Letter from John Muir to Louie [Muir], 1899 Jul 3.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1899
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; correspondence; letters; Emerald Isle; Ribes; Dwarf birch; Kodiak; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/2418; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/muir-correspondence/article/3417/viewcontent/muir10_0863_let.pdf

Kodiak. July 3, 1899Dear Louie -I sent you a word from Homer, as Katchemak Bay, a branch of Cook Inlet last week when we intended to go on up the main Inlet to the head. But the plans were changed & we sailed across the mouth of the Inlet & down the coast of the Alaska peninsula to Kukak Bay where at midnight a party of ornithologists & mice catchers were landed with their presses & traps to work a week or so. Thence we sailed to Yuyak Bay on the northwest side of Kodiak Island near the famous Karluk canning station, a charming place [embosomed?] in green hills & mountains where the hunters of big game were sent off to hunt in the interior of the island. bears moose etc. Carrying guns & baggage & plans enough for a [Marsilla?] campaign. Thence we came here by way of the beautiful Northern & Narrow straits to this old Russian town arriving last Saturday afternoon. The weather is delightful & everybody is happy & well. The hills & mountains up to the snow are marvelously flowery & plushy & green Not even the Emerald Isle is so softly richly brilliantly green. The Sitka spruce & Western & Mountain hemlocks form fine forests all along the coast this far, or rather to Cook Inlet. Here less than a fifth of the Coast region is forested & only with02598 2the spruce as far as I have seen all the rest of the ground is embossed with plushy grass & ferns (4 kinds) & heathwarts (Cassiope, Vaccimums, Empetrum, Kalmia, rhododendron, Loisleuria etc), primula, geranium rose Tofieldia dwarf willows, dwarf birch, Alder, daisy, fritillaria cypripedium a magnificent purple orchis blue bell, sedums, saxifrages, potentilla, [gemm?], buttercups, rubus, ribes, anemome, etc etc etc scare a square inch of surface up to a height of 1500 or 2000 feet above the sea is bare It is all one rich furred carpet or bossy plushy mantle embroidered with purple & golden flowers. The rhododendron is purple, only a few inches high, large flowers It is just coming into bloom ...