The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1901-04-12
PACIFIC COAST MOUNTAINS.
John Mnir's Explorations a Service
to Science.

JoAA NUAESS CORPORATIONS q service
to Science.
1T is largely to the extended, patient
researches of John Muir that the scien-
tific world is indebted for great part
of its information on glacial movements.
What Thoreau did for the region about
Walden pond, Mr.. Muir has done for the
whole Pacific slope, from the icebound
fastness OF Alaska to the snowcapped
peaks OF the South, giving US a minute
and accurate record, geographical, geo
| logical and botanical.
along the mountains OF the coast to
Alaska stretches series of glaciers thou
sands in number. Many of them are
still active. From the summit of Mount
Rainier, for instance, radiate eight gla-
ciers: from seven to twelve miles long,
ers of the state of Washington. On
through British Columbia and into Alas
ka, the mountains strerch, and among
their peaks and in their deep canyons,
are still other glaciers. John Muir esti-
mates that there are probably more than
SUN glaciers, not counting the smallest
ones. Muir glacier has 200 tributaries,
and, at it's greatest width, spreads out
about twenty-five miles.
The work of these great streams is
even yet doing. They are cutting deep
canyons in the mountains, preparing the
soil for forests yet to exist, forming new
lakes, sometimes destroying those now
there; forming and extending. fiords and
inlets, blocking out. grinding down,
long processes of erosion helping on the
business Of licking into shape the con-
tinent upon which we live. It is among
these awesome forces that John Muir has
spent the best years of his life. Gods
glacial mills grind slowly he has some
<1@
ton long enough in California to grind
sufficient soil for glorious abundance
Of life
''This grinding he has watched year by
year. He has. spent months beside now
one, now another great glacier; measur-
more than one inch in a day. Sometimes,
in the case of what we may call lightning
express glaciers, five or ten feet In twen-
ty-four hours. He has noted the max
ing of meadows and moraines; the ex-
tinction Of a lake by an avalanche. He
has traversed under ice caverns and
creygasses, where, inch by inch; great
the centuries to the plains below. For
hours he has watched the antics of a
squirrel on a bough. Nothing has been
too mighty, too awe-inspiring to turn
back his reverent feet and inquiring
small, among all the living things Of ma
ture, not to be worth his sympathetic OBJ
servation and record. This is why the
story of his life reads like saga Of old,
and the records of his studies are full of
fascination.
ION his travels John Muir carried
bread. made by himself. in. little sack
attached to his belt In one pocket he
kept an alcohol lamp. in it's tin cup; in
another a package Of tea. Melted snow
furnished water to infuse this, and the
outfit formed his provisions for weeks at
a time.
81 never carried gum he once said
to me, because I wanted to gain the con-
fidence, Of my fellow creatures and to
make their acquaintance. You can't learn
much about either men or wild animals.
merely by killing them and making arith-
metical measurements of their bodies
Suppose you had been killed.?
asked, somewhat hastily.
HE looked at me, with the one bright
eye that sees SO much more than the two
of other people. and realized my fool
ishness.
"'Killed?' he repeated, with his broad
est Scotch burr. Suppose 1 had been.
to die and be buried than up there on a
snowy peak, or in a deep ice gorge?
might die in a dirty street in any city,
and be buried in hole in the ground
Going to the Mountains Mr.. Muir
says, going to Gods clean, healthy wilds.
near or far. is going home.' "-Adeline
Knapp in Ainslee's.