Title

[Meeting John Muir at Seattle.]

Authors

In Hall Young of Alaska. . . The Autobiography of S. Hall Young

Files

Kimes Entry Number

A29-a

Original Date

1-1-1927

William and Maymie Kimes Annotation

In August of 1897, Muir was on his sixth trip to Alaska with Charles S. Sargent and William M. Canby. When they boarded the Queen at Seattle, Muir was surprised but delighted to meet his old friend S. Hall Young. While watching the crowd of gold seekers scrambling aboard, Muir commented, "Babes in the woods would not be more bewildered than these Chechacos. How are they going to get all that stuff over the mountains? I don't envy you your job of proclaiming the Gospel to such a mob. Why it's like preaching to a pack of wolves!" At Fort Townsend Muir received telegrams from two San Francisco newspapers offering him a handsome sum if he would join the Klondikers as a reporter and go into Dawson with them. Young recalls that Muir laughingly said, "These men must think I am a fool, like the rest of the crowd, asking me to leave my nature study and join that mob!" Muir then offered the reporting job to Young, but Young declined, saying that he would be too busy, and besides, were not the publishers pleased with Joaquin Miller, who had already started to the Klondike as their reporter? Muir's reply was that Miller "cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood. His imagination is always running away with him. He will tell tremendous stories and describe imaginary events most enchantingly, but the papers and the public want facts about the Klondike rush-statistics, data on which to build their stories. That Miller cannot and will not give." Muir reconsidered and did write about the gold seekers

Publication

New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Company

Page/Column

pp. 320-322

See also Kimes Entry Number

See nos. 211, 212, 214, and 215.

Recommended Citation

In Hall Young of Alaska. . . The Autobiography of S. Hall Young, "[Meeting John Muir at Seattle.]" (1927). John Muir: A Reading Bibliography by Kimes, 1986 (Muir articles 1866-1986). 636.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/jmb/636