Alaska Land. Perilous Adventure-Shooting the Rapids. A Typical Young Yosemite-Royal Glaciers-Alaska Flora. (Special Correspondence of the Bulletin.) Gold Camp, Sum Dum Bay, Alaska, August 20, 1880.

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1880
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; pamphlets; journal articles; speeches; writing; annotation; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/153; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmb/article/1152/viewcontent/106.pdf

Alaska-Land Perilous Adventure-Shooting the Rapids. A Typical Young Yosemite-Royal Glaciers-Alaska Flora. [SPHCJAI, CORRESPONDENCE OF THE BDIUSTIKJ Gold Camp, Sot: Dcm Bat, ) Alaska, August 30,1880. j The song of our sixteen cascades made us sleep al! the sounder last night, and we were so happy as to find this morning that the bergs and berg-waves had spared" our canoe, and that our way down the fiord was comparatively open. Sliding ourselves and baggage down the rocks we set off in high spirits down the fiord and across to (he right side to explore a remarkably deep and narrow branch of the main fiord that I had noted on the way up, and that, from the magnitude of the glacial character of its advertisement on the two colossal rocks that guard the entrance, promised a rich reward for our pains. After we had sailed about three miles up this narrow side fiord we came to what seemed to be the head of it, for trees and rocks swept in a curve around from one side to the other without showing any opening, although the walls of the canyon were seen extending back indefinitely, one majestic brow beyond the other, into the alps. In tracing this curve, however, in a leisurely way, in search of a good landing, we were startled by Captain lyeen shouting "Skookum chuck! Skookum chuck!" (strong water, strong, water) and found our canoe being carried sideways by a powerful current, the roar of whijh we had"mistaken for that of a big waterfall. We barely escaped being swept over a rocky bar on the boiling, foaming flood, which, as we afterwards learned,would have been only a happy push on our way. After we had effected a landing we climbed the highest rock near the shore to seek a view of the channel beyond the rapids, to find out whether or no we could safely venture in. Up, over rolling, mossy, bushy, burnished rock waves we dragged and scrambled for an hour or two, which resulted in a fair view of the deep blue waters of the fiord stretching on and on along the feet of the most majestic Yosemite rocks we had yet seen. This ...