Transcriber’s Note
The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved.
ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR
[Illustration: JOHN MUIR WITH ALASKA SPRUCE CONES]
ALASKA DAYS WITH JOHN MUIR
by
S. HALL YOUNG
Illustrated
[Illustration]
New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh
Copyright, 1915, by
Fleming H. Revell Company
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
CONTENTS
I THE MOUNTAIN 11
II THE RESCUE 37
III THE VOYAGE 59
IV THE DISCOVERY 95
V THE LOST GLACIER 125
VI THE DOG AND THE MAN 163
VII THE MAN IN PERSPECTIVE 201
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
John Muir with Alaska Spruce Cones _Title_
Fort Wrangell 12
The Mountain 24
One of the Marvelous Array of Lakes 40
Glacier--Stickeen Valley 54
Chilcat Woman Weaving a Blanket 82
Muir Glacier 114
Davidson Glacier 128
Taku Glacier 150
The Front of Muir Glacier 168
Glacial Crevasses 186
John Muir in Later Life 200
Map 70
(Voyages of Muir and Young)
THE MOUNTAIN
THUNDER BAY
Deep calm from God enfolds the land;
Light on the mountain top I stand;
How peaceful all, but ah, how grand!
Low lies the bay beneath my feet;
The bergs sail out, a white-winged fleet,
To where the sky and ocean meet.
Their glacier mother sleeps between
Her granite walls. The mountains lean
Above her, trailing skirts of green.
Each ancient brow is raised to heaven:
The snow streams always, tempest-driven,
Like hoary locks, o'er chasms riven
By throes of Earth. But, still as sleep,
No storm disturbs the quiet deep
Where mirrored forms their silence keep.
A heaven of light beneath the sea!
A dream of worlds from shadow free!
A pictured, bright eternity!
The azure domes above, below
(A crystal casket), hold and show,
As precious jewels, gems of snow,
Dark emerald islets, amethyst
Of far horizon, pearls of mist
In pendant clouds, clear icebergs, kissed
By wavelets,--sparkling diamonds rare
Quick flashing through the ambient air.
A ring of mountains, graven fair
In lines of grace, encircles all,
Save where the purple splendors fall
On sky and ocean's bridal-hall.
The yellow river, broad and fleet,
Winds through its velvet meadows sweet--
A chain of gold for jewels meet.
Pours over all the sun's broad ray;
Power, beauty, peace, in one array!
My God, I thank Thee for this day.
I
THE MOUNTAIN
In the summer of 1879 I was stationed at Fort Wrangell in southeastern
Alaska, whence I had come the year before, a green young student fresh
from college and seminary--very green and very fresh--to do what I could
towards establishing the white man's civilization among the Thlinget
Indians. I had very many things to learn and many more to unlearn.
Thither came by the monthly mail steamboat in July to aid and counsel me
in my work three men of national reputation--Dr. Henry Kendall of New
York; Dr. Aaron L. Lindsley of Portland, Oregon, and Dr. Sheldon Jackson
of Denver and the West. Their wives accompanied them and they were to
spend a month with us.
Standing a little apart from them as the steamboat drew to the dock, his
peering blue eyes already eagerly scanning the islands and mountains,
was a lean, sinewy man of forty, with waving, reddish-brown hair and
beard, and shoulders slightly stooped. He wore a Scotch cap and a long,
gray tweed ulster, which I have always since associated with him, and
which seemed the same garment, unsoiled and unchanged, that he wore
later on his northern trips. He was introduced as Professor Muir, the
Naturalist. A hearty grip of the hand, and we seemed to coalesce at once
in a friendship which, to me at least, has been one of the very best
things I have known in a life full of blessings. From the first he was
the strongest and most attractive of these four fine personalities to
me, and I began to recognize him as my Master who was to lead me into
enchanting regions of beauty and mystery, which without his aid must
forever have remained unseen by the eyes of my soul. I sat at his feet;
and at the feet of his spirit I still sit, a student, absorbed,
surrendered, as this "priest of Nature's inmost shrine" unfolds to me
the secrets of his "mountains of God."
[Illustration: FORT WRANGELL
Near the mouth of the Stickeen--the starting point of the expeditions]
Minor excursions culminated in the chartering of the little steamer
_Cassiar_, on which our party, augmented by two or three friends,
steamed between the tremendous glaciers and through the columned canyons
of the swift Stickeen River through the narrow strip of Alaska's
cup-handle to Glenora, in British Columbia, one hundred and fifty miles
from the river's mouth. Our captain was Nat. Lane, a grandson of the
famous Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon. Stocky, broad-shouldered,
muscular, given somewhat to strange oaths and strong liquids, and eying
askance our group as we struck the bargain, he was withal a genial,
good-natured man, and a splendid river pilot.
Dropping down from Telegraph Creek (so named because it was a principal
station of the great projected trans-American and trans-Siberian line of
the Western Union, that bubble pricked by Cyrus Field's cable), we tied
up at Glenora about noon of a cloudless day.
"Amuse yourselves," said Captain Lane at lunch. "Here we stay till two
o'clock to-morrow morning. This gale, blowing from the sea, makes safe
steering through the Canyon impossible, unless we take the morning's
calm."
I saw Muir's eyes light up with a peculiar meaning as he glanced
quickly at me across the table. He knew the leading strings I was in;
how those well-meaning D.D.s and their motherly wives thought they had a
special mission to suppress all my self-destructive proclivities toward
dangerous adventure, and especially to protect me from "that wild Muir"
and his hare-brained schemes of mountain climbing.
