If you will go, I will wait here two days, and then go to Olympia and tell your people that you perished on Takhoma. Give me a paper to them to let them know that I am not to blame for your death.
My talk is ended.
Samuel Franklin Emmons.
VIII. SECOND SUCCESSFUL ASCENT, 1870
By S. F. EMMONS
Later in the same year, 1870, when Stevens and Van Trump made their first successful ascent, the achievement was also accomplished by S. F. Emmons and A. D. Wilson of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel. Samuel Franklin Emmons was born at Boston on March 29, 1841. He died painlessly and unexpectedly on the eve of his seventieth birthday, March 28, 1911.
George F. Becker gave him a fervent eulogy which appeared in the Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers for 1911. He says: "There is not a geological society or even a mining camp from Arctic Finland to the Transvaal, or from Alaska to Australia, where Emmons's name is not honored and his authority recognized." With all his fame and ability, the biographer declares, he was modest to diffidence.
His account of the ascent is in the form of a letter to his chief, Clarence King, who published it in the American Journal of Science for March, 1871. It is here reproduced from that source. The photograph of Mr. Emmons was obtained from the United States Geological Survey. It will be noticed that Mr. Emmons calls the mountain Tachoma.
The Mountain's largest glacier, to which he refers with enthusiasm, was for a long time known by the name of White River which it feeds. It is peculiarly appropriate that that glacier should bear the name given it on the official map of the United States Geological Survey—Emmons Glacier.
The glaciers of Mt. Tachoma, or Rainier as it is more commonly called, form the principal sources of four important rivers of Washington Territory, viz: the Cowlitz, which flows into the Columbia, and the Nisqually, Puyallup and White rivers which empty into Puget Sound. In accordance with your instructions, Mr. A. D. Wilson and I visited this mountain in the early part of October, 1870, and carried the work of making its complete survey, both geological and topographical, as far as the lateness of the season and the means at our disposal would permit. As the topographical work has not yet been plotted, the figures given in my notes are merely estimates, and liable to subsequent correction. I herewith transmit an abstract from my notes upon the glaciers, embracing those of rather more than half the slopes of the mountain, those on the eastern side, from the extreme southern to the extreme northern point.