flinty rock faces, as the carpenter's forming plane
+flutes a board!
+
+When we were half-way up this wonderful bay the sun burst through a rift
+of cloud. "Look, look!" exclaimed 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
+rainbows of marvelous distinctness and brilliance, waving and dancing--a
+very riot of color. The tinkling water falling into the bay waked a
+thousand echoes, weird, musical and 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 any 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 Snettisham, Tahkou Harbor; all of which we rudely put on the map,
+or at least extended the arms beyond 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 Gastineau Channel and Stevens
+Passage can only be crossed with canoes at flood tide), we met two old
+gold prospectors whom I had frequently seen at Wrangell--Joe Harris 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 camping 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" sufficiently
+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 prospectors, and
+afterwards Juneau for the other. The great Treadwell gold quartz mine
+was located three miles from Juneau in 1881, and others subsequently.
+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 paddled, 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. 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 follow. 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 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 discovered Stickeen away out in the water, paddling
+calmly and confidently 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 insisted 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 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 glacier and across its surface. On one
+occasion Muir, with the little dog at his heels, crossed entirely in a
+diagonal direction the great glacial lake, a trip of some thirty miles,
+starting before daylight in the morning and not appearing at camp until
+long after dark. Muir always carried 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 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE FRONT OF MUIR GLACIER
+
+We could understand the constant breaking off and leaping up and
+smashing down of the ice, and the formation of the great mass of bergs]
+
+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 rapids, 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 conception 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.
+
+Shortly before we left Muir Glacier, I saw Muir furiously angry for the
+first and last time in my acquaintance with him. We had noticed day
+after day, whenever the mists admitted a view of the mountain slopes,
+bands of mountain goats looking like little white mice against the green
+of the high pastures. I said to Joe, the hunter, one morning: "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 returned
+with a fine young buck on his shoulders. While we were examining 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:
+
+"_Tatlum-pe-ict_ (eleven)," he replied.
+
+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 until 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; although he
+would eat meat when prepared, he never killed a wild animal; even the
+rattlesnakes he did not molest during his rambles in California. 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 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 exploring
+the inlets and glaciers to the west. These days were rainy and cold. We
+groped blindly into unknown, unmapped, fog-hidden fiords and bayous,
+exploring them to their ends and often making excursions to the glaciers
+above them.
+
+The climax of the trip, however, was the last glacier we visited, Taylor
+Glacier, the scene of Muir's great adventure with Stickeen. We reached
+this fine glacier in the afternoon of a very stormy day. We were
+approaching the open Pacific, and the _saanah_, the southeast rain-wind,
+was howling through the narrow entrance into Cross Sound. For twenty
+miles we had been facing strong head winds and tidal waves 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
+wielding his big steering paddle, now on this side, now on that,
+grunting with each mighty stroke, calling encouragement to his crew,
+"_Ut-ha, ut-ha! hlitsin! hlitsin-tin!_ (pull, pull, strong, with
+strength!)"; Joe and Billy rising 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 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 narrow
+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 others of
+this region are receding; this has been coming forward. See the mighty
+ploughshare and its furrow!"
+
+For the icy mass was heaving up the ground clear across its front, and,
+on the side where we stood, had evidently 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 whole 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-morrow," 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 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 pouring,
+and I knew how imperative the call of such a morning as was promised
+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.
+
+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 pocketed 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 movements,
+had, as usual, quietly left his warm nest and followed his adopted
+master. Muir was scolding and expostulating with him as if he were a
+boy. I chuckled to myself at the futility of Muir's efforts; Stickeen
+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 chief's 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 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 circling about, doubtless wondering
+what had become of their parent stream.
+
+The old chief came to our camp early, followed by his squaws bearing
+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 interpreter, and asked for a big talk.
+
+With all ceremony I made preparations, gave more presents of leaf
+tobacco and hardtack and composed myself for the palaver. After the
+usual preliminaries, in which he told 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
+compliments 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 below it,
+and here for years great schools of king salmon came crowding 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!"
+
+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 answer. When I exclaimed in horror
+at his deed of blood he was astonished; he could not understand.
+
+"Why, they were _my_ slaves," he said, "and the man suggested it
+himself. He was glad to go to death to help his chief."
+
+A few years after this our missionary 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 embraced the new gospel of peace and love.
+He could not get rid of his superstition about the glacier, however, and
+about eight years afterwards, visiting at Wrangell, he told me as an
+item of news which he expected 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 driving passionately in horizontal sheets shut out the mountains
+and the upper plateau of 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
+ventured to face the wind on the glacier, but had contented himself with
+tracing its eastern side, and was somewhere 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 command: clam chowder, fried porpoise, bacon
+and beans, "savory meat" made of mountain kid with potatoes, onions,
+rice and curry, camp biscuit 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
+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 without 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 succession, without a question asked or a word
+uttered. Lot kept the fire blazing 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
+silence. "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 pounding
+of the blanket with his heavy tail.
+
+Then Muir began to talk, and little by little, between sips of coffee,
+the story of the day was unfolded. Soon memories crowded for utterance
+and I listened till midnight, entranced by a succession of vivid
+descriptions 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.
+
+[Illustration: GLACIAL CREVASSES
+
+"We had to make long, narrow tacks and doublings, tracing the edges of
+tremendous transverse and longitudinal crevasses--beautiful and awful"]
+
+When Muir described his marooning on the narrow island of ice
+surrounded by fathomless crevasses, with a knife-edged sliver curving
+deeply "like the cable of a suspension bridge" diagonally across it as
+the only means of escape, I shuddered at his peril. I held my breath as
+he told of the terrible risks he 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
+determination 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, intoxicated by his escape, he became a living 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 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
+rewritten 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 balanced well. He had the keenest
+sense of melody, as well as of harmony, in his sentence structure, and
+this great dog-story of his is a remarkable instance of the growth to
+perfection of the great production of a great master.
+
+The wonderful power of endurance of this man, whom Theodore Roosevelt
+has well called a "perfectly natural man," is instanced by the fact
+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 promised 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 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 attacked the
+Stickeens, killing old Tow-a-att, Moses and another of our Christian
+Indians. The trouble was not settled yet, and although the two 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 approached Angoon, however, I heard the war-drums
+beating with their peculiar 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 dancing 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 hurried up to the head chief of the
+Hootz-noos, who was alternately haranguing 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
+carvings 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 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
+natives 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
+Baranof 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 ferocity at the hunter, and one little tap
+of that huge paw crushed his skull like an egg-shell. His companion
+brought his body home; and now the whole tribe had formally declared
+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 their way.
+
+We had been rowing all night before 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 reception 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.
+
+Alaska at that time had no vestige of civil government, no means of
+punishing crime, no civil officers except the customs collectors, no
+magistrate or police,--everyone was a law to himself. The only sign of
+authority was this cumbersome sailing vessel with its marines and
+sailors. It could not move out of Sitka harbor without first sending by
+the monthly mail steamer to San Francisco 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 supposed 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 Glacier
+Bay and of the other unmapped 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
+passages, before surveying vessels began to make accurate maps. So from
+its beginning has Uncle Sam neglected 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
+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 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 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 blithe 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 answers 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 enthusiastic. When he had found
+in his great outdoor museum some peculiar treasure he talked over his
+find with me by letter.
+
+Muir's letters were never commonplace and sometimes they were long and
+rich. I preserved them all; and when, a few years ago, an Alaska
+steamboat sank to the bottom of the Yukon, carrying with it my library
+and all my literary possessions, the loss of these letters from my
+friend caused me more sorrow than the loss of almost any other of my
+many priceless treasures.
+
+The summer of 1881, the year following that of our second canoe voyage,
+Muir went, as scientific and literary 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 published
+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 process 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
+wilderness."
+
+A very brief visit at Muir's home near Martinez, California, in the
+spring of 1883 found him at what he frankly said was very distasteful
+work--managing a large fruit ranch. He was doing the work well and
+making his orchards pay large dividends; but his heart was in the hills
+and woods. Eagerly he questioned me of my travels and of the "progress"
+of the glaciers and woods of Alaska. Beyond a few short mountain trips
+he had seen nothing for two years of his beloved wilds.
+
+Passionately he voiced his discontent: "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
+expired. The educational necessities of my children and the feeling that
+was growing upon me like a smothering cloud that if I remained much
+longer among the Indians I would lose all power to talk or write good
+English, drove me from the Northwest 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-picking 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 so heavy it is like to crush
+me. I'm 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 example.
+I, who have breathed the mountain 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; putting
+them in prison! And for money! Man! I'm like to die of the shame of it.
+
+"And then you're not safe a day in this sordid world of money-grubbing
+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 I'd 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. I'm 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 enchantment. 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 August saw me on _The Queen_, the largest of
+that great fleet of passenger boats that were traversing the thousand
+miles of wonder and beauty between Seattle and Skagway. These steamboats
+were all laden with gold seekers and their goods. Seattle sprang into
+prominence and wealth, doubling her population 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, doctors,
+clerks, merchants, farmers, mechanics, engineers, reporters,
+sharpers--all gold-struck--all mad with excitement--all rushing
+pell-mell into a thousand new and hard experiences.
+
+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 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 together 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 and down the Yukon to the Klondyke, 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 I'm daft," he asked, "like a' the lave o' thae puir
+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 reporter's job tendered to him. I
+refused, urging my lack of training for such work and my more important
+and responsible position.
+
+"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 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 delight 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 doctor to him. After
+the usual examination the physician asked, "What do you generally do for
+a cold?"
+
+"Oh," said Muir, "I shiver it away."
+
+"Explain yourself," said the puzzled doctor.
+
+"We-ll," 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 snowstorm,
+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 welcome to use it
+in your practice."
+
+"Well," laughed the doctor, "if I had such patients as you in such 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 exclamations
+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
+welcome from those who remained warmed our hearts.
+
+From Wrangell northward the steamboat followed the route of our canoe
+voyage of 1880 through Wrangell Narrows into Prince Frederick 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 Skagway
+and examining the flora of that region. They kept mostly off the trail
+of the struggling, straggling army of _Cheechakoes_ (newcomers) 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 journey this time, my friend," he admonished
+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, yourself; and break
+clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the
+woods. Wash 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 public to the needs
+of this newly discovered 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, 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 steamship
+_George W. Elder_, carrying one of the most remarkable companies of
+scientific men ever gathered together in one expedition. Mr. Harriman,
+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 Institute, and, not least, John Muir. Indeed 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
+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 Interior. But what a
+joy and inspiration 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 glaciers of
+Prince William's Sound, and renew my studies of this good world under my
+great Master.
+
+A letter from Muir about his summer's cruise, written in November, 1899,
+reached me at Nome in June, 1900; for those of us who had reached that
+bleak, exposed northwestern 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 instruction. 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 together, 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 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 treeless, 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 friendships inestimably
+precious and rich; but for me the World has produced but one John Muir;
+and to no other 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 correction 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 and camping in the forests and among the
+hills. When he was seventy-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 companionship with the trees, the mountains, the
+flowers and the animals, that is altogether fine. Surely no such books
+of mountains and forests 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 animals he has met in his rambles, without any
+attempt to put into their characters anything that does not belong to
+them, without "manufacturing his data," he somehow manages to do much
+more than introduce 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 Douglas 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 top, and who had shouted with delight 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
+immortality my ownership of an immortalized 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 separated from his mountains, trees and glaciers.
+Somewhere, I am sure, he is making other explorations, solving other
+natural problems, using that brilliant, inventive genius to good effect;
+and some time again I shall hear him unfold anew, with still clearer
+insight and more eloquent 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 animals 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
+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 meantime 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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+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Alaska Days with John Muir</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Samuel Hall Young</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 17, 2009 [eBook #30697]<br />
+[Most recently updated: October 24, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Greg Bergquist, Chris Curnow, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR ***</div>
+
+<div class="tn">
+<p class="center"><big><b>Transcriber&#8217;s Note</b></big></p>
+
+<p class="center">The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" height="766" alt="cover" title="" />
+</div>
+<hr />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/signature.jpg" width="400" height="290" alt="signature" title="" />
+</div>
+<hr />
+<p class="t1">
+ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR
+</p>
+<hr />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="JOHN_MUIR_WITH_ALASKA_SPRUCE_CONES" id="JOHN_MUIR_WITH_ALASKA_SPRUCE_CONES"></a>
+<img src="images/image1.jpg" width="500" height="750" alt="JOHN MUIR WITH ALASKA SPRUCE CONES" title="" />
+<span class="caption">JOHN MUIR WITH ALASKA SPRUCE CONES</span>
+</div>
+<hr />
+<h1>
+Alaska Days with John Muir<br /></h1>
+
+<p class="center">By</p>
+
+<p class="t2">S. HALL YOUNG<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Illustrated</span><br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/pubmark.jpg" width="100" height="127" alt="pubmark" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">New York&nbsp;&nbsp; Chicago&nbsp;&nbsp; Toronto</span><br />
+<br />
+<big>Fleming H. Revell Company</big><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">London&nbsp;&nbsp; and&nbsp;&nbsp; Edinburgh</span><br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p class="center">
+Copyright, 1915, by<br />
+FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+New York: 158 Fifth Avenue<br />
+Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave.<br />
+Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W.<br />
+London: 21 Paternoster Square<br />
+Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street<br />
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table width="25%" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>
+ <td align='right'>I</td>
+ <td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#I">The Mountain</a></span></td>
+ <td align='right'>11</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='right'>II</td>
+ <td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#II">The Rescue</a></span></td>
+ <td align='right'>37</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='right'>III</td>
+ <td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#III">The Voyage</a></span></td>
+ <td align='right'>59</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='right'>IV</td>
+ <td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#IV">The Discovery</a></span></td>
+ <td align='right'>95</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='right'>V</td>
+ <td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#V">The Lost Glacier</a></span></td>
+ <td align='right'>125</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='right'>VI</td>
+ <td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#VI">The Dog and the Man</a></span></td>
+ <td align='right'>163</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='right'>VII</td>
+ <td align='left'><span class="smcap"><a href="#VII">The Man in Perspective</a></span></td>
+ <td align='right'>201</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" width="35%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations">
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><span class="smcap">facing<br />page</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#JOHN_MUIR_WITH_ALASKA_SPRUCE_CONES">John Muir with Alaska Spruce Cones</a></td>
+ <td align='right'><i>Title</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#FORT_WRANGELL">Fort Wrangell</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>12</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#THE_MOUNTAIN">The Mountain</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>24</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#ONE_OF_THE_MARVELOUS_ARRAY_OF_LAKES">One of the Marvelous Array of Lakes</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>40</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#GLACIER_STICKEEN_VALLEY">Glacier&mdash;Stickeen Valley</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>54</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#CHILCAT_WOMAN_WEAVING_A_BLANKET">Chilcat Woman Weaving a Blanket</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>82</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#MUIR_GLACIER">Muir Glacier</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>114</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#DAVIDSON_GLACIER">Davidson Glacier</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>128</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#TAKU_GLACIER">Taku Glacier</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>150</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#THE_FRONT_OF_MUIR_GLACIER">The Front of Muir Glacier</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>168</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#GLACIAL_CREVASSES">Glacial Crevasses</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>186</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#JOHN_MUIR_IN_LATER_LIFE">John Muir in Later Life</a></td>
+ <td align='right'>200</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+ <td align='left'><a href="#VOYAGES_OF_MUIR_AND_YOUNG">Map</a> (Voyages of Muir and Young)</td>
+ <td align='right'>70</td>
+</tr>
+
+</table></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="t1">
+THE MOUNTAIN<br />
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="THUNDER_BAY" id="THUNDER_BAY"></a>THUNDER BAY</h2>
+
+<div class="poem">
+Deep calm from God enfolds the land;<br />
+Light on the mountain top I stand;<br />
+How peaceful all, but ah, how grand!<br />
+<br />
+Low lies the bay beneath my feet;<br />
+The bergs sail out, a white-winged fleet,<br />
+To where the sky and ocean meet.<br />
+<br />
+Their glacier mother sleeps between<br />
+Her granite walls. The mountains lean<br />
+Above her, trailing skirts of green.<br />
+<br />
+Each ancient brow is raised to heaven:<br />
+The snow streams always, tempest-driven,<br />
+Like hoary locks, o'er chasms riven<br />
+<br />
+By throes of Earth. But, still as sleep,<br />
+No storm disturbs the quiet deep<br />
+Where mirrored forms their silence keep.<br />
+<br />
+A heaven of light beneath the sea!<br />
+A dream of worlds from shadow free!<br />
+A pictured, bright eternity!<br />
+<br />
+The azure domes above, below<br />
+(A crystal casket), hold and show,<br />
+As precious jewels, gems of snow,<br />
+<br />
+Dark emerald islets, amethyst<br />
+Of far horizon, pearls of mist<br />
+In pendant clouds, clear icebergs, kissed<br />
+<br />
+By wavelets,&mdash;sparkling diamonds rare<br />
+Quick flashing through the ambient air.<br />
+A ring of mountains, graven fair<br />
+<br />
+In lines of grace, encircles all,<br />
+Save where the purple splendors fall<br />
+On sky and ocean's bridal-hall.<br />
+<br />
+The yellow river, broad and fleet,<br />
+Winds through its velvet meadows sweet&mdash;<br />
+A chain of gold for jewels meet.<br />
+<br />
+Pours over all the sun's broad ray;<br />
+Power, beauty, peace, in one array!<br />
+My God, I thank Thee for this day.<br />
+</div>
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MOUNTAIN</h3>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">I</span>N the summer of 1879 I was stationed at Fort Wrangell in southeastern
+Alaska, whence I had come the year before, a green young student fresh
+from college and seminary&mdash;very green and very fresh&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Thither came by the monthly mail steamboat in July to aid and counsel me
+in my work three men of national reputation&mdash;Dr. Henry Kendall of New
+York; Dr. Aaron L. Lindsley of Portland, Oregon, and Dr. Sheldon Jackson
+of Denver and the West.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> Their wives accompanied them and they were to
+spend a month with us.</p>
+
+<p>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 always since associated with him, and
+which seemed the same garment, unsoiled 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 these four fine personalities to
+me, and I began to recognize him as my Master who was to lead me into
+enchanting regions of beauty and mystery, 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."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="FORT_WRANGELL" id="FORT_WRANGELL"></a>
+<img src="images/image2.jpg" width="600" height="315" alt="FORT WRANGELL" title="" />
+<span class="caption">FORT WRANGELL<br />Near the mouth of the Stickeen&mdash;the starting point of the expeditions</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p><p>Minor excursions culminated in the chartering of the little steamer
+<i>Cassiar</i>, on which our party, augmented by two or three friends,
+steamed between the tremendous glaciers and through the columned canyons
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+famous Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon. Stocky, broad-shouldered,
+muscular, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Dropping down from Telegraph Creek (so named because it was a principal
+station of the great projected 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 Canyon impossible, unless we take the morning's
+calm."</p>
+
+<p>I saw Muir's eyes light up with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> 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 toward
+dangerous adventure, and especially to protect me from "that wild Muir"
+and his hare-brained schemes of mountain climbing.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it?" I asked, as we met behind the pilot house a moment later.</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to a little group of jagged peaks rising right up from where
+we stood&mdash;a pulpit in the center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
+mountains. "One of the finest viewpoints in the world," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"How far to the highest point?"</p>
+
+<p>"About ten miles."</p>
+
+<p>"How high?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seven or eight thousand feet."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p><p>That was enough. I caught the D.D.s with guile. There were Stickeen
+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 whetted 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
+children 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
+interpreter, to call the natives to another <i>hyou wawa</i> (big talk) and,
+note-book in hand, the doctors "went gayly to the fray." I set the
+speeches<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> a-going, and then slipped out to join the impatient Muir.</p>
+
+<p>"Take off your coat," he commanded, "and here's your supper."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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
+thousand feet? Why, I felt equal to forty miles and the Matterhorn!</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p><p>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&mdash;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, humpbacked, 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 narrow, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> of stiff needles, till we gained the upper side and found
+another green slope.</p>
+
+<p>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. Nowhere else have I see anything approaching
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> on his knees, babbling in unknown tongues,
+prattling a curious mixture of scientific lingo and baby talk,
+worshiping his little blue-and-pink goddesses.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! my blue-eyed darlin', little did I think to see you here. How did
+you stray away from Shasta?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! Who'd 'a' thought that you'd have left that niche in the
+Merced mountains to come here!"</p>
+
+<p>"And who might you be, now, with your wonder look? Is it possible that
+you can be (two Latin polysyllables)? You're lost, my dear; you belong
+in Tennessee."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I thought I'd find you, my homely little sweetheart," and so on
+unceasingly.</p>
+
+<p>So absorbed was he in this amatory botany that he seemed to forget my
+existence. While I, as glad as he, tagged along, running up and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> 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 outdoor palaces.
