202 GROVE KARL GILBERT— DAVIS tMEMOIR ^vouxxi; 



for them, spent most of their growing years at boarding schools, and the separation from them 

 grieved their father. He wrote of this to a friend in the summer of 1894: 



Archie has been home now for a month, and I am better acquainted with him than for years. One of the 

 disadvantages of his absence has been that I have largely dropped out of his life except as a source of supplies 

 and a stickler for accountability. I find him more of a man than I had expected and am glad to gratify his 

 desires for a college course. 



The elder son was therefore sent to Cornell University, where he was near his father's especial 

 friends, the Comstocks, and where, as he seemed to possess some of his father's capacity in 

 mathematics, he studied engineering. He later established himself in that profession in the 

 West, much to his father's satisfaction. The younger son, Roy, did not carry his studies beyond 

 school years; but he had the satisfaction of aiding his father occasionally by acting as carriage 

 driver during field excursions in western New York and by typewriting some of his longer 

 manuscripts. 



When the boys were at home, their father enjoyed bicycle rides with them, and used to 

 take advantage of such occasions to encourage the observation of outdoor objects. One of the 

 boys recalls an incident which illustrates the extreme patience that Gilbert showed in his home. 

 It was at the time when the study of the moon absorbed the father's attention, and when he 

 used to resort to a room on the third floor in order to find quiet for his work. One day when he 

 was thus secluded, one of the boys, feeling a wish for company, followed him there and, boylike, 

 stood around whistling. The studious father bore the distraction silently as long as he could, 

 and then, still silent, quietly carried pen, ink, and papers into an adjoining room. The boy 

 followed him, still whistling. After a time the father went back to the first room; and the boy, 

 not catching the point, again accompanied him. At last, unable to pursue his thoughts with 

 the whistling boy so near, the father said in the most gentle voice : 



My boy, I can't work so well with you here whistling; don't you think you could go somewhere else? 



The mother of the boys died on March 17, 1899, in Florida, where she had gone with a 

 valued friend and where her husband followed on receiving word of her approaching end. The 

 Corcoran Street house was thereupon given up, and the widower established himself temporarily 

 in an apartment. In April of that year he had the fortunate distraction of going, with C. E. 

 Dutton, geologist of the high plateaus of Utah and the Colorado Canyon, and W. H. Holmes, 

 whom geology had lost to the profit of anthropology, to Mexico, as the guests and in the private 

 car of G. W. Breckinridge, of San Antonio. Gilbert's attention was given primarily to the 

 "phenomena of land sculpture and the relation of types of sculpture to climate." Among many 

 features noted was the little cleftlike gorge, known as the "Infernillo," which lies along the side 

 of a broad valley in the eastern margin of the central plateau and is followed for a short distance 

 above the town of Orizaba by the railway between Vera Cruz and Mexico City. Gilbert recog- 

 nized the gorge to result from the displacement of a valley stream from its former mid-valley 

 course by a relatively recent lava flow, although his only opportunity for observation was from 

 the train window. 



In February of the same year Gilbert proposed to the director of the survey that " the new 

 methods of geologic interpretation which have been rendered possible by the genetic study of 

 topographic forms," and which "have been successfully applied in the Appalachian province," 

 should be carried to the Cordilleran region; and that the work should begin at the north end of 

 the Rocky Mountains and advance southward, or at the south end of the Coast Range and 

 advance northward; but in case the expense involved seemed too great, an alternative plan of 

 areal work in western New York was added. The larger proposal is, like his flying studies in 

 Mexico, of interest in showing Gilbert's continued preference for physiographic geology. How- 

 ever, he did not carry out either plan, but went instead to Alaska as a member of the famous 

 Harrirnan expedition. For a time after the death of his wife, Gilbert had an unsettled residence 

 in Washington, but after returning from Alaska he was invited by Dr. C. Hart Merriam to 

 become a member of his household at 1919 Sixteenth Street, and there he resided for a good 

 part of all the remaining years of his life. The arrangement was one that gave happiness to all 

 concerned. 



