108 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1153 



bridges, worked day after day alone on the 

 vast glacier that bears his name. 



The man who goes out to the wilds alone 

 is a true lover of nature, not a lip worshiper. 

 The mighty forests are sometimes so soundless 

 that the ear hears only the circulating blood; 

 at other times are a tumultuous mass of toss- 

 ing boughs, swaying limbs and crashing trunks. 

 In the impenetrable darkness of the forests 

 at night, it is as if the eye did not exist; but 

 the tense ear may catch a myriad mingled 

 sounds — the moaning of the trees, the falling 

 of the waters, and the joyful, weird, or angry 

 cries of fowl and beast. In the day the eye 

 may sweep over the endless plain, leap a hun- 

 dred miles to the distant mountain peak, or 

 attempt to penetrate the gray mist hanging 

 over the crevasses of the glaciers. To be alone 

 with nature, oppressive and terrifying to the 

 city born, was a delicious pleasure to Muir. 

 Indeed it was with almost delirious joy that 

 he felt himself to be a part of the handiwork 

 of the Almighty. To him cliff, air, cloud, 

 flower, tree, bird and beast— all were manifes- 

 tations of a unifying God. 



The great public service of John Muir was 

 leading the nation through his writings to ap- 

 preciate the grandeur of our mountains and 

 the beauty and variety of their plant and ani- 

 mal life, and the consequent necessity for 

 holding forever as a heritage for all the peo- 

 ple the most precious of these great scenic 

 areas. Probably to his leadership more than 

 to that of any other man is due the adoption 

 of the policy of national parks. 



Of a man who is likable, it is a common- 

 place to say that all who knew him loved him ; 

 but this was so intensely true of Muir that one 

 feels he should have a stronger word than 

 love. For his friends, mingled with love, were 

 ardent admiration for his tall, thin, sinewy 

 frame, and almost worship for the inner fire 

 which burned upon his strong and noble face. 



The story of Stickeen reveals the adorable 

 qualities of the man as well as the finer qual- 

 ities of a dog. Here are the impressions of his 

 companion, the missionary Young, to whom 

 Muir told the story of Stickeen after that 



memorable day and evening upon Taylor 

 Glacier :"> 



Finally Muir broke the silence. "Ton's a brave 

 doggie," he said. Stickeen, who could not yet be 

 induced to eat, responded by a glance of one eye 

 and a feeble pounding of the blanket with his 

 heavy tail. 



Then Muir began to talk, and little by little, 

 between sips of coffee, the story of the day was un- 

 folded. Soon memories crowded for utterance, and 

 I listened tiU midnight, entranced by a succession 

 of vivid descriptions the like of which I have never 

 heard before or since. The fierce music and gran- 

 deur of the storm, the expanse of ice with its be- 

 wildering crevasses, its mysterious contortions, its 

 solemn voices were made to live before me. 



When Muir described his marooning on the 

 narrow island of ice surrounded by fathomless 

 crevasses, with a knife-edged sliver curving deeply 

 ' ' like the cable of a suspension bridge ' ' diagonally 

 across it as the only means of escape, I shuddered 

 at his peril. I held my breath as he told of the 

 terrible risks he ran as he cut his steps down the 

 waU of ice to the bridge 's end, knocked off the 

 sharp edge of the sliver, hitched across inch by inch 

 and climbed the still more difiicult ascent on the 

 other side. 



But when he told of Stickeen 's cries of despair 

 at being left on the other side of the crevasse, of 

 his heroic determination at last to do or die, of 

 his careful progress across the sliver as he braced 

 himself against the gusts and dug his little claws 

 into the ice, and of his passionate revulsion to the 

 heights of exultation when, intoxicated by his es- 

 cape, he became a living whirlwind of joy, flashing 

 about in mad gyrations, shouting and screaming 

 ' ' Saved, saved ! ' ' the tears streamed down my face. 



It was especially fitting that, in recognition 

 of Muir's great public service to conservation 

 through advancing the movement for the 

 creation of forest reserves and national parks, 

 the University of Wisconsin, many years after 

 his regretful farewell, granted him her highest 

 academic honor, the degree of doctor of laws. 



It is indeed fortunate and most appropriate 

 that through the decades and cent'uries to come, 

 the youth of the university may behold this 

 beautiful bronze bust which has so faithfully 

 caught the thoughtful countenance of Muir, 

 as if in meditation upon the meaning of the 



10 ' ' Alaska Days with John Muir, ' ' S. Hall 

 Young, pp. 187-88. 