"Where is it?" I asked, as we met behind the pilot house a moment later.
He pointed to a little group of jagged peaks rising right up from where
we stood--a pulpit in the center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
mountains. "One of the finest viewpoints in the world," he said.
"How far to the highest point?"
"About ten miles."
"How high?"
"Seven or eight thousand feet."
That was enough. I caught the D.D.s with guile. There were Stickeen
Indians there catching salmon, and among them Chief Shakes, who our
interpreter said was "The youngest but the headest Chief of all." Last
night's palaver had whetted the appetites of both sides for more. On the
part of the Indians, a talk with these "Great White Chiefs from
Washington" offered unlimited possibilities for material favor; and to
the good divines the "simple faith and childlike docility" of these
children of the forest were a constant delight. And then how well their
high-flown compliments and flowery metaphors would sound in article and
speech to the wondering East! So I sent Stickeen Johnny, the
interpreter, to call the natives to another _hyou wawa_ (big talk) and,
note-book in hand, the doctors "went gayly to the fray." I set the
speeches a-going, and then slipped out to join the impatient Muir.
"Take off your coat," he commanded, "and here's your supper."
Pocketing two hardtacks apiece we were off, keeping in shelter of house
and bush till out of sight of the council-house and the flower-picking
ladies. Then we broke out. What a matchless climate! What sweet,
lung-filling air! Sunshine that had no weakness in it--as if we were
springing plants. Our sinews like steel springs, muscles like India
rubber, feet soled with iron to grip the rocks. Ten miles? Eight
thousand feet? Why, I felt equal to forty miles and the Matterhorn!
"Eh, mon!" said Muir, lapsing into the broad Scotch he was so fond of
using when enjoying himself, "ye'll see the sicht o' yer life the day.
Ye'll get that'll be o' mair use till ye than a' the gowd o' Cassiar."
From the first, it was a hard climb. Fallen timber at the mountain's
foot covered with thick brush swallowed us up and plucked us back.
Beyond, on the steeper slopes, grew dwarf evergreens, five or six feet
high--the same fir that towers a hundred feet with a diameter of three
or four on the river banks, but here stunted by icy mountain winds. The
curious blasting of the branches on the side next to the mountain gave
them the appearance of long-armed, humpbacked, hairy gnomes, bristling
with anger, stretching forbidding arms downwards to bar our passage to
their sacred heights. Sometimes an inviting vista through the branches
would lure us in, when it would narrow, and at its upper angle we would
find a solid phalanx of these grumpy dwarfs. Then we had to attack
boldly, scrambling over the obstinate, elastic arms and against the
clusters of stiff needles, till we gained the upper side and found
another green slope.
Muir led, of course, picking with sure instinct the easiest way. Three
hours of steady work brought us suddenly beyond the timber-line, and the
real joy of the day began. Nowhere else have I see anything approaching
the luxuriance and variety of delicate blossoms shown by these high,
mountain pastures of the North. "You scarce could see the grass for
flowers." Everything that was marvelous in form, fair in color, or sweet
in fragrance seemed to be represented there, from daisies and campanulas
to Muir's favorite, the cassiope, with its exquisite little pink-white
bells shaped like lilies-of-the-valley and its subtle perfume. Muir at
once went wild when we reached this fairyland. From cluster to cluster
of flowers he ran, falling on his knees, babbling in unknown tongues,
prattling a curious mixture of scientific lingo and baby talk,
worshiping his little blue-and-pink goddesses.
"Ah! my blue-eyed darlin', little did I think to see you here. How did
you stray away from Shasta?"
"Well, well! Who'd 'a' thought that you'd have left that niche in the
Merced mountains to come here!"
"And who might you be, now, with your wonder look? Is it possible that
you can be (two Latin polysyllables)? You're lost, my dear; you belong
in Tennessee."
"Ah! I thought I'd find you, my homely little sweetheart," and so on
unceasingly.
So absorbed was he in this amatory botany that he seemed to forget my
existence. While I, as glad as he, tagged along, running up and down
with him, asking now and then a question, learning something of plant
life, but far more of that spiritual insight into Nature's lore which is
granted only to those who love and woo her in her great outdoor palaces.
But how I anathematized my short-sighted foolishness for having as a
student at old Wooster shirked botany for the "more important" studies
of language and metaphysics. For here was a man whose natural science
had a thorough technical basis, while the superstructure was built of
"lively stones," and was itself a living temple of love!
With all his boyish enthusiasm, Muir was a most painstaking student; and
any unsolved question lay upon his mind like a personal grievance until
it was settled to his full understanding. One plant after another, with
its sand-covered roots, went into his pockets, his handkerchief and the
"full" of his shirt, until he was bulbing and sprouting all over, and
could carry no more. He was taking them to the boat to analyze and
compare at leisure. Then he began to requisition my receptacles. I stood
it while he stuffed my pockets, but rebelled when he tried to poke the
prickly, scratchy things inside my shirt. I had not yet attained that
sublime indifference to physical comfort, that Nirvana of passivity,
that Muir had found.
Hours had passed in this entrancing work and we were progressing upwards
but slowly. We were on the southeastern slope of the mountain, and the
sun was still staring at us from a cloudless sky. Suddenly we were in
the shadow as we worked around a spur of rock. Muir looked up, startled.
