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ONE of the poignant tragedies
of north polar exploration, that of the Jeannette, still lingers in the
memory of persons now living, though a generation has since passed away.
John Muir, who joined the first search expedition dispatched from San
Francisco, had already achieved distinction by his glacial studies in the
Sierra Nevada and in Alaska. The Corwin expedition afforded him a coveted
opportunity to cruise among the islands of Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean,
and to visit the frost-bitten shores of northeastern Siberia and
northwestern Alaska. So enticing was the lure of this new adventure, so
eager was he to study the evidence of glaciation in the Far North, that he
said a reluctant good-bye to his young wife and fared forth upon the deep.
"You remember," he wrote to her from the Siberian coast, "that I told you
long ago how eager I was to get upon those islands in the middle of the
Bering Sea and Strait to read the ice record there."
The events which led up to
this memorable cruise of the Corwin in 1881 had their origin in the
widespread interest which north polar exploration was exciting at this time
all over the world. In 1877 Lieutenant George W. De Long, an American naval
officer, was searching among the northern ports of England for a whaling
vessel adapted to the requirements of Arctic exploration. De Long had
commanded the Juniata which was sent out for the relief of the Polaris, and
through this experience had grown enthusiastic over his own plans for
reaching the North Pole.
The whaling industry was at
that time a very profitable one, and few owners of whalers and scalers were
willing to part with their vessels. Though Sir Allen Young's steam yacht
Pandora, which Dc Long finally selected, had already made two Arctic
voyages, she appears to have been chosen more because she was available than
because of her superior fitness for ice navigation. In any case she was
purchased by James Gordon Bennett, patron of the proposed expedition, was
fitted out at Deptford, England, and re-named the Jeannette. Though the new
name evaded the suggestion of a box of evils, she proved to be one for those
who sailed in her. Commander De Long himself brought her around Cape Horn to
San Francisco. In the month of July, 1879, she sailed from that port for
Bering Strait and the Arctic Ocean - never to return. Crushed in the ice,
she sank, June 12, 1881, in the Arctic Ocean, one hundred and fifty miles
north of the New Siberian Islands.
The retreat southward across
the ice-floes was one of great peril. Only thirteen out of thirty-four men
ultimately reached civilization and safety. De Long himself, and ten of the
men with him, died of starvation and exposure on the delta of the Lena
River, where two of the Jeannette's storm-beaten cutters landed in the
middle of September, 1881. One of them, commanded by Chief Engineer
Melville, reached a Russian village on one of the eastern mouths of the Lena
River. He promptly organized a search party, recovering the ship's records
in November, 1881, and the bodies of his unfortunate shipmates the following
spring.
When the North Pacific
whaling fleet returned from Arctic waters in the autumn of 1879, two ships,
the Mount Wollaston and the Vigilant, were reported missing. They had been
last seen in October in the same general region, near Herald Island, where
the Jeannette had entered the polar ice. The Mount Wollaston was commanded
by Captain Nye, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, one of the keenest and
bravest men that ever sailed the frigid seas. He it was who at a conference
of whaling captains, called by Be Long in San Francisco before the departure
of his expedition, hesitated to give an opinion on the practicability of De
Long's plans. But when urged for an expression of his views, he said, "Put
her [the Jeannette] into the ice and let her drift, and you may get through,
or you may go to the devil, and the chances are about equal."
In the service of the United
States Treasury Department there was at this time a stanch little steamer
called the Corwin. Built at Abina, Oregon, she was constructed throughout of
the finest Oregon fir, fastened with copper, galvanized iron, and
locust-tree nails. She had a draught of nearly eleven feet, twenty- four
feet beam, and was one hundred and thirty-seven feet long between
perpendiculars. The ordinary duties of the captain of such a revenue steamer
involved primarily the enforcement of federal laws for the protection of
governmental interests on the Fur Seal Islands and the sea-otter hunting
grounds of Alaska. But the supposed plight of the Jeannette and the unknown
fate of two whalers caught in the ice were soon to increase the Corwin's
duties, and call her into regions where her sturdy sailing qualities were to
prove of the utmost importance.
