poetical appropriateness in the fact that his last work ends with a
portrayal of the auroras--one of those phenomena which else where he
described as "the most glorious of all the terrestrial manifestations
of God."

Muir's manuscripts bear on every page impressive evidence of the
pains he took in his literary work, and the lofty standard he set
himself in his scientific studies. The counterfeiting of a fact or of
an experience was a thing unthinkable in connection with John Muir.
He was tireless in pursuing the meaning of a physiographical fact,
and his extraordinary physical endurance usually enabled him to trail
it to its last hiding-place. Often, when telling the tale of his
adventures in Alaska, his eyes would kindle with youthful enthusiasm,
and he would live over again the red-blooded years that yielded him
"shapeless harvests of revealed glory."

For a number of months just prior to his death he had the friendly
assistance of Mrs. Marion Randall Parsons. Her familiarity with the
manuscript, and with Mr. Muir's expressed and penciled intentions of
revision and arrangement, made her the logical person to prepare it
in final form for publication. It was a task to which she brought
devotion as well as ability. The labor involved was the greater in
order that the finished work might exhibit the last touches of Muir's
master-hand, and yet contain nothing that did not flow from his pen.
All readers of this book will feel grateful for her labor of love.

I add these prefatory lines to the work of my departed friend with
pensive misgiving, knowing that he would have deprecated any
discharge of musketry over his grave. His daughters, Mrs. Thomas Rea
Hanna and Mrs. Buel Alvin Funk, have honored me with the request to