Then he jammed home his last handful of plants, and hastened up to
where I stood.
"Man!" he said, "I was forgetting. We'll have to hurry now or we'll miss
it, we'll miss it."
"Miss what?" I asked.
"The jewel of the day," he answered; "the sight of the sunset from the
top."
Then Muir began to _slide_ up that mountain. I had been with mountain
climbers before, but never one like him. A deer-lope over the smoother
slopes, a sure instinct for the easiest way into a rocky fortress, an
instant and unerring attack, a serpent-glide up the steep; eye, hand and
foot all connected dynamically; with no appearance of weight to his
body--as though he had Stockton's negative gravity machine strapped on
his back.
Fifteen years of enthusiastic study among the Sierras had given him the
same pre-eminence over the ordinary climber as the Big Horn of the
Rockies shows over the Cotswold. It was only by exerting myself to the
limit of my strength that I was able to keep near him. His example was
at the same time my inspiration and despair. I longed for him to stop
and rest, but would not have suggested it for the world. I would at
least be game, and furnish no hint as to how tired I was, no matter how
chokingly my heart thumped. Muir's spirit was in me, and my "chief end,"
just then, was to win that peak with him. The impending calamity of
being beaten by the sun was not to be contemplated without horror. The
loss of a fortune would be as nothing to that!
[Illustration: THE MOUNTAIN
He pointed to a little group of jagged peaks rising right up from where
we stood--a pulpit in the center of a vast rotunda of magnificent
mountains]
We were now beyond the flower garden of the gods, in a land of rocks
and cliffs, with patches of short grass, caribou moss and lichens
between. Along a narrowing arm of the mountain, a deep canyon flumed a
rushing torrent of icy water from a small glacier on our right. Then
came moraine matter, rounded pebbles and boulders, and beyond them the
glacier. Once a giant, it is nothing but a baby now, but the ice is
still blue and clear, and the crevasses many and deep. And that day it
had to be crossed, which was a ticklish task. A misstep or slip might
land us at once fairly into the heart of the glacier, there to be
preserved in cold storage for the wonderment of future generations. But
glaciers were Muir's special pets, his intimate companions, with whom he
held sweet communion. Their voices were plain language to his ears,
their work, as God's landscape gardeners, of the wisest and best that
Nature could offer.
No Swiss guide was ever wiser in the habits of glaciers than Muir, or
proved to be a better pilot across their deathly crevasses. Half a mile
of careful walking and jumping and we were on the ground again, at the
base of the great cliff of metamorphic slate that crowned the summit.
Muir's aneroid barometer showed a height of about seven thousand feet,
and the wall of rock towered threateningly above us, leaning out in
places, a thousand feet or so above the glacier. But the earth-fires
that had melted and heaved it, the ice mass that chiseled and shaped it,
the wind and rain that corroded and crumbled it, had left plenty of
bricks out of that battlement, had covered its face with knobs and
horns, had ploughed ledges and cleaved fissures and fastened crags and
pinnacles upon it, so that, while its surface was full of man-traps and
blind ways, the human spider might still find some hold for his claws.
The shadows were dark upon us, but the lofty, icy peaks of the main
range still lay bathed in the golden rays of the setting sun. There was
no time to be lost. A quick glance to the right and left, and Muir, who
had steered his course wisely across the glacier, attacked the cliff,
simply saying, "We must climb cautiously here."
Now came the most wonderful display of his mountain-craft. Had I been
alone at the feet of these crags I should have said, "It can't be done,"
and have turned back down the mountain. But Muir was my "control," as
the Spiritists say, and I never thought of doing anything else but
following him. He thought he could climb up there and that settled it.
He would do what he thought he could. And such climbing! There was never
an instant when both feet and hands were not in play, and often elbows,
knees, thighs, upper arms, and even chin must grip and hold. Clambering
up a steep slope, crawling under an overhanging rock, spreading out like
a flying squirrel and edging along an inch-wide projection while fingers
clasped knobs above the head, bending about sharp angles, pulling up
smooth rock-faces by sheer strength of arm and chinning over the edge,
leaping fissures, sliding flat around a dangerous rock-breast, testing
crumbly spurs before risking his weight, always going up, up, no
hesitation, no pause--that was Muir! My task was the lighter one; he did
the head-work, I had but to imitate. The thin fragment of projecting
slate that stood the weight of his one hundred and fifty pounds would
surely sustain my hundred and thirty. As far as possible I did as he
did, took his hand-holds, and stepped in his steps.
But I was handicapped in a way that Muir was ignorant of, and I would
not tell him for fear of his veto upon my climbing. My legs were all
right--hard and sinewy; my body light and supple, my wind good, my
nerves steady (heights did not make me dizzy); but my arms--there lay
the trouble. Ten years before I had been fond of breaking colts--till
the colts broke me. On successive summers in West Virginia, two colts
had fallen with me and dislocated first my left shoulder, then my right.
Since that both arms had been out of joint more than once. My left was
especially weak. It would not sustain my weight, and I had to favor it
constantly. Now and again, as I pulled myself up some difficult reach I
could feel the head of the humerus move from its socket.