+But how I anathematized my short-sighted foolishness for having as a
+student at old Wooster shirked botany for the "more important" studies
+of language and metaphysics. For here was a man whose natural science
+had a thorough technical basis, while the superstructure was built of
+"lively stones," and was itself a living temple of love!</p>
+
+<p>With all his boyish enthusiasm, Muir was a most painstaking student; and
+any unsolved question lay upon his mind like a personal grievance until
+it was settled to his full understanding. One plant after another, with
+its sand-covered roots,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> went into his pockets, his handkerchief 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.</p>
+
+<p>Hours had passed in this entrancing work and we were progressing upwards
+but slowly. We were on the southeastern slope of the mountain, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> his last handful of plants, and hastened up to
+where I stood.</p>
+
+<p>"Man!" he said, "I was forgetting. We'll have to hurry now or we'll miss
+it, we'll miss it."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss what?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The jewel of the day," he answered; "the sight of the sunset from the
+top."</p>
+
+<p>Then Muir began to <i>slide</i> up that mountain. I had been with mountain
+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 serpent-glide up the steep; eye, hand and
+foot all connected dynamically; with no appearance of weight to his
+body&mdash;as though he had Stockton's negative gravity machine strapped on
+his back.</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen years of enthusiastic study among the Sierras had given him the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+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!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="THE_MOUNTAIN" id="THE_MOUNTAIN"></a>
+<img src="images/image3.jpg" width="600" height="355" alt="THE MOUNTAIN" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE MOUNTAIN<br />He pointed to a little group of jagged peaks rising right up from where
+we stood&mdash;a pulpit in the center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
+mountains</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>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
+between. 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 pebbles and boulders, and beyond them the
+glacier. Once a giant, it is nothing 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 future generations. But
+glaciers were Muir's special pets, his intimate companions, with whom he
+held sweet communion. Their voices were plain language to his ears,
+their work, as God's landscape gardeners, of the wisest and best that
+Nature could offer.</p>
+
+<p>No Swiss guide was ever wiser in the habits of glaciers than Muir, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p><p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Now came the most wonderful display 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 climbing! There was never
+an instant when both feet and hands were not in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> play, and often elbows,
+knees, thighs, upper arms, and even chin must grip and hold. Clambering
+up a steep slope, crawling under an overhanging 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 fissures, sliding flat around a dangerous rock-breast, testing
+crumbly spurs before risking his weight, always going up, up, no
+hesitation, no pause&mdash;that was Muir! My task was the lighter one; he did
+the head-work, I had but to imitate. The thin fragment 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p><p>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&mdash;hard and sinewy; my body light and supple, my wind good, my
+nerves steady (heights did not make me dizzy); but my arms&mdash;there lay
+the trouble. Ten years before I had been fond of breaking colts&mdash;till
+the colts broke me. On successive summers in West Virginia, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Muir climbed so fast that his movements were almost like flying,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> 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 vantage. 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 obstacle, 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 moment 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.</p>
+
+<p>Among the much-prized gifts of this good world one of the very richest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+was given to me in that hour. It is securely locked in the safe of my
+memory and nobody can rob me of it&mdash;an imperishable treasure. Standing
+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. Striking 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 islands, now foaming white through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> narrow
+canyons. Beyond, among the undulating hills, was a marvelous 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 glacier collars. The taller peaks seemed almost
+sharp enough to be the helmets<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> and spears of watchful sentinels. 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 horizon&mdash;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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<p class="t1">THE RESCUE</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_MOUNTAINS_FAITH" id="THE_MOUNTAINS_FAITH"></a>THE MOUNTAIN'S FAITH</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem">
+At eventide, upon a dreary sea,<br />
+I watched a mountain rear its hoary head<br />
+To look with steady gaze in the near heaven.<br />
+The earth was cold and still. No sound was heard<br />
+But the dream-voices of the sleeping sea.<br />
+The mountain drew its gray cloud-mantle close,<br />
+Like Roman senator, erect and old,<br />
+Raising aloft an earnest brow and calm,<br />
+With upward look intent of steadfast faith.<br />
+The sky was dim; no glory-light shone forth<br />
+To crown the mountain's faith; which faltered not,<br />
+But, ever hopeful, waited patiently.<br />
+<br />
+At morn I looked again. Expectance sat<br />
+Of immanent glory on the mountain's brow.<br />
+And, in a moment, lo! the glory <i>came!</i><br />
+An angel's hand rolled back a crimson cloud.<br />
+Deep, rose-red light of wondrous tone and power&mdash;<br />
+A crown of matchless splendor&mdash;graced its head,<br />
+Majestic, kingly, pure as Heaven, yet warm<br />
+With earthward love. A motion, like a heart<br />
+With rich blood beating, seemed to sway and pulse,<br />
+With might of ecstasy, the granite peak.<br />
+A poem grand it was of Love Divine&mdash;<br />
+An anthem, sweet and strong, of praise to God&mdash;<br />
+A victory-peal from barren fields of death.<br />
+Its gaze was heavenward still, but earthward too&mdash;<br />
+For Love seeks not her own, and joy is full,<br />
+Only when freest given. The sun shone forth,<br />
+And now the mountain doffed its ruby crown<br />
+For one of diamonds. Still the light streamed down;<br />
+No longer chill and bleak, the morning glowed<br />
+With warmth and light, and clouds of fiery hue<br />
+Mantled the crystal glacier's chilly stream,<br />
+And all the landscape throbbed with sudden joy.<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RESCUE</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">M</span>UIR was the first to awake from his trance. Like Schiller's king in
+"The Diver," "Nothing could slake his wild thirst of desire."</p>
+
+<p>"The sunset," he cried; "we must have the whole horizon."</p>
+
+<p>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, although 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> across my path&mdash;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.
+Instantly the stone melted away beneath 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>Falling forward hard, my hands struck the walls of the chasm, my arms
+were twisted behind me, and instantly both shoulders were dislocated.
+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 slipping
+inch by inch to the point when all would give way and I would go
+whirling down to the glacier.</p>
+
+<p>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 thousand
+thoughts flash through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> brain in a single instant&mdash;an anguished
+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 instantaneous photography of deadly peril. I had no hope of escape
+at all. The gravel was rattling past me and piling 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&mdash;that was all. Then came
+the wish that Muir would come before I fell, and take a message to my
+wife.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="ONE_OF_THE_MARVELOUS_ARRAY_OF_LAKES" id="ONE_OF_THE_MARVELOUS_ARRAY_OF_LAKES"></a>
+<img src="images/image4.jpg" width="600" height="357" alt="ONE OF THE MARVELOUS ARRAY OF LAKES" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ONE OF THE MARVELOUS ARRAY OF LAKES</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p><p>Suddenly I heard his voice right above me. "My God!" he cried. Then he
+added, "Grab that rock, man, just by your right hand."</p>
+
+<p>I gurgled from my throat, not daring to inflate my lungs, "My arms are
+out."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Then his voice rang again, cheery, confident,
+unexcited, "Hold fast; I'm going to get you out of this. I can't get to
+you on this side; the rock is sheer. I'll 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."</p>
+
+<p>Then I heard him going away, whistling "The Blue Bells of Scotland,"
+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 entertained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> no more
+thoughts of last messages. 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 growing 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+Now I heard Muir's voice, low and steady, close to me, and it seemed a
+little below.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold steady," he said. "I'll have to swing you out over the cliff."</p>
+
+<p>Then I felt a careful hand on my back, fumbling with the waistband of my
+pants, my vest and shirt, gathering 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Work downwards with your feet."</p>
+
+<p>I obeyed. He drew me close to him by crooking his arm and as my head
+came up past his level he caught<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to let go of you," he hissed through his clenched teeth. "I
+need both hands here. Climb upward with your feet."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> on
+the rock. It was utterly impossible, yet he did it!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 dislocation, the ball of the humerus resting 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 muscles had pulled the head of the bone deep into my armpit.
+There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 tottery, 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 himself down to a
+lower shelf, brace himself, and I would get my right hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> 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 would swing me down to a lower shelf, before
+descending himself. My right shoulder came out three times that night,
+and had to be reset.</p>
+
+<p>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 midnight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> 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 disappeared 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.</p>
+
+<p>Now we found ourselves in the canyon, down which tumbled the glacial
+stream, and far beneath the ridge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> along which we had ascended. The
+sides of the canyon were sheer cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll try it," said Muir. "Sometimes these canyons are passable."</p>
+
+<p>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 going 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, "I'm going to make it to the
+boat."</p>
+
+<p>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;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> and always cheery, full of talk and anecdote,
+cracking jokes with me, infusing me with his own indomitable spirit. He
+was eyes, hands, feet, and heart to me&mdash;my caretaker, in whom I trusted
+absolutely. My eyes brim with tears even now when I think of his utter
+self-abandon as he ministered to my infirmities.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> of
+whites and Indians just starting out to search the mountain for us.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"See here, young man; give an account of yourself. Do you know you've
+kept us waiting&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, hell!" he roared. "Can't you see the man's hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> 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 inhumanity"
+in not starting at once to search for me.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>When they objected that they did not know where we had gone, she
+snapped: "Go everywhere until you find him."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> them.
+She obtained some whisky from the captain, some water, porridge 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:</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>My recollections of that day are not very clear. The shoulder was in a
+bad condition&mdash;swollen, bruised, very painful. I had to be strengthened
+with food and rest, and Muir called from his sleep of exhaustion,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> 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 seemingly 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!"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="GLACIER_STICKEEN_VALLEY" id="GLACIER_STICKEEN_VALLEY"></a>
+<img src="images/image5.jpg" width="600" height="368" alt="GLACIER&mdash;STICKEEN VALLEY" title="" />
+<span class="caption">GLACIER&mdash;STICKEEN VALLEY<br />Muir, fresh and enthusiastic as ever, was the pilot of the party across
+the moraine and upon the great ice mountain</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p><p>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&mdash;then kindly oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>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 middle of an acre of alder brush, he asked
+indignantly, in response to the hurry-up calls: "Do you think I'm going
+to leave my wife in this forest?"</p>
+
+<p>One overpowering regret&mdash;one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> only&mdash;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 <i>Cassiar</i>, 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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<p class="t1">THE VOYAGE<br /></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="TOW-A-ATT" id="TOW-A-ATT"></a>TOW-A-ATT</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem">
+You are a child, old Friend&mdash;a child!<br />
+As light of heart, as free, as wild;<br />
+As credulous of fairy tale;<br />
+As simple in your faith, as frail<br />
+In reason; jealous, petulant;<br />
+As crude in manner; ignorant,<br />
+Yet wise in love; as rough, as mild&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">You are a child!</span><br />
+<br />
+You are a man, old Friend&mdash;a man!<br />
+Ah, sure in richer tide ne'er ran<br />
+The blood of earth's nobility,<br />
+Than through your veins; intrepid, free;<br />
+In counsel, prudent; proud and tall;<br />
+Of passions full, yet ruling all;<br />
+No stauncher friend since time began;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">You are a MAN!</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE VOYAGE</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">T</span>HE 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&mdash;thirty miles up the river, to the Hot Springs, the
+Mud Glacier and the interior lakes, ranges, forests and flower pastures.
+Always upon his return (for my house was his home the most of that time)
+he would be full to intoxication of what he had seen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> and dinners would
+grow cold and lamps burn out while he held us entranced with his
+impassioned stories. Although his books are all masterpieces 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 especially the
+glaciers, live before us. Somehow a glacier never seemed cold when John
+Muir was talking about it.</p>
+
+<p>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 finishing his pencil sketches, and also
+studying the flora of the islands. It was a season of constant rains
+when the <i>saanah</i>, the southeast rain-wind, blew a gale. But these
+stormy days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> and nights, which kept ordinary people indoors, always
+lured him out into the woods or up the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Where now?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, to the top of the mountain," he replied. "It is a rare chance to
+study this fine storm."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Chief
+Tow-a-att, Moses, Aaron, Matthew, Thomas.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p><p>"Why, men," I cried, "what's wrong? What brings you here?"</p>
+
+<p>"We want you play (pray)," answered Matthew.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"We scare. All Stickeen scare; plenty cly. We want you play God; plenty
+play."</p>
+
+<p>By dint of much questioning I gathered at last that the whole tribe were
+frightened by a mysterious light waving 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Some miner has camped there," I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>An eager chorus protested; it was not like the light of a camp-fire in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+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 foolish as to camp up there on such a night, when there were
+plenty of comfortable houses at the foot of the hill. It was a spirit, a
+malignant spirit.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;John Muir, wet but happy, feeding his fire with spruce
+sticks, studying and enjoying the storm! But I explained to my natives,
+who ever afterwards eyed Muir askance, as a mysterious being whose ways
+and motives were beyond all conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>"Why does this strange man go into the wet woods and up the mountains on
+stormy nights?" they asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> "Why does he wander alone on barren peaks
+or on dangerous ice-mountains? There is no gold up there and he never
+takes a gun with him or a pick. <i>Icta mamook</i>&mdash;what make? Why&mdash;why?"</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>terra incognita</i>. The only
+seaman's chart of the region in existence was that made by the great
+English navigator, Vancouver, in 1807. It was a wonderful chart,
+considering what an absurd little sailing vessel he had in which to
+explore those intricate waters with their treacherous winds and tides.</p>
+
+<p>But Vancouver's chart was hastily made, after all, in a land of fog and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+rain and snow. He had not the modern surveyor's instruments, boats or
+other helps. And, besides, this region 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 rivers were opening new passages and
+closing old ones; and, more than all, those mightiest tools of the great
+Engineer, the glaciers, were furrowing 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>My mission in the proposed voyage of discovery was to locate and visit
+the tribes and villages of Thlingets to the north and west of Wrangell,
+to take their census, confer with their chiefs and report upon their
+condition, with a view to establishing schools and churches among them.
+The most of these tribes had never had a visit from a missionary, and I
+felt the eager zeal an Eliot or a Martin at the prospect of telling 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> with me&mdash;so
+our plans fitted into each other well.</p>
+
+<p>"We are going to write some history, my boy," Muir would say to me.
+"Think of the honor! We have been chosen to put some interesting people
+and some of Nature's grandest scenes on the page of human record and on
+the map. Hurry! We are daily losing the most important news of all the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>In many respects we were most congenial companions. We both loved the
+same poets and could repeat, 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&mdash;the result of a Scotch father's discipline.
+Our studies supplemented each other and our tastes were similar. We had
+both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> lived clean lives and our conversation together was sweet and
+high, while we both had a sense of humor and a large fund of stories.</p>
+
+<p>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
+commander of the expedition, he was my teacher and guide into the inner
+recesses and meanings of the islands, bays and mountains we explored
+together.</p>
+
+<p>Our ship for this voyage of discovery, while not so large as
+Vancouver's, was much more shapely and manageable&mdash;a <i>kladushu etlan</i>
+(six fathom) red-cedar canoe. It belonged to our captain, old Chief
+Tow-a-att, a chief who had lately embraced Christianity with his whole
+heart&mdash;one of the simplest, most faithful, dignified and brave souls I
+ever knew. He fully expected to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> meet a martyr's death among his heathen
+enemies of the northern islands; yet he did not shrink from the voyage
+on that account.</p>
+
+<p>His crew numbered three. First in importance was Kadishan, also a chief
+of the Stickeens, chosen because of his powers of oratory, his kinship
+with Chief Shathitch of the Chilcat tribe, and his friendly relations
+with other chiefs. He was a born courtier, learned in Indian lore, songs
+and customs, and able to instruct me in the proper Thlinget etiquette to
+suit all occasions. The other two were sturdy young men&mdash;Stickeen John,
+our interpreter, and Sitka Charley. They were to act as cooks,
+camp-makers, oarsmen, hunters and general utility men.</p>
+
+<p>We stowed our baggage, which was not burdensome, in one end of the
+canoe, taking a simple store of provisions&mdash;flour, beans, bacon, sugar,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+salt and a little dried fruit. We were to depend upon our guns,
+fishhooks, 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
+<i>potlatch</i>,&mdash;leaf-tobacco, rice and sugar. Our Indian crew laid in their
+own stock of provisions, chiefly dried salmon and seal-grease, while our
+table was to be separate, set out with the white man's viands.</p>
+
+<p>We did not get off without trouble. 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
+entreaties did not avail she said: "If anything happens to my son, I
+will take your baby as mine in payment."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="VOYAGES_OF_MUIR_AND_YOUNG" id="VOYAGES_OF_MUIR_AND_YOUNG"></a><a href="images/image6.jpg">
+<img src="images/image6a.jpg" width="600" height="964" alt="VOYAGES OF MUIR AND YOUNG" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">VOYAGES OF MUIR AND YOUNG 1879 and 1880 IN SOUTHEASTERN
+ALASKA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p><p>One sunny October day we set our prow to the unknown northwest. Our
+hearts beat high with anticipation. 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 overhead and the eagles shrilling from the sky
+promised wonderful adventures.</p>
+
+<p>The voyage naturally divides itself into the human interest and the
+study of nature; yet the two constantly 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.</p>
+
+<p>Our captain, taciturn and self-reliant, commanded Muir's admiration from
+the first. His paddle was sure in the stern, his knowledge of the wind
+and tide unfailing. Whenever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> we landed the crew would begin 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 acquiescing in his decision as the best possible
+choice.</p>
+
+<p>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 butter and
+at the three who were to eat, measured with his eye one-third of the
+roll, cut it off with his hunting knife and began to cut it into squares
+and eat it with great gusto. I was about to interfere and show<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> 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 "<i>hyas klosh</i> (very good) glease."</p>
+
+<p>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. During
+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.</p>
+
+<p>We steered our course due westward 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 coming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> to a native town,
+was to find where the head chief lived, feed him with rice and regale
+him with tobacco, 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 presents of tobacco to each, and then open the floodgate of talk,
+proclaiming my mission and telling them in simplest terms the Great New
+Story. Muir would generally follow me, unfolding in turn some of the
+wonders 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 suspicion
+at first old Tow-a-att's tearful pleadings and Kadishan's oratory
+speedily brought about peace and unity.</p>
+
+<p>These palavers often lasted a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> 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, getting the
+heads of the families to count their relatives with the aid of
+beans,&mdash;the large brown beans representing men, the large white ones,
+women, and the small Boston beans, children. In this manner the first
+census of southeastern Alaska was taken.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> 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 excitement 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 fragment 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 clothing 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> in
+this whole voyage was a college graduate of great New England stock!</p>
+
+<p>"Lift a stone to mountain height and let it fall," said Muir, "and it
+will sink the deeper into the mud."</p>
+
+<p>At Angoon, one of the towns of the Hootz-noo tribe, occurred an incident
+of another type. We found this village hilariously drunk. There was a
+very stringent prohibition law over Alaska at that time, which
+absolutely forbade the importation of any spirituous liquors into the
+Territory. But the law was deficient in one vital respect&mdash;it did not
+prohibit the importation of molasses; and a soldier during the military
+occupancy of the Territory had instructed the natives in the art of
+making rum. The method was simple. A five-gallon oil can was taken and
+partly filled with molasses as a base; into that alcohol was placed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> (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,&mdash;forming the worm, and the still. Talk about your
+forty-rod whiskey&mdash;I have seen this "hooch," as it was called because
+these same Hootz-noo natives first made it, kill at more than forty
+rods, for it generally made the natives <i>fighting</i> drunk.</p>
+
+<p>Through the large company of screaming, dancing and singing natives we
+made our way to the chief's house. By some miracle this majestic-looking
+savage was sober. Perhaps he felt it incumbent upon him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> 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 looking Indian women I
+have ever met,&mdash;tall, straight, lithe and dignified. But, crawling about
+on the floor on all fours, was the most piteous travesty of the human
+form I have ever seen. It was an idiot boy, sixteen years of age. He had
+neither the comeliness of a beast nor the intellect of a man. His name
+was <i>Hootz-too</i> (Bear Heart), and indeed all his motions were those of a
+bear rather than of a human being. Crossing the floor with the swinging
+gait of a bear, he would crouch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> 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 <i>loved</i> him. For sixteen
+years she had cared for this monster, feeding him with her choicest
+food, putting 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 illness 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.</p>
+
+<p>When I said to her thoughtlessly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> "Oh, would you not be relieved at the
+death of this poor idiot boy?" she saw in my words a threat, and I shall
+never forget the pathetic, hunted look with which she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, it must not be; he shall not die. Is he not my son,
+<i>uh-yeet-kutsku</i> (my dear little son)?"</p>
+
+<p>If our voyage had yielded me nothing but this wonderful instance of
+mother-love, I should have counted myself richly repaid.</p>
+
+<p>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 Chilcoot natives on Lynn Canal, the
+most northern tribes of the Alexandrian Archipelago. Here reigned the
+proudest and worst old savage of Alaska, Chief Shathitch. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> wealth
+was very great in Indian treasures, and he was reputed to have cached
+away in different places several houses full of blankets, guns, boxes of
+beads, ancient carved pipes, spears, knives and other valued heirlooms.
