Part 5 (1/2)

Nothing came of that, neither book nor articles. Either Powell had no time then to write them, or decided to wait until he could satisfy the request that both Houghton and Alden had made for a full-sized ma.n.u.script. On April 13 Alden returned the ma.n.u.script12 and photographs and Powell apparently did nothing more about them for over a year, leaving the field to Beaman. Beaman's book eventually landed in and photographs and Powell apparently did nothing more about them for over a year, leaving the field to Beaman. Beaman's book eventually landed in Appleton's Journal, Appleton's Journal, which printed it in seven installments during April and May, 1874. Its appearance may have had something to do with Powell's decision to omit all mention of the second expedition from his own book. which printed it in seven installments during April and May, 1874. Its appearance may have had something to do with Powell's decision to omit all mention of the second expedition from his own book.

But it did not discourage him from trying to publish in a popular journal. On July 17, 1874, he signed an elaborate contract 13 13 with Richard Watson Gilder of with Richard Watson Gilder of Scribner's Scribner's which did credit both to Gilder's eye for publis.h.i.+ng innovations and Powell's knack of carrying water on both shoulders. Scribner's agreed to pay Major Powell $500 for three or four articles plus twelve engravings on wood which Powell was to supply. But in addition to these twelve pictures, which did credit both to Gilder's eye for publis.h.i.+ng innovations and Powell's knack of carrying water on both shoulders. Scribner's agreed to pay Major Powell $500 for three or four articles plus twelve engravings on wood which Powell was to supply. But in addition to these twelve pictures, Scribner's, Scribner's, at that moment moving to revolutionize the art of magazine ill.u.s.tration, would spend $2000 for others, which after use in the magazine would become Powell's property. By this stroke the Major not only made himself a modest sum, but he a.s.sured himself a spectacular spread in the magazine, and obtained besides an excellent collection of ill.u.s.trations for his projected report. at that moment moving to revolutionize the art of magazine ill.u.s.tration, would spend $2000 for others, which after use in the magazine would become Powell's property. By this stroke the Major not only made himself a modest sum, but he a.s.sured himself a spectacular spread in the magazine, and obtained besides an excellent collection of ill.u.s.trations for his projected report.

So the scientific report was first written as a popular adventure story of original exploration and ill.u.s.trated lavishly for a popular magazine. It was written, moreover, after Beaman had already published a highly-colored account, so that there may have been some inclination to outdo what had already been made public. To some such combination of motives are due the persistent height enings and dramatizings that make the Exploration exciting reading but weaken its accuracy: the tendency (the opposite of what Bradley had grumbled at) to overestimate the drop of rapids, to dwell ominously on the dangers ahead, to ”touch up.”

As if to make amends for literary license in the first part, the second half of the Exploration Exploration is sober treatise ent.i.tled ”The Physical Features of the Valley of the Colorado.” It was serialized too, but not in a general magazine: is sober treatise ent.i.tled ”The Physical Features of the Valley of the Colorado.” It was serialized too, but not in a general magazine: The Popular Science Monthly The Popular Science Monthly was not popular in that sense. was not popular in that sense.

Some river historians, notably Stanton and Chalfant and Julius Stone, have taken a good deal of delight in pointing out inaccuracies or distortions of fact in Powell's account. Some of their criticism is legitimate, some a part of that curious jealousy which seems to persuade every man who ever ran the Colorado that he invented it. The distortions are there, most of them traceable to this literary motive and the complex circ.u.mstances under which his all-purpose narrative was written and published. But it is not possible to accuse Major Powell of the ordinary sort of inaccuracy-through-ignorance that fills the travel writing of his time or any other. He was no nature faker. He did not distort natural laws or misinterpret natural scenery. In his own way he was part of that inevitable slow movement toward realism whose local literary beginnings in John Hay and Edward Eggleston were almost precisely contemporary with his own beginnings as a scientist. Writer and scientist in that tradition do not differ so widely: Powell's method of observing natural phenomena did not differ in kind from Mark Twain's - especially that Mark Twain who lampooned so mercilessly the romantic inaccuracies of Fenimore Cooper. But both Powell and Twain, realists and even factualists, might on occasion be led to follow Twain's own advice to Kipling: ”Young man, first get your facts and then do with them what you will.” In literature, if not in science, an unintentional lie is worse than a deliberate one.

