206 GROVE KARL GILBERT— DAVIS [MEMOIE ^vo£Txt. 



more singular in view of the fact that the inaccurate map was the work of Gilbert's former 

 assistant in Utah, W. D. Johnson. The fault in the matter may be reasonably ascribed rather 

 to the system in vogue during the earlier years of the survey under which Johnson had been 

 required to work— a system that demanded a certain area to be surveyed in a certain time — 

 than to any lack of skill on his part; for other erroneous maps of early production are known to 

 have been due to that time-and-area method, and Johnson is known to have been an expert 

 topographer, with a natural as well as trained capacity for representing relief by contours; 

 witness the beautiful maps of the San Francisco district, made under his direction while Gilbert 

 was in Colorado, and witness also his selection as topographer when Gilbert undertook a study 

 of certain basin ranges in 1901, as will be told below. But apart from the difficulty of having 

 to work with an inaccurate map and from the not infrequent annoyance of swarms of mos- 

 quitoes, Gilbert appears to have enjoyed the return to field work, as the following extracts from 

 personal letters written in the summer of 1S93 will show. 



Everything but the entomology is charming. The geology is full of anticlinals and baselevels, and the 

 climate averages delightfully. . . . What is happiness? "The soul's calm sunshine." True enough, but 

 too abstract and metaphoric; give us something specific. Well, specifically, happiness is sitting under a tent 

 with walls uplifted, just after a brief shower, when most of the flies have quit lighting on the lobster-red wrists 

 burnt during the morning ride, and gone off to see what the cook is going to do next, and when the thirsty air 

 is rapidly exchanging its heat for the moisture left by the shower. It is rising at 4.30, while Jupiter is still palely 

 visible but there is no longer any temptation to hunt for the comet, taking a sponge bath in the open, break- 

 fasting from off a box lid gaudily decked by a painted table cloth, and then sallying forth on the white horse 

 Frank to study the limits of the alluvial veneering on the base-level mesas, measure the dips of rows of rusty 

 nodules, sketch problematic buttes, and gather the houses of Ammonite, Scaphite, and Hamite. It is going to 

 bed by early candle light in the midst of a grove of Rhus tox, hunting the double stars near Lyrae and Cygni 

 among the branches of overhanging cottonwoods, moralizing on the development of character through the 

 trying associations of camp life, congratulating yourself that you are not a pessimist, and finally dropping off 

 to sleep. 



Among the "trying associations of camp life" may have been a trouble with one of the hired 

 helpers; for a member of one of Gilbert's parties recalls that he never saw his chief so near 

 "getting mad" as when a driver, thinking he had the chief at a disadvantage, attempted to raise 

 an agreed wage on him. 



In the second season it was August before Gilbert could escape from the Washington office. 

 He wrote of the delay: 



This year again the Fates are perverse. Work that I could not refuse and must not neglect holds me here 

 when I ought to be scouring the plains — so to speak. . . . Fortunately the energy I stored up by last year's 

 outing has kept me from wilting as I am apt to in this summer climate and it has only been for a few days I 

 have felt the physical need of a change. 



One of his letters spoke of "luxuriating in camp life on the Plains," as if freedom from duties 

 in Washington were truly grateful. During this season he was accompanied by two assistants, 

 both novices but both assiduous and successfid to the point of giving satisfaction to their chief. 

 He nevertheless seems to have enjoyed trying them out in various ways, as well as aiding and 

 encouraging them in their work. One of them sometimes gave trouble by remaining out of 

 camp so long after dark that searching parties had to be dispatched to guide him in; on such 

 an occasion, when there was nothing with which to make a beacon fire, it is recalled that Gdbert, 

 as one of the searchers, walked out for a certain distance on a straight path guided by the stars, 

 then turned 120° to one side and walked the same distance, and finally making a similar turn 

 came back to camp. The incident is here recorded not because there is any great marvel in 

 its performance, but because it seems to exemplify a practical application of Gilbert's love for 

 mathematical problems, for an equilateral triangle is about the best route on which a searcher 

 can cover the greatest amount of ground farthest from camp in a given time. 



Camp fare was varied from tinned meat to rabbits and prairie dogs; and the unconven- 

 tional leader of the party even argued that, as rattlesnakes live on clean food such as birds and 

 frogs, they ought to be good eating; so one was killed without being allowed to bite itself, and 

 as the conventional cowboy cook refused to have anything to do with serving such a dish, it 

 was geologically prepared for the camp table and found to be "really very nice," but it does not 