+He was said to have stored away over one hundred of the elegant 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&mdash;guns, ammunition, blankets, knives and so forth&mdash;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 Indians of the Interior in a bondage of 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,&mdash;piling
+beaver skins to the height of a ten-dollar Hudson Bay musket as the
+<i>price</i> of the musket. They were the most quarrelsome and warlike of the
+tribes of Alaska, and their villages were full of slaves procured by
+forays upon the coasts of Vancouver Island, Puget Sound, and as far
+south as the mouth of the Columbia River. I was eager to visit these
+large and untaught tribes, and establish a mission among them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="CHILCAT_WOMAN_WEAVING_A_BLANKET" id="CHILCAT_WOMAN_WEAVING_A_BLANKET"></a>
+<img src="images/image7.jpg" width="600" height="351" alt="CHILCAT WOMAN WEAVING A BLANKET" title="" />
+<span class="caption">CHILCAT WOMAN WEAVING A BLANKET<br />Chief Shathitch was said to have over one hundred of the elegant Chilcat
+blankets, woven by hand, from the hair of the mountain goat</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p><p>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 excitement in the town. We had hoisted the
+American flag, as was our custom, and had put on our best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> 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 reception&mdash;a shower of
+bullets falling unpleasantly around us. Instinctively Muir and I ceased
+to paddle, but Tow-a-att commanded, "<i>Ut-ha, ut-ha!</i>&mdash;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&mdash;"<i>Gusu-wa-eh?</i>&mdash;Who are
+you? Whence do you come? What is your business here?" And Stickeen John
+shouted back the reply:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p><p>"A great preacher-chief and a great ice-chief have come to bring you a
+good message."</p>
+
+<p>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 Russian officer had given him. He confessed 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, "<i>Hoo-hooh, hoo-hooh</i>,"
+as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> if they were going to take us prisoners. 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
+chief's house and set us down at his door. It was the Thlinget way of
+paying us honor as great guests.</p>
+
+<p>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 fashion of a chief's house&mdash;carved corner posts,
+a square of gravel in the center of the room for the fire surrounded 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 chieftain's household goods were stowed and
+where the family took their repose.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> A brisk fire was burning in the
+middle of the room; and after a short palaver, with gifts of tobacco and
+rice to the chief, it was announced that he would pay us the
+distinguished honor of feasting us first.</p>
+
+<p>It was a never-to-be-forgotten banquet. We were seated on the lower
+platform with our feet towards 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, holding about as
+much as the washbowls. We had learned enough Indian etiquette to know
+that at each course our respective vessels were to be filled full of
+food, and we were expected 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> of bread among the whites,&mdash;dried salmon. It
+was served, a whole washbowlful for each of us, with a dressing of
+seal-grease. Muir and I adroitly man&#339;uvred so as to get our salmon
+and seal-grease served separately; for our stomachs had not been
+sufficiently trained to endure that rancid grease. This course finished,
+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 washbowlful, with a dressing of
+seal-grease. The final course was the only berry then in season, the
+long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> fleshy apple of the wild rose mellowed with frost, served to us in
+the usual quantity with the invariable sauce of seal-grease.</p>
+
+<p>"Mon, mon!" said Muir aside to me, "I'm fashed we'll be floppin' aboot
+i' the sea, whiles, wi' flippers an' forked tails."</p>
+
+<p>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 properly
+receive His Majesty, Muir and I and our two chiefs were each given a
+whole bale of Hudson Bay blankets for a couch. Shathitch made us wait a
+long time, doubtless to impress us with his dignity as supreme chief.</p>
+
+<p>The heat of the fire after the wind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> and cold of the day made us very
+drowsy. We fought off sleep, however, 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
+astonished to see printed in black letters these words, "To Chief
+Shathitch, from his friend, William H. Seward!" We learned afterwards
+that Seward, in his voyage of investigation, had penetrated to this
+far-off town, had been received in royal state 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, history does not relate.</p>
+
+<p>To me the inspiring part of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Runners had been sent to the Chilcoot 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> 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 religion; 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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<p class="t1">THE DISCOVERY<br /></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="MOONLIGHT_IN_GLACIER_BAY" id="MOONLIGHT_IN_GLACIER_BAY"></a>MOONLIGHT IN GLACIER BAY</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem">
+To heaven swells a mighty psalm of praise;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Its music-sheets are glaciers, vast and white.</span><br />
+Sky-piercing peaks the voiceless chorus raise,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To fill with ecstasy the wond'ring night.</span><br />
+<br />
+Complete, with every part in sweet accord,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Th' adoring breezes waft it up, on wings</span><br />
+Of beauty-incense, giving to the Lord<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The purest sacrifice glad Nature brings.</span><br />
+<br />
+The list'ning stars with rapture beat and glow;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The moon forgets her high, eternal calm</span><br />
+To shout her gladness to the sea below,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose waves are silver tongues to join the psalm.</span><br />
+<br />
+Those everlasting snow-fields are not cold;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This icy solitude no barren waste.</span><br />
+The crystal masses burn with love untold;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The glacier-table spreads a royal feast.</span><br />
+<br />
+Fairweather! Crillon! Warders at Heaven's gate!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hoar-headed priests of Nature's inmost shrine!</span><br />
+Strong seraph forms in robes immaculate!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Draw me from earth; enlighten, change, refine;</span><br />
+<br />
+Till I, one little note in this great song,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who seem a blot upon th' unsullied white,</span><br />
+No discord make&mdash;a note high, pure and strong&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Set in the silent music of the night.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DISCOVERY</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">T</span>HE 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 objects and points of surprise and interest. When we
+landed, the algæ, which sometimes filled the little harbors, 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 attention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> and study. Muir
+was one of the most expert foresters this country has ever produced. He
+was never at a loss. The luxuriant vegetation 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 blossoms; 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 thorough knowledge of botany and his interest in
+that study made every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> 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:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+"One impulse from a vernal wood<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Will teach you more of man,</span><br />
+Of moral evil and of good,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Than all the sages can."</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Muir was a devout theist. The Fatherhood of God and the Unity of God,
+the immanence of God in nature and His management of all the affairs of
+the universe, was his constantly reiterated belief. He saw design in
+many things which the ordinary naturalist overlooks, such as the
+symmetry of an island, the balancing branches of a tree, the harmony of
+colors in a group of flowers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> the completion of a fully rounded
+landscape. In his view, the Creator of it all saw every beautiful and
+sublime 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 landscape
+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!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p><p>Thus Muir was always discovering to me things which I would never have
+seen myself and opening up to me new avenues of knowledge, delight and
+adoration. There was something so intimate in his theism that it
+purified, elevated and broadened mine, even when I could not agree with
+him. His constant exclamation 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!"</p>
+
+<p>Two or three great adventures stand out prominently in this wonderful
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> 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 Glacier Bay of
+which we had heard. Vancouver's chart gave us no intimation 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.</p>
+
+<p>In one bay there was said to be a giant devil-fish with arms as long as
+a tree, lurking in malignant patience, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> horrid beak.
+Another deep fiord was the abode of <i>Koosta-kah</i>, 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 transport them a
+dozen miles in a moment, 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, mangling 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.</p>
+
+<p>"There are no natives up in that region; there is nothing to hunt;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+there is no gold there; why do you persist in this <i>cultus coly</i>
+(aimless journey)? You are likely to meet death and nothing else if you
+go into that dangerous region."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Leaving this last green island we steered northwest into the great bay,
+the country of ice and bare rocks. Muir's excitement was increasing
+every moment, and as the majestic arena opened before us and the Muir,
+Geicke, Pacific and other great glaciers (all nameless as yet)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> 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 wonders. Now the marks of recent glaciation showed
+plainly. Here was a conical island of gray granite, whose rounded top
+and symmetrical shoulders 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 resistless sweep of that great
+ice mass which Vancouver saw filling the bay.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the icebergs were charging down upon us with the receding tide and
+dressing up in compact phalanx<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> 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
+ultra-marine; 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 icebergs. 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.</p>
+
+<p>Our progress up the sixty miles of Glacier Bay was very slow. Three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+nights we camped on the bare granite rock before we reached the limit of
+the bay. All vegetation had disappeared; 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 matter of the mighty ice mass that had
+engulfed them. They told the story of great forests which had once
+covered this whole region, until the great sea of ice of the second
+glacial 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p><p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 summits of Mts. Fairweather and Crillon. These
+mighty summits, twelve thousand, fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand
+feet high, respectively, pierced the sky directly above us; sometimes
+they seemed to be hanging over us threateningly. Only once did the sky
+completely clear; and then was preached to us the wonderful Sermon of
+Glacier Bay.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p><p>Early that morning we quitted our camp on a barren rock, steering
+towards 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 purpose to attain to the head of the bay.
+The air was damp and raw, chilling us to the marrow. The forbidding
+granite mountains, showing here and there through the fog, seemed
+suddenly to push out threatening fists and shoulders at us. All night
+long the ice-guns had bombarded us from four or five directions, 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.</p>
+
+<p>There was no Love apparent on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> 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 avalanche, threatened us.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I heard Muir catch his breath with a fervent ejaculation. "God,
+Almighty!" he said. Following his gaze towards Mt. Crillon, I saw the
+summit highest of all crowned with glory indeed. It was not sunlight;
+there was no appearance 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> colors&mdash;as if a pigment, perfectly made and
+thickly spread, too delicate 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, shivering in our wet
+blankets, were glowing 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+princes about him to share his glory. Their radiant heads, ruby crowned,
+were above the clouds, which seemed to form their silken garments.</p>
+
+<p>As we looked in ecstatic silence we saw the light creep down the
+mountains. 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 changing mellow light moved downward that wonderful
+colosseum appeared clearly with its battlements and peaks and columns,
+until the whole majestic landscape was revealed.</p>
+
+<p>Now we saw the design and purpose of it all. Now the text of this great
+sermon was emblazoned across the landscape&mdash;"<i>God is Love</i>"; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>Our minds cleared with the landscape; our courage rose; our Indians
+dipped their paddles silently, steering without fear amidst the
+dangerous masses of ice. But there was no profanity in Muir's
+exclamation, "We have met with God!" A lifelong 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 atmospheric<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> 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 surpassing loveliness. Again and again
+Muir would break out, after a long silence of blissful memory, with
+exclamations:</p>
+
+<p>"We saw it; we saw it! He sent us to His most glorious exhibition.
+Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!"</p>
+
+<p>Two or three inspiring days followed. Muir must climb the most
+accessible of the mountains. My weak shoulders forbade me to ascend more
+than two or three thousand 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"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> were so
+frequent, that it was difficult to ascend them.</p>
+
+<p>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 governed 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.</p>
+
+<p>Muir would explore all day long, often rising hours before daylight and
+disappearing among the mountains,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> 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 forgetting to eat.</p>
+
+<p>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 hundred feet
+above the surface of the water. The ice masses were breaking off so fast
+that we were forced to put off far from the face of the glacier. The
+great waves threatened 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 our canoe about half a mile from the edge of the glacier,
+but, attempting 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 boulders 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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="MUIR_GLACIER" id="MUIR_GLACIER"></a>
+<img src="images/image8.jpg" width="600" height="356" alt="MUIR GLACIER" title="" />
+<span class="caption">MUIR GLACIER<br />Returning down Glacier Bay, we visited the largest glacier of all, which
+was to bear Muir's name</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p><p>Muir spent a whole day alone on the glacier, walking over twenty miles
+across what he called the glacial lake between two mountains. A cold,
+penetrating, mist-like rain was falling, and dark clouds swept up the
+bay and clung about the shoulders of the mountains. When night
+approached and Muir had not returned,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> 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 taking 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.</p>
+
+<p>Muir came stumbling into camp with these two Indians a little before
+midnight, very tired but very happy. "Ah!" he sighed, "I'm glad to be in
+camp. The glacier almost got me this time. If it had not been for the
+beacon and old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>I brought him to the tent and placed the hot viands before him. He
+attacked them ravenously, but presently was talking again:</p>
+
+<p>"Man, man; you ought to have been with me. You'll never make up what you
+have lost to-day. I've 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 marble 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> softly freeze, until I would become part of the glacier. What
+a great death that would be!"</p>
+
+<p>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 splendid
+reading they would make!</p>
+
+<p>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 Chatham
+Strait again. Landing our Hoonah guide at his village, we took our route
+northward again up Lynn Canal. The beautiful Davison Glacier 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 commenced.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> Bowling
+down the canal before a strong north wind, we entered 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.</p>
+
+<p>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, enticed us to
+exploration, but the constant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> 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 exploration to the end of the bay impossible. 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 purpose of pushing forward up the bay he would have the blood of
+the whole party on his hands.</p>
+
+<p>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
+minister."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p><p>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.</p>
+
+<p>On down now through Prince Frederick Sound, past the beautiful Norris
+Glacier, then into Le Conte Bay with its living glacier and icebergs,
+across the Stickeen flats, and so joyfully home again, Muir to take the
+November steamboat back to his sunland.</p>
+
+<p>I have made many voyages in that great Alexandrian Archipelago since,
+traveling by canoe over fifteen thousand miles&mdash;not one of them a dull
+one&mdash;through its intricate passages; but none compared, in the number
+and intensity of its thrills, in the variety and excitement of its
+incidents and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<p class="t1">THE LOST GLACIER<br /></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="NIGHT_IN_A_CANOE" id="NIGHT_IN_A_CANOE"></a>NIGHT IN A CANOE</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem">
+A dreary world! The constant rain<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Beats back to earth blithe fancy's wings;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And life&mdash;a sodden garment&mdash;clings</span><br />
+About a body numb with pain.<br />
+<br />
+Imagination ceased with light;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of Nature's psalm no echo lingers.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The death-cold mist, with ghostly fingers,</span><br />
+Shrouds world and soul in rayless night.<br />
+<br />
+An inky sea, a sullen crew,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A frail canoe's uncertain motion;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">A whispered talk of wind and ocean,</span><br />
+As plotting secret crimes to do!<br />
+<br />
+The vampire-night sucks all my blood;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Warm home and love seem lost for aye;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From cloud to cloud I steal away,</span><br />
+Like guilty soul o'er Stygian flood.<br />
+<br />
+Peace, morbid heart! From paddle blade<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">See the black water flash in light;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And bars of moonbeams streaming white,</span><br />
+Have pearls of ebon raindrops made.<br />
+<br />
+From darkest sea of deep despair<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Gleams Hope, awaked by Action's blow;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And Faith's clear ray, though clouds hang low,</span><br />
+Slants up to heights serene and fair.<br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LOST GLACIER</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">J</span>OHN MUIR was married in the spring of 1880 to Miss Strentzel, the
+daughter of a Polish physician who had come out in the great stampede of
+1849 to California, but had found his gold in oranges, lemons 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 September. 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Springing ashore he said, "When can you be ready?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you a little fast?" I replied. "What does this mean? Where's
+your wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 conscience? 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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> work
+on my own account,&mdash;one in the spring, of four hundred fifty miles
+around Prince of Wales Island, visiting the five towns of Hydah Indians
+and the three villages of the Hanega tribe of Thlingets. 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 Tsimpheans, and on fifteen miles further to the famous mission
+of Father Duncan 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.</p>
+
+<p>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,&mdash;the
+darkest day of my life,&mdash;this "noblest Roman of them all" fell dead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> 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 simply
+and eloquently a few months before. 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 blankets 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 emblem of his position as chief, to see if he could not call
+his tribe back again. At my instance, as I stood with my hand on his
+shoulder, he lifted up his voice to recall his people to their houses,
+when, in an instant, 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 barbarism; and the
+white man, who had taught the Indians the art of making rum, and the
+white man's government, which had afforded no safeguard against such
+scenes, were responsible.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="DAVIDSON_GLACIER" id="DAVIDSON_GLACIER"></a>
+<img src="images/image9.jpg" width="600" height="350" alt="DAVIDSON GLACIER" title="" />
+<span class="caption">DAVIDSON GLACIER<br />The beautiful Davidson Glacier, with its great snow-white fan, drew our
+gaze and excited our admiration for two days</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p><p>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 seventeen who acted as interpreter,
+formed the crew. When we were about to embark I suddenly thought of my
+little dog Stickeen and made the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> resolve to take him along. My wife and
+Muir both protested and I almost 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
+independent 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> His
+markings were very much like those of an American Shepherd dog&mdash;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 beautifully
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+voyage. 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
+delegation 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
+antics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> were irresistible. It was Moses who named him Stickeen after
+their tribe&mdash;an exceptional honor. Thereafter the whole tribe adopted
+and protected him, and woe to the Indian 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, delivered 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 offending Indian dog&mdash;a valuable hunting animal.</p>
+
+<p>Stickeen lacked the obtrusively affectionate 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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> he attracted the attention of
+everybody and won all hearts.</p>
+
+<p>As instances: Dr. Kendall, "The Grand Old Man" of our Church, during 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> with Muir was arranged, and curled
+himself down on my coat. The discussion ended abruptly in a general
+laugh, and Stickeen went along.</p>
+
+<p>Then the acute little fellow set about, in the wisest possible way, to
+conquer Muir. He was not obtrusive, never "butted in"; never offended 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 Stickeen 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 squirrels; but when we would start to the
+woods, the mountains or the glaciers the dog would join us, coming
+mysteriously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 victory
+was complete; he slept at Muir's feet, went with him on all his rambles;
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Our canoe was light and easily propelled. Our outfit was very simple,
+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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> 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
+oarsman; Billy, a lad of seventeen, our interpreter and Joe's assistant.
+Towards 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.</p>
+
+<p>Our route was different from that of '79. Now we struck through Wrangell
+Narrows, that tortuous and narrow passage between Mitkof<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> 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 waters 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 especially his expedition. He was the commander now, as I had been
+the year before. He had set for himself 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
+accustomed to such rude interruption. They could not understand Muir at
+all, nor in the least comprehend his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> object in visiting icy bays where
+there was no chance of finding gold and nothing to hunt.</p>
+
+<p>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 phosphorescent 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
+illumination. Sometimes their black tops with waving seaweed, surrounded
+by phosphorescent breakers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> 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
+accompanying us as if the outraged fairies were bombarding us with tiny
+guns. Then would ensue a tedious groping with the lantern for a camping
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Four or five days sufficed to bring us to our first objective&mdash;Sumdum or
+Holkham Bay, with its three wonderful arms. Here we were to find the
+lost glacier. This deep fiord has two great prongs. Neither of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+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, flashing
+through the trees, disappearing as an island intervened, and again
+opening up with its fair ray as we pushed on. An hour's steady paddling
+brought us to the camp of some Cassiar miners&mdash;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 constant
+rains had swelled the glacial stream, burst through their wing-dams,
+swept away their sluice-boxes and destroyed the work of the summer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+Strong men of the wilderness as they were, they were not discouraged,
+but were discussing plans for prospecting new places and trying it again
+here next summer. Hot coffee 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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+Endicott Arm, spreading out like the skirmish 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> the top, owing to the
+smoothness of the granite rock. It was newly glaciated&mdash;this whole
+region&mdash;and the hard rubbing ice-tools had polished the granite like a
+monument. A hasty meal and we were off.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll find it this time," said Muir.</p>
+
+<p>A miner crawled out of his blankets 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."</p>
+
+<p>The long, straight fiord stretched southeast into the heart of the
+granite 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 getting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> inside the outer fleet of
+icebergs 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, threatened a trap. The only way to
+navigate 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 precaution to put a false bow and stern on
+his canoe, cunningly fashioned out of curved branches of trees and
+hollowed 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> 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 rising tide.</p>
+
+<p>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 giants 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> mountains, and the
+depth of the water could only be conjectured. It must have been hundreds
+of feet, perhaps thousands, from the surface of the water to the bottom
+of that fissure. Smooth, polished, shining breasts of bright gray
+granite crowded above the glacier on every side, seeming to overhang the
+ice and the bay. Struggling clumps of evergreens 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.</p>
+
+<p>"What a plucky little giant!" was Muir's exclamation as we stood on a
+rock-mound in front of this glacier. "To think of his shouldering his
+way through the mountain range like this! Samson, pushing down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> the
+pillars of the temple at Gaza, was nothing to this fellow. Hear him roar
+and laugh!"</p>
+
+<p>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 surveying 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.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of days and nights spent in the vicinity of Young Glacier were
+a period of unmixed pleasure. Muir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> spent all of these days and part of
+the nights climbing the pinnacled mountains to this and that viewpoint,
+crossing the deep, narrow and dangerous glacier five thousand feet above
+the level of the sea, exploring its tributaries and their side canyons,
+making sketches in his note-book for future elaboration. Stickeen by
+this time constantly followed Muir, exciting my jealousy by his plainly
+expressed preference. Because 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 promontory 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> which had evidently been broken off from the
+mountain; indeed, there was a niche five thousand feet above into which
+it would exactly fit. The sturdy evergreens struggled half-way up its
+sides, but the top was bare.</p>
+
+<p>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 green that
+relieved the gray of the granite, there he was dodging in and out of the
+blue crevasses of the upper glacial falls. Darting before him or
+creeping behind was a little black speck which I made out to be
+Stickeen, climbing steeps up which a fox would hardly venture.
