A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

By John Muir

At the age of 29, naturalist John Muir set out alone for a long hike through the rural American South in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. This volume chronicles his path from Indiana across Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to the Gulf of Mexico. Muir chose the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find," sketching plants along the way and recording his delighted encounters with Spanish moss, palmettos, magnolias, and other botanical wonders. Although he preferred the wilderness to settlements, Muir occasionally encountered former Confederate soldiers, freed slaves, and other residents of the region during the 1860s.
This volume bridges the gap between The Story of My Boyhood and Youth and My First Summer in the Sierra. Muir's editor and biographer, William Frederic Badè, assembled it by drawing upon the decades-old journals kept by the fledgling conservationist and writer as he traversed the many miles. Badè's footnotes appear throughout the book, offering context for Muir's enthusiastic observations, which pulse with the immediacy and freshness of first impressions. Atmospheric black-and-white photographs and sketches complement the text.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780486829555

John Muir

John Muir (21 April 1838 – 24 December 1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States.

Book preview

JOHN MUIR ABOUT 1870

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2018, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1916 by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York.

Readers should be aware that the text in places contains cultural references characteristic of the era, which may be deemed offensive by modern standards.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Muir, John, 1838-1914, author. | Badáe, William Frederic, 1871-1936, editor.

Title: A thousand-mile walk to the Gulf / John Muir.

Other titles: 1000-mile walk to the Gulf

Description: Dover edition. | Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., [2018] | «This Dover edition, first published in 2018, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1916 by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. —"Provided by publisher. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017045152| ISBN 9780486823980 | ISBN 0486823989

Subjects: LCSH: Southern States—Description and travel. | Botany—Southern States. | Natural history—Southern States. | Natural history—Cuba. | Cuba—Description and travel. | California—Description and travel. | Walking—United States. | Muir, John, 1838-1914—Diaries. | Muir, John, 1838-1914—Travel—Southern States. | Naturalists—United States—Biography.

Classification: LCC F215 .M95 2018 | DDC 917.504-dc23

LC record available at https://lccnloc.gov/2017045152

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

82398901 2018

www.doverpublications.com

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. K ENTUCKY F ORESTS AND C AVES

II. C ROSSING THE C UMBERLAND M OUNTAINS

III. T HROUGH THE R IVER C OUNTRY OF G EORGIA

IV. C AMPING AMONG THE T OMBS

V. T HROUGH F LORIDA S WAMPS AND F ORESTS

VI. C EDAR K EYS

VII. A S OJOURN IN C UBA

VIII. B Y A C ROOKED R OUTE TO C ALIFORNIA

IX. T WENTY H ILL H OLLOW

INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

JOHN MUIR ABOUT 1870

Photograph by Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco, CA.

MAP SHOWING ROUTE OF WALK TO THE GULF

KENTUCKY OAKS

Photograph by Theodore Eitel

ENTRANCE TO MAMMOTH CAVE

Photograph courtesy of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad

THE CLINCH RIVER, TENNESSEE

Photograph courtesy of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad

A SOUTHERN PINE

Photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

SPANISH MOSS (Tillandsia)

Photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

IN BONAVENTURE CEMETERY, SAVANNAH

Photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

BY THE ST. JOHN’S RIVER IN EASTERN FLORIDA

Photograph by Herbert W. Gleason

A FLORIDA PALMETTO HUMMOCK, OR HAMMOCK

Photograph by Herbert K. Job

LIME KEY, FLORIDA

From Mr. Muir’s sketch in the original journal

MORRO CASTLE AND ENTRANCE TO HAVANA HARBOR

From a photograph

TWENTY HILL HOLLOW, MERCED COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

From a sketch by Mr. Muir

INTRODUCTION

John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe.—These words are written on the inside cover of the notebook from which the contents of this volume have been taken. They reflect the mood in which the late author and explorer undertook his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico a half-century ago. No less does this refreshingly cosmopolitan address, which might have startled any finder of the book, reveal the temper and the comprehensiveness of Mr. Muir’s mind. He never was and never could be a parochial student of nature. Even at the early age of twenty-nine his eager interest in every aspect of the natural world had made him a citizen of the universe.

While this was by far the longest botanical excursion which Mr. Muir made in his earlier years, it was by no means the only one. He had botanized around the Great Lakes, in Ontario, and through parts of Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois. On these expeditions he had disciplined himself to endure hardship, for his notebooks disclose the fact that he often went hungry and slept in the woods, or on the open prairies, with no cover except the clothes he wore.