The element of the spectacular in Powell's story is therefore not remarkable. He had shown before then that he was a vigorous and sharply intelligent young man on the make, with a considerable instinctive and some trained knowledge of the arts of self promotion. But the Exploration is the last real demonstration of any such motive - a kind of last fling, a farewell to his Wanderjahre. Wanderjahre. After 1876 he delegated both his geological speculations and his scenic and dramatic enthusiasms and settled down to organize government science. But first he firmly clinched the reputation as a geologist that the second half of his first book had established. After 1876 he delegated both his geological speculations and his scenic and dramatic enthusiasms and settled down to organize government science. But first he firmly clinched the reputation as a geologist that the second half of his first book had established.

Many of the generalizations that Powell made in the Exploration and in the Uinta Mountains have at this date an air of the obvious; yet when he made them they were either new or newly emphatic. His homemade education fitted him to grasp the obvious and state it without embarra.s.sment - he had not been educated into scholarly caution and that squidlike tendency to retreat, squirting ink, which sophisticated learning often displays. He was intellectually a plunger, not a retreater. As it turned out, the obvious clearly stated, and combined with new observations, was some times close to revolutionary. And the obvious in the Plateau Province was so much more obvious than it was anywhere else that it demanded statement and at the same time presented incontrovertible proofs.

As a single example, consider his remarks on the behavior of streams. He observed that often they paid no attention to the terrain through which they ran. The Yampa, the Green, the Escalante, with valleys at hand to run through, chose instead to cut straight into ma.s.sive ridges or mountain ranges. Since water does not run uphill, he had to conclude that these rivers were older than the mountains, and that as the mountains rose across their path they rose slowly enough to be cut like a log held against a revolving saw. Out of that simple observation arose a whole complex of ideas: that mountains were relatively ephemeral earth features, that nature abhorred an elevation almost as fiercely as it was said to abhor a vacuum, and persistently cut it down and carried it away; that in this case at least, and probably in most, earth movements were slow, not catastrophic as Dana and King and some other geologists held; and in particular that drainage upon this slowly altering earth-surface could be divided into three cla.s.ses which he called antecedent, consequent, and superimposed. In the first, a previously existing river such as the Green cut through a rising mountain range as fast as the range rose, and held its course; in the second, an obstruction that rose too fast ponded the rivers, or diverted them to new channels established by the new topography; in the third, a drainage produced by the topography of one age held its course while erosion leveled and obliterated all those elevations and valleys it had been born among, so that the rivers were ”superimposed” upon an entirely different topography exposed underneath.

These general cla.s.sifications seem simple and obvious enough; they have become the alphabet of the study of drainage, in the Plateau Province or anywhere else.

Working from the same observed facts, Powell made certain generalizations about erosion, which he instantly recognized as the prime agent in the land forms of the region. He put together things already well known: That the corrasion of a stream's bed was relatively swift, and increased with the declivity by a much more than arithmetical ratio. That the weathering away of elevated country proceeded much more slowly, so that a stream would cut a deep, narrow canyon before its walls or the surface of the country back from them would be much affected by erosion. That the erosion of low country was near a minimum, and that this minimum was always being approached. He called it the ”base level of erosion” and gave another fundamental concept to the science. He noted the way in which cliffs were eaten back by the weathering out of soft layers and the caving in of the undermined hard strata, and he gave it a name; the recession of cliffs. Dutton would elaborate the idea, and point out among other things that the profile of such a retreating cliff would, once established, remain constant. But the original observation and the rubric were Powell's.

