Letter from [John Muir] to Louie [Strentzel], [1879] Aug 19.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1879
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; correspondence; letters; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Hudson; Hudson Bay; Indian; Thibert Creek
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/500; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/muir-correspondence/article/1499/viewcontent/muir03_1145_md_1.pdf

On tributary of Thibert Creek,Aug. 19 [1879].Dear Louie:I have at last been blest by the good lord in being allowed to taste of this wild and beautiful Northland away back at the fountains of the rivers. The waters here flow into the Arctic Ocean. This stream is a tributary of the great Mackenzie. There is a mountain, the highest hereabouts, which I will climb early tomorrow. The view is said by the Frenchman in whose little hut I am sheltered to be very extensive.I wish you could see him. He is an old voyageur of the Hudson Bay Co. We have been sitting in his queer wee cabin all the eve talking adventure. I wish you could see how the firelight glows on his face as he talks about the birds and animals. He loves flowers too, I am sure, and is a gentleman, but how wild. It was snowing a little while ago. What big feathery flakes, an inch wide and more, intensely beautiful and exciting as they slanted down through the trees in front of the cabin. How impressive in this noble wild! I came up here from Wrangel by steamer 200 miles and afoot a hundred miles. Am a little tired. 300 miles to Wrangel. I can hardly see to write, the fire in the wee ingle blinks so. Am on the dirt floor - about eleven o'clock, but thought of you, and so write you the kind of a line I can. Mean to go down the Stickeen in a canoe with an Indian, stop and climb among the glaciers as I go. Grand facts here. Counted a hundred ? on way up the river. The stars shining through clouds. ?Goodnight,[John Muir]