Creator
[John Muir]
Recipient
[Louie Strentzel Muir]
Preview
Transcription
[4] 3she will be afraid of my beard. I have a great quantity of ivory dolls & toys – ducks, bears, seals walruses etc for her to play with, & some soft white furs to make a little robe for her carriage. But it is a sore hard thing to be out of sight of her so long & of thee Louie but still sorer & harder not to hear. Perhaps not one word until I reach San Francisco. You however will hear often. I sent lots of letters by a schooner from [Gonaluska?], one from St Paul Island a lot by a the returning whaler Tom Pope one on the 21, I think, from St Michael & this again will go from St Michael Then we will have a good many more opportunities by the other whalers. This is a lovely cool clear bright day & the mountains along the coast of Asia stand in glorious array telling the grand old story of their birth beneath the sculpturing ice of the glacial period, but the snow still lingers here & there down to the waters edge & a little beyond the mouth of Behring Strait the vast mysterious ice field of the north stretches away beneath dark stormy sky for thousands of miles I landed on E. Cape yesterday & found unmistakeable evidence of the passage over it of a rigid ice-sheet01016[5] 4from the north a fact wh is exceedingly telling here. Similar traces I have already seen on the Di[illegible] & on St Laurence Island along its entire length, & on 300 or 400 miles of the Coast of Asia, & also about St Michaels. Showing clearly that Behrings Sea was once only a glacier lake, & that Asia & America have been separated by the mechanical action of this grand frost flow. The south side of the Aleutian Chain of Islands was during the gl period the N. boundary of the Pacific Ocean & Asia & American were one. My health is so good now that I never notice it. I climbed a mountain at E Cape yesterday about 3000 feet high a mile through snow knee deep & never felt fatigue my cheeks tingling in the north wind. My cheeks are red now & I eat all sorts of greasy stuff in heavy bulk. I wish I could make out a list of all the fish flesh & fowl, & puddings & gravies I have eaten for grand mothers study. I have a great quanty of material in my
Location
Between Plover Bay & St. Laurence Island
Date Original
1881 Jul 2
Source
Original letter dimensions: 19.5 x 14 cm.
Resource Identifier
muir04_0636-let.tif
File Identifier
Reel 04, Image 0636
Copyright Status
Copyrighted
Copyright Statement
The unpublished works of John Muir are copyrighted by the Muir-Hanna Trust. To purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish or exhibit them, see http://www.pacific.edu/Library/Find/Holt-Atherton-Special-Collections/Fees-and-Forms-.html
Owning Institution
University of the Pacific Library Holt-Atherton Special Collections. Please contact this institution directly to obtain copies of the images or permission to publish or use them beyond educational purposes.
Copyright Holder
Muir-Hanna Trust
Copyright Date
1984
Page Number
Page 3
Keywords
John Muir, correspondence, letters, author, writing, naturalist, California, correspondent, mail, message, post, exchange of letters, missive, notes, epistle
