164 GROVE KARL GILBERT— DAVIS [Memoi Vouxxi: 



instance did I sec one of them speak to another, & I of course assumed to address none but the servants. Then 

 I strolled through two reading rooms and up the grand staircase to the library occupying four or five large rooms 

 above. There were readers and writers in all the rooms and I lingered to read and even wrote a letter, but I 

 saw no person speak to another, except that occasionally a servant came to tell a gentleman that his dinner 

 was ready. Oppressed by the silence I continued my promenade looking for a smoking room, for there if any- 

 where the English club man must thaw out. For a time my search was in vain, but at last I asked the door- 

 keeper and was directed to the basement where smoking is permitted in a card room and a billiard room. The 

 card room contained five gentlemen, four of whom were engaged in a game. The billiard room has but a single 

 table where two men were playing and a third observing. I watched the game, which is very different from the 

 American, and when it was finished the players invited the observer and me to join them in a four-hand game 

 which we did. , This is all I know of the English club, but I strongly suspect that it spells "social" with a small "s." 



On reading this lugubrious description, one must wonder whether Gilbert did not compare 

 the elegant isolation of that evening in the vast wilderness of London during his first trip abroad 

 with the forlorn desolation that he had seen in a frontier city of Arizona 17 years before during 

 his first season in the wilderness of western America; and whether he did not feel about as 

 lonesome amid the decorated splendor of the spacious clubrooms in the greater city as in the 

 unredeemed squalor of the Free Press office in the smaller one. But London must have been 

 more agreeable the next morning, when he attended the International Geological Congress 

 under the presidency of Prestwich, in what was then the University of London, part of a rec- 

 tangle of buildings known as Burlington Gardens, off Piccadilly; rooms near by being occupied 

 by the Royal Society and the Geological Society, while the Geological Museum, with the office 

 of the Geological Survey, as well as the building of the Royal Geographical Society, were in the 

 immediate neighborhood. He must surely have found a hearty welcome there. 



The Congress was attended by 240 members from 25 countries; Gilbert was listed among 

 them as a "Prof." The proceedings indicate that he spoke only once, when he urged that the 

 lower Paleozoic should be divided into only two systems, one of his reasons being that there 

 would be hardly enough colors available for uniformly colored international geological maps 

 if more divisions were established ; but his opinion was not followed. Personal records concern- 

 ing this meeting are unfortunately wanting, as they are concerning the following excursion to 

 the Isle of Wight, and concerning Gilbert's own travels in Ireland and Scotland; his diary in- 

 dicates, however, that he went far enough in the latter country to see the "Parallel Roads" 

 of Glen Roy, to which he afterwards referred in the Bonneville monograph as showing no more 

 change by erosion than the Bonneville shore lines. As to the visit to the office of the ordnance 

 survey at Southampton, a letter briefly notes that his object was especially to learn " the methods 

 of making topographic surveys in the field," and there as well as in Paris his visit "led inciden- 

 tally to the gathering of information of value to the Geological Survey. " It was shortly after 

 this trip abroad and apparently in consequence of what he then learned that he advised Powell 

 against making over the hachured maps of earlier surveys into contoured maps to be published 

 by the United States Geological Survey, but unfortunately his advice was not accepted in this 

 matter and in consequence of its nonacceptance some extremely inaccurate contour maps were 

 issued. 



THREE DAYS IN PARIS 



If Gilbert felt himself a stranger in England where the language was his own, he must 

 have been completely a foreigner in France where the language was wholly unintelligible to him ; 

 yet he was there given the opportunity of penetrating French home life to a degree that is 

 rarely opened to visitors. During his brief stay in Paris he was the guest, at their residence, 

 132 Rue de Grenelle, in an old and aristocratic quarter of the city on the "left bank" of the 

 Seine, between the Chamber of Deputies and the Hotel des Invalides, of a family distinguished 

 in its own country by the accomplishments of its elder members in literature and diplomacy, 

 and known to all the world of geology and geography by the generous erudition of a younger 

 member. Indeed, this actual entrance of Gilbert, truly American explorer of western deserts, 

 into the household of the purely French de Margeries, not one of whom he had ever seen before, 

 seems more fabulous than the storied reception of Christopher Newman, same-aged American 

 maker of washtubs, at the " h6tel, " Rue de l'Universit6, of the exclusive de Bellegardes! 



There was no session of any geological or geographical congress to attract Gilbert to Paris; 

 it would seem as if his wish to make the personal acquaintance of Emmanuel de Margerie, with 