+Occasionally I would see him dancing about at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> the base of a cliff too
+steep for him, up which Muir was climbing, and his piercing howls of
+protest at being left behind would come echoing down to me.</p>
+
+<p>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 forest, 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 variety of blue and purple tints I have never seen
+surpassed&mdash;baby-blue, sky-blue, sapphire, turquoise, cobalt, 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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="TAKU_GLACIER" id="TAKU_GLACIER"></a>
+<img src="images/image10.jpg" width="600" height="350" alt="TAKU GLACIER" title="" />
+<span class="caption">TAKU GLACIER<br />There followed an excursion into Taku Bay, that miniature of Glacier
+Bay, with its three living glaciers</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p><p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> of prismatic colors when the
+sunlight struck them. As I gazed I could see the whole upper part of the
+cliff slowly moving forward until 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. Fascinated, 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the climax came in a surprising way. The great tower of crystal
+shot up into the air two hundred 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> shout of
+applause and Stickeen's sharp bark came faintly to my ears when the deep
+rumbling of the newly formed icebergs had subsided.</p>
+
+<p>That night I waited supper long for Muir. It was a good supper&mdash;a
+mulligan stew of mallard duck, with biscuits and coffee. Stickeen romped
+into camp about ten o'clock and his new master soon followed.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;form, color, motion and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> sound&mdash;have
+been present to-day at their very best. My friend, we are the richest
+men in all the world to-night."</p>
+
+<p>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 current. 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 afforded 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 before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> we could penetrate the
+depths of this great canyon.</p>
+
+<p>We shot through the mouth of the canyon at dangerous speed. Indeed, we
+could not do otherwise; we were helpless in the grasp of the torrent. At
+certain stages the surging tide forms an actual fall, for the entrance
+is so narrow that the water 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 narrows, twenty miles an hour. Then, suddenly,
+the bay widened out, the water ceased to swirl and boil and the current
+became gentle.</p>
+
+<p>When we could lay aside our paddles 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."</p>
+
+<p>Before entering this bay I had expressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> 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 Sentinel, 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 Yosemite, 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&mdash;a bigger Yosemite, as Alaska is bigger than California."</p>
+
+<p>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 without
+vegetation upon it between the glaciers and the bay showed that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> 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 glaciers
+stretched away miles and miles, like two great antennæ, from the head of
+the bay to the top of the mountain range. But the most striking 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 parallel mouldings, like massive cornices 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-like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> ice must have
+possessed, driven by millions of tons of weight, to mould and shape and
+scoop out these flinty rock faces, as the carpenter's forming plane
+flutes a board!</p>
+
+<p>When we were half-way up this wonderful bay the sun burst through a rift
+of cloud. "Look, look!" exclaimed Muir. "Nature is turning on the
+colored lights in her great show house."</p>
+
+<p>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
+rainbows of marvelous distinctness and brilliance, waving and dancing&mdash;a
+very riot of color. The tinkling water falling into the bay waked a
+thousand echoes, weird, musical and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> 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 any 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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<p class="t1">THE DOG AND THE MAN<br /></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="MY_FRIENDS" id="MY_FRIENDS"></a>MY FRIENDS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem">
+Two friends I have, and close akin are they.<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">For both are free</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">And wild and proud, full of the ecstasy</span><br />
+Of life untrammeled; living, day by day,<br />
+A law unto themselves; yet breaking none<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Of Nature's perfect code.</span><br />
+And far afield, remote from man's abode,<br />
+They roam the wilds together, two as one.<br />
+<br />
+Yet, one's a dog&mdash;a wisp of silky hair,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Two sharp black eyes,</span><br />
+A face alert, mysterious and wise,<br />
+A shadowy tail, a body lithe and fair.<br />
+And one's a man&mdash;of Nature's work the best,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">A heart of gold,</span><br />
+A mind stored full of treasures new and old,<br />
+Of men the greatest, strongest, tenderest.<br />
+<br />
+They love each other&mdash;these two friends of mine&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Yet both agree</span><br />
+In this&mdash;with that pure love that's half divine<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">They both love me.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DOG AND THE MAN</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">T</span>HERE is no time to tell of all the bays we explored; of Holkham Bay,
+Port Snettisham, Tahkou Harbor; all of which we rudely put on the map,
+or at least extended the arms beyond 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> Gastineau Channel and Stevens
+Passage can only be crossed with canoes at flood tide), we met two old
+gold prospectors whom I had frequently seen at Wrangell&mdash;Joe Harris 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 camping place, Harris said to Juneau, "Suppose we camp there
+and try the gravel of that creek."</p>
+
+<p>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" sufficiently
+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 prospectors, and
+afterwards Juneau for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> other. The great Treadwell gold quartz mine
+was located three miles from Juneau in 1881, and others subsequently.
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Through Stevens Passage we paddled, 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.</p>
+
+<p>At Pleasant Island we loaded, as on the previous trip, with dry wood for
+our voyage into Glacier Bay.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> 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 follow. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Row back," he said.</p>
+
+<p>So we rowed back and called, but no Stickeen. Around the next point we
+rowed and whistled; still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> 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 discovered Stickeen away out in the water, paddling
+calmly and confidently 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 insisted 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>At Muir Glacier we spent a week this time, making long trips up the
+mountains that overlooked the glacier and across its surface. On one
+occasion Muir, with the little dog at his heels, crossed entirely in a
+diagonal direction the great glacial lake, a trip of some thirty miles,
+starting before daylight in the morning and not appearing at camp until
+long after dark. Muir always carried 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 so vast
+and so comparatively still that it has but few crevasses, and Muir's day
+for traversing it was a perfect one&mdash;warm and sunny.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="THE_FRONT_OF_MUIR_GLACIER" id="THE_FRONT_OF_MUIR_GLACIER"></a>
+<img src="images/image11.jpg" width="600" height="355" alt="THE FRONT OF MUIR GLACIER" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE FRONT OF MUIR GLACIER<br />We could understand the constant breaking off and leaping up and
+smashing down of the ice, and the formation of the great mass of bergs</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p><p>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 rapids, 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 conception 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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p><p>Shortly before we left Muir Glacier, I saw Muir furiously angry for the
+first and last time in my acquaintance with him. We had noticed day
+after day, whenever the mists admitted a view of the mountain slopes,
+bands of mountain goats looking like little white mice against the green
+of the high pastures. I said to Joe, the hunter, one morning: "Go up and
+get us a kid. It will be a great addition to our larder."</p>
+
+<p>He took my breech-loading rifle and went. In the afternoon he returned
+with a fine young buck on his shoulders. While we were examining it he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"I picked the fattest and most tender of those that I killed."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" I exclaimed, "did you kill more than this one?"</p>
+
+<p>He put up both hands with fingers extended and then one finger:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p><p>"<i>Tatlum-pe-ict</i> (eleven)," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>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 until 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.</p>
+
+<p>Muir had a strong aversion to taking the life of any animal; although he
+would eat meat when prepared, he never killed a wild animal; even the
+rattlesnakes he did not molest during his rambles in California. 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> trying to get a bead on a flock of ducks or a deer
+standing on the shore.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving the mouth of Glacier Bay we spent a week or more exploring
+the inlets and glaciers to the west. These days were rainy and cold. We
+groped blindly into unknown, unmapped, fog-hidden fiords and bayous,
+exploring them to their ends and often making excursions to the glaciers
+above them.</p>
+
+<p>The climax of the trip, however, was the last glacier we visited, Taylor
+Glacier, the scene of Muir's great adventure with Stickeen. We reached
+this fine glacier in the afternoon of a very stormy day. We were
+approaching the open Pacific, and the <i>saanah</i>, the southeast rain-wind,
+was howling through the narrow entrance into Cross Sound. For twenty
+miles we had been facing strong head winds and tidal waves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> 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
+wielding his big steering paddle, now on this side, now on that,
+grunting with each mighty stroke, calling encouragement to his crew,
+"<i>Ut-ha, ut-ha! hlitsin! hlitsin-tin!</i> (pull, pull, strong, with
+strength!)"; Joe and Billy rising 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 narrow
+promontory of moraine boulders next to the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>"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 others of
+this region are receding; this has been coming forward. See the mighty
+ploughshare and its furrow!"</p>
+
+<p>For the icy mass was heaving up the ground clear across its front, and,
+on the side where we stood, had evidently<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> 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 whole 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I must climb this glacier to-morrow," said Muir. "I shall have a great
+day of it; I wish you could come along."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> only spoil his day and endanger his life as well as my own.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 pouring,
+and I knew how imperative the call of such a morning as was promised
+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.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p><p>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 pocketed 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 movements,
+had, as usual, quietly left his warm nest and followed his adopted
+master. Muir was scolding and expostulating with him as if he were a
+boy. I chuckled to myself at the futility of Muir's efforts; Stickeen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+would now, as always, do just as he pleased&mdash;and he would please to go
+along.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But the advancing glacier had played havoc with the chief's 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> 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 circling about, doubtless wondering
+what had become of their parent stream.</p>
+
+<p>The old chief came to our camp early, followed by his squaws bearing
+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 interpreter, and asked for a big talk.</p>
+
+<p>With all ceremony I made preparations, gave more presents of leaf
+tobacco and hardtack and composed myself for the palaver. After the
+usual preliminaries, in which he told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> 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
+compliments and asked what he wanted.</p>
+
+<p>Recalled to earth he said: "I wish you to pray to your God."</p>
+
+<p>"For what do you wish me to pray?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"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 below<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> it,
+and here for years great schools of king salmon came crowding 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 <i>your</i> God, the God of the white man, to see if He
+will make the glacier stop!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p><p>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 answer. When I exclaimed in horror
+at his deed of blood he was astonished; he could not understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, they were <i>my</i> slaves," he said, "and the man suggested it
+himself. He was glad to go to death to help his chief."</p>
+
+<p>A few years after this our missionary 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 embraced the new gospel of peace and love.
+He could not get rid of his superstition about the glacier, however, and
+about eight years afterwards, visiting at Wrangell, he told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> me as an
+item of news which he expected 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 driving passionately in horizontal sheets shut out the mountains
+and the upper plateau of 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
+ventured to face the wind on the glacier, but had contented himself with
+tracing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> its eastern side, and was somewhere in the woods bordering it,
+beside a big fire, studying storm and glacier in comparative safety.</p>
+
+<p>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 command: clam chowder, fried porpoise, bacon
+and beans, "savory meat" made of mountain kid with potatoes, onions,
+rice and curry, camp biscuit and coffee, with dessert of wild
+strawberries and condensed milk.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+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 without 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 succession, without a question asked or a word
+uttered. Lot kept the fire blazing just right, Joe kept the victuals hot
+and baked fresh bread, while Billy and I waited on Muir.</p>
+
+<p>Not till he came to the coffee and strawberries did Muir break the
+silence. "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 pounding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+of the blanket with his heavy tail.</p>
+
+<p>Then Muir began to talk, and little by little, between sips of coffee,
+the story of the day was unfolded. Soon memories crowded for utterance
+and I listened till midnight, entranced by a succession of vivid
+descriptions 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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"><a name="GLACIAL_CREVASSES" id="GLACIAL_CREVASSES"></a>
+<img src="images/image12.jpg" width="600" height="378" alt="GLACIAL CREVASSES" title="" />
+<span class="caption">GLACIAL CREVASSES<br />"We had to make long, narrow tacks and doublings, tracing the edges of
+tremendous transverse and longitudinal crevasses&mdash;beautiful and awful"</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p><p>When Muir described his marooning on the narrow island of ice
+surrounded by fathomless crevasses, with a knife-edged sliver curving
+deeply "like the cable of a suspension bridge" diagonally across it as
+the only means of escape, I shuddered at his peril. I held my breath as
+he told of the terrible risks he 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
+determination 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, intoxicated by his escape, he became a living 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> murmuring soft canine
+words of adoration to his god.</p>
+
+<p>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
+rewritten 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 balanced well. He had the keenest
+sense of melody, as well as of harmony, in his sentence structure, and
+this great dog-story of his is a remarkable instance of the growth to
+perfection of the great production of a great master.</p>
+
+<p>The wonderful power of endurance of this man, whom Theodore Roosevelt
+has well called a "perfectly natural man," is instanced by the fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The latter part of this voyage was hurried. Muir had a wife waiting for
+him at home and he had promised 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 attacked the
+Stickeens, killing old Tow-a-att, Moses and another of our Christian
+Indians. The trouble was not settled yet, and although the two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> 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 approached Angoon, however, I heard the war-drums
+beating with their peculiar cadence, "tum-tum"&mdash;a beat off&mdash;"tum-tum,
+tum-tum." As we came up to the beach I saw what was seemingly the whole
+tribe dancing 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."</p>
+
+<p>Driving our canoe ashore, we hurried up to the head chief of the
+Hootz-noos, who was alternately haranguing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> his people and directing the
+dances.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me," he said.</p>
+
+<p>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
+carvings 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> crushed on one side as
+by a heavy blow. Then the story came out.</p>
+
+<p>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
+natives say, "<i>quonsum-sollex</i>" (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
+Baranof 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 ferocity at the hunter, and one little tap
+of that huge paw crushed his skull like an egg-shell. His companion
+brought his body home; and now the whole tribe had formally declared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+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 their way.</p>
+
+<p>We had been rowing all night before 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 reception from the missionaries, and
+also from the captain and officers of the old man-of-war <i>Jamestown</i>,
+afterwards used as a school ship for the navy in the harbor of San
+Francisco.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p><p>Alaska at that time had no vestige of civil government, no means of
+punishing crime, no civil officers except the customs collectors, no
+magistrate or police,&mdash;everyone was a law to himself. The only sign of
+authority was this cumbersome sailing vessel with its marines and
+sailors. It could not move out of Sitka harbor without first sending by
+the monthly mail steamer to San Francisco 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 <i>Jamestown</i> were supposed to be doing some surveying,
+but, lacking the means of travel, what they did amounted to very little.</p>
+
+<p>They were interested at once in our account of the discovery of Glacier
+Bay and of the other unmapped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> 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
+passages, before surveying vessels began to make accurate maps. So from
+its beginning has Uncle Sam neglected this greatest and richest of all
+his possessions.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+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 of
+the canoe, howling a sad farewell.</p>
+
+<p>Muir sailed south on the monthly mail steamer; while I took passage on a
+trading steamer for another missionary trip among the northern tribes.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> 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&mdash;a rustless,
+inexhaustible treasure.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<p class="t1">THE MAN IN PERSPECTIVE<br /></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="JOHN_MUIR" id="JOHN_MUIR"></a>JOHN MUIR</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem">
+He lived aloft, exultant, unafraid.<br />
+All things were good to him. The mountain old<br />
+Stretched gnarled hands to help him climb. The peak<br />
+Waved blithe snow-banner greeting; and for him<br />
+The rav'ning storm, aprowl for human life,<br />
+Purred like the lion at his trainer's feet.<br />
+The grizzly met him on the narrow ledge,<br />
+Gave gruff "good morning"&mdash;and the right of way.<br />
+The blue-veined glacier, cold of heart and pale,<br />
+Warmed, at his gaze, to amethystine blush,<br />
+And murmured deep, fond undertones of love.<br />
+<br />
+He walked apart from men, yet loved his kind,<br />
+And brought them treasures from his larger store.<br />
+For them he delved in mines of richer gold.<br />
+Earth's messenger he was to human hearts.<br />
+The starry moss flower from its dizzy shelf,<br />
+The ouzel, shaking forth its spray of song,<br />
+The glacial runlet, tinkling its clear bell,<br />
+The rose-of-morn, abloom on snowy heights&mdash;<br />
+Each sent by him a jewel-word of cheer.<br />
+Blind eyes he opened and deaf ears unstopped.<br />
+<br />
+He lived aloft, apart. He talked with God<br />
+In all the myriad tongues of God's sweet world;<br />
+But still he came anear and talked with us,<br />
+Interpreting for God to listn'ing men.<br />
+</div>
+<hr />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="JOHN_MUIR_IN_LATER_LIFE" id="JOHN_MUIR_IN_LATER_LIFE"></a>
+<img src="images/image13.jpg" width="500" height="797" alt="JOHN MUIR IN LATER LIFE" title="" />
+<span class="caption">JOHN MUIR IN LATER LIFE</span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MAN IN PERSPECTIVE</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noin"><span class="dcap">T</span>HE 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&mdash;or rather lack of rule.
+Sometimes answers 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 enthusiastic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> When he had found
+in his great outdoor museum some peculiar treasure he talked over his
+find with me by letter.</p>
+
+<p>Muir's letters were never commonplace and sometimes they were long and
+rich. I preserved them all; and when, a few years ago, an Alaska
+steamboat sank to the bottom of the Yukon, carrying with it my library
+and all my literary possessions, the loss of these letters from my
+friend caused me more sorrow than the loss of almost any other of my
+many priceless treasures.</p>
+
+<p>The summer of 1881, the year following that of our second canoe voyage,
+Muir went, as scientific and literary expert, with the U.S. revenue
+cutter <i>Rogers</i>, which was sent by the Government into the Arctic Ocean
+in search of the ill-fated De Long exploring party. His published<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+articles written on the revenue cutter were of great interest; but in
+his more intimate letters to me there was a note of disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"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 process of modeling the world I saw but
+little&mdash;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
+wilderness."</p>
+
+<p>A very brief visit at Muir's home near Martinez, California, in the
+spring of 1883 found him at what he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> frankly said was very distasteful
+work&mdash;managing a large fruit ranch. He was doing the work well and
+making his orchards pay large dividends; but his heart was in the hills
+and woods. Eagerly he questioned me of my travels and of the "progress"
+of the glaciers and woods of Alaska. Beyond a few short mountain trips
+he had seen nothing for two years of his beloved wilds.</p>
+
+<p>Passionately he voiced his discontent: "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."</p>
+
+<p>In 1888 the ten years' limit which I had set for service in Alaska
+expired. The educational necessities of my children and the feeling that
+was growing upon me like a smothering cloud that if I remained much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+longer among the Indians I would lose all power to talk or write good
+English, drove me from the Northwest to find a temporary home in
+Southern California.</p>
+
+<p>I had not notified Muir of my coming, but suddenly appeared in his
+orchard at Martinez one day in early summer. It was cherry-picking 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;to Lituya
+and Yakutat bays and Prince William Sound; have you not? My weariness of
+this hum-drum, work-a-day life has grown so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> heavy it is like to crush
+me. I'm ready to break away and go with you whenever you say."</p>
+
+<p>"No," I replied, "I am leaving Alaska."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, look at me," he said, "and take warning. I'm a horrible example.
