Yosemite Glaciers by John Muir (1871) - John Muir Exhibit (John Muir Education Project, Sierra Club California)
The following was John Muir's first published work, for which he was paid $200--a large amount of money at the time. The essay was pieced together from letters sent to his friends. The Ice Streams of the Great Valley. Their Progress and Present Condition -- Scenes among the Glacier Beds. YOSEMITE VALLEY September 28th, 1871. Two years ago, when picking flowers in the mountains back of Yosemite Valley, I found a book. It was blotted and storm-beaten; all of its outer pages were mealy and crumbly, the paper seemed to dissolve like the snow beneath which it had been buried; but many of the inner pages were well preserved, and though all were more or less stained and torn, whole chapters were easily readable. In this condition is the great open book of Yosemite glaciers today; its granite pages have been torn and blurred by the same storms that wasted the castaway book. The grand central chapters of the Hoffman, and Tenaya, and Nevada glaciers are stained and corroded by the frosts and rai