1881 July 4 JM to Louie p1a

• Main Author: Muir, John
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1881
• Subjects: Environmentalist; naturalist; travel; conservation; national parks; John Muir; history; correspondence; letters; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Bering Strait; Lawrence Island; St Michael; Plover Bay; Ice Sheet; Point Barrow; St Lawrence Island
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/muir-correspondence/4835; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/context/muir-correspondence/article/5851/viewcontent/muir00_054_let.pdf

[Page 1] St. Michael July 4th, 1881. 7.40 P.M. Dear Louie. We arrived here this afternoon at 3 o'clock and intend to stay about three days, taking in coal and provisions, and then To push off to the North, We intend to spend nearly a month along the American shore, perhaps as far North as Point Barrow, before we attempt to go out into the Arctic Ocean among the ice, for it is in August and September that the ice is most open. Then, if, as we hope from the favorableness of the season, we succeed in reaching Wrangell Land to search for traces of the Jeanette, or should find any sure tidings of her, we will be back in sunny, iceless California about the end of October, in grape time. Otherwise we will "[Page 2] probably return to St. Michael and take on a fresh supply of coal and nine months' provisions, and go north again prepared to winter in case we should get caught in the north of Bering Strait. A few miles to the north of Plover Bay some 13 or 14 canoe loads of natives came out to trade; more than a hundred of them were aboard at once, making a very lively picture. When we proceeded on our way they allowed us to tow them for a mile or two in order to take advantage of the northerly current in going back to their village. They were dragged along, five or six canoes on each side, making the Corwin look like a mother field-mouse with a big family hanging to her teats, one of the first country sights that filled me with astonishment when a boy." "[Page 3] here I had very fine views of St. Lawrence Island from the north side, showing the trend of the ice-sheet, very plainly, much to my delight. The middle of the island is crowded with volcanic cones, mostly post-glacial, and therefore regular in form and but little wasted, and I counted upwards of 50 from one point of view. Just in front of this volcanic portion on the Coast there is a dead Esquimo village where we landed and found that every soul of the population had died two yrs. ago of starvation. More than 200 skeletons were seen lying about like rubbish, in ...