+I, who have breathed the mountain air&mdash;who have really lived a life of
+freedom&mdash;condemned to penal servitude with these miserable little
+bald-heads!" (holding up a bunch of cherries). "Boxing them up; putting
+them in prison! And for money! Man! I'm like to die of the shame of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p><p>"And then you're not safe a day in this sordid world of money-grubbing
+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!</p>
+
+<p>"Gin it were na for my bairnies I'd rin awa' frae a' this tribble an'
+hale ye back north wi' me."</p>
+
+<p>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. I'm learning nothing here that will do me
+any good."</p>
+
+<p>I spent the night with him, and we talked till long after midnight,
+sailing anew our voyages of enchantment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> He had just completed his work
+of editing "Picturesque California" and gave me a set of the beautiful
+volumes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The first of the great northward gold stampedes&mdash;that of 1897 to the
+Klondyke in Northwestern Canada on the borders of Alaska&mdash;afforded me
+the opportunity for which I was longing to return to the land of my
+heart. The latter part of August saw me on <i>The Queen</i>, the largest of
+that great fleet of passenger boats that were traversing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> the thousand
+miles of wonder and beauty between Seattle and Skagway. These steamboats
+were all laden with gold seekers and their goods. Seattle sprang into
+prominence and wealth, doubling her population 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, doctors,
+clerks, merchants, farmers, mechanics, engineers, reporters,
+sharpers&mdash;all gold-struck&mdash;all mad with excitement&mdash;all rushing
+pell-mell into a thousand new and hard experiences.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>Five pleasurable days we had together on board <i>The Queen</i>. 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."</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> and down the Yukon to the Klondyke, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do they think I'm daft," he asked, "like a' the lave o' thae puir
+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."</p>
+
+<p>He offered to secure for me the reporter's job tendered to him. I
+refused, urging my lack of training for such work and my more important
+and responsible position.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that same paper has a host of reporters on the way to the Klondyke
+now," I said. "There is &mdash;&mdash;" (naming a noted poet and author of the
+Coast). "He must be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> half-way down to Dawson by this time."</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;&mdash; 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 delight his
+wonderful tales of the trail, but nobody will believe him. We all know
+him too well."</p>
+
+<p>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 doctor to him. After
+the usual examination the physician asked, "What do you generally do for
+a cold?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Muir, "I shiver it away."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p><p>"Explain yourself," said the puzzled doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"We-ll," 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&mdash;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 snowstorm,
+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 welcome to use it
+in your practice."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," laughed the doctor, "if I had such patients as you in such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> a
+country as this I might try your heroic remedy, but I am afraid it would
+hardly serve in general practice."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>At Wrangell, as we went ashore, we were greeted by joyful exclamations
+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 <i>Nuknate Ankow ka Glate Ankow</i>
+(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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> the
+welcome from those who remained warmed our hearts.</p>
+
+<p>From Wrangell northward the steamboat followed the route of our canoe
+voyage of 1880 through Wrangell Narrows into Prince Frederick Sound,
+past Norris Glacier and Holkham Bay into Stevens Passage, past Taku Bay
+to Juneau and on to Lynn Canal&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The two or three days which it took <i>The Queen</i> 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 Skagway
+and examining the flora of that region. They kept mostly off the trail
+of the struggling, straggling army of <i>Cheechakoes</i> (newcomers)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"You are going on a strange journey this time, my friend," he admonished
+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, yourself; and break
+clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the
+woods. Wash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>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&ndash;99 in the Eastern States arousing the Christian public to the needs
+of this newly discovered 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,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> where we could load them on our
+open boat for the voyage of two thousand miles down the Yukon.</p>
+
+<p>While I was engaged in this task there came to Skagway the steamship
+<i>George W. Elder</i>, carrying one of the most remarkable companies of
+scientific men ever gathered together in one expedition. Mr. Harriman,
+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 Institute, and, not least, John Muir. Indeed he was
+called the Nestor of the expedition and his advice followed as that of
+no other.</p>
+
+<p>The enticing proposition was made me by Muir, and backed by Mr.
+Harriman's personal invitation, that I should join this distinguished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+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 Interior. But what a
+joy and inspiration 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 glaciers of
+Prince William's Sound, and renew my studies of this good world under my
+great Master.</p>
+
+<p>A letter from Muir about his summer's cruise, written in November, 1899,
+reached me at Nome in June, 1900; for those of us who had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> reached that
+bleak, exposed northwestern coast and wintered there did not get any
+mail for six months. We were fifteen hundred miles from a post-office.</p>
+
+<p>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 instruction. 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 together, you and I!"</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> 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 treeless, 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&mdash;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 friendships inestimably
+precious and rich; but for me the World has produced but one John Muir;
+and to no other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> man do I feel that I owe so much; for I was blind and
+he made me see!</p>
+
+<p>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 correction 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> and camping in the forests and among the
+hills. When he was seventy-three he made long trips to South America and
+Africa, and to the very end he was exploring, studying, working and
+enjoying.</p>
+
+<p>All his writings exult with the spirit of immortal youth. There is in
+his books an intimate companionship with the trees, the mountains, the
+flowers and the animals, that is altogether fine. Surely no such books
+of mountains and forests 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&mdash;they live and talk.</p>
+
+<p>And when he writes of the animals he has met in his rambles, without any
+attempt to put into their characters anything that does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> not belong to
+them, without "manufacturing his data," he somehow manages to do much
+more than introduce 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 Douglas 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> top, and who had shouted with delight 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
+immortality my ownership of an immortalized dog.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;too
+natural&mdash;to be separated from his mountains, trees and glaciers.
+Somewhere, I am sure, he is making other explorations, solving other
+natural problems, using that brilliant, inventive genius to good effect;
+and some time again I shall hear him unfold anew, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> still clearer
+insight and more eloquent words, fresh secrets of his "mountains of
+God."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that the
+so-called lower animals have as much right to a Heaven as humans. I
+wonder if he has found a still more beautiful&mdash;a glorified&mdash;Stickeen;
+and if the little fellow still follows and frisks about him as in those
+old days. I like to think so; and when I too cross the Great Divide&mdash;and
+it can't be long now&mdash;I shall look eagerly for them both to be my
+companions in fresh adventures. In the meantime I am lonely for them and
+think of them often, and say, with <i>The Harvester</i>, "What a dog!&mdash;and
+what a MAN!!"<br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<p class="center">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
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+eBook #30697 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30697)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Alaska Days with John Muir, by Samuel Hall
+Young
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Alaska Days with John Muir
+
+
+Author: Samuel Hall Young
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 17, 2009  [eBook #30697]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Greg Bergquist, Chris Curnow, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from digital
+material generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 30697-h.htm or 30697-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30697/30697-h/30697-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30697/30697-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/alaskadayswithjo00younuoft
+
+
+
+
+
+ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR
+
+[Illustration: JOHN MUIR WITH ALASKA SPRUCE CONES]
+
+
+ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR
+
+by
+
+S. HALL YOUNG
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York Chicago Toronto
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+London and Edinburgh
+
+Copyright, 1915, by
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+
+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                   11
+
+  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 velvet 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 stationed at Fort Wrangell in southeastern
+Alaska, whence I had come the year before, a green young student fresh
+from college and seminary--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. 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 always since associated with him, and
+which seemed the same garment, unsoiled 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 these four fine personalities to
+me, and I began to recognize him as my Master who was to lead me into
+enchanting regions of beauty and mystery, 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."
+
+[Illustration: FORT WRANGELL
+
+Near the mouth of the Stickeen--the starting point of the expeditions]
+
+Minor excursions culminated in the chartering of the little steamer
+_Cassiar_, on which our party, augmented by two or three friends,
+steamed between the tremendous glaciers and through the columned canyons
+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
+famous Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon. Stocky, broad-shouldered,
+muscular, 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 projected 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 Canyon impossible, unless we take the morning's
+calm."
+
+I saw Muir's eyes light up with a 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 toward
+dangerous adventure, and especially 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 center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
+mountains. "One of the finest viewpoints in the world," he said.
+
+"How far to the highest point?"
+
+"About ten miles."
+
+"How high?"
+
+"Seven or eight thousand feet."
+
+That was enough. I caught the D.D.s with guile. There were Stickeen
+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 whetted 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
+children 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
+interpreter, to call the natives to another _hyou wawa_ (big talk) and,
+note-book in hand, the doctors "went gayly to the fray." I set the
+speeches a-going, and then slipped out to join the impatient Muir.
+
+"Take off your coat," he commanded, "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
+thousand 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."
+
+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, humpbacked, 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 narrow, 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 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. Nowhere else have I see anything approaching
+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 on his knees, babbling in unknown tongues,
+prattling a curious mixture of scientific lingo and baby talk,
+worshiping his little blue-and-pink goddesses.
+
+"Ah! my blue-eyed darlin', 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 possible 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 amatory botany that he seemed to forget my
+existence. While I, as glad as he, tagged along, running up and 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 outdoor palaces.
+But how I anathematized my short-sighted foolishness for having as a
+student at old Wooster shirked botany for the "more important" studies
+of language and metaphysics. For here was a man whose natural science
+had a thorough technical basis, while the superstructure was built of
+"lively stones," and was itself a living temple of love!
+
+With all his boyish enthusiasm, Muir was a most painstaking student; and
+any unsolved question lay upon his mind like a personal grievance until
+it was settled to his full understanding. One plant after another, with
+its sand-covered roots, went into his pockets, his handkerchief 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 entrancing work and we were progressing upwards
+but slowly. We were on the southeastern slope of the mountain, 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 his last handful of plants, and hastened up to
+where I stood.
+
+"Man!" he said, "I was forgetting. 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 answered; "the sight of the sunset from the
+top."
+
+Then Muir began to _slide_ up that mountain. I had been with mountain
+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 serpent-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
+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!
+
+[Illustration: THE MOUNTAIN
+
+He pointed to a little group of jagged peaks rising right up from where
+we stood--a pulpit in the center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
+mountains]
+
+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
+between. 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 pebbles and boulders, and beyond them the
+glacier. Once a giant, it is nothing 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 future generations. But
+glaciers were Muir's special pets, his intimate companions, with whom he
+held sweet communion. Their voices were plain language to his ears,
+their work, as God's landscape gardeners, of the wisest and best that
+Nature could offer.
+
+No Swiss guide was ever wiser in the habits of glaciers than Muir, or
+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 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 display 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 climbing! There was never
+an instant when both feet and hands were not in play, and often elbows,
+knees, thighs, upper arms, and even chin must grip and hold. Clambering
+up a steep slope, crawling under an overhanging 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 fissures, 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 fragment 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.
+
+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 before I had been fond of breaking colts--till
+the colts broke me. On successive summers in West Virginia, 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, 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 vantage. 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 obstacle, 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 moment 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 richest
+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. Standing
+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. Striking 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 islands, now foaming white through narrow
+canyons. Beyond, among the undulating hills, was a marvelous 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 glacier collars. The taller peaks seemed almost
+sharp enough to be the helmets and spears of watchful sentinels. 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 horizon--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 Schiller'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, although 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 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.
+Instantly the stone melted away beneath 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.
+
+Falling forward hard, my hands struck the walls of the chasm, my arms
+were twisted behind me, and instantly both shoulders were dislocated.
+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 slipping
+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 thousand
+thoughts flash through the brain in a single instant--an anguished
+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 instantaneous photography of deadly peril. I had no hope of escape
+at all. The gravel was rattling past me and piling 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.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE MARVELOUS ARRAY OF LAKES]
+
+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; I'm going to get you out of this. I can't get to
+you on this side; the rock is sheer. I'll 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 Scotland,"
+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 entertained no more
+thoughts of last messages. 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 growing 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.
+Now I heard Muir's voice, low and steady, close to me, and it seemed a
+little below.
+
+"Hold steady," he said. "I'll 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, gathering 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 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.
+
+"I've got to let go of you," he hissed through his clenched teeth. "I
+need both hands here. Climb upward 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 on
+the rock. It was utterly impossible, 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 dislocation, the ball of the humerus resting 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 muscles had pulled the head of the bone deep into my armpit.
+There 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 tottery, 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 himself down to a
+lower shelf, brace himself, and I would get my right hand 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 would 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 midnight 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 disappeared 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 glacial
+stream, and far beneath the ridge along which we had ascended. The
+sides of the canyon were sheer cliffs.
+
+"We'll try it," said Muir. "Sometimes 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 going 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, "I'm 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; and always cheery, full of talk and anecdote,
+cracking jokes with me, infusing me with his own indomitable spirit. He
+was eyes, hands, feet, and heart to me--my caretaker, in whom I trusted
+absolutely. My eyes brim with tears even now when I think of his utter
+self-abandon as he ministered to my infirmities.
+
+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 of
+whites and Indians just starting 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 account 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 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 inhumanity"
+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 them.
+She obtained some whisky from the captain, some water, porridge 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 strengthened
+with food and rest, and Muir called from his sleep of exhaustion, 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 seemingly 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!"
+
+[Illustration: GLACIER--STICKEEN VALLEY
+
+Muir, fresh and enthusiastic as ever, was the pilot of the party across
+the moraine and upon the great ice mountain]
+
+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 middle of an acre of alder brush, he asked
+indignantly, in response to the hurry-up calls: "Do you think I'm going
+to leave my wife in this forest?"
+
+One overpowering regret--one 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!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+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 interior lakes, ranges, forests and flower pastures.
+Always upon his return (for my house was his home the most of that time)
+he would be full to intoxication of what he had seen, and dinners would
+grow cold and lamps burn out while he held us entranced with his
+impassioned stories. Although his books are all masterpieces 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 especially 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 finishing 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 and nights, which kept ordinary people 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.
+
+"Why, men," I cried, "what's wrong? What brings you here?"
+
+"We want you play (pray)," answered 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 gathered at last that the whole tribe were
+frightened by a mysterious light waving 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 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 foolish as to camp up there on such a night, when there were
+plenty of comfortable 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 natives,
+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 mountains on
+stormy nights?" they asked. "Why does he wander alone on barren peaks
+or on dangerous ice-mountains? There is no gold up there and he never
+takes a gun with him or a pick. _Icta 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 navigator, Vancouver, in 1807. It was a wonderful chart,
+considering what an absurd little sailing vessel he had in which to
+explore those intricate waters with their treacherous winds and tides.
+
+But Vancouver's chart was hastily made, after all, in a land of fog and
+rain and snow. He had not the modern surveyor's instruments, boats or
+other helps. And, besides, this region 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 rivers were opening new passages and
+closing old ones; and, more than all, those mightiest tools of the great
+Engineer, the glaciers, were furrowing 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 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 voyage of discovery was to locate and visit
+the tribes and villages of Thlingets to the north and west of Wrangell,
+to take their census, confer with their chiefs and report upon their
+condition, with a view to establishing schools and churches among them.
+The most of these tribes had never had a visit from a missionary, and I
+felt the eager zeal an Eliot or a Martin at the prospect of telling 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 with me--so
+our plans fitted into each other well.
+
+"We are going to write some history, my boy," Muir would say to me.
+"Think of the honor! We have been chosen to put some interesting people
+and some of Nature's grandest scenes on the page of human record and on
+the map. Hurry! We are daily losing the most important news of all the
+world."
+
+In many respects we were most congenial companions. We both loved the
+same poets and could repeat, 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 studies supplemented each other and our tastes were similar. We had
+both lived clean lives and our conversation 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
+commander of the expedition, he was my teacher and guide into the inner
+recesses and meanings of the islands, bays and mountains we explored
+together.
+
+Our ship for this voyage of discovery, while not so large as
+Vancouver's, was much more shapely and manageable--a _kladushu etlan_
+(six fathom) red-cedar canoe. It belonged 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 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 because of his powers of oratory, his kinship
+with Chief Shathitch of the Chilcat tribe, and his friendly relations
+with other chiefs. He was a born courtier, learned in Indian lore, songs
+and customs, and able to instruct 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, sugar,
+salt and a little dried fruit. We were to depend upon our guns,
+fishhooks, 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 provisions, 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 trouble. 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
+entreaties did not avail she said: "If anything happens to my son, I
+will take your baby as mine in payment."
+
+[Illustration: VOYAGES OF MUIR AND YOUNG 1879 and 1880 IN SOUTHEASTERN
+ALASKA]
+
+One sunny October day we set our prow to the unknown northwest. Our
+hearts beat high with anticipation. 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 overhead and the eagles shrilling from the sky
+promised wonderful adventures.
+
+The voyage naturally divides itself into the human interest and the
+study of nature; yet the two constantly 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 admiration from
+the first. His paddle was sure in the stern, his knowledge of the wind
+and tide unfailing. Whenever we landed the crew would begin 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 acquiescing 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 butter and
+at the three who were to eat, measured with his eye one-third of the
+roll, cut it off with his hunting knife and began to cut it into squares
+and eat it with great gusto. I was about to interfere and show 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. During
+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 westward 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 coming to a native town,
+was to find where the head chief lived, feed him with rice and regale
+him with tobacco, 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 presents of tobacco to each, and then open the floodgate of talk,
+proclaiming my mission and telling them in simplest terms the Great New
+Story. Muir would generally follow me, unfolding in turn some of the
+wonders 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 suspicion
+at first old Tow-a-att's tearful pleadings and Kadishan's oratory
+speedily brought about peace and unity.
+
+These palavers often lasted a 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, getting the
+heads of the families to count their relatives with the aid of
+beans,--the large brown beans representing men, the large white ones,
+women, 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 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 excitement 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 fragment 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 clothing 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 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 tribe, occurred an incident
+of another type. We found this village hilariously drunk. There was a
+very stringent prohibition law over Alaska at that time, which
+absolutely forbade the importation of any spirituous liquors into the
+Territory. But the law was deficient in one vital respect--it did not
+prohibit the importation of molasses; and a soldier during the military
+occupancy of the Territory had instructed the natives in the art of
+making rum. The method was simple. A five-gallon oil can was taken and
+partly filled with molasses as a base; into that alcohol was placed (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 because
+these same Hootz-noo natives first made it, kill at more than forty
+rods, for it generally made the natives _fighting_ drunk.
+
+Through the large company of screaming, dancing and singing natives we
+made our way to the chief's house. By some miracle this majestic-looking
+savage was sober. Perhaps he felt it incumbent upon him 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 looking Indian women I
+have ever met,--tall, straight, lithe and dignified. But, crawling about
+on the floor on all fours, was the most piteous travesty of the human
+form I have ever seen. It was an idiot boy, sixteen 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 swinging
+gait of a bear, he would crouch 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, feeding him with her choicest
+food, putting 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 illness 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, "Oh, would you not be relieved at the
+death of this poor idiot boy?" she saw in my words a threat, and I 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 nothing 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 Chilcoot natives on Lynn Canal, the
+most northern tribes of the Alexandrian Archipelago. Here reigned the
+proudest and worst old savage of Alaska, Chief Shathitch. His wealth
+was very great in Indian treasures, and he was reputed to have cached
+away in different places several houses full of blankets, guns, boxes of
+beads, ancient carved pipes, spears, knives and other valued heirlooms.
+He was said to have stored away over one hundred of the elegant 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 Indians of the Interior in a bondage of 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 villages were full of slaves procured by
+forays upon the coasts of Vancouver Island, Puget Sound, and as far
+south as the mouth of the Columbia River. I was eager to visit these
+large and untaught tribes, and establish a mission among them.
+
+[Illustration: CHILCAT WOMAN WEAVING A BLANKET
+
+Chief Shathitch was said to have over one hundred of the elegant Chilcat
+blankets, woven by hand, from the hair of the mountain goat]
+
+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 excitement in the town. We had hoisted the
+American flag, as was our custom, and had put on our best 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 reception--a shower of
+bullets falling unpleasantly around us. Instinctively 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:
+
+"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 Russian officer had given him. He confessed 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 if they were going to take us prisoners. 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
+chief's 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 fashion of a chief's house--carved corner posts,
+a square of gravel in the center of the room for the fire surrounded 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 chieftain's household goods were stowed and
+where the family took their repose. A brisk fire was burning in the
+middle of the room; and after a short palaver, with gifts of tobacco 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 towards 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, holding about as
+much as the washbowls. We had learned enough Indian etiquette to know
+that at each course our respective vessels were to be filled full of
+food, and we were expected 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 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 separately; for our stomachs had not been
+sufficiently trained to endure that rancid grease. This course finished,
+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 washbowlful, with a dressing of
+seal-grease. The final course was the only berry then in season, the
+long fleshy apple of the wild rose mellowed 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 properly
+receive His Majesty, Muir and I and our two chiefs were each given a
+whole bale of Hudson Bay blankets for a couch. Shathitch made us wait a
+long time, doubtless to impress us with his dignity as supreme chief.
