June-September 1879, Expedition to Alaska Image 40

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1879
• Subjects: John Muir; journals; drawings; writings; travel; journaling; naturalist; Arctic; Bear Pond; Canada; Indian; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/1370; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmj-all/article/2369/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

175 Channel. The stream was one of those shady brawling rocky currents that trout most dearly love to live in full of eddies & sheltering pools & clear & cool. The [gathered] jewels of the woods [flowing] in part from the snow on wooded hills [8] or 10 miles away & into a lake about a mile long & then [two] one miles further down into the bay the banks mossy every stone cushioned & every log & tree trunk above the [rush] of the flood. The day was too bright strange to say in the cloud land & we caught only about a dozen all told most of them quite small but perfect beauties both in color & form. After climbing along up to the lake now in the middle of the stream jumping from boulder to boulder [beneath] the [leaning] arching trees & logs [now] out among the bushes of the bank casting our hooks into deep pools at the foot of cascades & along [side] mossy logs as [temptingly] as possible, the Indian boys keeping mostly ahead of us 176 we halted at the outlet each of [the] [four] of us choosing a boulder for a stand & fished in solemn [silence] but only caught 2 small unfortunates then the Col [colonel] & the brown pair [of] attendants pushed on around the meadow margin to the inlet to [try] their luck then while I lingered to botanize in the delightful boggy flora wh [which] occupied a level filled up portion of the lake basin, a margin between the water & the forest about from 30 to 75 yds wide. Here the flora [is strictly arctic] suggests the cold [sphagnum] & [carex] bogs of Canada [W] The delight with wh [which] I found again my old favorites the [heathuvits] - Kalmia [Ledum] huckleberry the cranberry with its dainty pretty pink bells the darling [linnaea] with its [fragrant] [twin] bells pink & white a gentian a potentillas, mosses spagnum [sphagnum] [hypnum] [polybrubium] Buck [bear] pond [lily] spiranthes solomons seal gold thread [pyrola] etc. may be https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/2369/thumbnail.jpg