1880 Aug 14 JM to Louie p1

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1880
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; correspondence; letters; Prince of Wales Island
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/4834; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/muir-correspondence/article/5850/viewcontent/muir00_050_let.pdf

[Page 1] Residence of Mr. Young, Fort Wrangell, Aug. 14th, 1880. 11:45 A.M. Dear Louie I am back in my old quarters, and how familiar it all seems -- the lovely water, the islands, the Indians with their baskets and blankets and berries, the jet ravens prying and flying here and there, and the bland, dreamy, hushed air drooping and brooding kindly over all. I miss [fathers?] so much. I have just been over the battleground with Mr. Young, and have seen the spot where he fell. Instead of coming here direct from Sitka we called at Klawack on Prince of Wales Island for freight -- canned salmon, oil, furs, etc., which detained us a day. We arrived here last evening at 10:30. Klawack is a fishing and trading station located in a most charmingly beautiful bay, and while lying there, the evening before last, we witnessed a glorious auroral display which lasted more than three hours. First we noticed long white lance-shaped streamers shooting up from a dark cloud-like mass near the horizon, then a well defined arch, the corona, almost black, with a luminous edge appeared, and from it, radiating like spokes from a hub, the streamers kept shooting with a quick glancing motion, and remaining drawn on the dark sky, distinct, + white, as fine lines drawn on a blackboard. And when half the horizon was adorned with these silky fibrous "[Page 2] lances of light reaching to and converging at the zenith, broad flapping folds and waves of the same white auroral light came surging on from the corona with astonishing energy and quickness, the folds and waves spending themselves near the zenith like waves on a smooth sloping sand-beach, But throughout the greater portion of their courses the motion was more like that of sheet lightning, or wave made in broad folds of muslin when rapidly shaken; then in a few minutes those delicate billows of light, rolled up among the silken streamers, would vanish, leaving the more lasting streamers with the stars shining through them; then some of the seemingly permanent streamers would vanish also, ...