The characteristic flat crest lines and the vertical cliff-edges of b.u.t.te and mesa and plateau Powell noted as the product of horizontal strata and arid climate, and he isolated a good many of the effects of climate upon the processes of erosion. His conclusions began to reach outside the area of the obvious when he insisted that this region, where the rivers had cut gorges sometimes more than a mile deep, and where weathering had demonstrably swept away thousands of feet of solid rock from a territory totaling thousands of square miles, was actually not a region of maximum erosion, but one of minimum. With an incorrigible l.u.s.t to put things into categories, he cla.s.sified the types of mountain and plateau structure found in the Plateau Province and found that some of them had never been revealed or studied elsewhere, and had no relation to the Appalachian structure and the tight plica tion that the textbooks thought characteristic of all mountains. These mountains - the Uintas, say - were not folded and tangled; they were simply a great arch, like an asymmetrical Quonset hut, carved and furrowed by the erosional processes eager to reduce it to a plain again. The plateaus of the Grand Canyon region and northward were sometimes arches, or half arches, and sometimes flat blocks sheared upward along fault lines. Sometimes the shear of a fault broke into a series of step faults, and sometimes into a simple monoclinal fold. He arrived at the conclusion that there was no essential difference between fault and monocline, and his evidence was so plain, revealed along bare exposed fronts that could be traced for dozens of miles, that there was no disputing it. These generalizations too Gilbert and Dutton would amplify, doc.u.ment, and elaborate, but not alter. From the time of their publication, first in the American Journal of Science American Journal of Science14 and later in the Exploration and the Uinta Mountains, they were part of the basic textbook of geology. and later in the Exploration and the Uinta Mountains, they were part of the basic textbook of geology.

Though he collected fossils, Powell was no paleontologist; though he took geological sections, he was no stratigrapher; though he had a lively and even excited interest in the historical geology of the Plateau Province, what most took his eye and his imagination was the land forms, the plateaus, mesas, b.u.t.tes, canyons, cliffs, the fantastic erosional remains that simply by their shapes and their positions on a denuded plain told of the forces that had created them. Quite alone, his generalizations about earth movements (with his support of uniformitarianism when it was still widely disputed), about the character of rivers and the forms of earth sculpture and the laws that govern erosion, would more than justify his years of work in the West. In his two monographs, according to Emmons,15 was born the modem science of physical geology. was born the modem science of physical geology.

7. Geology: Grove Karl Gilbert

IN THE YEARS of the Powell Survey between 1874 and 1879, and later in the eighties when the United States Geological Survey was growing into a major federal bureau, Grove Karl Gilbert was Major Powell's right hand. Geological ideas that Powell touched and left, sketched and pa.s.sed on from, Gilbert grappled with and exhausted. Powell's broad principles were divided, subdivided, reduced to that near-mathematical certainty that was Gilbert's ideal. A genial, kindly, much-loved man, he was in his own way as brilliantly speculative as Powell, and as far removed from a laboratory drudge, but he operated on some other kind of fuel. He built a bridge of equations where Powell leaped by intuition, and he tidied things up as he went so that everything was solid behind him - a thing that could not, always be said for the Major.

The chapter on erosion in his Geology of Geology of the Henry Mountains the Henry Mountains does not alter Powell's systematic observations, but it systematizes them further and develops them so fully that that chapter needs practically no revision even today. Neither does his study of those mountains which had been a Powell Survey discovery in geographical terms and which Gilbert made into a discovery of another kind. He described and dissected them so precisely and exactly that they have been known ever since as the cla.s.sic type of a special kind of mountain structure. Gilbert called them ”laccolites” but others corrected his Greek to ”laccoliths.” These are ”bubble mountains,” formed of strata domed upward by lava ma.s.ses from beneath, the layers of sedimentary rock interleaved by sheets of lava and penetrated by dikes. Marvine, Holmes, and others had speculated on some such structure; does not alter Powell's systematic observations, but it systematizes them further and develops them so fully that that chapter needs practically no revision even today. Neither does his study of those mountains which had been a Powell Survey discovery in geographical terms and which Gilbert made into a discovery of another kind. He described and dissected them so precisely and exactly that they have been known ever since as the cla.s.sic type of a special kind of mountain structure. Gilbert called them ”laccolites” but others corrected his Greek to ”laccoliths.” These are ”bubble mountains,” formed of strata domed upward by lava ma.s.ses from beneath, the layers of sedimentary rock interleaved by sheets of lava and penetrated by dikes. Marvine, Holmes, and others had speculated on some such structure;1 Gilbert demonstrated it not only for the Henrys but for the La Sals, the Abajo, and Navajo Mountain. Gilbert demonstrated it not only for the Henrys but for the La Sals, the Abajo, and Navajo Mountain.

