BOOK REVIEWS 



Edited by Marion Randall Parsons 



"The Cruise In the summer of 1881 Mr. Muir accompanied his friend, 

 OF THE Captain Calvin Hooper, on a long Arctic cruise in search 



Corwin"* of the Jeannette and Captain De Long's exploring party. 



Captain De Long had sailed into the Arctic in the sum- 

 mer of 1879, and grave fears were entertained for his safety. As a mat- 

 ter of fact, at the very time that the Corwin was beginning her search 

 the Jeannette sank, crushed in the ice, a thousand miles to northwest- 

 ward. Her captain and twenty of her men never returned. The Corwin 

 was also searching for traces of two missing whaling ships. Coasting 

 along the Siberian and Alaskan shores, making enquiry at all the Chuk- 

 chi and Esquimo villages, gave Mr. Muir a wonderful opportunity to 

 study the glaciation and plant life of the Arctic. The young Mr. Nel- 

 son, whose enthusiastic pursuit of birds and "other game" — such as the 

 dead natives in the cemeteries and the "ivory spears, arrows, stone ham- 

 mers . . . which formed the least ghastly of his spoils" — so amused Mr. 

 Muir, is now the director of the U. S. Biological Survey. 



The book is based upon a series of letters written during the cruise 

 for the San Francisco "Bulletin." Certain passages from his journal 

 containing material omitted from the letters have been included in chron- 

 ological order to complete the record. Mr. Muir's valuable and inter- 

 esting report on the "Glaciation of the Arctic and Subartic regions vis- 

 ited during the cruise," and his "Botanical Notes," published in 1883 as 

 a part of Treasury Document No. 429, likewise have been included in 

 an appendix. The botanical report on the flora of Herald Island and 

 Wrangell Land, says the editor, "still remains, after thirty-six years, 

 the only one ever made on the vegetation of these remote Arctic regions." 

 The editor's work throughout is admirable. An interesting introduction 

 completes the story of the Jeannette, and gives a brief account of sub- 

 sequent exploration in that region. 



The narrative of the voyage dwells not alone on the features which 

 were Mr. Muir's especial object of study, but on the characters and cus- 

 toms of the natives as well. The voyage was not without its danger. 

 More than once they risked being crushed by the ice, narrowly escaping, 

 indeed, the fate of the lost Jeannette. Mr. Muir was a member of the 

 first party ever to land on the ice-bound shores of Wrangell Land. He 

 also made the first ascent of Herald Island. "The midnight hour," he 

 says, "I spent alone on the highest summit — one of the most impressive 



* The Cruise of the Corwin. Journal of the Arctic Expedition of 1881 in search 

 of De Long and the Jeannette. By John Muir. Edited by William Frederic Bade. 

 Illustrated with photographs and sketches by Mr, Muir. Houghton Mifflin Company, 

 Boston and New York. 191 7. Pages, 272. Price, $2.50. 



