Travels in Alaska | Page 2

mass of Alaska notes that had accumulated under his
hands for more than thirty years.
The events recorded in this volume end in the middle of the trip of
1890. Muir's notes on the remainder of the journey have not been found,
and it is idle to speculate how he would have concluded the volume if
he had lived to complete it. But no one will read the fascinating
description of the Northern Lights without feeling a poetical
appropriateness in the fact that his last work ends with a portrayal of
the auroras--one of those phenomena which elsewhere he described as
"the most glorious of all the terrestrial manifestations of God."
Muir's manuscripts bear on every page impressive evidence of the pains
he took in his literary work, and the lofty standard he set himself in his
scientific studies. The counterfeiting of a fact or of an experience was a
thing unthinkable in connection with John Muir. He was tireless in
pursuing the meaning of a physiographical fact, and his extraordinary

physical endurance usually enabled him to trail it to its last
hiding-place. Often, when telling the tale of his adventures in Alaska,
his eyes would kindle with youthful enthusiasm, and he would live over
again the red-blooded years that yielded him "shapeless harvests of
revealed glory."
For a number of months just prior to his death he had the friendly
assistance of Mrs. Marion Randall Parsons. Her familiarity with the
manuscript, and with Mr. Muir's expressed and penciled intentions of
revision and arrangement, made her the logical person to prepare it in
final form for publication. It was a task to which she brought devotion
as well as ability. The labor involved was the greater in order that the
finished work might exhibit the last touches of Muir's master-hand, and
yet contain nothing that did not flow from his pen. All readers of this
book will feel grateful for her labor of love.
I add these prefatory lines to the work of my departed friend with
pensive misgiving, knowing that he would have deprecated any
discharge of musketry over his grave. His daughters, Mrs. Thomas Rea
Hanna and Mrs. Buel Alvin Funk, have honored me with the request to
transmit the manuscript for publication, and later to consider with them
what salvage may be made from among their father's unpublished
writings. They also wish me to express their grateful acknowledgments
to Houghton Mifflin Company, with whom John Muir has always
maintained close and friendly relations.
William Frederic Bade.
Berkeley, California, May, 1915.


Part I
The Trip of 1879

Travels in Alaska
Chapter I
Puget Sound and British Columbia
After eleven years of study and exploration in the Sierra Nevada of
California and the mountain-ranges of the Great Basin, studying in
particular their glaciers, forests, and wild life, above all their ancient
glaciers and the influence they exerted in sculpturing the rocks over
which they passed with tremendous pressure, making new landscapes,
scenery, and beauty which so mysteriously influence every human
being, and to some extent all life, I was anxious to gain some
knowledge of the regions to the northward, about Puget Sound and
Alaska. With this grand object in view I left San Francisco in May,
1879, on the steamer Dakota, without any definite plan, as with the
exception of a few of the Oregon peaks and their forests all the wild
north was new to me.
To the mountaineer a sea voyage is a grand, inspiring, restful change.
For forests and plains with their flowers and fruits we have new
scenery, new life of every sort; water hills and dales in eternal visible
motion for rock waves, types of permanence.
It was curious to note how suddenly the eager countenances of the
passengers were darkened as soon as the good ship passed through the
Golden Gate and began to heave on the waves of the open ocean. The
crowded deck was speedily deserted on account of seasickness. It
seemed strange that nearly every one afflicted should be more or less
ashamed.
Next morning a strong wind was blowing, and the sea was gray and
white, with long breaking waves, across which the Dakota was racing
half-buried in spray. Very few of the passengers were on deck to enjoy
the wild scenery. Every wave seemed to be making enthusiastic, eager
haste to the shore, with long, irised tresses streaming from its tops,

some of its outer fringes borne away in scud to refresh the wind, all the
rolling, pitching, flying water exulting in the beauty of rainbow light.
Gulls and albatrosses, strong, glad life in the midst of the stormy beauty,
skimmed the waves against the wind, seemingly without effort,
oftentimes flying nearly a mile without a single wing-beat, gracefully
swaying from side to side and tracing the curves