CHAPTER XXIV 

 NIAGARA AND THE GREAT LAKES 



A RETURN TO NIAGARA 



The annual visits that Gilbert made to western New York and thereabouts during the six 

 years when he was in charge of Appalachian studies and during the following three when he 

 was chief geologist of the survey were interrupted by the three years of summer field work in 

 Colorado; but he found time during the winter of 1S94-95 to write in popular form an admirable 

 summary of his work on Niagara, 1 above mentioned, which constitutes a worthy extension of 

 the famous Toronto lecture. The temporary subdivision of the falls into a larger American 

 and a smaller Canadian member, when they stood at Wintergreen flats a little below the present 

 whirlpool, is here beautifully described, and visitors are advised not to overlook this eloquent 

 record of a brief chapter in the story of the gorge. The flats in question are easily reached by 

 stopping off on the Canadian half of the electric railway circuit of the gorge. Some account is 

 also given of the varying depth of water in different parts of the gorge, a topic that is more 

 especially referred to in a later paragraph of the present section. Hall's camera-lucida drawing 

 of the falls in 1827 is introduced in connection with a photograph taken in the nineties from 

 the very point where the drawing was made, this topic also being here further treated in a 

 later paragraph. As to the age of the falls, Gilbert shows his customary caution. In spite 

 of the great advance of knowledge in the preceding 10 years, or perhaps precisely because of 

 that advance, he seems to regard the history of the falls as involving so many variable factors 

 that the total time of their interaction can not be safely calculated: 



No estimate yet made has great value, and the best result obtainable may perhaps be only a rough approxi- 

 mation. 



Popular impatience to have an answer to this popular question could not push him beyond 

 a guarded statement. 



His fear expressed in 1893 that work in the West might prevent a continuation of work 

 on Niagara was happily not realized. When he completed the assigned task of areal surveying 

 in Colorado in 1895, he acted like a bent spring which, when released from a constrained posi- 

 tion, flies back to its attitude of free preference; he resumed his studies in New York in the 

 autumn immediately on his return from a final season on the plains, and, in 1896 and the years 

 following, Niagara and the Great Lakes once more received his first attention. Even more 

 than before the field was then occupied by other workers than himself, but he seemed to have 

 as much interest in the results of their work as in those of his own. He frequently made excur- 

 sions with one or another of them, and on one occasion when work in the field was interrupted 

 by rain his companion, whose scientific interests were not so limited that a single planet could 

 fill them, was surprised to discover that Gilbert also had found geology too narrow a subject 

 and that his speculations had been extended so far into astronomy that he had become seriously 

 competent in celestial problems. If any local bystander listened in on the conversation in the 

 village railroad station where refuge was taken by the two geologists, he must have been sur- 

 prised when a theoretical explanation of the moon's face by the taller and older stranger was 

 followed by some improvements on the nebular hypothesis of planetary origin proposed by the 

 shorter and younger stranger. 



Gilbert's relations with his fellow workers brought out certain remarkable traits of his char- 

 acter. He had a habit of delaying publication while he was making sure of his conclusions, 

 even though this sometimes led to the anticipation of his results by others ; but he seems never 

 to have paid any attention to possible losses of that kind; indeed, he wrote to a correspondent 

 who was actively working in the Great Lakes region: 



Having deliberately determined years ago that I would publish nothing prematurely for the sake of securing 

 priority, I ought not to be perturbed when the world neglects to wait for me. 



' Niagara Falls and their history. Nat. Qeogr. Monogrs., 1895, 203-230. 



20154°— 26 21 219 



