16 GROVE KARL GILBERT— DAVIS lMEii0l * S [v™xxi, 



It was indeed with a sudden plunge into the deep unknown that Gilbert entered upon 

 the arduous experiences of his first season of western field work, for it began abruptly and 

 continued through eight months of almost continuous movement. Having left Rochester on 

 April 21 and arrived at San Francisco on the 29th, a week before his twenty-eighth birthday, 

 he had only three days there before turning back again and going with various members of 

 the survey as far as Halleck in northeastern Nevada. Two weeks were spent at that point 

 before the unwieldy expedition, which numbered over 40 men with 165 horses and mules, 

 made its first move; later on, it was usually divided into two or three smaller parties. 

 Gilbert's division for a time zigzagged among the ranges of the Great Basin into California on 

 the west and Arizona on the east; then crossing the plateaus south of the Colorado Canyon, 

 it went eastward as far as Mount San Francisco. Return westward was finally made through 

 southern Arizona by the valley of the Gila to Yuma, where a river steamboat was taken down 

 the Colorado to its mouth; thence an ocean-going steamer, running southward through the 

 Gulf of California and northward along the Pacific coast, carried the party to San Francisco 

 on January 3, 1872. During a brief delay there Gilbert called on J. D. Whitney, at that time 

 director of the State survey of California, to examine volcanic rocks, and on Clarence King, 

 director of the Fortieth Parallel survey ; and then turning to the East, with stops on the way 

 at Cleveland to see his former chief, Newberry, and at Rochester to see his family, he went for 

 the first time to Washington, where he arrived on January 25. Journeys across or nearly 

 across the continent were repeated many times in later years. 



Departure was made from Washington for a second western field season late in June, 

 1872, this time with the title of chief geologist; and after making stops again at Rochester and 

 Cleveland, Salt Lake City was reached early in July. Thence Gilbert's party, frequently 

 working independently of the main expedition, explored southwestern Utah and northwestern 

 Arizona, thus covering an eastern part of the Great Basin and a western part of the plateaus 

 north of the Colorado Canyon. It was during this season that Gilbert saw the House Range, 

 wliich he selected nearly 30 years later for closer study as a typical example of a dissected moun- 

 tain block. Farther east the truly fracturelike cleft of the Virgin River in massive sandstones 

 was examined, and acquaintance was made with the long fines of cliffs, "trending east and 

 west and facing south," by wliich the northern plateaus are "divided into a series of great 

 terraces." The return journey from Salt Lake City to Washington was begun on December 12. 



The third and final season under Wheeler began in July, 1873, at Fort Wingate, N. 

 Mex., which was reached by stage from Pueblo, Colo. Field work extended over western 

 New Mexico and eastern Arizona south of the Colorado River, thus once more including parts 

 of the plateau and Great Basin provinces. Monoclinal flexures and the Zuni uplift were studied 

 in the plateau region, of which the southwestern and southern margin was traced; several 

 members of the basin-range system were examined, and volcanic phenomena were studied 

 more fully than before. This season closed with Gilbert's return, in late November and early 

 December, by stage to Pueblo and train to Washington; there he spent a large part of the fol- 

 lowing year in completing his reports. His residence in Washington is described in a later 

 section. 



FIELD NOTEBOOKS: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES 



It is profitable to know something about the personal methods of work adopted by suc- 

 cessful scientists, and the field notebooks of an eminent geologist are therefore of special inter- 

 est. The theory of note taking in geological field work, especially during a prolonged cam- 

 paign in a distant and little-known region, demands that the records of observed facts shall be 

 so complete as to leave little to the memory, and advises that full but carefully separated 

 records should be made of the speculations and interpretations excited by the facts. Practice 

 departs largely and variously from theory, and in Gilbert's case conspicuously so. His notes 

 of three field seasons on the Wheeler survey were made in 17 small books, each containing 

 about 140 pages, measuring 6 by Z% inches, and usually with from 70 to 100 words to a page, 

 written crosswise. The record of observations for the first year of rapid movement with a large 

 party is only occasionally detailed, more often scanty; a day occupies from 1 to 10 pages. In 