Muir climbed so fast that his movements were almost like flying, legs
and arms moving with perfect precision and unfailing judgment. I must
keep close behind him or I would fail to see his points of vantage. But
the pace was a killing one for me. As we neared the summit my strength
began to fail, my breath to come in gasps, my muscles to twitch. The
overwhelming fear of losing sight of my guide, of being left behind and
failing to see that sunset, grew upon me, and I hurled myself blindly at
every fresh obstacle, determined to keep up. At length we climbed upon a
little shelf, a foot or two wide, that corkscrewed to the left. Here we
paused a moment to take breath and look around us. We had ascended the
cliff some nine hundred and fifty feet from the glacier, and were within
forty or fifty feet of the top.
Among the much-prized gifts of this good world one of the very richest
was given to me in that hour. It is securely locked in the safe of my
memory and nobody can rob me of it--an imperishable treasure. Standing
out on the rounded neck of the cliff and facing the southwest, we could
see on three sides of us. The view was much the finest of all my
experience. We seemed to stand on a high rostrum in the center of the
greatest amphitheater in the world. The sky was cloudless, the level sun
flooding all the landscape with golden light. From the base of the
mountain on which we stood stretched the rolling upland. Striking boldly
across our front was the deep valley of the Stickeen, a line of foliage,
light green cottonwoods and darker alders, sprinkled with black fir and
spruce, through which the river gleamed with a silvery sheen, now
spreading wide among its islands, now foaming white through narrow
canyons. Beyond, among the undulating hills, was a marvelous array of
lakes. There must have been thirty or forty of them, from the pond of an
acre to the wide sheet two or three miles across. The strangely
elongated and rounded hills had the appearance of giants in bed, wrapped
in many-colored blankets, while the lakes were their deep, blue eyes,
lashed with dark evergreens, gazing steadfastly heavenward. Look long at
these recumbent forms and you will see the heaving of their breasts.
The whole landscape was alert, expectant of glory. Around this great
camp of prostrate Cyclops there stood an unbroken semicircle of mighty
peaks in solemn grandeur, some hoary-headed, some with locks of brown,
but all wearing white glacier collars. The taller peaks seemed almost
sharp enough to be the helmets and spears of watchful sentinels. And
the colors! Great stretches of crimson fireweed, acres and acres of
them, smaller patches of dark blue lupins, and hills of shaded yellow,
red, and brown, the many-shaded green of the woods, the amethyst and
purple of the far horizon--who can tell it? We did not stand there more
than two or three minutes, but the whole wonderful scene is deeply
etched on the tablet of my memory, a photogravure never to be effaced.
THE RESCUE
THE MOUNTAIN'S FAITH
At eventide, upon a dreary sea,
I watched a mountain rear its hoary head
To look with steady gaze in the near heaven.
The earth was cold and still. No sound was heard
But the dream-voices of the sleeping sea.
The mountain drew its gray cloud-mantle close,
Like Roman senator, erect and old,
Raising aloft an earnest brow and calm,
With upward look intent of steadfast faith.
The sky was dim; no glory-light shone forth
To crown the mountain's faith; which faltered not,
But, ever hopeful, waited patiently.
At morn I looked again. Expectance sat
Of immanent glory on the mountain's brow.
And, in a moment, lo! the glory _came!_
An angel's hand rolled back a crimson cloud.
Deep, rose-red light of wondrous tone and power--
A crown of matchless splendor--graced its head,
Majestic, kingly, pure as Heaven, yet warm
With earthward love. A motion, like a heart
With rich blood beating, seemed to sway and pulse,
With might of ecstasy, the granite peak.
A poem grand it was of Love Divine--
An anthem, sweet and strong, of praise to God--
A victory-peal from barren fields of death.
Its gaze was heavenward still, but earthward too--
For Love seeks not her own, and joy is full,
Only when freest given. The sun shone forth,
And now the mountain doffed its ruby crown
For one of diamonds. Still the light streamed down;
No longer chill and bleak, the morning glowed
With warmth and light, and clouds of fiery hue
Mantled the crystal glacier's chilly stream,
And all the landscape throbbed with sudden joy.
II
THE RESCUE
Muir was the first to awake from his trance. Like Schiller's king in
"The Diver," "Nothing could slake his wild thirst of desire."
"The sunset," he cried; "we must have the whole horizon."
Then he started running along the ledge like a mountain goat, working to
get around the vertical cliff above us to find an ascent on the other
side. He was soon out of sight, although I followed as fast as I could.
I heard him shout something, but could not make out his words. I know
now he was warning me of a dangerous place. Then I came to a sharp-cut
fissure which lay across my path--a gash in the rock, as if one of the
Cyclops had struck it with his axe. It sloped very steeply for some
twelve feet below, opening on the face of the precipice above the
glacier, and was filled to within about four feet of the surface with
flat, slaty gravel. It was only four or five feet across, and I could
easily have leaped it had I not been so tired. But a rock the size of my
head projected from the slippery stream of gravel. In my haste to
overtake Muir I did not stop to make sure this stone was part of the
cliff, but stepped with springing force upon it to cross the fissure.
Instantly the stone melted away beneath my feet, and I shot with it down
towards the precipice. With my peril sharp upon me I cried out as I
whirled on my face, and struck out both hands to grasp the rock on
either side.
Falling forward hard, my hands struck the walls of the chasm, my arms
were twisted behind me, and instantly both shoulders were dislocated.