Oftentimes, he writes in some unpublished biographical notes, I had to sleep out without blankets, and also without supper or breakfast. But usually I had no great difficulty in finding a loaf of bread in the widely scattered clearings of the farmers. With one of these big backwoods loaves I was able to wander many a long, wild mile, free as the winds in the glorious forests and bogs, gathering plants and feeding on God’s abounding, inexhaustible spiritual beauty bread. Only once in my long Canada wanderings was the deep peace of the wilderness savagely broken. It happened in the maple woods about midnight, when I was cold and my fire was low. I was awakened by the awfully dismal howling of the wolves, and got up in haste to replenish the fire.

It was not, therefore, a new species of adventure upon which Mr. Muir embarked when he started on his Southern foot-tour. It was only a new response to the lure of those favorite studies which he had already pursued over uncounted miles of virgin Western forests and prairies. Indeed, had it not been for the accidental injury to his right eye in the month of March, 1867, he probably would have started somewhat earlier than he did. In a letter written to Indianapolis friends on the day after the accident, he refers mournfully to the interruption of a long-cherished plan. For weeks, he writes, I have daily consulted maps in locating a route through the Southern States, the West Indies, South America, and Europe—a botanical journey studied for years. And so my mind has long been in a glow with visions of the glories of a tropical flora; but, alas, I am half blind. My right eye, trained to minute analysis, is lost and I have scarce heart to open the other. Had this journey been accomplished, the stock of varied beauty acquired would have made me willing to shrink into any corner of the world, however obscure and however remote.

The injury to his eye proved to be less serious than he had at first supposed. In June he was writing to a friend: I have been reading and botanizing for some weeks, and find that for such work I am not very much disabled. I leave this city [Indianapolis] for home to-morrow, accompanied by Merrill Moores, a little friend of mine. We will go to Decatur, Illinois, thence northward through the wide prairies, botanizing a few weeks by the way. . . . I hope to go South towards the end of the summer, and as this will be a journey that I know very little about, I hope to profit by your counsel before setting out.

In an account written after the excursion he says: I was eager to see Illinois prairies on my way home, so we went to Decatur, near the center of the State, thence north [to Portage] by Rockford and Janesville. I botanized one week on the prairie about seven miles southwest of Pecatonica. . . . To me all plants are more precious than before. My poor eye is not better, nor worse. A cloud is over it, but in gazing over the widest landscapes, I am not always sensible of its presence.

By the end of August Mr. Muir was back again in Indianapolis. He had found it convenient to spend a botanical week among his University friends in Madison. So keen was his interest in plants at this time that an interval of five hours spent in Chicago was promptly turned to account in a search for them. I did not find many plants in her tumultuous streets, he complains; only a few grassy plants of wheat, and two or three species of weeds,—amaranth, purslane, carpet-weed, etc.,—the weeds, I suppose, for man to walk upon, the wheat to feed him. I saw some green algae, but no mosses. Some of the latter I expected to see on wet walls, and in seams on the pavements. But I suppose that the manufacturers’ smoke and the terrible noise are too great for the hardiest of them. I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be ‘carried of the spirit into the wilderness,’ I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest.

The letter noted above was written only two days before he started on his long walk to Florida. If the concluding sentences still reflect indecision, they also convey a hint of the overmastering impulse under which he was acting. The opening sentences of his journal, afterwards crossed out, witness to this sense of inward compulsion which he felt. Few bodies, he wrote, are inhabited by so satisfied a soul that they are allowed exemption from extraordinary exertion through a whole life. After reciting illustrations of nature’s periodicity, of the ebbs and flows of tides, and the pulsation of other forces, visible and invisible, he observes that so also there are tides not only in the affairs of men, but in the primal thing of life itself. In some persons the impulse, being slight, is easily obeyed or overcome. But in others it is constant and cumulative in action until its power is sufficient to overmaster all impediments, and to accomplish the full measure of its demands. For many a year I have been impelled toward the Lord’s tropic gardens of the South. Many influences have tended to blunt or bury this constant longing, but it has outlived and overpowered them all.

Muir’s love of nature was so largely a part of his religion that he naturally chose Biblical phraseology when he sought a vehicle for his feelings. No prophet of old could have taken his call more seriously, or have entered upon his mission more fervently. During the long days of his confinement in a dark room he had opportunity for much reflection. He concluded that life was too brief and uncertain, and time too precious, to waste upon belts and saws; that while he was pottering in a wagon factory, God was making a world; and he determined that, if his eyesight was spared, he would devote the remainder of his life to a study of the process. Thus the previous bent of his habits and studies, and the sobering thoughts induced by one of the bitterest experiences of his life, combined to send him on the long journey recorded in these pages.

