Quantcast
Channel: oldscratbag » the arctic
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Travels In Alaska

0
0

The book I read to research this post was Travels In Alaska by John Muir which is a very good book that I downloaded for free from kindle. This book was written in 1879 and presumably is out of copyright. I doubt if much of places depicted in Alaska have changed much even today. In Juneau there was an impressive 240 stamps running off one mill. Obviously the towns have changed greatly. John was a bit of an ecologist who lived much of his life in the Sierra Nevada wilderness and visited Alaska by ship to explore and wrote the manuscript for this book. His widow finished the book from his notes and published it after his death. It became regarded as a classic travel book. The American Indians he encounted were friendly and hospitable to him but there had been an incident at the one place where a gunboat was sent to flatten a village and punish them and stormed it and killed all but one of the crew. The situation with them was obviously volatile. They did canoe around the glaciers and watch out for the small ones that could break a canoe and the big glaciers were liable to either have large pieces break off or the whole thing tip upside down. At the one place someone had a newfoundland that caught fish out the stream for him to eat. At another place the American Indians caught a devil fish that lives on shellfish it picks in suckers and crushes in its beak like mouth. Anything it grabs has no chance of getting away. The one they had was 3 feet long and they were going to eat. At the native villages there was a totem pole each dwelling many 15-16 feet high and some upto 40 feet high. These depicted animals where each family had a particular animal spirit guide depicted. American Indians regard wolves as the most wise. In a pack they will attack almost any animal and are very well organised. They will even attack bear. He does say are more numerous on the islands than on the mainland. Even people have to watch out for them and if you are attacked the best thing is to climb a tree. I very much enjoyed this book and do recommend it.

 



Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images