Title

[Letter (excerpts): To the 'Big Four.' ]

Authors

In Goetzmann, William H. and Kay Sloan, Looking Far North, The Harriman Expedition to Alaska, 1899

Files

Kimes Entry Number

503

Original Date

1-1-1982

William and Maymie Kimes Annotation

Upon returning from the Harriman Alaska Expedition, Muir addressed a letter to the ""Big Four,"" a name he endearingly applied to ""the Misses Mary and Cornelia Harriman, and the Misses Elizabeth Averell and Dorothea Draper, who with Carol and Roland [Harriman] the 'Little two,' kept us all young on the never-to-be-forgotten H.A.E."" As a prologue, the authors use Muir's whimsical description from this letter of various members of the expedition. Muir closes his letter to the ""Girls four"" with the admonition, ""Kill as few of your fellow beings as possible and pursue some branch of natural history at least far enough to see Nature's harmony.""

Publication

New York: The Viking Press

Page/Column

pp. ix-x

See also Kimes Entry Number

The letter is from no. 366, v. II, pp. 329-333. In addition, the authors enhance this narrative and its authenticity with many mini-excerpts from nos. 303, 333, 366 (v. III), and particularly from Muir's journal notes of the expedition in John of the Mountains. . . , no. 379, pp. [378]-426.

Recommended Citation

In Goetzmann, William H. and Kay Sloan, Looking Far North, The Harriman Expedition to Alaska, 1899, "[Letter (excerpts): To the 'Big Four.' ]" (1982). John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes, 1986 (Muir articles 1866-1986). 582.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/582