With my paralyzed arms flopping helplessly above my head, I slid swiftly
down the narrow chasm. Instinctively I flattened down on the sliding
gravel, digging my chin and toes into it to check my descent; but not
until my feet hung out over the edge of the cliff did I feel that I had
stopped. Even then I dared not breathe or stir, so precarious was my
hold on that treacherous shale. Every moment I seemed to be slipping
inch by inch to the point when all would give way and I would go
whirling down to the glacier.
After the first wild moment of panic when I felt myself falling, I do
not remember any sense of fear. But I know what it is to have a thousand
thoughts flash through the brain in a single instant--an anguished
thought of my young wife at Wrangell, with her immanent motherhood; an
indignant thought of the insurance companies that refused me policies on
my life; a thought of wonder as to what would become of my poor flocks
of Indians among the islands; recollections of events far and near in
time, important and trivial; but each thought printed upon my memory by
the instantaneous photography of deadly peril. I had no hope of escape
at all. The gravel was rattling past me and piling up against my head.
The jar of a little rock, and all would be over. The situation was too
desperate for actual fear. Dull wonder as to how long I would be in the
air, and the hope that death would be instant--that was all. Then came
the wish that Muir would come before I fell, and take a message to my
wife.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE MARVELOUS ARRAY OF LAKES]
Suddenly I heard his voice right above me. "My God!" he cried. Then he
added, "Grab that rock, man, just by your right hand."
I gurgled from my throat, not daring to inflate my lungs, "My arms are
out."
There was a pause. Then his voice rang again, cheery, confident,
unexcited, "Hold fast; I'm going to get you out of this. I can't get to
you on this side; the rock is sheer. I'll have to leave you now and
cross the rift high up and come down to you on the other side by which
we came. Keep cool."
Then I heard him going away, whistling "The Blue Bells of Scotland,"
singing snatches of Scotch songs, calling to me, his voice now receding,
as the rocks intervened, then sounding louder as he came out on the face
of the cliff. But in me hope surged at full tide. I entertained no more
thoughts of last messages. I did not see how he could possibly do it,
but he was John Muir, and I had seen his wonderful rock-work. So I
determined not to fall and made myself as flat and heavy as possible,
not daring to twitch a muscle or wink an eyelid, for I still felt myself
slipping, slipping down the greasy slate. And now a new peril
threatened. A chill ran through me of cold and nervousness, and I slid
an inch. I suppressed the growing shivers with all my will. I would keep
perfectly quiet till Muir came back. The sickening pain in my shoulders
increased till it was torture, and I could not ease it.
It seemed like hours, but it was really only about ten minutes before he
got back to me. By that time I hung so far over the edge of the
precipice that it seemed impossible that I could last another second.
Now I heard Muir's voice, low and steady, close to me, and it seemed a
little below.
"Hold steady," he said. "I'll have to swing you out over the cliff."
Then I felt a careful hand on my back, fumbling with the waistband of my
pants, my vest and shirt, gathering all in a firm grip. I could see only
with one eye and that looked upon but a foot or two of gravel on the
other side.
"Now!" he said, and I slid out of the cleft with a rattling shower of
stones and gravel. My head swung down, my impotent arms dangling, and I
stared straight at the glacier, a thousand feet below. Then my feet came
against the cliff.
"Work downwards with your feet."
I obeyed. He drew me close to him by crooking his arm and as my head
came up past his level he caught me by my collar with his teeth! My
feet struck the little two-inch shelf on which he was standing, and I
could see Muir, flattened against the face of the rock and facing it,
his right hand stretched up and clasping a little spur, his left holding
me with an iron grip, his head bent sideways, as my weight drew it. I
felt as alert and cool as he.
"I've got to let go of you," he hissed through his clenched teeth. "I
need both hands here. Climb upward with your feet."
How he did it, I know not. The miracle grows as I ponder it. The wall
was almost perpendicular and smooth. My weight on his jaws dragged him
outwards. And yet, holding me by his teeth as a panther her cub and
clinging like a squirrel to a tree, he climbed with me straight up ten
or twelve feet, with only the help of my iron-shod feet scrambling on
the rock. It was utterly impossible, yet he did it!
When he landed me on the little shelf along which we had come, my nerve
gave way and I trembled all over. I sank down exhausted, Muir only less
tired, but supporting me.
The sun had set; the air was icy cold and we had no coats. We would soon
chill through. Muir's task of rescue had only begun and no time was to
be lost. In a minute he was up again, examining my shoulders. The right
one had an upward dislocation, the ball of the humerus resting on the
process of the scapula, the rim of the cup. I told him how, and he soon
snapped the bone into its socket. But the left was a harder proposition.
The luxation was downward and forward, and the strong, nervous reaction
of the muscles had pulled the head of the bone deep into my armpit.
There was no room to work on that narrow ledge. All that could be done
was to make a rude sling with one of my suspenders and our
handkerchiefs, so as to both support the elbow and keep the arm from
swinging.
Then came the task to get down that terrible wall to the glacier, by the
only practicable way down the mountain that Muir, after a careful
search, could find. Again I am at loss to know how he accomplished it.
For an unencumbered man to descend it in the deepening dusk was a most
difficult task; but to get a tottery, nerve-shaken, pain-wracked cripple
down was a feat of positive wonder. My right arm, though in place, was
almost helpless. I could only move my forearm; the muscles of the upper
part simply refusing to obey my will. Muir would let himself down to a
lower shelf, brace himself, and I would get my right hand against him,
crawl my fingers over his shoulder until the arm hung in front of him,
and falling against him, would be eased down to his standing ground.
