John Muir, explorer

JOHN MUIR, EXPLORER

In researching about John Muir's life, I found that he has a big influence in our area. There is a hospital named after him, as well as streets, parks, schools and a museum. I visited the museum, which is in Martinez, California. It was his home where he lived with his wife and two daughters. There are many fruit trees around the home. There is one room where he wrote about his travels and explorations. He wrote many letters to save the environment in many places.

I also visited John Muir Woods. There are many large redwood trees there on a path. The stream that runs along the path is very clear and beautiful.

John Muir in Yosemite

1863, Artist: J.Bierstadt

Location:Landers Peak, Colorado

Although, John Muir had many other accomplishments I would like to just focus on his early childhood and how that formed his explorations in the United States.

A brief biography:

John Muir was born in Scotland on April 1, 1838. He was the third child, born after two sisters, Margaret and Sarah and before David, Daniel,Jr., the twins Mary and Annie, and Joanna.



His mother, Ann, was possibly very passive, as there is not much written about her in Muir's autobiography. She liked painting and poetry, was kind and affectionate, conventionally pious, but only vaguely there. She lived to be eighty-three, dying in 1896 in the United States.



In Muir's autobiography, in contrast, much is written about his father. Daniel Muir married Ann in 1833. He operated a thriving feed and grain business, and was one of the leading citizens of the town. The building was one of the largest, having a large domestic space upstairs for the family to live. This is where Muir lived as a child in Scotland.



Even though they were well off financially, they lived very frugally. Breakfast was always porridge, milk and treachle eaten from wooden bowls. Lunch was usually vegetable broth and barley scones. Evening "tea" was white bread and a little milk mixed with water and sugar. Dinner was boiled potatoes and scones again. Muir didn't mention eating meat, although they could easily afford it. This was part of his father's strict control over his children and wife.

He placed restrictions on what they ate, where they went, and what they did with their time. If they disobeyed any of his rules, the children must be punished by harsh reproof or whipping. Muir wrote: "Naturally, his heart was far from hard, though he devoutly believed in eternal punishment for bad boys both here and hereafter." He denied his childen the normal pleasures of childhood.

Playing outside was forbidden as Muir wrote: "Father sternly forbade David and me from playing truant in the fields with plundering wanderers like ourselves, fearing we might go on from bad to worse, get hurt in climbing over walls, caught by gamekeepers, or lost by falling over a cliff into the sea." Wild nature was a source of danger. Daniel was afraid of cliffs, birds, plants, the ocean - any aspect of nature that was not under his personal command. However, he was a grower of fruits and vegetables, and allowed the children to garden in their own space.



Muir felt unjustly treated and became as determined to challenge Daniel's restrictions. "After I was five or six years old, Muir recalled, "I ran away to the seashore or the fields almost every Saturday, and every day in the school vacations except Sundays...in spite of the sure sore punishments that followed like shadows, the natural inherited wildness in our blood ran true on its glorious course as invincible and unstoppable as stars."

1. "The story of my boyhood and youth", by John Muir, Boston & N.Y. Houghton Mifflin Company, published 1913.

Lewis and Clark Expedition

Lewis and Clark expedition

This picture is found at the website lehrman.isi.org. It shows Meriweather Lewis, 29 years old and William Clark, 33 years old.

When the purchase of the "Louisiana Territory" was purchased on May 2, 1803, Thomas Jefferson wanted the area explored. He arranged for Lewis and Clark to find out all they could about the area. As Jefferson's instructions to the Expedition said, in part:

"The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, and such pricipal stream of it, as, by its course and communication with the ater of the Pacific Ocean may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent, for purposes of commerce.

Beginning at the mouth of the Missouri, you will take observations of latitude and longitude at all remarkable points on the river, and expecially at the mouths of rivers, at rapids, at islands, and other places and objects distiguished by such natural marks and characters of a durable kind, as that they may with certainty be recognied hereafter..."

Jefferson gave them $2500 for equipment, supplies, and expenses for the expedition. He instructed them to find out about minerals, soils, land forms, vegetation, and tributary stream courses. Also, if there was any danger from hostile forces to turn back.

Also, in the picture above, is a Shoshoni woman named Sadadawea. Lewis and Clark employed her as an interpreter in their journey. She knew about plants and food sources, and was very valuable to them.

In their travels, they met French and Spanish owners of the territory, who helped them make their maps.

The map above shows the route they took. The first part of the trip was slow, allowing time for organizing and repacking of their supplies. Sometimes they travelled by boat. By winter of 1804 they reached North Dakota and could go no further. They stayed with the Mandan and Hidatsa. They would wait for spring time to cross the mountains to the Pacific.

The expedition of Lewis and Clark took much courage. Their journal was published in 1814 and provided information about geography. It is truly a wonderful story of exploration and is fascinating to learn about what they found.

Sources:

Biddle, Nicholas,ed. 1814:History of the expedition under the command of captians Lewis and Clark, to the Sources of the Missouri, Thence across the Rock Mountains and Down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean; 2 vol.Philadelphia

Foner,Eric, ed.2005:Give Me Liberty;vol.1.New York, pages 263-264

Devoto,Bernard,ed.1953:The Journals of Lewis and Clark;Mentor Books

A seasoned mariner and fearless explorer from Genoa, a major port in northern Italy, Columbus had for years sailed the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, studying ocean currents and wind patterns. Like nearly all navigators of the time, Columbus knew the earth was round. But he drastically underestimated its size. He believed that by sailing westward he could relatively quickly cross the Atlantic and reach Asia. No one in Europe knew that two giant continents existed 3,000 miles to the west.
On October 12,1492, after only thirty-three days of sailing from the Canary Islands, where he had stopped to resupply his three ships, Columbus and his expedition arrived at the Bahamas.
In the following year, 1493, European colonization of the New World began. Columbus returned with seventeen ships and over 1,000 men to explore the area and establish a Spanish outpost.
Before he died in 1506, Columbus made two more voyages to the New World, in 1498 and 1502.

Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty, An American History, 2006, pages 6-7.

One of the most famous explorers was Christopher Columbus

Explorers

I chose "explorers" as my blog subject because I think of myself as an explorer. I have gone places that were unknown to me and unfamiliar, far from home and family. Also, I have explored books at the library, subjects that I would not ordinarily think I would be interested in. I suppose all of life is an exploration.
What I would like to write about in my blog is about explorers that came from another land, that was unknown to more than themselves. Columbus will be the first explorer I will study. The next one will be Lewis and Clark, after that I am not sure.