CHAPTER III 

 THREE YEARS ON THE WHEELER SURVEY 



THREE SEASONS IN THE WEST 



Before Newberry became director of the State survey of Ohio, he had been geologist of 

 several western exploring expeditions conducted by officers of the United States Army Engineers. 

 It was therefore natural that, when Lieut. G. M. Wheeler, also of the Army Engineers, was 

 organizing the "United States geographical surveys west of the one hundredth meridian" 

 in the winter of 1871, he should ask Newberry to suggest a geologist for the new expedition. 

 Gilbert was recommended and was forthwith appointed as "geological assistant;" thus began 

 rather "late in life," as he himself felt, his career as an exploring geologist in the little-known 

 Far West of those days. 



It should be here recalled that, in the years shortly following the War of the Rebellion, the 

 exploration of our western national domain was actively prosecuted. When Wheeler's survey 

 was established, several other independent surveys were already in progress under different 

 departments of the National Government, each one in active competition with the others for 

 funds at Washington, and in ill-concealed rivalry with the others in the West, as a consequence 

 of which an overlapping duplication of field work sometimes occurred. The eventual con- 

 solidation of the several surveys, following the recommendation of a committee of the National 

 Academy of Sciences, in a single United States Geological Survey was not accomplished until 

 1879. It should also be borne in mind that Wheeler's survey was primarily, as its original 

 name indicates, geographical and not geological; and further that Wheeler's conception of the 

 work of a geographical survey was essentially the making of maps, including the determination 

 of latitude, longitude, and altitude for standard points, and the representation of the inter- 

 mediate areas by hachures or shading. He appears, as far as one may judge from the text of 

 his own reports, to have had no clear conception of physical geography or of geography as a 

 whole, even as it was developed in his time; and regarding geology he does not seem to have 

 been informed at all. 



No other geologist was appointed on the Wheeler survey in 1871, but A. R. Marvine, a 

 recent graduate of the short-lived Hooper Mining School of Harvard University, who served 

 under Wheeler primarily as an astronomical assistant and who became an accomplished geo- 

 logist on the Hayden survey, which he joined the following year, reported on such geological 

 observations as he could make while moving from camp to camp. A year later E. E. Howell, 

 who had no more geological training than he could gather while a fellow worker with Gilbert 

 in Ward's Cosmos Hall at Rochester, was added to the Staff. With these two, as well as with 

 H. W. Henshaw, collector in natural history, Gilbert was closely associated. How different 

 was the preparation of the young geologists for their tasks from that now exacted of new mem- 

 bers of our National survey! Not one of them had made or could have had opportunity of 

 making more than an introductory study of geology in college, for no American college then 

 offered advanced teaching in that science. Not one had prepared a thesis, based on original 

 research and replete with citations from the work of earlier geologists, or had passed a formidable 

 oral examination on the general content of geological science for a doctorate in geology; higher 

 degrees in geology were then practically unknown among us. To charge these little-practiced 

 apprentices with the geological exploration of a new country was like authorizing a boy to swim 

 by throwing him overboard into deep water. And yet for those who survived it this rude 

 method led to great results; so great indeed as to make one wish that all young men who now, 

 after a fair beginning as undergraduates, wish to embark on geology as a profession, might have 

 the inspiring opportunity of investigating a little-known region on their own responsibility, as a 

 practical test of their quality and capacity. 



