The labor involved was the greater in
order that the finished work might exhibit the last touches of Muir's
master-hand, and yet contain nothing that did not flow from his pen.
All readers of this book will feel grateful for her labor of love.
I add these prefatory lines to the work of my departed friend with
pensive misgiving, knowing that he would have deprecated any
discharge of musketry over his grave. His daughters, Mrs. Thomas Rea
Hanna and Mrs. Buel Alvin Funk, have honored me with the request to
transmit the manuscript for publication, and later to consider with
them what salvage may be made from among their father's unpublished
writings. They also wish me to express their grateful acknowledgments
to Houghton Mifflin Company, with whom John Muir has always
maintained close and friendly relations.
William Frederic Bade.
Berkeley, California,
May, 1915.
Part I
The Trip of 1879
Travels in Alaska
Chapter I
Puget Sound and British Columbia
After eleven years of study and exploration in the Sierra Nevada of
California and the mountain-ranges of the Great Basin, studying in
particular their glaciers, forests, and wild life, above all their
ancient glaciers and the influence they exerted in sculpturing the
rocks over which they passed with tremendous pressure, making new
landscapes, scenery, and beauty which so mysteriously influence every
human being, and to some extent all life, I was anxious to gain some
knowledge of the regions to the northward, about Puget Sound and
Alaska.
