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Sierra Club Bulletin 



confidence in the truth of his theories, his knowledge that the time was 

 not ripe for their general acceptance. It is a wonderful tribute to the 

 thoroughness and soundness of his early investigations that none of his 

 theories had to be modified in the light of later discoveries. His long, pa- 

 tient revision of his notes was devoted entirely to the task of bettering 

 the expression of his early thought, never to any change in the substance 

 of the thought itself. 



No attempt has been made to rewrite or finish the book, which is pre- 

 sented as Mr. Muir left it, with the exception of some of the chapter di- 

 visions and the transposition of certain passages, and even these minor 

 changes were made in accordance with Mr. Muir's expressed intentions. 

 It is not complete, inasmuch as it ends in the middle of the trip of 1890, 

 nor as a whole can it be regarded as a finished production. The inequali- 

 ties at once apparent in its style were not at all due to failing powers, 

 but only to the fact that time was not granted him to finish it. Mr. Muir's 

 best work was always slow of fruition. To appreciate fully what the 

 world has lost, one has only to compare the earlier published story, 

 Stickeen, with the passages in Chapter XV, which give the incidents of 

 that story practically as they were first written in the journals. The 

 vivid, forceful language is there, the keen delight in the wild, stormy, 

 icy day, the sense of oneness with elemental things, and yet it lacks some- 

 thing of the flashes of insight, the philosophy, the poetry, the illuminat- 

 ing touches of the master hand that make the little story a classic. 



Nevertheless the book abounds in passages of wonderful beauty. The 

 description of his camp-fire in the storm, of the auroras, of the sunrise 

 in Glacier Bay, of the view from Glenora Peak, and a score of others, 

 will rank among his best work. An interesting aspect of the book is the 

 new light in which it places Mr. Muir in his relation to humanity. His 

 fine, broad understanding of the Indians, their virtues, their failings, the 

 hopelessness of their situation, where the approach of civilization brought 

 mainly the "contamination of bad whites," is manifested most sympa- 

 thetically throughout. His meeting with the coureur-de-bois, Le Claire, 

 and their intimate companionship for a day and a night before life parted 

 them forever, is another revealing glimpse of the John Muir known to 

 his friends, the big-hearted, open-minded companion, the lover of all 

 things simple, sincere and best in mankind. 



In this as in all his other books two qualities stand out pre-eminently 

 — the sincerity of his enthusiasm, the intensity of his religious faith. The 

 sound in the flow of a stream, the note of a thrush, the roar of a rain- 

 laden gale — each of nature's voices was to him the "very voice of God, 

 humanized, terrestrialized, entering one's heart as to a home prepared 

 for it." Perhaps in the years to come his greatest claim to the world's 

 love and reverence will be that in an age of groping, dark materialism 

 he kept alight the flame of simple faith in God, of belief in the spiritual 

 character of nature's influence on man. M. R. P. 