The Geology of the Henry Mountains appeared as a Powell Survey monograph in 1877, at a time when, as we shall see, Powell needed every evidence of scientific accomplishment his survey could muster if he was to induce Congress to prolong its life. Much later, after his own a.s.sistants and other geologists had taken some of the bloom from the subject, Gilbert produced a second report, this one on Lake Bonneville, appeared as a Powell Survey monograph in 1877, at a time when, as we shall see, Powell needed every evidence of scientific accomplishment his survey could muster if he was to induce Congress to prolong its life. Much later, after his own a.s.sistants and other geologists had taken some of the bloom from the subject, Gilbert produced a second report, this one on Lake Bonneville,2 and this like his first was so careful, so thorough, so perceptive of those lost or buried or effaced traces by which geological history must be known that it became at once a landmark. The Pleistocene lake that used to spread deep water across much of the western Utah and eastern Nevada desert has needed little study since. But it is worth noting that at the foundation of Gilbert's reconstruction of the extent, history, drainage, climate, and character of the extinct lake are Powell's rules of erosion, modified and extended to the habits of lakes rather than rivers, and traceable by sh.o.r.e cliffs, beach terraces, embankments, spits, and bars instead of by canyons, cliffs of erosion, alluvial fans, and cameo b.u.t.tes. The basic laws are still to some extent Powell's, and the focus of attention is still, as with Powell, the land forms, the sculpture of the earth, and the processes by which it is created. and this like his first was so careful, so thorough, so perceptive of those lost or buried or effaced traces by which geological history must be known that it became at once a landmark. The Pleistocene lake that used to spread deep water across much of the western Utah and eastern Nevada desert has needed little study since. But it is worth noting that at the foundation of Gilbert's reconstruction of the extent, history, drainage, climate, and character of the extinct lake are Powell's rules of erosion, modified and extended to the habits of lakes rather than rivers, and traceable by sh.o.r.e cliffs, beach terraces, embankments, spits, and bars instead of by canyons, cliffs of erosion, alluvial fans, and cameo b.u.t.tes. The basic laws are still to some extent Powell's, and the focus of attention is still, as with Powell, the land forms, the sculpture of the earth, and the processes by which it is created.

Like several of Major Powell's later professional colleagues, Gilbert 3 3 was borrowed, not developed, by the Survey. After graduation from the University of Rochester and a general scientific apprentices.h.i.+p in Ward's Natural History Establishment, that fantastic business house, still extant, which provided and will still provide anything from trays of fossils to live black widows, from platypus eggs to relief maps, from laboratory insects to articulated skeletons of men or mastodons, he had worked briefly for the Ohio State Geological Survey and developed an acquaintance with the habits of living lakes that he later used effectively in the study of a dead one. In 1871, with his friend Archibald Marvine, he had gone out with Lieutenant Wheeler's Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian. was borrowed, not developed, by the Survey. After graduation from the University of Rochester and a general scientific apprentices.h.i.+p in Ward's Natural History Establishment, that fantastic business house, still extant, which provided and will still provide anything from trays of fossils to live black widows, from platypus eggs to relief maps, from laboratory insects to articulated skeletons of men or mastodons, he had worked briefly for the Ohio State Geological Survey and developed an acquaintance with the habits of living lakes that he later used effectively in the study of a dead one. In 1871, with his friend Archibald Marvine, he had gone out with Lieutenant Wheeler's Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian.

