INTRODUCTION
The article on glaciation should have been published a year earlier, in the same volume with the "Botanical Notes." But for some reason Muir was misinformed, and an apologetic letter to him from Major E. W. Clark, then Chief of the United States Revenue Marine, hints at a petty intrigue as the cause. "I regret very much," he writes, "that I had not myself corresponded with you regarding your contribution to the Arctic report. Your article on glaciation would have been exactly the thing and would have admitted of very effective illustration. I feel well assured that you were purposely misinformed regarding the report, and could readily explain the reason to you in a personal interview. There has been much anxious inquiry for your notes on glaciation." It was the writer of this letter after whom Captain Hooper named the river at whose mouth the Corwin anchored on Wrangell Land. This fact has been recorded by Professor Joseph Everett Nourse, U.S.N., in his work American Explorations in the Ice Zones. He states that through the courtesy of Major Clark he had access to the unpublished official report of the cruise of the Corwin. Since the river in question appears without a name upon the chart of Wrangell Land, we must suppose it to be one of the names which Cap-
