July-August 1879, Alaska Trip Image 45

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1879
• Subjects: John Muir; journals; drawings; writings; travel; journaling; naturalist; Jagged; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/1425; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmj-all/article/2424/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

too slowly and therefore they turned back, leaving them to die unsaved yet a while. Therefore we directed the Captain to return to Wrangell. The scenery along the sixty miles we sailed is not unlike that of the straits and channels passed through in coming from Victoria to Wrangell, lovely shores wooded close down to tide level, seemingly untouched by man save at long intervals for some lonely cabin where a grassy margin allowed an open space islands, too, in endless variety and composition. The mountains, however, on the mainland are higher and glaciers larger and more numerous. The charm of all was the bland mellow sunshine lying on the lovely shores and calm glassy water, and in the distance the lofty mountains rising higher hacked and worn into an imposing array of pinnacles and towers and black outstanding battlements. The jagged walls, mostly black, circling around the most fruitful in-wombs I ever beheld; then below these the wide neve fields sending up long white fingers into the dark recesses of the peaks and the bluish gray ice currents pouring from the base of these and coming down in beautiful curves into the forests, the largest of them to sea-level. {sketch} https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/2424/thumbnail.jpg