In the spring of 1880 the
Corwin, in command of Captain Calvin L. Hooper, was ordered into North
Alaskan waters in pursuance of her regular duties. But Captain Hooper had
also been directed to make all possible inquiries for the missing whalers
and the Jeannette. He returned with no tidings of the lost, but with reports
of starvation and death among the Eskimos of St. Lawrence Island on account
of an uncommonly severe and stormy winter in the Arctic regions. He
entertained no hope for the lost whalers, but thought De Long and his party
might be safe.
A general demand for relief
expeditions now arose. Petitions poured into Congress, and the American
Geographical Society addressed a forcible appeal to President Garfield. When
the Corwin was sent to Alaskan waters again in 1881 it was with the
following specific instructions to Captain Hooper: -
No information having been
received concerning the whalers Mount Wollaston and Vigilant, you will bear
in mind the instructions for your cruise of last year, and it is hoped you
may bring back some tidings of the missing vessels. You will also make
careful inquiries in the Arctic regarding the progress and whereabouts of
the steamer Jeannette, engaged in making explorations under command of
Lieutenant- Commander Dc Long, U.S.N., and will, if practicable, communicate
with and extend any needed assistance to that vessel. . . . You will in your
season's cruise touch at such places as may be practicable on the mainland
or islands where there are settlements of natives, and examine into and
report upon their condition.
A letter written to his
mother from Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, gives Muir's own account of his purpose
in joining the expedition.
I wrote you from San
Francisco [he says] that I had suddenly made up my mind to avail myself of
the opportunity offered to visit the Arctic region on the steamer Thomas
Corwin sent to seek the Jeannette and the missing whalers that were lost in
the ice two years ago off Point Barrow.
I have been interested for a
long time in the glaciation of the Pacific Coast, and I felt that I must
make a trip of this sort to the Far North some time, and no better chance
could in any probability offer. I am acquainted with our captain, and have
every comfort the ship can afford, and every facility to pursue my studies.
We mean to proceed from here
past the seal islands St. Paul and St. George, then northward along the
Siberian coast to about Cape Serdze, where a sledge party with dogs will be
sent out to search the North Siberian coast, while the steamer the meanwhile
will cross to the American shore and call at St. Michael, Kotzebue Sound,
and other places, [where we shall have the opportunity of] making short
journeys inland. Then, as the ice melts and breaks up, we will probably push
eastward around Point Barrow, then return to the Siberian side to pick up
our land party, then endeavor to push through the ice to the mysterious
unexplored Wrangell Land. We hope to return to San Francisco by October or
November, but may possibly be compelled to winter in the Arctic somewhere.
De Long, in a letter to his
wife, had written that his plan was to proceed north by the eastern coast of
Wrangell Land, touching first at Herald Island to build a cairn and leave
news of the Jeannette's progress. Believing that Wrangell Land extended
northward toward the Pole, he proposed to leave similar records along its
eastern coast, under cairns, at intervals of twenty-five miles. These known
intentions of Dc Long show why it was one of the foremost objects of the
Corwin expedition to reach what Muir called "the mysterious unexplored
Wrangell Land."
How keenly Muir appreciated
the possibilities of science and adventure in the exploration of this
unknown Arctic land may be seen in the fourteenth chapter of this volume. Up
to this time nothing was actually known about Wrangell Land except its
existence. The first European who reported its discovery was Captain Kellett
of H.M.S. Herald. He saw it in 1849 when he discovered Herald Island, which
was named after his vessel. By right of discovery Kellett's name should have
been given to Wrangell Land, and upon British Admiralty charts it was very
properly indicated as "Kellett Land."