Sometimes he would pack me a short distance on his back. Again, taking
me by the wrist, he would swing me down to a lower shelf, before
descending himself. My right shoulder came out three times that night,
and had to be reset.
It was dark when we reached the base; there was no moon and it was very
cold. The glacier provided an operating table, and I lay on the ice for
an hour while Muir, having slit the sleeve of my shirt to the collar,
tugged and twisted at my left arm in a vain attempt to set it. But the
ball was too deep in its false socket, and all his pulling only bruised
and made it swell. So he had to do up the arm again, and tie it tight to
my body. It must have been near midnight when we left the foot of the
cliff and started down the mountain. We had ten hard miles to go, and no
supper, for the hardtack had disappeared ere we were half-way up the
mountain. Muir dared not take me across the glacier in the dark; I was
too weak to jump the crevasses. So we skirted it and came, after a mile,
to the head of a great slide of gravel, the fine moraine matter of the
receding glacier. Muir sat down on the gravel; I sat against him with my
feet on either side and my arm over his shoulder. Then he began to hitch
and kick, and presently we were sliding at great speed in a cloud of
dust. A full half-mile we flew, and were almost buried when we reached
the bottom of the slide. It was the easiest part of our trip.
Now we found ourselves in the canyon, down which tumbled the glacial
stream, and far beneath the ridge along which we had ascended. The
sides of the canyon were sheer cliffs.
"We'll try it," said Muir. "Sometimes these canyons are passable."
But the way grew rougher as we descended. The rapids became falls and we
often had to retrace our steps to find a way around them. After we
reached the timber-line, some four miles from the summit, the going was
still harder, for we had a thicket of alders and willows to fight. Here
Muir offered to make a fire and leave me while he went forward for
assistance, but I refused. "No," I said, "I'm going to make it to the
boat."
All that night this man of steel and lightning worked, never resting a
minute, doing the work of three men, helping me along the slopes, easing
me down the rocks, pulling me up cliffs, dashing water on me when I grew
faint with the pain; and always cheery, full of talk and anecdote,
cracking jokes with me, infusing me with his own indomitable spirit. He
was eyes, hands, feet, and heart to me--my caretaker, in whom I trusted
absolutely. My eyes brim with tears even now when I think of his utter
self-abandon as he ministered to my infirmities.
About four o'clock in the morning we came to a fall that we could not
compass, sheer a hundred feet or more. So we had to attack the steep
walls of the canyon. After a hard struggle we were on the mountain
ridges again, traversing the flower pastures, creeping through openings
in the brush, scrambling over the dwarf fir, then down through the
fallen timber. It was half-past seven o'clock when we descended the last
slope and found the path to Glenora. Here we met a straggling party of
whites and Indians just starting out to search the mountain for us.
As I was coming wearily up the teetering gang-plank, feeling as if I
couldn't keep up another minute, Dr. Kendall stepped upon its end,
barring my passage, bent his bushy white brows upon me from his six feet
of height, and began to scold:
"See here, young man; give an account of yourself. Do you know you've
kept us waiting----"
Just then Captain Lane jumped forward to help me, digging the old Doctor
of Divinity with his elbow in the stomach and nearly knocking him off
the boat.
"Oh, hell!" he roared. "Can't you see the man's hurt?"
Mrs. Kendall was a very tall, thin, severe-looking old lady, with face
lined with grief by the loss of her children. She never smiled. She had
not gone to bed at all that night, but walked the deck and would not let
her husband or the others sleep. Soon after daylight she began to lash
the men with the whip of her tongue for their "cowardice and inhumanity"
in not starting at once to search for me.
"Mr. Young is undoubtedly lying mangled at the foot of a cliff, or else
one of those terrible bears has wounded him; and you are lolling around
here instead of starting to his rescue. For shame!"
When they objected that they did not know where we had gone, she
snapped: "Go everywhere until you find him."
Her fierce energy started the men we met. When I came on board she at
once took charge and issued her orders, which everybody jumped to obey.
She had blankets spread on the floor of the cabin and laid me on them.
She obtained some whisky from the captain, some water, porridge and
coffee from the steward. She was sitting on the floor with my head in
her lap, feeding me coffee with a spoon, when Dr. Kendall came in and
began on me again:
"Suppose you had fallen down that precipice, what would your poor wife
have done? What would have become of your Indians and your new church?"
Then Mrs. Kendall turned and thrust her spoon like a sword at him.
"Henry Kendall," she blazed, "shut right up and leave this room. Have
you no sense? Go instantly, I say!" And the good Doctor went.
My recollections of that day are not very clear. The shoulder was in a
bad condition--swollen, bruised, very painful. I had to be strengthened
with food and rest, and Muir called from his sleep of exhaustion, so
that with four other men he could pull and twist that poor arm of mine
for an hour. They got it into its socket, but scarcely had Muir got to
sleep again before the strong, nervous twitching of the shoulder
dislocated it a second time and seemingly placed it in a worse condition
than before. Captain Lane was now summoned, and with Muir to direct,
they worked for two or three hours. Whisky was poured down my throat to
relax my stubborn, pain-convulsed muscles. Then they went at it with two
men pulling at the towel knotted about my wrist, two others pulling
against them, foot braced to foot, Muir manipulating my shoulder with
his sinewy hands, and the stocky Captain, strong and compact as a bear,
with his heel against the yarn ball in my armpit, takes me by the elbow
and says, "I'll set it or pull the arm off!"
