Letter from John Muir to Mary [Harriman et al.], 1899 Aug 30.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1899
• Subjects: John Muir; correspondence; letters; author; writing; naturalist; California; correspondent; mail; message; post; exchange of letters; missive; notes; epistle; Bouquet; Draper; Roland; Archipelago; glacier; glaciers; Kodiak; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/2610; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmcl/article/27543/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

To the "Big Four": the misses Mary and Cornelia Harriman,and the misses Elizabeth [illegible]and Dorothea Draper[Rough Draft of letter]["Big Four": refers to Mary and Cornelia Harriman, Elizabeth Averell & Dorothea?[Martinez],Aug. 30,1899.Girls four, Mary and Cornelia, Elizabeth and Dorothea -- the "Big Four"Who with Carol and Roland Harriman, the "Little Two", kept us all young on the never-to-be-forgotten H.A.E.1 Dear Girls:I received your kind compound letter from the R.R. washout with great pleasure, for it showed, as I fondly thought, that no wreck, washout, or crevasse of any sort will be likely to break or wash out the memories of our grand trip, or abate the friendliness that sprung up on the Elder among the wild scenery of Alaska during these last two memorable months. No doubt every one of the favored happy band feels as I do that this was the grandest trip of his life. To me it was peculiarly grateful and interesting because nearly all my life I have wandered and studied alone. On the Elder, I found not only the fields I liked best to study, but a hotel, a club and a home, together with a floating University in which I enjoyed the instruction and companionship of a lot of the best fellows imaginable, culled and arranged like a well balanced bouquet, or like a band of glaciers flowing smoothly together, each in its own channel, or perhaps at times like a lot of round bowlders merrily swirling and chafing against each other in a glacier pothole.And what a glorious trip it was for you girls, flying like birds from wilderness to wilderness, the wildest and brightest of America, tasting most every science under the sun, with fine breezy exercise, scrambles over mossy logs and rocks in the spruce forests, walks on the crystal prairies of the glaciers, on the flowery boggy tundras, in the luxuriant wild gardens of Kodiak, and the islands of Bearing Sea, and plashing boat rides in the piping bracing winds, all the while your eyes filled with magnificent scenery -- the Alexander Archipelago with its ...