The Jeanette Search. Exploration of Herald Island-No Signs of the Missing Ship. Dangers of Arctic Exploration-Fauna and Flora of the North. (Special Correspondence of the Bulletin.) Steamer Corwin (Off Herald Island), Arctic Ocean, July 31, 1881.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1881
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; pamphlets; journal articles; speeches; writing; annotation; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Herald Island; Jagged; Ice Sheet; Alaska; Siberia
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/165; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmb/article/1164/viewcontent/125.pdf

written, July 31, 1881 Pub. Sep. 28 " EVENING "GorwiiF THE JEAimETTE SEARCH. Exploration of Herald Island—No Signs of the Missing Ship. JJasgfers of Arctic Exploration—Fauna and Flora of tlie Worth. Written, July 51, Pub. Sep. 29 1681 •IT' P Q '- this lowest portion being about half a mile, and the average width about two miles.:'The entire island is a mass of granite, with the exception of a patch of meiamorphie slate near the center, and no doubt owes its existence with so considerable a highly to the superior resistance this granite offered to the degrading action of the northern ice sheet, traces of which are here plainly shown, as well as on the shores of Siberia and Alaska and down through Behring Strait southward beyond Vancouver Island. Traces of the subsequent partial glaciation it has been subjected to are also manifested iu glacial valleys of considerable depth as compared with the size of the island. 1 noticed four ot these, besides many marginal glacial grooves around the sides. One small remnant with feeble action still exists near the middle of the island. I also noted several scored and polished patches on the hardest and most enduring of the outswelling rock bosses. This little island, standing as it does alone out in the Polar Sea, is a fine glacial monument. A MIDNIGHT OBSERVATION. The midnight hour I spent alone on the highest Bummit,- one of the most impressive hours of my life. The deepest silence seemed to press down on all the vast, immeasurable, virgin landscape. The sun near the horizon reddened the edges of belted cloud-bars near the base of the sky, and the jagged ice bowlders crowded together over the frozen ocean stretching indefinitely northward, while more than a hundred miles of that mysterious Wrangel Land was seen blue, in the northwest, a wavering line of hill and dale over the white and blue ice-prairie, and pale gray mountains beyond, well calculated to fix the eye of a mountaineer, but it was to the far north that I ever found myself turning where the iee met the sky. I ...