The name Wrangell Land, it
seems, became associated with the island through a report of Captain Thomas
Long, of the whaling bark Nile. In 1867 he reported that he had sailed to
the eastward along the land during the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth
[of August], and in some places approached it as near as fifteen miles. I
have named this northern land Wrangell Land [he says] as an appropriate
tribute to the memory of a man who spent three consecutive years north of
latitude 68°, and demonstrated the problem of this open polar sea forty-five
years ago, although others of much later date have endeavored to claim the
merit of this discovery. The west cape of this land I have named Cape
Thomas, after the man who first reported the land from the masthead of my
ship, and the southeastern cape I have named after the largest island in
this group [Hawaii]. [Quoted from a letter by Captain Long published in the
Honolulu Commercial Advertiser, November, 1867. The same paper contains a
letter from Captain George W. Raynor, of the ship Reindeer, giving
additional geographic details.]
Captain Long apparently was
unaware of the fact that the island already bore the name of Kellett by
right of discovery eighteen years earlier. But since Baron Wrangell had made
such a brave and determined search for this "problematical land of the
North," as he referred to it in his final report, there is a certain poetic
justice in applying his name to what he only sought, but never found.
While Captain Hooper, in his
report of 1880, had expressed the conviction that Wrangell Land was an
island, the first demonstration of its insularity was made by Commander De
Long, who had practically staked the success of his expedition on the belief
that it was a country of large extent northward, and suitable for winter
quarters. But before his vessel was crushed in the ice it drifted, within
sight of Wrangell Land, directly across the meridians between which it lies.
This fatal drift of the Jeannette not only furnished conclusive disproof of
the theory that Wrangell Land might be part of a continent stretching across
the north polar regions, but proved it to be an island of limited extent. It
is an inaccuracy, therefore, when the United States Hydrographer's report
for 1882 sets the establishment of this fact down to the credit of the
Rodgers expedition.
So far as known, the first
human beings that ever stood upon the shores of this island were in Captain
Hooper's landing party, August 12, 1881, and John Muir was of the number.
The earliest news of the event, and of the fact that Be Long had not
succeeded in touching either Herald Island or Wrangell Land, reached the
world at large in a letter from Muir published in the San Francisco Evening
Bulletin, September 29, 1881. But the complete record of Muir's
observations, together with some of the sketches contained in his journals,
is now given to the public for the first time.
A second Jeannette relief
expedition, already mentioned as that of the Rodgers, was sent out under the
direction of the Secretary of the Navy. It succeeded in reaching Wrangell
Land two weeks after the Corwin. In order to make our geographical and
scientific knowledge of this remote island as complete in this volume as
possible, we deem it desirable to include a brief account of what was
achieved during the cruise of the Rodgers.
This vessel, a stout and
comparatively new whaler, known before its re-baptism as the Mary and Helen,
was placed in command of Lieutenant, now Rear Admiral, Robert Al. Berry. He
discovered on the southern shore of Wrangell Land a snug little harbor where
he kept the Rodgers at anchor for nineteen days while two search parties, in
whaleboats, going in opposite directions, explored the coast for possible
survivors of the missing whalers and for cairns left by the crew of the
Jeannette. These search parties nearly circumnavigated the island without
finding anything except Captain Hooper's cairn, and Commander Berry, in his
report to the Secretary of the Navy, said, "I believe it impossible that any
of the missing parties ever landed here."
The principal gain of this
exploration was a running survey of the coast and a general determination of
the size of the island. In other respects the harvest of scientific facts
gathered on Wrangell Land by the Rodgers was meager, if one may judge by W.
H. Gilder's Ice Pack and Tundra. Unfortunately, the act which carried the
appropriation for the expedition provided that the vessel selected "be
wholly manned by volunteers from the Navy." This fact seems to have
prevented the taking of men trained in the natural sciences, like John Muir
or E. W. Nelson. Nineteen days on Wrangell Land would have enabled them to
obtain a large amount of interesting information about its flora, fauna,
avifauna, and geology.