Some autobiographical notes found among his papers furnish interesting additional details about the period between his release from the dark room and his departure for the South. As soon as I got out into heaven’s light, he says, "I started on another long excursion, making haste with all my heart to store my mind with the Lord’s beauty, and thus be ready for any fate, light or dark. And it was from this time that my long, continuous wanderings may be said to have fairly commenced. I bade adieu to mechanical inventions, determined to devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God. I first went home to Wisconsin, botanizing by the way, to take leave of my father and mother, brothers and sisters, all of whom were still living near Portage. I also visited the neighbors I had known as a boy, renewed my acquaintance with them after an absence of several years, and bade each a formal good-bye. When they asked where I was going I said, ‘Oh! I don’t know—just anywhere in the wilderness, southward. I have already had glorious glimpses of the Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, and Canada wildernesses; now I propose to go South and see something of the vegetation of the warm end of the country, and if possible to wander far enough into South America to see tropical vegetation in all its palmy glory.’

"The neighbors wished me well, advised me to be careful of my health, and reminded me that the swamps in the South were full of malaria. I stopped overnight at the home of an old Scotch lady who had long been my friend and was now particularly motherly in good wishes and advice. I told her that as I was sauntering along the road, just as the sun was going down, I heard a darling speckled-breast sparrow singing, ‘The day’s done, the day’s done.’ ‘Weel, John, my dear laddie,’ she replied, ‘your day will never be done. There is no end to the kind of studies you like so well, but there’s an end to mortals’ strength of body and mind, to all