+
+The heat of the fire after the wind and cold of the day made us very
+drowsy. We fought off sleep, however, 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
+astonished to see printed in black letters these words, "To Chief
+Shathitch, from his friend, William H. Seward!" We learned afterwards
+that Seward, in his voyage of investigation, had penetrated to this
+far-off town, had been received in royal state 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, history does not relate.
+
+To me the inspiring part of that 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 Chilcoot 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 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 religion; 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 objects and points of surprise and interest. When we
+landed, the alg�, which sometimes filled the little harbors, 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 attention and study. Muir
+was one of the most expert foresters this country has ever produced. He
+was never at a loss. The luxuriant vegetation 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 blossoms; 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 thorough knowledge of botany and his interest in
+that study made every 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 nature and His management of all the affairs of
+the universe, was his constantly reiterated belief. He saw design in
+many things which the ordinary naturalist overlooks, such as the
+symmetry of an island, the balancing branches of a tree, the harmony of
+colors in a group of flowers, the completion of a fully rounded
+landscape. In his view, the Creator of it all saw every beautiful and
+sublime 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 landscape
+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!"
+
+Thus Muir was always discovering to me things which I would never have
+seen myself and opening up to me new avenues of knowledge, delight and
+adoration. There was something so intimate in his theism that it
+purified, elevated and broadened mine, even when I could not agree with
+him. His constant exclamation 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 wonderful
+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 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 Glacier Bay of
+which we had heard. Vancouver's chart gave us no intimation 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 patience, 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 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 transport them a
+dozen miles in a moment, 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, mangling 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;
+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 increasing
+every moment, and as the majestic arena opened before us and the Muir,
+Geicke, Pacific and other great glaciers (all nameless as yet) 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 wonders. Now the marks of recent glaciation showed
+plainly. Here was a conical island of gray granite, whose rounded top
+and symmetrical shoulders 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 resistless 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 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
+ultra-marine; 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 icebergs. 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
+nights we camped on the bare granite rock before we reached the limit of
+the bay. All vegetation had disappeared; 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 matter of the mighty ice mass that had
+engulfed them. They told the story of great forests which had once
+covered this whole region, until the great sea of ice of the second
+glacial 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.
+
+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 summits of Mts. Fairweather and Crillon. These
+mighty summits, twelve thousand, fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand
+feet high, respectively, pierced the sky directly above us; sometimes
+they seemed to be hanging over us threateningly. Only once did the sky
+completely clear; and then was preached to us the wonderful Sermon of
+Glacier Bay.
+
+Early that morning we quitted our camp on a barren rock, steering
+towards 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 purpose to attain to the head of the bay.
+The air was damp and raw, chilling us to the marrow. The forbidding
+granite mountains, showing here and there through the fog, seemed
+suddenly to push out threatening fists and shoulders at us. All night
+long the ice-guns had bombarded us from four or five directions, 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 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 avalanche, threatened us.
+
+Suddenly I heard Muir catch his breath with a fervent ejaculation. "God,
+Almighty!" he said. Following his gaze towards Mt. Crillon, I saw the
+summit highest of all crowned with glory indeed. It was not sunlight;
+there was no appearance 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 colors--as if a pigment, perfectly made and
+thickly spread, too delicate 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, shivering in our wet
+blankets, were glowing 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
+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
+mountains. 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 changing 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 purpose of it all. Now the text of this great
+sermon was emblazoned across the landscape--"_God is Love_"; and 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 landscape; our courage rose; our Indians
+dipped their paddles silently, steering without fear amidst the
+dangerous masses of ice. But there was no profanity in Muir's
+exclamation, "We have met with God!" A lifelong 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 atmospheric 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 surpassing loveliness. Again and again
+Muir would break out, after a long silence of blissful memory, with
+exclamations:
+
+"We saw it; we saw it! He sent us to His most glorious exhibition.
+Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!"
+
+Two or three inspiring days followed. Muir must climb the most
+accessible of the mountains. My weak shoulders forbade me to ascend more
+than two or three thousand 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" 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 governed 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 mountains, 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 forgetting 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 hundred feet
+above the surface of the water. The ice masses were breaking off so fast
+that we were forced to put off far from the face of the glacier. The
+great waves threatened 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 our canoe about half a mile from the edge of the glacier,
+but, attempting 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 boulders 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.
+
+[Illustration: MUIR GLACIER
+
+Returning down Glacier Bay, we visited the largest glacier of all, which
+was to bear Muir's name]
+
+Muir spent a whole day alone on the glacier, walking over twenty miles
+across what he called the glacial lake between two mountains. A cold,
+penetrating, mist-like rain was falling, and dark clouds swept up the
+bay and clung about the shoulders of the mountains. When night
+approached and Muir had not returned, 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 taking 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 before
+midnight, very tired but very happy. "Ah!" he sighed, "I'm glad to be in
+camp. The glacier almost got me this time. If it had not been for the
+beacon and old 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. I've 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 marble 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 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 splendid
+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 Chatham
+Strait again. Landing our Hoonah guide at his village, we took our route
+northward again up Lynn Canal. The beautiful Davison Glacier 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 commenced. Bowling
+down the canal before a strong north wind, we entered 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, enticed us to
+exploration, but the constant 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 exploration to the end of the bay impossible. 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 purpose 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
+minister."
+
+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 icebergs,
+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 thousand 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 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 light;
+     And bars of moonbeams streaming white,
+ Have pearls of ebon raindrops made.
+
+ From darkest sea 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.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE LOST GLACIER
+
+
+John Muir was married in the spring of 1880 to Miss Strentzel, the
+daughter of a Polish physician who had come out in the great stampede of
+1849 to California, but had found his gold in oranges, lemons 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 September. 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 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 replied. "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 conscience? 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 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 villages of the Hanega tribe of Thlingets. 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 Tsimpheans, and on fifteen miles further to the famous mission
+of Father Duncan 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 "noblest Roman of them all" fell dead 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 simply
+and eloquently a few months before. 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 blankets 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 emblem of his position as chief, to see if he could not call
+his tribe back again. At my instance, as I stood with my hand on his
+shoulder, he lifted up his voice to recall his people to their houses,
+when, in an instant, 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 barbarism; and the
+white man, who had taught the Indians the art of making rum, and the
+white man's government, which had afforded no safeguard against such
+scenes, were responsible.
+
+[Illustration: DAVIDSON GLACIER
+
+The beautiful Davidson Glacier, with its great snow-white fan, drew our
+gaze and excited our admiration for two days]
+
+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 seventeen who acted as interpreter,
+formed the crew. When we were about to embark I suddenly thought of my
+little dog Stickeen and made the resolve to take him along. My wife and
+Muir both protested and I almost 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
+independent 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. 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 beautifully
+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
+voyage. 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
+delegation 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
+antics were irresistible. It was Moses who named him Stickeen after
+their tribe--an exceptional honor. Thereafter the whole tribe adopted
+and protected him, and woe to the Indian 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, delivered 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 offending Indian dog--a valuable hunting animal.
+
+Stickeen lacked the obtrusively affectionate 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, he attracted the attention of
+everybody and won all hearts.
+
+As instances: Dr. Kendall, "The Grand Old Man" of our Church, during 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
+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 with Muir was arranged, and curled
+himself down on my coat. The discussion 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 obtrusive, never "butted in"; never offended 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 Stickeen 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 squirrels; but when we would start to the
+woods, the mountains or the glaciers the dog would join us, coming
+mysteriously 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 victory
+was complete; he slept at Muir's feet, went with him on all his rambles;
+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 simple,
+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 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
+oarsman; Billy, a lad of seventeen, our interpreter and Joe's assistant.
+Towards 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 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 waters 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 especially his expedition. He was the commander now, as I had been
+the year before. He had set for himself 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
+accustomed to such rude interruption. They could not understand Muir at
+all, nor in the least comprehend his 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 phosphorescent 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
+illumination. Sometimes their black tops with waving seaweed, surrounded
+by phosphorescent breakers, 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
+accompanying us as if the outraged fairies were bombarding us with tiny
+guns. Then would ensue a tedious groping with the lantern for a camping
+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 wonderful arms. Here we were to find the
+lost glacier. This deep fiord has two great prongs. Neither of them
+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, flashing
+through the trees, disappearing as an island intervened, and again
+opening up with its fair ray as we pushed on. An hour's steady paddling
+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 constant
+rains had swelled the glacial stream, burst through their wing-dams,
+swept away their sluice-boxes and destroyed the work of the summer.
+Strong men of the wilderness as they were, they were not discouraged,
+but were discussing plans for prospecting new places and trying it again
+here next summer. Hot coffee 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
+Endicott Arm, spreading out like the skirmish 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 top, owing to the
+smoothness of the granite rock. It was newly glaciated--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 blankets 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
+granite 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 getting inside the outer fleet of
+icebergs 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, threatened a trap. The only way to
+navigate 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 precaution to put a false bow and stern on
+his canoe, cunningly fashioned out of curved branches of trees and
+hollowed 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 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 rising 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 giants 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 mountains, and the
+depth of the water could only be conjectured. It must have been hundreds
+of feet, perhaps thousands, from the surface of the water to the bottom
+of that fissure. Smooth, polished, shining breasts of bright gray
+granite crowded above the glacier on every side, seeming to overhang the
+ice and the bay. Struggling clumps of evergreens 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 glacier. "To think of his shouldering his
+way through the mountain range like this! Samson, pushing down 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 surveying 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 spent all of these days and part of
+the nights climbing the pinnacled mountains to this and that viewpoint,
+crossing the deep, narrow and dangerous glacier five thousand feet above
+the level of the sea, exploring its tributaries and their side canyons,
+making sketches in his note-book for future elaboration. Stickeen by
+this time constantly followed Muir, exciting my jealousy by his plainly
+expressed preference. Because 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 promontory 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 which had evidently been broken off from the
+mountain; indeed, there was a niche five thousand feet above into which
+it would exactly fit. The 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 green that
+relieved the gray of the granite, there he was dodging in and out of the
+blue crevasses of the upper glacial falls. Darting before him or
+creeping behind was a little black speck which I made out to be
+Stickeen, climbing steeps up which a fox would hardly venture.
+Occasionally I would see him dancing about at the base of a cliff too
+steep for him, up which Muir was climbing, and his piercing howls of
+protest at being 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 forest, 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 variety of blue and purple tints I have never seen
+surpassed--baby-blue, sky-blue, sapphire, turquoise, cobalt, 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.
+
+[Illustration: TAKU GLACIER
+
+There followed an excursion into Taku Bay, that miniature of Glacier
+Bay, with its three living glaciers]
+
+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 of prismatic colors when the
+sunlight struck them. As I gazed I could see the whole upper part of the
+cliff slowly moving forward until 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. Fascinated, 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 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 surprising way. The great tower of crystal
+shot up into the air two hundred 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 shout of
+applause and Stickeen's sharp bark came faintly 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 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 current. 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 afforded 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 before we could penetrate the
+depths of this great canyon.
+
+We shot through the mouth of the canyon at dangerous speed. Indeed, we
+could not do otherwise; we were helpless in the grasp of the torrent. At
+certain stages the surging tide forms an actual fall, for the entrance
+is so narrow that the water 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 narrows, 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 paddles 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 expressed 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 Sentinel, 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 Yosemite, 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 bigger 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 without
+vegetation upon it between the glaciers and the bay showed that 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 glaciers
+stretched away miles and miles, like two great antenn�, from the head of
+the bay to the top of the mountain range. But the most striking 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 parallel mouldings, like massive cornices 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-like ice must have
+possessed, driven by millions of tons of weight, to mould and shape and
+scoop out these flinty rock faces, as the carpenter's forming plane
+flutes a board!
+
+When we were half-way up this wonderful bay the sun burst through a rift
+of cloud. "Look, look!" exclaimed 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
+rainbows of marvelous distinctness and brilliance, waving and dancing--a
+very riot of color. The tinkling water falling into the bay waked a
+thousand echoes, weird, musical and 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 any 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 Snettisham, Tahkou Harbor; all of which we rudely put on the map,
+or at least extended the arms beyond 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 Gastineau Channel and Stevens
+Passage can only be crossed with canoes at flood tide), we met two old
+gold prospectors whom I had frequently seen at Wrangell--Joe Harris 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 camping 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" sufficiently
+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 prospectors, and
+afterwards Juneau for the other. The great Treadwell gold quartz mine
+was located three miles from Juneau in 1881, and others subsequently.
+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 paddled, 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. 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 follow. 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 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 discovered Stickeen away out in the water, paddling
+calmly and confidently 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 insisted 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 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 glacier and across its surface. On one
+occasion Muir, with the little dog at his heels, crossed entirely in a
+diagonal direction the great glacial lake, a trip of some thirty miles,
+starting before daylight in the morning and not appearing at camp until
+long after dark. Muir always carried 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 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE FRONT OF MUIR GLACIER
+
+We could understand the constant breaking off and leaping up and
+smashing down of the ice, and the formation of the great mass of bergs]
+
+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 rapids, 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 conception 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.
+
+Shortly before we left Muir Glacier, I saw Muir furiously angry for the
+first and last time in my acquaintance with him. We had noticed day
+after day, whenever the mists admitted a view of the mountain slopes,
+bands of mountain goats looking like little white mice against the green
+of the high pastures. I said to Joe, the hunter, one morning: "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 returned
+with a fine young buck on his shoulders. While we were examining 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:
+
+"_Tatlum-pe-ict_ (eleven)," he replied.
+
+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 until 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; although he
+would eat meat when prepared, he never killed a wild animal; even the
+rattlesnakes he did not molest during his rambles in California. 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 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 exploring
+the inlets and glaciers to the west. These days were rainy and cold. We
+groped blindly into unknown, unmapped, fog-hidden fiords and bayous,
+exploring them to their ends and often making excursions to the glaciers
+above them.
+
+The climax of the trip, however, was the last glacier we visited, Taylor
+Glacier, the scene of Muir's great adventure with Stickeen. We reached
+this fine glacier in the afternoon of a very stormy day. We were
+approaching the open Pacific, and the _saanah_, the southeast rain-wind,
+was howling through the narrow entrance into Cross Sound. For twenty
+miles we had been facing strong head winds and tidal waves 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
+wielding his big steering paddle, now on this side, now on that,
+grunting with each mighty stroke, calling encouragement to his crew,
+"_Ut-ha, ut-ha! hlitsin! hlitsin-tin!_ (pull, pull, strong, with
+strength!)"; Joe and Billy rising 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 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 narrow
+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 others of
+this region are receding; this has been coming forward. See the mighty
+ploughshare and its furrow!"
+
+For the icy mass was heaving up the ground clear across its front, and,
+on the side where we stood, had evidently 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 whole 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-morrow," 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 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 pouring,
+and I knew how imperative the call of such a morning as was promised
+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.
+
+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 pocketed 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 movements,
+had, as usual, quietly left his warm nest and followed his adopted
+master. Muir was scolding and expostulating with him as if he were a
+boy. I chuckled to myself at the futility of Muir's efforts; Stickeen
+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 chief's 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 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 circling about, doubtless wondering
+what had become of their parent stream.
+
+The old chief came to our camp early, followed by his squaws bearing
+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 interpreter, and asked for a big talk.
+
+With all ceremony I made preparations, gave more presents of leaf
+tobacco and hardtack and composed myself for the palaver. After the
+usual preliminaries, in which he told 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
+compliments 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 below it,
+and here for years great schools of king salmon came crowding 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!"
+
+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 answer. When I exclaimed in horror
+at his deed of blood he was astonished; he could not understand.
+
+"Why, they were _my_ slaves," he said, "and the man suggested it
+himself. He was glad to go to death to help his chief."
+
+A few years after this our missionary 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 embraced the new gospel of peace and love.
+He could not get rid of his superstition about the glacier, however, and
+about eight years afterwards, visiting at Wrangell, he told me as an
+item of news which he expected 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 driving passionately in horizontal sheets shut out the mountains
+and the upper plateau of 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
+ventured to face the wind on the glacier, but had contented himself with
+tracing its eastern side, and was somewhere 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 command: clam chowder, fried porpoise, bacon
+and beans, "savory meat" made of mountain kid with potatoes, onions,
+rice and curry, camp biscuit 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
+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 without 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 succession, without a question asked or a word
+uttered. Lot kept the fire blazing 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
+silence. "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 pounding
+of the blanket with his heavy tail.
+
+Then Muir began to talk, and little by little, between sips of coffee,
+the story of the day was unfolded. Soon memories crowded for utterance
+and I listened till midnight, entranced by a succession of vivid
+descriptions 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.
+
+[Illustration: GLACIAL CREVASSES
+
+"We had to make long, narrow tacks and doublings, tracing the edges of
+tremendous transverse and longitudinal crevasses--beautiful and awful"]
+
+When Muir described his marooning on the narrow island of ice
+surrounded by fathomless crevasses, with a knife-edged sliver curving
+deeply "like the cable of a suspension bridge" diagonally across it as
+the only means of escape, I shuddered at his peril. I held my breath as
+he told of the terrible risks he 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
+determination 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, intoxicated by his escape, he became a living 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 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
+rewritten 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 balanced well. He had the keenest
+sense of melody, as well as of harmony, in his sentence structure, and
+this great dog-story of his is a remarkable instance of the growth to
+perfection of the great production of a great master.
+
+The wonderful power of endurance of this man, whom Theodore Roosevelt
+has well called a "perfectly natural man," is instanced by the fact
+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 promised 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 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 attacked the
+Stickeens, killing old Tow-a-att, Moses and another of our Christian
+Indians. The trouble was not settled yet, and although the two 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 approached Angoon, however, I heard the war-drums
+beating with their peculiar 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 dancing 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 hurried up to the head chief of the
+Hootz-noos, who was alternately haranguing 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
+carvings 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 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
+natives 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
+Baranof 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 ferocity at the hunter, and one little tap
+of that huge paw crushed his skull like an egg-shell. His companion
+brought his body home; and now the whole tribe had formally declared
+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 their way.
+
+We had been rowing all night before 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 reception 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.
+
+Alaska at that time had no vestige of civil government, no means of
+punishing crime, no civil officers except the customs collectors, no
+magistrate or police,--everyone was a law to himself. The only sign of
+authority was this cumbersome sailing vessel with its marines and
+sailors. It could not move out of Sitka harbor without first sending by
+the monthly mail steamer to San Francisco 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 supposed 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 Glacier
+Bay and of the other unmapped 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
+passages, before surveying vessels began to make accurate maps. So from
+its beginning has Uncle Sam neglected 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
+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 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 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 blithe 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 answers 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 enthusiastic. When he had found
+in his great outdoor museum some peculiar treasure he talked over his
+find with me by letter.
+
+Muir's letters were never commonplace and sometimes they were long and
+rich. I preserved them all; and when, a few years ago, an Alaska
+steamboat sank to the bottom of the Yukon, carrying with it my library
+and all my literary possessions, the loss of these letters from my
+friend caused me more sorrow than the loss of almost any other of my
+many priceless treasures.
+
+The summer of 1881, the year following that of our second canoe voyage,
+Muir went, as scientific and literary 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 published
+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 process 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
+wilderness."
+
+A very brief visit at Muir's home near Martinez, California, in the
+spring of 1883 found him at what he frankly said was very distasteful
+work--managing a large fruit ranch. He was doing the work well and
+making his orchards pay large dividends; but his heart was in the hills
+and woods. Eagerly he questioned me of my travels and of the "progress"
+of the glaciers and woods of Alaska. Beyond a few short mountain trips
+he had seen nothing for two years of his beloved wilds.
+
+Passionately he voiced his discontent: "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
+expired. The educational necessities of my children and the feeling that
+was growing upon me like a smothering cloud that if I remained much
+longer among the Indians I would lose all power to talk or write good
+English, drove me from the Northwest 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-picking 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 so heavy it is like to crush
+me. I'm 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 example.
+I, who have breathed the mountain 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; putting
+them in prison! And for money! Man! I'm like to die of the shame of it.
