Alaska Notes Summer of 1890, 1890 [1895; 1912?], Image 11

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 2019
• Subjects: Sandwich Islands; Pacific; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmn-a2/11; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/jmn-a2/article/1010/type/native/viewcontent/MuirReel33_Notebook02_Img011.jpg

16 ft above the blue waters with picturesquely sculptured summits & long withdrawing slopes heavy clad with spruce & fir. Here we met the steamer Queen to which the Alaska passengers were transferred. & [we] were soon on our way to icy Alaska [through the islands to the regions of ice]. I had pleasant company on the San Fransisco steamer & left it with regret[ted having to change]. The most interesting man I met on the trip & the best talking was an old weather-beaten Scandanavian, a sea captain & owner of several small vessels, well acquainted with the Pacific Coast & other coasts [and the Sandwitch [Sandwich] Islands] from long experience & a thousand battles [fights] with fogs & storms. He was a passenger on the Puebla on his way to Port Blakely on Puget Sound where he was having a brig built. He was a bluff hearty sturdy specimen of his race, a worthy descendent of the old Norse Sea Kings, descended no doubt from the Norse Pirates [or] Sea Kings [as they were sometimes called] & so suggestion of the sea one fancied in talking with him. His very words savored of the brine & seemed to raise[d] the winds & waves. He was [evidently] a fearless man of [great courage], keen-eyes & a stubborn skeptic, but the kindest soul on board nevertheless 17 As a pugnacious iconoclast he was the best natured growler I ever met. He was particularly severe on priests [& the clergy] from being poor sailors perhaps in general, declaring again & again that as a class they were good only for people who dwelt in towns & had nothing to do. Sailors had to face real work & real danger every day, all their life[s] was real & left no space for nonsense & mystery & other worlds. To make ones way through the waves of this world [one] was work enough for him he said & required [took] all his attention. Etc etc. plunging on [with] full sail with or without encouragement. He refused to believe even in glaciers. A truly sad state of mind & I told him he must ...