He had not been happy with Wheeler, for Wheeler dragged his geologists from place to place on a leash, covering enormous stretches of country in very hasty reconnoissance so that they barely got to sniff an exciting problem before their noses were dragged away from it. They were not scientists, but a.s.sistants to topographers. Late in 1872 Gilbert's path crossed that of the Powell party when Wheeler's outfit camped near Kanab, and though Powell was not there at the time, being busy about some Paiute investigations, Gilbert visited with Clem Powell and others, and bought a Navajo rug from Nellie Thompson.4 Apparently he met the Major in Was.h.i.+ngton, where community of interests and mutual members.h.i.+p in scientific societies would have thrown them together naturally, in that winter or the next. In November, 1874, just after his marriage, Gilbert accepted Powell's offer of a job, and moved at once out of a restricting, frustrating, military organization into complete freedom. Apparently he met the Major in Was.h.i.+ngton, where community of interests and mutual members.h.i.+p in scientific societies would have thrown them together naturally, in that winter or the next. In November, 1874, just after his marriage, Gilbert accepted Powell's offer of a job, and moved at once out of a restricting, frustrating, military organization into complete freedom.

Under Powell, once the two of them decided on an area for field study, Gilbert went as he pleased, stayed until the budget or the weather chased him home, studied what he wanted, lingered where he wished, returned if he felt like it for another visit or another whole field season. The freedom with which he was allowed to work, and the liberality with which Powell gave away his most illuminating ideas,5 cemented a personal friends.h.i.+p that was as close as any in either man's life. As ranking geologist and for a time as acting director of the United States Geological Survey, Gilbert loyally subordinated his personal wishes and his own studies to help Powell in one or another promotional scheme. At the end of the eighteen-seventies and again at the end of the eighteen-eighties, as we shall see in later chapters, Powell focused most of his incredible energy on the political fight to establish scientific laws and policies for the administration of the Public Domain. While he did so, his bureaus were expected to run themselves. Translated, this means that Powell's a.s.sistants, notably Gilbert, took over. He let himself, though among geologists he was quite as respected as his chief and more universally liked, become a tail to Powell's kite. When Powell died it was Gilbert who acted as his executor and Gilbert who was his first and most respectful biographer. cemented a personal friends.h.i.+p that was as close as any in either man's life. As ranking geologist and for a time as acting director of the United States Geological Survey, Gilbert loyally subordinated his personal wishes and his own studies to help Powell in one or another promotional scheme. At the end of the eighteen-seventies and again at the end of the eighteen-eighties, as we shall see in later chapters, Powell focused most of his incredible energy on the political fight to establish scientific laws and policies for the administration of the Public Domain. While he did so, his bureaus were expected to run themselves. Translated, this means that Powell's a.s.sistants, notably Gilbert, took over. He let himself, though among geologists he was quite as respected as his chief and more universally liked, become a tail to Powell's kite. When Powell died it was Gilbert who acted as his executor and Gilbert who was his first and most respectful biographer.6 The only thing he did not do that he might have been expected to do was to succeed the Major in one of his several administrative jobs. The only thing he did not do that he might have been expected to do was to succeed the Major in one of his several administrative jobs.

Actually it was pure kindness that Powell did not urge one of these positions on him. Gilbert was a scholar, not a promoter or an administrator. He disliked politics and hated even scientific controversy so much that with evidence enough to hang a man he corrected him hesitantly and apologetically and gave him every opportunity to save face. There was no better loved man in all of Was.h.i.+ngton's scientific company. But though he outlived Powell by sixteen years, his productivity in those years was not so great as many would have expected of him - perhaps because with all his virtues he needed the galvanizing influence of his one-armed friend and collaborator. His monographs, though greatly admired by geologists and less in need of modernization or revision than the work of any geologist of his time, make tough reading for the unenlightened.

8. Geological Aesthetics: Clarence Edward Dutton

NOT SO THE WRITINGS of Powell's left hand, Captain Dutton. A Yale cla.s.smate of O. C. Marsh, two years ahead of Clarence King, he had been like King a college athlete and like King he was attractive, charming, many-sided. An apt.i.tude for mathematics had led him after the war to take a permanent commission in the Ordnance Corps, but he had a literary flair too. As an undergraduate he had won the Yale Literary Prize; his reading all his life was so various and extensive that he called himself omnibiblical. During his years in Was.h.i.+ngton he developed a considerable reputation as a public lecturer, and there is plenty of testimony to the charm and instructiveness of his conversation.1 Altogether he was a somewhat less sybaritic and less spectacular King. Altogether he was a somewhat less sybaritic and less spectacular King.