Commander Berry, taking
charge of an exploring party, penetrated twenty miles into the interior of
the island and ascended a conspicuous mountain whose height, by barometric
measurement, was found to be twenty-five hundred feet. He reported that he
"could see from its summit the sea in all directions, except between S.S.W.
by W. per compass. The day was very clear, and no land except Herald Island
was visible from this height. There was no ice in sight to the southward." A
letter of inquiry addressed to Rear Admiral Berry by the editor brought a
courteous reply, stating that he did not know of any photographs or
sketches, made by members of the Rodgers expedition, which would show the
coast or interior topography of the island; that "the vegetation was scant,
consisting of a few Arctic plants, a little moss, etc."; that "polar bears,
walrus, and seal were quite common upon or near the island," and that the
provisional map which accompanied his report to the Secretary of the Navy in
1881 is the only one available.
From our reproduction of this
map, and from the report of the Rodgers, it will be seen that practically
the whole interior of the island still awaits exploration. Estimates of its
size vary between twenty-eight and forty miles as to width, and between
sixty-five and seventy- five as to length. Striking an average, one might
say that it contains about twenty-five hundred square miles of territory.
The distance across Long Strait from the nearest point on the Siberian coast
is about eighty-five or ninety miles, and Herald Island lies about thirty
miles east of Wrangell Land.
In 1914 the Karluk,
Steffiunsson's flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, was crushed in
the ice, and sank not far from the place where the Jeannette was lost. Under
the able leadership of Captain Robert A. Bartlett the members of the
expedition made their way to Wrangell Land, where they remained encamped
while Captain Bartlett, with an Eskimo, crossed Long's Strait to Siberia
over the ice. Thence he made his way to St. Michael, Alaska, and enlisted
aid for the Karluk survivors. Their rescue was effected successfully, and,
so far as we are able to discover, these members of the Canadian Arctic
Expedition are the only human beings that have been on Wrangell Land since
the visit of the Corwin and the Rodgers in 1881.
We venture to mention, in
this connection, a few facts which call for consideration in the interest of
a historical and consistent geographical nomenclature. The United States
Geographic Board has done much to bring order out of the chaos of Alaskan
names, and its decisions are available in Baker's Geographic Dictionary of
Alaska, which has been followed in the editing of this volume. There is a
"Wrangell Island" in southeastern Alaska, well known to readers of Muir's
Travels in Alaska, hence it occasions needless confusion to call Wrangell
Land by the same name, as even recent Hydrographic Office charts continue to
do, besides misspelling the name. The retention of the term "land" for an
island is supported by abundant precedent, especially in the Arctic regions.
The altitude of the mountain
ascended by Commander Berry had already been determined with remarkable
accuracy by Captain Long in 1867. He described it as having "the appearance
of an extinct volcano," and it is shown on his sketch of Wrangell Land,
reproduced on the map accompanying Nourse's American Explorations in the Ice
Zones. Captain Hooper, in his report of the cruise of the Corwin, declares
that the peak had been appropriately named for Long, and adds, "Singular as
it may appear, this name to which Captain Long was justly entitled has,
notwithstanding our pretended custom of adhering to original names, been set
aside on a recent issue of American charts." It is some compensation,
however, that the wide stretch of water between the North Siberian coast and
Wrangell Land is now known as Long Strait.
Captain Hooper and his party,
being the first to set foot upon Wrangell Land, exercised the privilege of
taking possession of it in the name of the United States. In order to avoid
the confusion of the two names, Kellett and Wrangell, which it already bore,
Captain Hooper named it New Columbia. This name, which was set aside by the
Hydrographic Office, he says
was suggested by the name
which had been given to the islands farther west, New Siberia. It is
probable that the name Wrangell Land will continue in use upon American
charts, but its justice, in view of all the facts, is not so apparent. In my
opinion the adoption by us of the name Kellett Land given by the English
would be appropriate, and avoid the confusion which is sure to follow in
consequence of its having two names.