+
+"And then you're not safe a day in this sordid world of money-grubbing
+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 I'd 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. I'm 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 enchantment. 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 August saw me on _The Queen_, the largest of
+that great fleet of passenger boats that were traversing the thousand
+miles of wonder and beauty between Seattle and Skagway. These steamboats
+were all laden with gold seekers and their goods. Seattle sprang into
+prominence and wealth, doubling her population 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, doctors,
+clerks, merchants, farmers, mechanics, engineers, reporters,
+sharpers--all gold-struck--all mad with excitement--all rushing
+pell-mell into a thousand new and hard experiences.
+
+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 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 together 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 and down the Yukon to the Klondyke, 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 I'm daft," he asked, "like a' the lave o' thae puir
+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 reporter's job tendered to him. I
+refused, urging my lack of training for such work and my more important
+and responsible position.
+
+"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 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 delight 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 doctor to him. After
+the usual examination the physician asked, "What do you generally do for
+a cold?"
+
+"Oh," said Muir, "I shiver it away."
+
+"Explain yourself," said the puzzled doctor.
+
+"We-ll," 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 snowstorm,
+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 welcome to use it
+in your practice."
+
+"Well," laughed the doctor, "if I had such patients as you in such 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 exclamations
+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
+welcome from those who remained warmed our hearts.
+
+From Wrangell northward the steamboat followed the route of our canoe
+voyage of 1880 through Wrangell Narrows into Prince Frederick 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 Skagway
+and examining the flora of that region. They kept mostly off the trail
+of the struggling, straggling army of _Cheechakoes_ (newcomers) 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 journey this time, my friend," he admonished
+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, yourself; and break
+clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the
+woods. Wash 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 public to the needs
+of this newly discovered 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, 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 steamship
+_George W. Elder_, carrying one of the most remarkable companies of
+scientific men ever gathered together in one expedition. Mr. Harriman,
+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 Institute, and, not least, John Muir. Indeed 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
+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 Interior. But what a
+joy and inspiration 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 glaciers of
+Prince William's Sound, and renew my studies of this good world under my
+great Master.
+
+A letter from Muir about his summer's cruise, written in November, 1899,
+reached me at Nome in June, 1900; for those of us who had reached that
+bleak, exposed northwestern 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 instruction. 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 together, 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 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 treeless, 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 friendships inestimably
+precious and rich; but for me the World has produced but one John Muir;
+and to no other 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 correction 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 and camping in the forests and among the
+hills. When he was seventy-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 companionship with the trees, the mountains, the
+flowers and the animals, that is altogether fine. Surely no such books
+of mountains and forests 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 animals he has met in his rambles, without any
+attempt to put into their characters anything that does not belong to
+them, without "manufacturing his data," he somehow manages to do much
+more than introduce 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 Douglas 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 top, and who had shouted with delight 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
+immortality my ownership of an immortalized 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 separated from his mountains, trees and glaciers.
+Somewhere, I am sure, he is making other explorations, solving other
+natural problems, using that brilliant, inventive genius to good effect;
+and some time again I shall hear him unfold anew, with still clearer
+insight and more eloquent 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 animals 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
+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 meantime I am lonely for them and
+think of them often, and say, with _The Harvester_, "What a dog!--and
+what a MAN!!"
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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+Transcriber�s note:
+
+The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been
+faithfully preserved.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR***
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diff --git a/old/30697.txt b/old/30697.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Alaska Days with John Muir, by Samuel Hall
+Young
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Alaska Days with John Muir
+
+
+Author: Samuel Hall Young
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 17, 2009  [eBook #30697]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Greg Bergquist, Chris Curnow, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from digital
+material generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 30697-h.htm or 30697-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30697/30697-h/30697-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30697/30697-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/alaskadayswithjo00younuoft
+
+
+
+
+
+ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR
+
+[Illustration: JOHN MUIR WITH ALASKA SPRUCE CONES]
+
+
+ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR
+
+by
+
+S. HALL YOUNG
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York Chicago Toronto
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+London and Edinburgh
+
+Copyright, 1915, by
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+
+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                   11
+
+  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 velvet 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 stationed at Fort Wrangell in southeastern
+Alaska, whence I had come the year before, a green young student fresh
+from college and seminary--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. 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 always since associated with him, and
+which seemed the same garment, unsoiled 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 these four fine personalities to
+me, and I began to recognize him as my Master who was to lead me into
+enchanting regions of beauty and mystery, 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."
+
+[Illustration: FORT WRANGELL
+
+Near the mouth of the Stickeen--the starting point of the expeditions]
+
+Minor excursions culminated in the chartering of the little steamer
+_Cassiar_, on which our party, augmented by two or three friends,
+steamed between the tremendous glaciers and through the columned canyons
+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
+famous Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon. Stocky, broad-shouldered,
+muscular, 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 projected 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 Canyon impossible, unless we take the morning's
+calm."
+
+I saw Muir's eyes light up with a 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 toward
+dangerous adventure, and especially 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 center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
+mountains. "One of the finest viewpoints in the world," he said.
+
+"How far to the highest point?"
+
+"About ten miles."
+
+"How high?"
+
+"Seven or eight thousand feet."
+
+That was enough. I caught the D.D.s with guile. There were Stickeen
+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 whetted 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
+children 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
+interpreter, to call the natives to another _hyou wawa_ (big talk) and,
+note-book in hand, the doctors "went gayly to the fray." I set the
+speeches a-going, and then slipped out to join the impatient Muir.
+
+"Take off your coat," he commanded, "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
+thousand 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."
+
+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, humpbacked, 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 narrow, 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 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. Nowhere else have I see anything approaching
+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 on his knees, babbling in unknown tongues,
+prattling a curious mixture of scientific lingo and baby talk,
+worshiping his little blue-and-pink goddesses.
+
+"Ah! my blue-eyed darlin', 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 possible 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 amatory botany that he seemed to forget my
+existence. While I, as glad as he, tagged along, running up and 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 outdoor palaces.
+But how I anathematized my short-sighted foolishness for having as a
+student at old Wooster shirked botany for the "more important" studies
+of language and metaphysics. For here was a man whose natural science
+had a thorough technical basis, while the superstructure was built of
+"lively stones," and was itself a living temple of love!
+
+With all his boyish enthusiasm, Muir was a most painstaking student; and
+any unsolved question lay upon his mind like a personal grievance until
+it was settled to his full understanding. One plant after another, with
+its sand-covered roots, went into his pockets, his handkerchief 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 entrancing work and we were progressing upwards
+but slowly. We were on the southeastern slope of the mountain, 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 his last handful of plants, and hastened up to
+where I stood.
+
+"Man!" he said, "I was forgetting. 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 answered; "the sight of the sunset from the
+top."
+
+Then Muir began to _slide_ up that mountain. I had been with mountain
+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 serpent-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
+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!
+
+[Illustration: THE MOUNTAIN
+
+He pointed to a little group of jagged peaks rising right up from where
+we stood--a pulpit in the center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
+mountains]
+
+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
+between. 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 pebbles and boulders, and beyond them the
+glacier. Once a giant, it is nothing 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 future generations. But
+glaciers were Muir's special pets, his intimate companions, with whom he
+held sweet communion. Their voices were plain language to his ears,
+their work, as God's landscape gardeners, of the wisest and best that
+Nature could offer.
+
+No Swiss guide was ever wiser in the habits of glaciers than Muir, or
+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 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 display 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 climbing! There was never
+an instant when both feet and hands were not in play, and often elbows,
+knees, thighs, upper arms, and even chin must grip and hold. Clambering
+up a steep slope, crawling under an overhanging 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 fissures, 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 fragment 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.
+
+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 before I had been fond of breaking colts--till
+the colts broke me. On successive summers in West Virginia, 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, 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 vantage. 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 obstacle, 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 moment 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 richest
+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. Standing
+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. Striking 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 islands, now foaming white through narrow
+canyons. Beyond, among the undulating hills, was a marvelous 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 glacier collars. The taller peaks seemed almost
+sharp enough to be the helmets and spears of watchful sentinels. 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 horizon--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 Schiller'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, although 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 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.
+Instantly the stone melted away beneath 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.
+
+Falling forward hard, my hands struck the walls of the chasm, my arms
+were twisted behind me, and instantly both shoulders were dislocated.
+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 slipping
+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 thousand
+thoughts flash through the brain in a single instant--an anguished
+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 instantaneous photography of deadly peril. I had no hope of escape
+at all. The gravel was rattling past me and piling 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.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF THE MARVELOUS ARRAY OF LAKES]
+
+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; I'm going to get you out of this. I can't get to
+you on this side; the rock is sheer. I'll 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 Scotland,"
+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 entertained no more
+thoughts of last messages. 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 growing 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.
+Now I heard Muir's voice, low and steady, close to me, and it seemed a
+little below.
+
+"Hold steady," he said. "I'll 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, gathering 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 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.
+
+"I've got to let go of you," he hissed through his clenched teeth. "I
+need both hands here. Climb upward 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 on
+the rock. It was utterly impossible, 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 dislocation, the ball of the humerus resting 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 muscles had pulled the head of the bone deep into my armpit.
+There 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 tottery, 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 himself down to a
+lower shelf, brace himself, and I would get my right hand 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 would 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 midnight 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 disappeared 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 glacial
+stream, and far beneath the ridge along which we had ascended. The
+sides of the canyon were sheer cliffs.
+
+"We'll try it," said Muir. "Sometimes 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 going 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, "I'm 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; and always cheery, full of talk and anecdote,
+cracking jokes with me, infusing me with his own indomitable spirit. He
+was eyes, hands, feet, and heart to me--my caretaker, in whom I trusted
+absolutely. My eyes brim with tears even now when I think of his utter
+self-abandon as he ministered to my infirmities.
+
+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 of
+whites and Indians just starting 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 account 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 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 inhumanity"
+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 them.
+She obtained some whisky from the captain, some water, porridge 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 strengthened
+with food and rest, and Muir called from his sleep of exhaustion, 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 seemingly 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!"
+
+[Illustration: GLACIER--STICKEEN VALLEY
+
+Muir, fresh and enthusiastic as ever, was the pilot of the party across
+the moraine and upon the great ice mountain]
+
+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 middle of an acre of alder brush, he asked
+indignantly, in response to the hurry-up calls: "Do you think I'm going
+to leave my wife in this forest?"
+
+One overpowering regret--one 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!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+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 interior lakes, ranges, forests and flower pastures.
+Always upon his return (for my house was his home the most of that time)
+he would be full to intoxication of what he had seen, and dinners would
+grow cold and lamps burn out while he held us entranced with his
+impassioned stories. Although his books are all masterpieces 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 especially 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 finishing 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 and nights, which kept ordinary people 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.
+
+"Why, men," I cried, "what's wrong? What brings you here?"
+
+"We want you play (pray)," answered 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 gathered at last that the whole tribe were
+frightened by a mysterious light waving 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 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 foolish as to camp up there on such a night, when there were
+plenty of comfortable 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 natives,
+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 mountains on
+stormy nights?" they asked. "Why does he wander alone on barren peaks
+or on dangerous ice-mountains? There is no gold up there and he never
+takes a gun with him or a pick. _Icta 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 navigator, Vancouver, in 1807. It was a wonderful chart,
+considering what an absurd little sailing vessel he had in which to
+explore those intricate waters with their treacherous winds and tides.
+
+But Vancouver's chart was hastily made, after all, in a land of fog and
+rain and snow. He had not the modern surveyor's instruments, boats or
+other helps. And, besides, this region 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 rivers were opening new passages and
+closing old ones; and, more than all, those mightiest tools of the great
+Engineer, the glaciers, were furrowing 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 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 voyage of discovery was to locate and visit
+the tribes and villages of Thlingets to the north and west of Wrangell,
+to take their census, confer with their chiefs and report upon their
+condition, with a view to establishing schools and churches among them.
+The most of these tribes had never had a visit from a missionary, and I
+felt the eager zeal an Eliot or a Martin at the prospect of telling 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 with me--so
+our plans fitted into each other well.
+
+"We are going to write some history, my boy," Muir would say to me.
+"Think of the honor! We have been chosen to put some interesting people
+and some of Nature's grandest scenes on the page of human record and on
+the map. Hurry! We are daily losing the most important news of all the
+world."
+
+In many respects we were most congenial companions. We both loved the
+same poets and could repeat, 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 studies supplemented each other and our tastes were similar. We had
+both lived clean lives and our conversation 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
+commander of the expedition, he was my teacher and guide into the inner
+recesses and meanings of the islands, bays and mountains we explored
+together.
+
+Our ship for this voyage of discovery, while not so large as
+Vancouver's, was much more shapely and manageable--a _kladushu etlan_
+(six fathom) red-cedar canoe. It belonged 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 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 because of his powers of oratory, his kinship
+with Chief Shathitch of the Chilcat tribe, and his friendly relations
+with other chiefs. He was a born courtier, learned in Indian lore, songs
+and customs, and able to instruct 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, sugar,
+salt and a little dried fruit. We were to depend upon our guns,
+fishhooks, 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 provisions, 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 trouble. 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
+entreaties did not avail she said: "If anything happens to my son, I
+will take your baby as mine in payment."
+
+[Illustration: VOYAGES OF MUIR AND YOUNG 1879 and 1880 IN SOUTHEASTERN
+ALASKA]
+
+One sunny October day we set our prow to the unknown northwest. Our
+hearts beat high with anticipation. 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 overhead and the eagles shrilling from the sky
+promised wonderful adventures.
+
+The voyage naturally divides itself into the human interest and the
+study of nature; yet the two constantly 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 admiration from
+the first. His paddle was sure in the stern, his knowledge of the wind
+and tide unfailing. Whenever we landed the crew would begin 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 acquiescing 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 butter and
+at the three who were to eat, measured with his eye one-third of the
+roll, cut it off with his hunting knife and began to cut it into squares
+and eat it with great gusto. I was about to interfere and show 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. During
+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 westward 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 coming to a native town,
+was to find where the head chief lived, feed him with rice and regale
+him with tobacco, 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 presents of tobacco to each, and then open the floodgate of talk,
+proclaiming my mission and telling them in simplest terms the Great New
+Story. Muir would generally follow me, unfolding in turn some of the
+wonders 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 suspicion
+at first old Tow-a-att's tearful pleadings and Kadishan's oratory
+speedily brought about peace and unity.
+
+These palavers often lasted a 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, getting the
+heads of the families to count their relatives with the aid of
+beans,--the large brown beans representing men, the large white ones,
+women, 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 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 excitement 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 fragment 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 clothing 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 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 tribe, occurred an incident
+of another type. We found this village hilariously drunk. There was a
+very stringent prohibition law over Alaska at that time, which
+absolutely forbade the importation of any spirituous liquors into the
+Territory. But the law was deficient in one vital respect--it did not
+prohibit the importation of molasses; and a soldier during the military
+occupancy of the Territory had instructed the natives in the art of
+making rum. The method was simple. A five-gallon oil can was taken and
+partly filled with molasses as a base; into that alcohol was placed (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 because
+these same Hootz-noo natives first made it, kill at more than forty
+rods, for it generally made the natives _fighting_ drunk.
+
+Through the large company of screaming, dancing and singing natives we
+made our way to the chief's house. By some miracle this majestic-looking
+savage was sober. Perhaps he felt it incumbent upon him 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 looking Indian women I
+have ever met,--tall, straight, lithe and dignified. But, crawling about
+on the floor on all fours, was the most piteous travesty of the human
+form I have ever seen. It was an idiot boy, sixteen 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 swinging
+gait of a bear, he would crouch 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, feeding him with her choicest
+food, putting 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 illness 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, "Oh, would you not be relieved at the
+death of this poor idiot boy?" she saw in my words a threat, and I 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 nothing 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 Chilcoot natives on Lynn Canal, the
+most northern tribes of the Alexandrian Archipelago. Here reigned the
+proudest and worst old savage of Alaska, Chief Shathitch. His wealth
+was very great in Indian treasures, and he was reputed to have cached
+away in different places several houses full of blankets, guns, boxes of
+beads, ancient carved pipes, spears, knives and other valued heirlooms.
+He was said to have stored away over one hundred of the elegant 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 Indians of the Interior in a bondage of 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 villages were full of slaves procured by
+forays upon the coasts of Vancouver Island, Puget Sound, and as far
+south as the mouth of the Columbia River. I was eager to visit these
+large and untaught tribes, and establish a mission among them.
+
+[Illustration: CHILCAT WOMAN WEAVING A BLANKET
+
+Chief Shathitch was said to have over one hundred of the elegant Chilcat
+blankets, woven by hand, from the hair of the mountain goat]
+
+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 excitement in the town. We had hoisted the
+American flag, as was our custom, and had put on our best 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 reception--a shower of
+bullets falling unpleasantly around us. Instinctively 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:
+
+"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 Russian officer had given him. He confessed 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 if they were going to take us prisoners. 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
+chief's 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 fashion of a chief's house--carved corner posts,
+a square of gravel in the center of the room for the fire surrounded 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 chieftain's household goods were stowed and
+where the family took their repose. A brisk fire was burning in the
+middle of the room; and after a short palaver, with gifts of tobacco 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 towards 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, holding about as
+much as the washbowls. We had learned enough Indian etiquette to know
+that at each course our respective vessels were to be filled full of
+food, and we were expected 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 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 separately; for our stomachs had not been
+sufficiently trained to endure that rancid grease. This course finished,
+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 washbowlful, with a dressing of
+seal-grease. The final course was the only berry then in season, the
+long fleshy apple of the wild rose mellowed 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 properly
+receive His Majesty, Muir and I and our two chiefs were each given a
+whole bale of Hudson Bay blankets for a couch. Shathitch made us wait a
+long time, doubtless to impress us with his dignity as supreme chief.
+
+The heat of the fire after the wind and cold of the day made us very
+drowsy. We fought off sleep, however, 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
+astonished to see printed in black letters these words, "To Chief
+Shathitch, from his friend, William H. Seward!" We learned afterwards
+that Seward, in his voyage of investigation, had penetrated to this
+far-off town, had been received in royal state 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, history does not relate.
+
+To me the inspiring part of that 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 Chilcoot 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 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 religion; 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 objects and points of surprise and interest. When we
+landed, the algae, which sometimes filled the little harbors, 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 attention and study. Muir
+was one of the most expert foresters this country has ever produced. He
+was never at a loss. The luxuriant vegetation 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 blossoms; 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 thorough knowledge of botany and his interest in
+that study made every 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 nature and His management of all the affairs of
+the universe, was his constantly reiterated belief. He saw design in
+many things which the ordinary naturalist overlooks, such as the
+symmetry of an island, the balancing branches of a tree, the harmony of
+colors in a group of flowers, the completion of a fully rounded
+landscape. In his view, the Creator of it all saw every beautiful and
+sublime 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 landscape
+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!"
+
+Thus Muir was always discovering to me things which I would never have
+seen myself and opening up to me new avenues of knowledge, delight and
+adoration. There was something so intimate in his theism that it
+purified, elevated and broadened mine, even when I could not agree with
+him. His constant exclamation 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 wonderful
+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 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 Glacier Bay of
+which we had heard. Vancouver's chart gave us no intimation 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 patience, 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 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 transport them a
+dozen miles in a moment, 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, mangling 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;
+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 increasing
+every moment, and as the majestic arena opened before us and the Muir,
+Geicke, Pacific and other great glaciers (all nameless as yet) 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 wonders. Now the marks of recent glaciation showed
+plainly. Here was a conical island of gray granite, whose rounded top
+and symmetrical shoulders 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 resistless 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 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
+ultra-marine; 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 icebergs. 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
+nights we camped on the bare granite rock before we reached the limit of
+the bay. All vegetation had disappeared; 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 matter of the mighty ice mass that had
+engulfed them. They told the story of great forests which had once
+covered this whole region, until the great sea of ice of the second
+glacial 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.
+
+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 summits of Mts. Fairweather and Crillon. These
+mighty summits, twelve thousand, fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand
+feet high, respectively, pierced the sky directly above us; sometimes
+they seemed to be hanging over us threateningly. Only once did the sky
+completely clear; and then was preached to us the wonderful Sermon of
+Glacier Bay.
+
+Early that morning we quitted our camp on a barren rock, steering
+towards 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 purpose to attain to the head of the bay.
+The air was damp and raw, chilling us to the marrow. The forbidding
+granite mountains, showing here and there through the fog, seemed
+suddenly to push out threatening fists and shoulders at us. All night
+long the ice-guns had bombarded us from four or five directions, 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 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 avalanche, threatened us.
