4 September 2023 John Muir on Vancouver Island

Although John Muir is mostly associated with America, he did visit Vancouver Island on his way to Alaska. This was his description of his first sight of the Island on Monday, August 2nd, 1880: MY DEAR WIFE: All goes well. In a few hours we will be in Victoria. The voyage thus far has been singularly calm and uneventful. Vancouver Island is on [the] left in fine clear view, with forests densely packed in every hollow and over every bill and mountain. How beautiful it is! How deep and shadowy its canons, how eloquently it tells the story of its sculpture during the Age of Ice! How perfectly virgin it is! Ships loaded with Nanaimo coal and Puget Sound coal and lumber, a half- dozen of them, are about us, beating their way down the strait, and here and there a pilot boat to represent civilization, but not one scar on the virgin shore, nor the smoke of a hut or camp. I have just been speaking with a man who has spent a good deal of time on the island. He says that so impenetrable is the underbrush, his party could seldom make more than two miles a day though assisted by eight Indians. Only the shores are known. (https://www.electricscotland.com/history/muir/vol10_chapter4.htm) PHOTO: mine, taken from the ferry crossing the strait between Victoria and Vancouver