Headlands and other
geographical features of the island were named by us, but as the names which
were applied to features actually discovered by the Corwin and heretofore
unnamed have been ignored, it is possible that a desire to do honor to the
memory of Wrangell is not the only consideration. To avoid the complications
which would result from duplicating geographical names, I have dropped all
bestowed by the Corwin and adopted the more recent ones applied by the
Hydrographic Office. I have also adopted the plan of the island [from
surveys of the Rodgers] as shown on the small chart accompanying
Hydrographic Notice No. 84, although the trend of the coast and the
geographical position of the mouth of the river where we first planted the
flag do not agree with the result of the observations and triangulations
made by the Corwin.
Now that Captain Hooper and
nearly all the men who had a share in these explorations of the early
eighties have passed on, it is proper that the basic facts as well as
conflicting judgments should be set down here for the just consideration of
geographers. Both from Muir's vivid narrative of the Corwin's penetration to
the shores of Wrangell Land, and from Captain Hooper's admirable report
published in 1884 as Senate Executive Document No. 204, the reader will
conclude that the Captain of the Corwin had a better right to be remembered
in connection with the geographical features of the island than most of the
persons whose names have been attached to them by the Hydrographic Office.
Whether Wrangell Land became
United States territory when Hooper formally raised our flag over it is a
question. The editor is unable to discover any treaty between Russia and the
United States which would debar possession by the latter. But questions
involving rights of territorial discovery have not, so far as we know, been
raised between the two governments.
Muir's opportunity to join
the Corwin apparently arose out of his acquaintanceship with Captain Hooper,
and when the invitation came he had little time to prepare for the cruise. A
letter to his wife affords a glimpse of his surroundings and plans when the
Corwin was approaching Unalaska.
All goes well on our little
ship [he writes] and not all the tossing of the waves, and the snow and hail
on the deck, and being out of sight of land so long, can make me surely feel
that I am not now with you all as ever, so sudden was my departure, and so
long have I been accustomed in the old lonely life to feel the influence of
loved ones as if present in the flesh, while yet far. . . . There are but
three of us in the cabin, the Captain, the Surgeon, and myself, and only the
same three at table, so that there is no crowding.
Should we be successful in
reaching Wrangell Land we would very likely be compelled to winter on it,
exploring while the weather permitted. In case we are unsuccessful in
reaching Wrangell Land, we may get caught farther west and be able to reach
it by dog-sledges in winter while the pack is frozen. Or we may have to
winter on the Siberian coast, etc., etc., according to the many variable
known and unknown circumstances of the case. Of course if Dc Long is found
we will return at once. If not, a persistent effort will be made to force a
way to that mysterious ice-girt Wrangell Land, since it was to it that Dc
Long was directing his efforts when last heard from. We will be cautious,
however, and we hope to be back to our homes this fall. Do not allow this
outline of Captain Hooper's plan to get into print at present.
From another letter written
the following day we quote this breezy bit of description: -
How cold it is this morning!
How it blows and snows! It is not "the wolf's long howl on Unalaska's
shore," as Campbell has it, but the wind's long howl. A more sustained,
prolonged, screeching, raving howl I never before heard. But the little
Corwin rides on through it in calm strength, rising and falling amid the
foam-streaked waves like a loon. The cabin boy, Henry, told me this morning
[May 16] early that land was in sight. So I got up at six o'clock - nine of
your time - and went up into the pilot-house to see it. Two jagged black
masses were visible, with hints of snow mountains back of them, but mostly
hidden beneath a snow-storm.
After breakfast we were
within two miles of the shore. Huge snow-peaks, grandly ice-sculptured,
loomed far into the stormy sky for a few moments in tolerably clear relief;
then the onrush of snowflakes, sweeping out into the dark levels of the sea,
would hide it all and fill our eyes, while we puckered our brows and tried
to gaze into the face of it all.
