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Earth clad in Medicine Mines of Musca Starry waves
If we inhabited the bottom of the sea ocean atmosphere of the water sky foam of wavetops~ be clouds & their shadows curved line links wavetops and & would be fishes, birds brilliant & elegant as they, unlike the birds of air their path is lighted & marked with stars “These are thy toys,” a mistake,--grand ocean infinitely above noticing each minute artificial [specks], rills & river are grave as sea Waves in loudest storm speak no defiance Water of Bahama banks most beautiful ever beheld most spiritual, ethereal—did not seem capable of sustaining more than the air but the black deep waters of the open sea with their heaped up hollows and valleys & gathered hills of wave on curved line links hollows and so (next line) are so waves look firm and field-like that one is often inclined to step from the vessel rail to walk among them If the storm waters of Galilee waves were at all like these Peter’s faith was small indeed The deep mysterious gardens of the hot South seem to be made and kept in beauty & order for other eyes than those of man he is fenced out by wild beasts & pestilence & countless gatherings of armed plants I suppose man would have been permitted to inhabit the sea if he could do so without spoiling it He has not marked the sea & done but little to the land which would soon be effaced on his departure from it. Ruins of a town Ruins . . . wave written in ink Ruins of a plant, a hill, a wave All is changeful—the hills & vales of ocean rise & fall & go from place to place & so do those of the land & of the ocean bot- tom the difference is caused by time &
Date Original
1868
Source
Original journal dimensions: 10 x 16 cm.
Resource Identifier
MuirReel23Journal02P01.tif
Publisher
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
Rights Management
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Keywords
John Muir, journals, drawings, writings, travel, journaling, naturalist
