June-October 1881, Cruise of the Corwin, Part II Image 57

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1881
• Subjects: John Muir; journals; drawings; writings; travel; journaling; naturalist; Diomede Island
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/2059; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmj-all/article/3058/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

of the bowlders, and even on the surface of the snow in some places, as regularly and as beautifully imbricated and arranged as are the feathers of a bird. The effect is marvelously beautiful and interesting. The points of the feather grow to windward, and show by their trends all the directions of the glinting surging wind as it sped past their innumerable angles and facets. When this frost feather-covering beings to melt, it falls off in one piece, the inner side seeming like ice. Thus the rocks on the ridge-tops where the gale is most furious as it is called, and where only ruin seems to be the object, are most clothed upon with beauty, beauty growing with and depending on the violence of the wind. And so in like manner do men find themselves enriched by storms that seem only big with ruin, both in the physical and moral worlds. We weighed anchor and got away at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and reached the west Diomede Island village at 4:30. Here we took aboard the boatswain and Mr. Nelson’s man, whom we had left to make observations https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmj-all/3058/thumbnail.jpg