We have to proceed in the
dimness and confusion of the storm with great caution, stopping frequently
to take soundings, so it will probably be one or two o'clock before we reach
the harbor of Unalaska on the other side of the island. I tried an hour ago
to make a sketch of the mountains along the shore for you, to be sent with
this letter, but my fingers got too cold to hold the pencil, and the snow
filled my eyes, and so dimmed the outlines of the rocks that I could not
trace them.
Down here in the cabin it is
warm and summerish, and when the Captain and Doctor are on deck I have it
all to myself. . . . I am glad you thought to send my glasses and barometer
and coat. We will procure furs as we proceed north, so as to be ready in
case we should be compelled to winter in the Arctic regions. It is
remarkably cold even here, and dark and blue and forbidding every way,
though it is fine weather for health.
I was just thinking this
morning of our warm sunny home. . . and of the red cherries down the hill,
and the hundreds of blunt-billed finches, every one of them with red bills
soaked in cherry juice. Not much fruit juice beneath this sky!
During the cruise Muir kept a
daily record of his experiences and observations. He also wrote a series of
letters to the San Francisco Evening Bulletin in which he turned to account
the contents of his journal. Comparison of the letters with the journal
shows that his notebooks contain a large amount of interesting literary and
scientific material which has not been utilized in the Bulletin letters. To
publish both would involve too much duplication. It has seemed best,
therefore, to make the letters the foundation of the volume and to insert
the additional matter from the journal wherever it belongs chronologically
in the epistolary record. Most of the letters have thus grown far beyond
their original size.
The performance of this task
has often been trying and time-consuming, especially when it became the
editor's duty to avoid repetition, or overlapping, by selecting what seemed
to be the more comprehensive, the more finished, or the more vivid form of
statement. But this method of solving the difficulty has the advantage, for
the reader, of unifying in the present volume practically the whole of
Muir's literary and scientific work during the cruise of the Corwin.
Sometimes, as in chapters eleven and twelve, all the material is new and has
been derived exclusively from the journal. The style of the latter may
generally be recognized by its telegraphic conciseness.
During his studies in the
Sierra Nevada Muir had acquired skill, speed, and accuracy in sketching the
features of a landscape. This ability he turned to good account during the
cruise of the Corwin, for one of his journals is filled with a variety of
sketches which prove to be remarkably faithful pictures in cases where it
has been possible to compare them with photographs. In judging the pictorial
value of these sketches it should be remembered that Muir employed them
chiefly as an auxiliary descriptive means of recording his observations for
future use. One of the sketches, for instance, is an extensive panoramic
view of the southern coast of Wrangell Land, evidently done as the Corwin
cruised along the coast. Since his numerous sketches of Wrangell Land are
apparently the only ones in existence, they are of unique importance in
connection with his account of the Corwin's landing on the island. The same
considerations apply in a measure to Herald Island whose precipitous cliffs
he was the first to scale as well as to sketch.
Since Muir's primary object
in joining the Corwin expedition was to look for evidence of glaciation in
the Arctic and subarctic regions, we have deemed it desirable to include in
this volume the article in which he gathered up the results of his glacial
studies and discoveries. It was published in 1884, with Captain C. L.
Hooper's report, as Senate Executive Document No. 204 of the Forty-eighth
Congress.
Both the Hooper report and
the article on glaciation were elaborately illustrated from Muir's pencil
sketches, though the fact that they were Muir's is nowhere stated. "The
'Glacier Article' arrived on the sixth," wrote Captain Hooper to Muir under
date of February 7, 1884, "and was sent on its way rejoicing the same day.
The Honorable Secretary [of the Treasury] assures me that he will see that
the whole is printed without delay. Please accept my thanks for the article,
which is very interesting. The sketches are very fine and will prove a
valuable addition to the report. That of the large glacier from Mount
Fairweather is particularly fine."
