Preface 



a pine tree on the hill above Sleepy Hollow. He had 

 gone to higher Sierras, and, as I fancied, was again 

 waving his hand in friendly re-cognition." And now 

 John Muir has followed his friend of other days to the 

 "higher Sierras." His earthly remains lie among trees 

 planted by his own hand. To the pine tree of Sleepy 

 Hollow answers a guardian sequoia in the sunny Al- 

 hambra Valley. 



In 1879 John Muir went to Alaska for the first 

 time. Its stupendous living glaciers aroused his un- 

 bounded interest, for they enabled him to verify his 

 theories of glacial action. Again and again he re- 

 turned to this continental laboratory of landscapes. 

 The greatest of the tide-water glaciers appropriately 

 commemorates his name. Upon this book of Alaska 

 travels, all but finished before his unforeseen depar- 

 ture, John Muir expended the last months of his life. 

 It was begun soon after his return from Africa in 

 191 2. His eager leadership of the ill-fated campaign 

 to save his beloved Hetch-Hetchy Valley from com- 

 mercial destruction seriously interrupted his labors. 

 Illness, also, interposed some checks as he worked 

 with characteristic care and thoroughness through 

 the great mass of Alaska notes that had accumulated 

 under his hands for more than thirty years. 



The events recorded in this volume end in the 

 middle of the trip of 1890. Muir's notes on the re- 

 mainder of the journey have not been found, and it is 

 idle to speculate how he would have concluded the 

 volume if he had lived to complete it. But no one 

 will read the fascinating description of the Northern 



[ vi] 