+
+Suddenly I heard Muir catch his breath with a fervent ejaculation. "God,
+Almighty!" he said. Following his gaze towards Mt. Crillon, I saw the
+summit highest of all crowned with glory indeed. It was not sunlight;
+there was no appearance 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 colors--as if a pigment, perfectly made and
+thickly spread, too delicate 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, shivering in our wet
+blankets, were glowing 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
+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
+mountains. 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 changing 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 purpose of it all. Now the text of this great
+sermon was emblazoned across the landscape--"_God is Love_"; and 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 landscape; our courage rose; our Indians
+dipped their paddles silently, steering without fear amidst the
+dangerous masses of ice. But there was no profanity in Muir's
+exclamation, "We have met with God!" A lifelong 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 atmospheric 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 surpassing loveliness. Again and again
+Muir would break out, after a long silence of blissful memory, with
+exclamations:
+
+"We saw it; we saw it! He sent us to His most glorious exhibition.
+Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!"
+
+Two or three inspiring days followed. Muir must climb the most
+accessible of the mountains. My weak shoulders forbade me to ascend more
+than two or three thousand 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" 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 governed 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 mountains, 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 forgetting 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 hundred feet
+above the surface of the water. The ice masses were breaking off so fast
+that we were forced to put off far from the face of the glacier. The
+great waves threatened 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 our canoe about half a mile from the edge of the glacier,
+but, attempting 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 boulders 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.
+
+[Illustration: MUIR GLACIER
+
+Returning down Glacier Bay, we visited the largest glacier of all, which
+was to bear Muir's name]
+
+Muir spent a whole day alone on the glacier, walking over twenty miles
+across what he called the glacial lake between two mountains. A cold,
+penetrating, mist-like rain was falling, and dark clouds swept up the
+bay and clung about the shoulders of the mountains. When night
+approached and Muir had not returned, 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 taking 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 before
+midnight, very tired but very happy. "Ah!" he sighed, "I'm glad to be in
+camp. The glacier almost got me this time. If it had not been for the
+beacon and old 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. I've 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 marble 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 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 splendid
+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 Chatham
+Strait again. Landing our Hoonah guide at his village, we took our route
+northward again up Lynn Canal. The beautiful Davison Glacier 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 commenced. Bowling
+down the canal before a strong north wind, we entered 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, enticed us to
+exploration, but the constant 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 exploration to the end of the bay impossible. 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 purpose 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
+minister."
+
+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 icebergs,
+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 thousand 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 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 light;
+     And bars of moonbeams streaming white,
+ Have pearls of ebon raindrops made.
+
+ From darkest sea 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.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE LOST GLACIER
+
+
+John Muir was married in the spring of 1880 to Miss Strentzel, the
+daughter of a Polish physician who had come out in the great stampede of
+1849 to California, but had found his gold in oranges, lemons 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 September. 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 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 replied. "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 conscience? 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 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 villages of the Hanega tribe of Thlingets. 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 Tsimpheans, and on fifteen miles further to the famous mission
+of Father Duncan 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 "noblest Roman of them all" fell dead 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 simply
+and eloquently a few months before. 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 blankets 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 emblem of his position as chief, to see if he could not call
+his tribe back again. At my instance, as I stood with my hand on his
+shoulder, he lifted up his voice to recall his people to their houses,
+when, in an instant, 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 barbarism; and the
+white man, who had taught the Indians the art of making rum, and the
+white man's government, which had afforded no safeguard against such
+scenes, were responsible.
+
+[Illustration: DAVIDSON GLACIER
+
+The beautiful Davidson Glacier, with its great snow-white fan, drew our
+gaze and excited our admiration for two days]
+
+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 seventeen who acted as interpreter,
+formed the crew. When we were about to embark I suddenly thought of my
+little dog Stickeen and made the resolve to take him along. My wife and
+Muir both protested and I almost 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
+independent 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. 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 beautifully
+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
+voyage. 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
+delegation 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
+antics were irresistible. It was Moses who named him Stickeen after
+their tribe--an exceptional honor. Thereafter the whole tribe adopted
+and protected him, and woe to the Indian 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, delivered 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 offending Indian dog--a valuable hunting animal.
+
+Stickeen lacked the obtrusively affectionate 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, he attracted the attention of
+everybody and won all hearts.
+
+As instances: Dr. Kendall, "The Grand Old Man" of our Church, during 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
+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 with Muir was arranged, and curled
+himself down on my coat. The discussion 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 obtrusive, never "butted in"; never offended 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 Stickeen 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 squirrels; but when we would start to the
+woods, the mountains or the glaciers the dog would join us, coming
+mysteriously 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 victory
+was complete; he slept at Muir's feet, went with him on all his rambles;
+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 simple,
+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 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
+oarsman; Billy, a lad of seventeen, our interpreter and Joe's assistant.
+Towards 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 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 waters 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 especially his expedition. He was the commander now, as I had been
+the year before. He had set for himself 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
+accustomed to such rude interruption. They could not understand Muir at
+all, nor in the least comprehend his 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 phosphorescent 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
+illumination. Sometimes their black tops with waving seaweed, surrounded
+by phosphorescent breakers, 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
+accompanying us as if the outraged fairies were bombarding us with tiny
+guns. Then would ensue a tedious groping with the lantern for a camping
+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 wonderful arms. Here we were to find the
+lost glacier. This deep fiord has two great prongs. Neither of them
+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, flashing
+through the trees, disappearing as an island intervened, and again
+opening up with its fair ray as we pushed on. An hour's steady paddling
+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 constant
+rains had swelled the glacial stream, burst through their wing-dams,
+swept away their sluice-boxes and destroyed the work of the summer.
+Strong men of the wilderness as they were, they were not discouraged,
+but were discussing plans for prospecting new places and trying it again
+here next summer. Hot coffee 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
+Endicott Arm, spreading out like the skirmish 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 top, owing to the
+smoothness of the granite rock. It was newly glaciated--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 blankets 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
+granite 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 getting inside the outer fleet of
+icebergs 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, threatened a trap. The only way to
+navigate 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 precaution to put a false bow and stern on
+his canoe, cunningly fashioned out of curved branches of trees and
+hollowed 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 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 rising 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 giants 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 mountains, and the
+depth of the water could only be conjectured. It must have been hundreds
+of feet, perhaps thousands, from the surface of the water to the bottom
+of that fissure. Smooth, polished, shining breasts of bright gray
+granite crowded above the glacier on every side, seeming to overhang the
+ice and the bay. Struggling clumps of evergreens 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 glacier. "To think of his shouldering his
+way through the mountain range like this! Samson, pushing down 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 surveying 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 spent all of these days and part of
+the nights climbing the pinnacled mountains to this and that viewpoint,
+crossing the deep, narrow and dangerous glacier five thousand feet above
+the level of the sea, exploring its tributaries and their side canyons,
+making sketches in his note-book for future elaboration. Stickeen by
+this time constantly followed Muir, exciting my jealousy by his plainly
+expressed preference. Because 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 promontory 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 which had evidently been broken off from the
+mountain; indeed, there was a niche five thousand feet above into which
+it would exactly fit. The 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 green that
+relieved the gray of the granite, there he was dodging in and out of the
+blue crevasses of the upper glacial falls. Darting before him or
+creeping behind was a little black speck which I made out to be
+Stickeen, climbing steeps up which a fox would hardly venture.
+Occasionally I would see him dancing about at the base of a cliff too
+steep for him, up which Muir was climbing, and his piercing howls of
+protest at being 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 forest, 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 variety of blue and purple tints I have never seen
+surpassed--baby-blue, sky-blue, sapphire, turquoise, cobalt, 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.
+
+[Illustration: TAKU GLACIER
+
+There followed an excursion into Taku Bay, that miniature of Glacier
+Bay, with its three living glaciers]
+
+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 of prismatic colors when the
+sunlight struck them. As I gazed I could see the whole upper part of the
+cliff slowly moving forward until 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. Fascinated, 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 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 surprising way. The great tower of crystal
+shot up into the air two hundred 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 shout of
+applause and Stickeen's sharp bark came faintly 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 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 current. 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 afforded 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 before we could penetrate the
+depths of this great canyon.
+
+We shot through the mouth of the canyon at dangerous speed. Indeed, we
+could not do otherwise; we were helpless in the grasp of the torrent. At
+certain stages the surging tide forms an actual fall, for the entrance
+is so narrow that the water 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 narrows, 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 paddles 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 expressed 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 Sentinel, 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 Yosemite, 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 bigger 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 without
+vegetation upon it between the glaciers and the bay showed that 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 glaciers
+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 striking 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 parallel mouldings, like massive cornices 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-like ice must have
+possessed, driven by millions of tons of weight, to mould and shape and
+scoop out these flinty rock faces, as the carpenter's forming plane
+flutes a board!
+
+When we were half-way up this wonderful bay the sun burst through a rift
+of cloud. "Look, look!" exclaimed 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
+rainbows of marvelous distinctness and brilliance, waving and dancing--a
+very riot of color. The tinkling water falling into the bay waked a
+thousand echoes, weird, musical and 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 any 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 Snettisham, Tahkou Harbor; all of which we rudely put on the map,
+or at least extended the arms beyond 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 Gastineau Channel and Stevens
+Passage can only be crossed with canoes at flood tide), we met two old
+gold prospectors whom I had frequently seen at Wrangell--Joe Harris 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 camping 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" sufficiently
+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 prospectors, and
+afterwards Juneau for the other. The great Treadwell gold quartz mine
+was located three miles from Juneau in 1881, and others subsequently.
+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 paddled, 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. 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 follow. 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 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 discovered Stickeen away out in the water, paddling
+calmly and confidently 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 insisted 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 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 glacier and across its surface. On one
+occasion Muir, with the little dog at his heels, crossed entirely in a
+diagonal direction the great glacial lake, a trip of some thirty miles,
+starting before daylight in the morning and not appearing at camp until
+long after dark. Muir always carried 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 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.
+
+[Illustration: THE FRONT OF MUIR GLACIER
+
+We could understand the constant breaking off and leaping up and
+smashing down of the ice, and the formation of the great mass of bergs]
+
+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 rapids, 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 conception 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.
+
+Shortly before we left Muir Glacier, I saw Muir furiously angry for the
+first and last time in my acquaintance with him. We had noticed day
+after day, whenever the mists admitted a view of the mountain slopes,
+bands of mountain goats looking like little white mice against the green
+of the high pastures. I said to Joe, the hunter, one morning: "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 returned
+with a fine young buck on his shoulders. While we were examining 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:
+
+"_Tatlum-pe-ict_ (eleven)," he replied.
+
+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 until 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; although he
+would eat meat when prepared, he never killed a wild animal; even the
+rattlesnakes he did not molest during his rambles in California. 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 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 exploring
+the inlets and glaciers to the west. These days were rainy and cold. We
+groped blindly into unknown, unmapped, fog-hidden fiords and bayous,
+exploring them to their ends and often making excursions to the glaciers
+above them.
+
+The climax of the trip, however, was the last glacier we visited, Taylor
+Glacier, the scene of Muir's great adventure with Stickeen. We reached
+this fine glacier in the afternoon of a very stormy day. We were
+approaching the open Pacific, and the _saanah_, the southeast rain-wind,
+was howling through the narrow entrance into Cross Sound. For twenty
+miles we had been facing strong head winds and tidal waves 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
+wielding his big steering paddle, now on this side, now on that,
+grunting with each mighty stroke, calling encouragement to his crew,
+"_Ut-ha, ut-ha! hlitsin! hlitsin-tin!_ (pull, pull, strong, with
+strength!)"; Joe and Billy rising 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 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 narrow
+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 others of
+this region are receding; this has been coming forward. See the mighty
+ploughshare and its furrow!"
+
+For the icy mass was heaving up the ground clear across its front, and,
+on the side where we stood, had evidently 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 whole 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-morrow," 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 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 pouring,
+and I knew how imperative the call of such a morning as was promised
+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.
+
+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 pocketed 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 movements,
+had, as usual, quietly left his warm nest and followed his adopted
+master. Muir was scolding and expostulating with him as if he were a
+boy. I chuckled to myself at the futility of Muir's efforts; Stickeen
+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 chief's 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 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 circling about, doubtless wondering
+what had become of their parent stream.
+
+The old chief came to our camp early, followed by his squaws bearing
+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 interpreter, and asked for a big talk.
+
+With all ceremony I made preparations, gave more presents of leaf
+tobacco and hardtack and composed myself for the palaver. After the
+usual preliminaries, in which he told 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
+compliments 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 below it,
+and here for years great schools of king salmon came crowding 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!"
+
+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 answer. When I exclaimed in horror
+at his deed of blood he was astonished; he could not understand.
+
+"Why, they were _my_ slaves," he said, "and the man suggested it
+himself. He was glad to go to death to help his chief."
+
+A few years after this our missionary 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 embraced the new gospel of peace and love.
+He could not get rid of his superstition about the glacier, however, and
+about eight years afterwards, visiting at Wrangell, he told me as an
+item of news which he expected 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 driving passionately in horizontal sheets shut out the mountains
+and the upper plateau of 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
+ventured to face the wind on the glacier, but had contented himself with
+tracing its eastern side, and was somewhere 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 command: clam chowder, fried porpoise, bacon
+and beans, "savory meat" made of mountain kid with potatoes, onions,
+rice and curry, camp biscuit 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
+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 without 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 succession, without a question asked or a word
+uttered. Lot kept the fire blazing 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
+silence. "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 pounding
+of the blanket with his heavy tail.
+
+Then Muir began to talk, and little by little, between sips of coffee,
+the story of the day was unfolded. Soon memories crowded for utterance
+and I listened till midnight, entranced by a succession of vivid
+descriptions 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.
+
+[Illustration: GLACIAL CREVASSES
+
+"We had to make long, narrow tacks and doublings, tracing the edges of
+tremendous transverse and longitudinal crevasses--beautiful and awful"]
+
+When Muir described his marooning on the narrow island of ice
+surrounded by fathomless crevasses, with a knife-edged sliver curving
+deeply "like the cable of a suspension bridge" diagonally across it as
+the only means of escape, I shuddered at his peril. I held my breath as
+he told of the terrible risks he 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
+determination 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, intoxicated by his escape, he became a living 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 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
+rewritten 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 balanced well. He had the keenest
+sense of melody, as well as of harmony, in his sentence structure, and
+this great dog-story of his is a remarkable instance of the growth to
+perfection of the great production of a great master.
+
+The wonderful power of endurance of this man, whom Theodore Roosevelt
+has well called a "perfectly natural man," is instanced by the fact
+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 promised 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 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 attacked the
+Stickeens, killing old Tow-a-att, Moses and another of our Christian
+Indians. The trouble was not settled yet, and although the two 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 approached Angoon, however, I heard the war-drums
+beating with their peculiar 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 dancing 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 hurried up to the head chief of the
+Hootz-noos, who was alternately haranguing 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
+carvings 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 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
+natives 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
+Baranof 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 ferocity at the hunter, and one little tap
+of that huge paw crushed his skull like an egg-shell. His companion
+brought his body home; and now the whole tribe had formally declared
+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 their way.
+
+We had been rowing all night before 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 reception 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.
+
+Alaska at that time had no vestige of civil government, no means of
+punishing crime, no civil officers except the customs collectors, no
+magistrate or police,--everyone was a law to himself. The only sign of
+authority was this cumbersome sailing vessel with its marines and
+sailors. It could not move out of Sitka harbor without first sending by
+the monthly mail steamer to San Francisco 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 supposed 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 Glacier
+Bay and of the other unmapped 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
+passages, before surveying vessels began to make accurate maps. So from
+its beginning has Uncle Sam neglected 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
+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 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 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 blithe 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.
+
+[Illustration: 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 answers 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 enthusiastic. When he had found
+in his great outdoor museum some peculiar treasure he talked over his
+find with me by letter.
+
+Muir's letters were never commonplace and sometimes they were long and
+rich. I preserved them all; and when, a few years ago, an Alaska
+steamboat sank to the bottom of the Yukon, carrying with it my library
+and all my literary possessions, the loss of these letters from my
+friend caused me more sorrow than the loss of almost any other of my
+many priceless treasures.
+
+The summer of 1881, the year following that of our second canoe voyage,
+Muir went, as scientific and literary 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 published
+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 process 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
+wilderness."
+
+A very brief visit at Muir's home near Martinez, California, in the
+spring of 1883 found him at what he frankly said was very distasteful
+work--managing a large fruit ranch. He was doing the work well and
+making his orchards pay large dividends; but his heart was in the hills
+and woods. Eagerly he questioned me of my travels and of the "progress"
+of the glaciers and woods of Alaska. Beyond a few short mountain trips
+he had seen nothing for two years of his beloved wilds.
+
+Passionately he voiced his discontent: "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
+expired. The educational necessities of my children and the feeling that
+was growing upon me like a smothering cloud that if I remained much
+longer among the Indians I would lose all power to talk or write good
+English, drove me from the Northwest 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-picking 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 so heavy it is like to crush
+me. I'm 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 example.
+I, who have breathed the mountain 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; putting
+them in prison! And for money! Man! I'm like to die of the shame of it.
+
+"And then you're not safe a day in this sordid world of money-grubbing
+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 I'd 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. I'm 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 enchantment. 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 August saw me on _The Queen_, the largest of
+that great fleet of passenger boats that were traversing the thousand
+miles of wonder and beauty between Seattle and Skagway. These steamboats
+were all laden with gold seekers and their goods. Seattle sprang into
+prominence and wealth, doubling her population 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, doctors,
+clerks, merchants, farmers, mechanics, engineers, reporters,
+sharpers--all gold-struck--all mad with excitement--all rushing
+pell-mell into a thousand new and hard experiences.
+
+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 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 together 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 and down the Yukon to the Klondyke, 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 I'm daft," he asked, "like a' the lave o' thae puir
+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 reporter's job tendered to him. I
+refused, urging my lack of training for such work and my more important
+and responsible position.
+
+"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 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 delight 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 doctor to him. After
+the usual examination the physician asked, "What do you generally do for
+a cold?"
+
+"Oh," said Muir, "I shiver it away."
+
+"Explain yourself," said the puzzled doctor.
+
+"We-ll," 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 snowstorm,
+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 welcome to use it
+in your practice."
+
+"Well," laughed the doctor, "if I had such patients as you in such 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 exclamations
+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
+welcome from those who remained warmed our hearts.
+
+From Wrangell northward the steamboat followed the route of our canoe
+voyage of 1880 through Wrangell Narrows into Prince Frederick 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 Skagway
+and examining the flora of that region. They kept mostly off the trail
+of the struggling, straggling army of _Cheechakoes_ (newcomers) 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 journey this time, my friend," he admonished
+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, yourself; and break
+clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the
+woods. Wash 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 public to the needs
+of this newly discovered 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, 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 steamship
+_George W. Elder_, carrying one of the most remarkable companies of
+scientific men ever gathered together in one expedition. Mr. Harriman,
+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 Institute, and, not least, John Muir. Indeed 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
+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 Interior. But what a
+joy and inspiration 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 glaciers of
+Prince William's Sound, and renew my studies of this good world under my
+great Master.
+
+A letter from Muir about his summer's cruise, written in November, 1899,
+reached me at Nome in June, 1900; for those of us who had reached that
+bleak, exposed northwestern 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 instruction. 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 together, 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 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 treeless, 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 friendships inestimably
+precious and rich; but for me the World has produced but one John Muir;
+and to no other 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 correction 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 and camping in the forests and among the
+hills. When he was seventy-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 companionship with the trees, the mountains, the
+flowers and the animals, that is altogether fine. Surely no such books
+of mountains and forests 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 animals he has met in his rambles, without any
+attempt to put into their characters anything that does not belong to
+them, without "manufacturing his data," he somehow manages to do much
+more than introduce 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 Douglas 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 top, and who had shouted with delight 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
+immortality my ownership of an immortalized 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 separated from his mountains, trees and glaciers.
+Somewhere, I am sure, he is making other explorations, solving other
+natural problems, using that brilliant, inventive genius to good effect;
+and some time again I shall hear him unfold anew, with still clearer
+insight and more eloquent 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 animals 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
+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 meantime I am lonely for them and
+think of them often, and say, with _The Harvester_, "What a dog!--and
+what a MAN!!"
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been
+faithfully preserved.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR***
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 19:54:17 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 19:54:17 -0700
commit	baa6eafb8324e37a9f606dacf00c20ed7333066f (patch)
tree	a7772d528063cc43033f549f55d3cb58b2eee381