[Illustration: GLACIER--STICKEEN VALLEY
Muir, fresh and enthusiastic as ever, was the pilot of the party across
the moraine and upon the great ice mountain]
Well, he almost does the latter. I am conscious of a frightful strain,
a spasm of anguish in my side as his heel slips from the ball and kicks
in two of my ribs, a snap as the head of the bone slips into the
cup--then kindly oblivion.
I was awakened about five o'clock in the afternoon by the return of the
whole party from an excursion to the Great Glacier at the Boundary Line.
Muir, fresh and enthusiastic as ever, had been the pilot across the
moraine and upon the great ice mountain; and I, wrapped like a mummy in
linen strips, was able to join in his laughter as he told of the big
D.D.'s heroics, when, in the middle of an acre of alder brush, he asked
indignantly, in response to the hurry-up calls: "Do you think I'm going
to leave my wife in this forest?"
One overpowering regret--one only--abides in my heart as I think back
upon that golden day with John Muir. He could, and did, go back to
Glenora on the return trip of the _Cassiar_, ascend the mountain again,
see the sunset from its top, make charming sketches, stay all night and
see the sunrise, filling his cup of joy so full that he could pour out
entrancing descriptions for days. While I--well, with entreating arms
about one's neck and pleading, tearful eyes looking into one's own, what
could one do but promise to climb no more? But my lifelong lamentation
over a treasure forever lost, is this: "I never saw the sunset from that
peak."
THE VOYAGE
TOW-A-ATT
You are a child, old Friend--a child!
As light of heart, as free, as wild;
As credulous of fairy tale;
As simple in your faith, as frail
In reason; jealous, petulant;
As crude in manner; ignorant,
Yet wise in love; as rough, as mild--
You are a child!
You are a man, old Friend--a man!
Ah, sure in richer tide ne'er ran
The blood of earth's nobility,
Than through your veins; intrepid, free;
In counsel, prudent; proud and tall;
Of passions full, yet ruling all;
No stauncher friend since time began;
You are a MAN!
III
THE VOYAGE
The summer and fall of 1879 Muir always referred to as the most
interesting period of his adventurous life. From about the tenth of July
to the twentieth of November he was in southeastern Alaska. Very little
of this time did he spend indoors. Until steamboat navigation of the
Stickeen River was closed by the forming ice, he made frequent trips to
the Great Glacier--thirty miles up the river, to the Hot Springs, the
Mud Glacier and the interior lakes, ranges, forests and flower pastures.
Always upon his return (for my house was his home the most of that time)
he would be full to intoxication of what he had seen, and dinners would
grow cold and lamps burn out while he held us entranced with his
impassioned stories. Although his books are all masterpieces of lucid
and glowing English, Muir was one of those rare souls who talk better
than they write; and he made the trees, the animals, and especially the
glaciers, live before us. Somehow a glacier never seemed cold when John
Muir was talking about it.
On September nineteenth a little stranger whose expected advent was
keeping me at home arrived in the person of our first-born daughter. For
two or three weeks preceding and following this event Muir was busy
writing his summer notes and finishing his pencil sketches, and also
studying the flora of the islands. It was a season of constant rains
when the _saanah_, the southeast rain-wind, blew a gale. But these
stormy days and nights, which kept ordinary people indoors, always
lured him out into the woods or up the mountains.
One wild night, dark as Erebus, the rain dashing in sheets and the wind
blowing a hurricane, Muir came from his room into ours about ten o'clock
with his long, gray overcoat and his Scotch cap on.
"Where now?" I asked.
"Oh, to the top of the mountain," he replied. "It is a rare chance to
study this fine storm."
My expostulations were in vain. He rejected with scorn the proffered
lantern: "It would spoil the effect." I retired at my usual time, for I
had long since learned not to worry about Muir. At two o'clock in the
morning there came a hammering at the front door. I opened it and there
stood a group of our Indians, rain-soaked and trembling--Chief
Tow-a-att, Moses, Aaron, Matthew, Thomas.
"Why, men," I cried, "what's wrong? What brings you here?"
"We want you play (pray)," answered Matthew.
I brought them into the house, and, putting on my clothes and lighting
the lamp, I set about to find out the trouble. It was not easy. They
were greatly excited and frightened.
"We scare. All Stickeen scare; plenty cly. We want you play God; plenty
play."
By dint of much questioning I gathered at last that the whole tribe were
frightened by a mysterious light waving and flickering from the top of
the little mountain that overlooked Wrangell; and they wished me to pray
to the white man's God and avert dire calamity.
"Some miner has camped there," I ventured.
An eager chorus protested; it was not like the light of a camp-fire in
the least; it waved in the air like the wings of a spirit. Besides,
there was no gold on the top of a hill like that; and no human being
would be so foolish as to camp up there on such a night, when there were
plenty of comfortable houses at the foot of the hill. It was a spirit, a
malignant spirit.
Suddenly the true explanation flashed into my brain, and I shocked my
Indians by bursting into a roar of laughter. In imagination I could see
him so plainly--John Muir, wet but happy, feeding his fire with spruce
sticks, studying and enjoying the storm! But I explained to my natives,
who ever afterwards eyed Muir askance, as a mysterious being whose ways
and motives were beyond all conjecture.
