Alaska Days with John Muir

IN the summer of 1879 I was stationed at Fort Wrangell in southeastern Alaska,... - very green and very fresh - to do what I could towards establishing the white man’s civilization among the Thlinget Indians. I had very many things to learn and many more to unlearn.Thither came by the monthly mail steamboat in July to aid and counsel me in my work three men of national reputation - Dr. Henry Kendall of New York; Dr. Aaron L. Lindsley of Portland, Oregon, and Dr. Sheldon Jackson of Denver and the West....Standing a little apart from them as the steamboat drew to the dock, his peering blue eyes already eagerly scanning the islands and mountains, was a lean, sinewy man of forty, with waving, reddish-brown hair and beard, and shoulders slightly stooped. He wore a Scotch cap and a long, gray tweed ulster, which I have always since associated with him, and which seemed the same garment, unsoiled and unchanged, that he wore later on his northern trips. He was introduced as Professor Muir, the Naturalist...