Letter from [John Muir] to [Louie Strentzel Muir], 1881 May 22.

• Main Author: John Muir
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1881
• Subjects: John Muir; correspondence; letters; author; writing; naturalist; California; correspondent; mail; message; post; exchange of letters; missive; notes; epistle; Bering Sea; The Schooner; Paul Islands; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmcl/10447; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmcl/article/35380/type/native/viewcontent/fullsize.jpg

To Mrs. Muir Sunday afternoon, May 22, 1881.Dear Louie: We left uonalaska this morning at four o'clock and are now in Bering Sea on our way to St. George and St. Paul Islands. We expect to reach St. Paul tomorrow and remain there half a day or so, when I will send this and another letter that I have for you by the Alaska Com. Co.'s steamer back to unalaska to be forwarded by the first chance. This morning I sent you five by the schooner H. L. Tiernan, which is going to Oregon where they will be put in the mail. Next Tuesday or Wednesday we expect to come in sight of the ice, but hope to find open water, along the west shore, that will enable us to get through the Strait to Cape Serdze or thereabouts. In a month or so we expect to be at St.Michaels, where we will have a chance to send more letters and still later by whalers.You will, therefore, have no very long period of darkness, though on my side I fear I shall have to wait a long time for a single word, and it is only by trusting in you to be cheerful and busy for the sake of your health and for the sake of our little dall of us that I can have any peace and rest throughout this trip, however long or short. Now you must be sure to sleep early to make up for waking during the night, and occupy all the day with light work and cheerful thoughts, and never brood and dream of trouble, and I will come back with the knowledge that I need and a fresh supply of the wilderness in my health.I am already quite well and eat with savage appetite whatsoever is brought within reach.This morning I devoured half of a salmon trout 18 inches long, a slice of ham, half a plateful of potatoes, two biscuits and four or five slices of bread with coffee and something else that I have forgotten, but which was certainly buried in me and lost. For lunch, two platefuls of soup, a heap of fat compound onion hash, two pieces of toast, and 3 or 4 slices of bread, with potatoes, and a big sweet cake, and now at 3 o'clock I am very hungry---a hunger that no amount of wave-tossing will abate. ...