CHAPTER XX 

 GENERAL SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITIES: 1891-1900 



THE INTERNATIONAL GEOLOGICAL CONGRESS OF 1891 



Gilbert was one of the large majority of American geologists who favored and brought 

 about the change of meeting place for the Fifth International Geological Congress from Phila- 

 delphia, where it had been ineptly placed following the proposal of an unrepresentative American 

 member at the London congress in 1888, to Washington, where it should have been placed 

 from the first. He was vice president of the American committee on organization, and when 

 the time for the meeting approached he took an active part in preparing the program for its 

 sessions and in making arrangements for the western excursion that was to follow it. Chapters 

 for the excursion guidebook on Niagara and certain districts in the Cordilleran region were 

 written by him. During the meeting in Washington, he spoke on methods of correlating 

 clastic formations, there reflecting his work on the correlation papers for the national survey; 

 and at the final session he called attention to the fact that, as rules on various practical matters 

 established by votes of earlier congresses had frequently been found unsatisfactory when the 

 attempt was made to apply them under new conditions, the precedent of the London congress 

 of 1888 not to establish rules by vote had been followed at Washington. He joined with Major 

 Powell in giving a complimentary dinner to 12 European and 10 American members. The 

 two hosts occupied the ends of the table, while foreign members alternated with Americans 

 along the sides. A company that included among its members von Zittel, de Geer, Barrois, 

 de Margerie, Iiothpletz, and Credner, with Le Conte, Hall, Marsh, Chamberlin, Shaler, and 

 King, and that was presided over by the director and the chief geologist of the national survey, 

 may be considered truly distinguished. 



Gilbert was one of a committee charged with the assignment of berths for the members of 

 the western excursion party on the special train. "We shall," he wrote to a friend, "herd the 

 Germans at one end and the French at the other and interpose a dining car in the middle of 

 the train to put them still further apart." During the journey he was at all times a most 

 helpful interpreter of American geology to the European members; he naturally acted as chief 

 guide at Niagara and in the neighborhood of Salt Lake City. Although he had never been to 

 the Yellowstone Park, he sacrificed the week that the excursion party spent there in order to 

 go ahead of the special train to Utah and make every arrangement for the local excursions that 

 he was to conduct along the Wasatch front and to certain Bonneville shore lines. After the 

 party overtook him and spent three days there, the train ran to Denver, where a number of 

 members continued eastward; Gilbert accompanied the others to Arizona, where Powell led 

 them through an uncomfortable and indeed arduous experience, including a night in the rain 

 with inadequate shelter, to the Colorado Canyon. 



One of Gilbert's letters written after return to Washington refers briefly to an amusing 

 illustration of skepticism on the part of the European geologists which was one of the most 

 significant incidents of the entire excursion. 



My own part of the trip — about Salt Lake City — was peculiarly satisfactory. I skipped Yellowstone 

 Park so as to spend a week in preparation in Utah. My friends in Salt Lake aided me most efficiently, so that 



I was able to carry out all my plans, and they added hospitality of their own Lake Bonneville and the 



faults were examined with great interest and deliberation and much discussion. As to the faults especially the 

 whole foreign contingent were skeptical at first, but they all capitulated before we were through. 



Both skepticism and capitulation deserve fuller statement. 



When the excursion train approached Salt Lake City in the afternoon of a hot and cindery 

 day, most of the members were looking forward to a bath and a rest rather than to a field demon- 

 stration; but the train was stopped a short distance north of the city, where Gilbert met it with 

 a procession of carriages, and the members, willing or not, were driven along a dusty road to 



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