"Why does this strange man go into the wet woods and up the mountains on
stormy nights?" they asked. "Why does he wander alone on barren peaks
or on dangerous ice-mountains? There is no gold up there and he never
takes a gun with him or a pick. _Icta mamook_--what make? Why--why?"
The first week in October saw the culmination of plans long and eagerly
discussed. Almost the whole of the Alexandrian Archipelago, that great
group of eleven hundred wooded islands that forms the southeastern
cup-handle of Alaska, was at that time a _terra incognita_. The only
seaman's chart of the region in existence was that made by the great
English navigator, Vancouver, in 1807. It was a wonderful chart,
considering what an absurd little sailing vessel he had in which to
explore those intricate waters with their treacherous winds and tides.
But Vancouver's chart was hastily made, after all, in a land of fog and
rain and snow. He had not the modern surveyor's instruments, boats or
other helps. And, besides, this region was changing more rapidly than,
perhaps, any other part of the globe. Volcanic islands were being born
out of the depths of the ocean; landslides were filling up channels
between the islands; tides and rivers were opening new passages and
closing old ones; and, more than all, those mightiest tools of the great
Engineer, the glaciers, were furrowing valleys, dumping millions of tons
of silt into the sea, forming islands, promontories and isthmuses, and
by their recession letting the sea into deep and long fiords, forming
great bays, inlets and passages, many of which did not exist in
Vancouver's time. In certain localities the living glacier stream was
breaking off bergs so fast that the resultant bays were lengthening a
mile or more each year. Where Vancouver saw only a great crystal wall
across the sea, we were to paddle for days up a long and sinuous fiord;
and where he saw one glacier, we were to find a dozen.
My mission in the proposed voyage of discovery was to locate and visit
the tribes and villages of Thlingets to the north and west of Wrangell,
to take their census, confer with their chiefs and report upon their
condition, with a view to establishing schools and churches among them.
The most of these tribes had never had a visit from a missionary, and I
felt the eager zeal an Eliot or a Martin at the prospect of telling them
for the first time the Good News. Muir's mission was to find and study
the forests, mountains and glaciers. I also was eager to see these and
learn about them, and Muir was glad to study the natives with me--so
our plans fitted into each other well.
"We are going to write some history, my boy," Muir would say to me.
"Think of the honor! We have been chosen to put some interesting people
and some of Nature's grandest scenes on the page of human record and on
the map. Hurry! We are daily losing the most important news of all the
world."
In many respects we were most congenial companions. We both loved the
same poets and could repeat, verse about, many poems of Tennyson, Keats,
Shelley and Burns. He took with him a volume of Thoreau, and I one of
Emerson, and we enjoyed them together. I had my printed Bible with me,
and he had his in his head--the result of a Scotch father's discipline.
Our studies supplemented each other and our tastes were similar. We had
both lived clean lives and our conversation together was sweet and
high, while we both had a sense of humor and a large fund of stories.
But Muir's knowledge of Nature and his insight into her plans and
methods were so far beyond mine that, while I was organizer and
commander of the expedition, he was my teacher and guide into the inner
recesses and meanings of the islands, bays and mountains we explored
together.
Our ship for this voyage of discovery, while not so large as
Vancouver's, was much more shapely and manageable--a _kladushu etlan_
(six fathom) red-cedar canoe. It belonged to our captain, old Chief
Tow-a-att, a chief who had lately embraced Christianity with his whole
heart--one of the simplest, most faithful, dignified and brave souls I
ever knew. He fully expected to meet a martyr's death among his heathen
enemies of the northern islands; yet he did not shrink from the voyage
on that account.
His crew numbered three. First in importance was Kadishan, also a chief
of the Stickeens, chosen because of his powers of oratory, his kinship
with Chief Shathitch of the Chilcat tribe, and his friendly relations
with other chiefs. He was a born courtier, learned in Indian lore, songs
and customs, and able to instruct me in the proper Thlinget etiquette to
suit all occasions. The other two were sturdy young men--Stickeen John,
our interpreter, and Sitka Charley. They were to act as cooks,
camp-makers, oarsmen, hunters and general utility men.
We stowed our baggage, which was not burdensome, in one end of the
canoe, taking a simple store of provisions--flour, beans, bacon, sugar,
salt and a little dried fruit. We were to depend upon our guns,
fishhooks, spears and clamsticks for other diet. As a preliminary to our
palaver with the natives we followed the old Hudson Bay custom, then
firmly established in the North. We took materials for a
_potlatch_,--leaf-tobacco, rice and sugar. Our Indian crew laid in their
own stock of provisions, chiefly dried salmon and seal-grease, while our
table was to be separate, set out with the white man's viands.
We did not get off without trouble. Kadishan's mother, who looked but
little older than himself, strongly objected to my taking her son on so
perilous a voyage and so late in the fall, and when her scoldings and
entreaties did not avail she said: "If anything happens to my son, I
will take your baby as mine in payment."
[Illustration: VOYAGES OF MUIR AND YOUNG 1879 and 1880 IN SOUTHEASTERN
ALASKA]
One sunny October day we set our prow to the unknown northwest. Our
hearts beat high with anticipation. Every passage between the islands
was a corridor leading into a new and more enchanting room of Nature's
great gallery. The lapping waves whispered enticing secrets, while the
seabirds screaming overhead and the eagles shrilling from the sky
promised wonderful adventures.