The article on glaciation
should have been published a year earlier, in the same volume with the
"Botanical Notes." But for some reason Muir was misinformed, and an
apologetic letter to him from Major E. W. Clark, then Chief of the United
States Revenue Marine, hints at a petty intrigue as the cause. "I regret
very much," he writes, "that I had not myself corresponded with you
regarding your contribution to the Arctic report. Your article on glaciation
would have been exactly the thing and would have admitted of very effective
illustration. I feel well assured that you were purposely misinformed
regarding the report, and could readily explain the reason to you in a
personal interview. There has been much anxious inquiry for your notes on
glaciation." It was the writer of this letter after whom Captain Hooper
named the river at whose mouth the Corwin anchored on Wrangell Land. This
fact has been recorded by Professor Joseph Everett Nourse, U.S.N., in his
work American Explorations in the Ice Zones. He states that through the
courtesy of Major Clark he had access to the unpublished official report of
the cruise of the Corwin. Since the river in question appears without a name
upon the chart of Wrangell Land, we must suppose it to be one of the names
which Captain Hooper complains the Hydrographic Office ignored. Besides the
illustrative drawings which accompany Muir's article on glaciation in the
Far North, his note-books contain numerous interesting sketches of
geological and topographical features of Arctic landscapes. They show with
what tireless industry and pains he worked at his task. This is the first
publication of the general conclusions of his Arctic studies, supported in
detail by the records of his journal, and by his sketches. In its present
form the article follows a revised copy found among Muir's papers.
Muir's report on the flora of
Herald Island and Wrangell Land still remains, after thirty- six years, the
only one ever made on the vegetation of these remote Arctic regions. It has
seemed best, therefore, to include also his article entitled "Botanical
Notes" as an appendix to this volume. It was first published in 1883 as a
part of Treasury Department Document No. 429. Strangely enough, the letter
of transmittal from the Secretary of the Treasury refers to it as "the
observations on glaciation in the Arctic Ocean and the Alaska region made by
John Muir."
The author never saw
printer's proof after he sent the manuscript, and the number of
typographical errors made in the technical parts of his article must have
established a new record, for they mount into hundreds. Knowing that Muir
had sent a duplicate set of his Arctic plant collection to Dr. Asa Gray for
final scientific determination, the editor went to the Gray Herbarium of
Harvard University, in order to make the necessary corrections and
verifications. Fortunately the writer found there not only the original
plants, but also Muir's letters to Asa Gray. "I returned a week ago," wrote
Muir under date of October 31, 1881, "from the polar region around Wrangell
Land and Herald Island, and brought a few plants from there which I wish you
would name as soon as convenient, as I have to write a report on the flora
for the expedition. I had a fine icy time, and gathered a lot of exceedingly
interesting facts concerning the formation of Bering Sea and the Arctic
Ocean, and the configuration of the shores of Siberia and Alaska. Also
concerning the forests that used to grow there, etc., which I hope some day
to discuss with you."
The editor has made no
attempt to reduce the genus and species names to modern synonymy. As in the
case of Muir's A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf, it has seemed best to offer
the original determinations, making the necessary corrections by reference
to the Index Kewensis, and, in the case of the ferns, to Christensen's Index
Filicum. Since Muir's lists did not follow any particular order of
classification we have adopted the order of families laid down in the last
edition of Gray's Manual of Botany.
Special interest attaches to
the fact that Muir found on the Arctic shore of Alaska, near Cape Thompson,
a species of Erigeron new to science. It is an asteraceous plant with showy,
daisy-like flowers In reporting this find to the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, Asa Gray described it as "the most interesting and apparently
the only new species of an extensive and truly valuable collection made by
Mr. Muir in a recent searching cruise which he accompanied, and which
extended to Wrangell Island Wrangell Land]. The plant seems to have been
abundant, for it occurs in the collection under three numbers."
Gray promptly named it
Erigeron Muirii in honor of its finder, thus redeeming for the second time a
promise made ten years earlier when he wrote to Muir, "Pray, find a new
genus, or at least a new species, that I may have the satisfaction of
embalming your name, not in glacier ice, but in spicy wild perfume."
WILLIAM FREDERIC BADE.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY,
June, 1917. |