Reviews for A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

[lazysky · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

** Following description by Harry Latimer, Olympia, WashingtonOne of a kind, rare large paper limited edition Verso of Title Page states: "550 copies of this large-paper edition were printed at the Riverside Press at Cambridge, in October, 1916. 500 copies are for sale. This is copy number 320." As shown.INSCRIBED BY MRS. E. H. HARRIMAN (MARY)Both E. H. (Edward Henry) and Mary Williamson (Averell) had a genuinely warm close and productive association with our Homeboy, and it would be difficult for me to state, between the two of them, which one was greater.John Muir's friendship--and partnership with E. H. and Mary was one of the most important in his later life. That later life when Muir was changing the very landscape of The West with words. A new way of seeing. Our National Parks are a new way of seeing.For more clarity in attempting a more truthful understanding of the Harriman's relationship, it is helpful to set aside, for the moment, the patriarchal bias as it has come to us through the usual history (his-story) written in textbooks.In other words, a world run by men. A history becomes a history of what men did. With E. H. and Mary it is more accurate to use the word partnership. Mary was no mere bystander to history, a bit of which can be demonstrated here.Your search engine will take you to a multitude of rare surviving letters between both E.H. and Mary to and from Muir, photos of them together, gorgeous photos and videos of Arden House, Pelican Bay, Southern California, Idaho, Southern Pacific Railroad narratives, studies, and institutional collections, along with PBS, if you like documentary movies on Muir, Harriman and The Harriman Alaska Expedition. The whole Harriman Family were onboard passengers for the Journey.The letters back and forth between Muir and the Harriman children are of particular interest, partly so in demonstrating Muir's own lively childlike sense of wonder and natural affinity for the young, and they for him. These surviving letters online are a special delight to read. The Harriman Alaska Expedition. Klamath Lake. Yosemite. Hetch Hetchy. Arden House. The Ranch in Idaho. National Parks. Their children. for starters...Also, it was the Harriman's talented & persistent private secretary, under explicit orders, who followed Muir around while he was on a visit to Harriman's "country lodge" at Klamath Lake. Muir talked, non-stop as usual, and the verbatim transcript finally became Muir's uniquely worded The Story Of My Boyhood and Youth. A book if otherwise left to Muir alone, late in life, busy and tired, would not likely have been completed for us to read today.E. H. and Mary Harriman are not the usual thing one first associates with John Muir. That would be a mistake if not considered at all, especially in light of Muir's stated singular mission in later life to "do something for the wildness", unprotected and fast disappearing. This is Muir at work, the nuts and bolts of preservation, outside the mountains, important practical matters to him.One does not easily grasp an association between E. H. and Mary and John Muir unless one considers how power moves in the world of money, enormous wealth, and Muir's own practical & political savvy. Political power. Muir needed that, his own powerful writings not enough, and he knew it.At the same time, as evidence shows, Muir maintained a genuine friendship, almost familial, with Mary Harriman ("Mrs. H.") and later often as ("Sister Mary") & family, including the kids, even years after E. H. died.Muir wrote only one book on one person: E. H. E. H. quote: "Cooperation means "Do as I say, and do it damn quick." Muir on E. H. : "I don't think Mr. Harriman is very rich. He has not as much money as I have. I have all I want and he has not." E. H. in response: "I never cared for money except as power for work...getting into partnership with Nature in doing good." This must have been music to Muir's ears, hearing that. Muir had found two partners. (Muir was like that you know, a tactful teaser, in order to find out, for one thing, if a person was too full of themselves. He did it-cautiously-with Harriman as demonstrated above, along with another one on Harriman hunting bears in Alaska. For Theodore Roosevelt, as president, it was his hunting too. John Burroughs got it over his stubborn writing about no glaciers in Yosemite and his general homebodyness. Burroughs was lost in the West, away from home in the Catskills. Muir got away with it with all of them, until Gifford Pinchot, when he let fly with both barrels-publicly-in the lobby of a Seattle Hotel over forests, preservation and sheep. Pinchot deserved it in retrospect, most now agree.)Through the political influence of both E. H. & Mary in considering just one place, (and the still not even now fully understood role of their "associates", particularly in the bowels of the California Legislature, we have today The Yosemite as a fully protected National Park. Yep, the Harrimans helped get us The Park.That was the time when Time moved at the speed of a horse. Then came the Railroads, changing everything. The Harrimans owned or controlled or influenced a great big chunk of all of them across the USA. In California it was the all important Southern Pacific Railroad.Mary inherited-it all-after E.H.'s death in 1909 and began a life of giving a great big chunk of it away. For starters, in 1910 she gave away to the State Of New York 10,000 acres (out of the 40 km2 Arden House estate), designated along with a million bucks maintenance for a State Park, which for generations since has been a wildlife refuge and a nearby vital retreat for the thankful human denizens of New York City.Mary also donated to the welfare of The Yosemite National Park... and fully supported till the end, Muir's noble efforts in the attempt to block the damming of the wild Tuolumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley of Yosemite National Park.Around this time, Muir got free passage, and watchful care-mostly unknown to him-as an old guy, aboard the Harriman owned Steamship Lines while he traveled the world. Yep, they owned Steamship Lines too. This was Mary's doing. His last trip to see what Muir called his address one last time: "John Muir, Earth-planet, Universe." as inscribed on his original journal that constitutes this later book.Returned, back in Martinez California he was reinvigorated for his final desperate plunge into the violation, that abyss of lies of others: Hetch Hetchy. Another Yosemite then, now underwater.In one of Muir's last long trips made anywhere, the year before he died, Muir accepted Mary Harriman's invitation to him to join her and the family at their Railroad Ranch in Idaho. Muir arrived August 17, 1913, greeted by Mary, and stayed with the Harriman clan for 10 days. Upon arriving he had what he described as a "second breakfast" with the family. Muir had long talks with Mary, some of it, without any doubt, on Hetch Hetchy, which by this time had practically consumed him, and in time some said, would kill him. He walked, wrote in his journal & sketched...and talked... Also, in one of his last, Muir left us a Journal of those 10 days with the Clan: "Island Park Idaho 1913" available to all for online viewing.***In 1977 Averell Harriman, Mary & E.H's son, deeded to the State Of Idaho for free what would become, as it is today Harriman State Park. The land is part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the most vital wild places of refuge on Planet Earth. Mary taught her children well.I met Averell Harriman by chance, much accomplished in his own right, late in his long life and early in mine. It was around the time he was re-printing his Daddy's Book written by Muir. I don't remember much, except his boyish expressions of sheer delight at retelling of his meeting, as a kid, with Muir on The Harriman Expedition in 1899. He got to hear the story of Stickeen live, in person. Wow. Imagine that. Averell was then the sole living survivor of the Expedition.To me, the Harrimans rank right up there with the Roosevelts, Carnegie and Kennedys for turning private gain into public good. Andrew Carnegie: "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." This Nation of Immigrants, most coming ashore dirt poor, like the above person named.Description: E. H. Harriman Arden Bookplate on pastedown. Signed and inscribed on ffep by Mrs. (Mary) Harriman, dated Dec 1917, 1 E. 69th St. (NYC residence). Light green paper boards with green cloth spine, leather label with gilt stamping. Frontispiece is a gorgeous hand colored photogravure. Frontispiece from a watercolor by Amelia M.Watson.Photographs by Herbert W. Gleason, Theodore Eitel, Bradley & Rulofson, Louisville and Nashville Railroad, others, & sketches from Muir's Journal.Condition: Clean & bright & squared & tight. Partially uncut pages. Unusually clean for a Large Paper Edition. Corners not bumped. Lightest soiling to green cover and bottom & top edges. Rubbing wear to leather label. Leather label on spine bumped, with slight loss and professionally repaired. Spine darkening and shelf wear consistent with age, careful use and handling.

[edwin6gleaves · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Refreshing and illuminating autobiography of the intrepid naturalist who managed to walk from Ohio to Florida in the days after the Civil War. His idea was to discover and/or identify new plants without getting killed by suspicious southerners. Nearly dead of the fever, he managed to make it to Florida and eventually to his beloved California, by way of Cuba.

[amerynth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've read a bunch of John Muir's books about his travels. While this isn't his best writing (or his most interesting topic,) his travels down south are entertaining enough to make this a worth while read.