ACADEMY OF SCENCES] WHEELER SURVEY 19 



The house of . . . has one long room & about 10 inhabitants. It is half dug in the shale & half 

 built of stone. Two wagons near by serve as sleeping apartments. Before the door is a spring that flows 

 down a steep slope of shale trod to mud by the cattle & devoid of vegetation. Back of it rises the red sand- 

 stone cliff & in front stretches the desert plain cut by the Colorado chasm. The largest tree is greasewood [a 

 small shrub] & in fine the picture is one of intense squalor & desolation. Imagination could not invent a more 

 appropriate home for such an outcast. 



Better conditions were found a few weeks later in a small Gentile town farther north : 



I have returned at night to 's Store which is the most comfortable house I have seen for many weeks. 



It has four rooms and a housekeeper. The table cloth is white. The butter is good & the milk is cream. This 

 is a combination of luxuries unknown in the saintly settlements. Contra the wholesome brown bread of Mormon 

 penury is exchanged for white, light, palatable, indigestible biscuits. Beds. 



The last word suggested a review, which follows : 



At Zion we furnished our own blankets & slept on the floor. At Rockville the same except we were furnished 

 pillows. At Mt. Carmel we were given extra blankets & the lee side of a corn stack. At Toquerville I slept 

 in a wagon box with the boy, at Workman's Ranch on the ground with the boy again. At Kanab in a bed 

 on a bedstead alone, at Allendale ditto with the boy. At Circleville, ditto, ditto. 



Such are examples of personal experience taken from Gilbert's early records of his western 

 explorations. 



NOTES ON SCIENTIFIC TOPICS 



Geological notes are usually limited to matters of direct observation, such as the nature 

 of volcanic rocks, sections of stratified formations with record of attitude, composition, and 

 fossils, and estimates of thickness. Surface forms are described briefly, if at all. Reviews 

 and generalizations are rare; by way of exception a good number of observations on springs 

 are collected in summaries on two dates in August, 1871. A bath in Sevier Lake led to a con- 

 cise note as to the density of its water: 



It is not so buoyant as Salt Lake & I infer not so salt. Floated about as in figure, ab & c are water lines 

 for fresh water, Sevier L. & G. Salt Lake. The water of thfc latter holds 20% of mineral matter. The second 

 may have 12%-14 %. 



The figure referred to shows a man immersed to different depths, indicated by lettered 

 lines. 



Theoretical inquiries and speculations were rarely recorded, although it is impossible 

 that a mind as active as Gilbert's should not have indulged in them frequently. A rare example 

 is as follows, November 19, 1871 : 



. . . There are Problems connected with the +d sandstone [a cross-bedded yellow sandstone, 400 feet 

 thick, in the upper Gila Valley]. 1st. How can it have originated conformably over a large area of limestone? 

 The Potsdam [sandstone resting on cr3'stalline rocks] is easily accounted for. It represents a gradual sinking 

 of the land & is followed by the natural sequence of shale and limestone. If the +d sand also represents a 

 sinking, where is the erosion of the complementary elevation? 2d. How came so great a mass to be cross- 

 stratified in one system from top to bottom? . . . The uniformity of all beds along lines of mesa front and the 

 line of the Colorado indicates that these lines were coast lines or parallel to coast lines during the original 

 deposition. The belt of the -f d sandstone may not be a broad one though it is already proven to be 100 miles 

 long at least. Perhaps the bed was laid slowly during a period of constant conditions when a strong shore 

 current bore the sand along to gradually build out a bar. In that case the ocean must have been south of the 

 mesa line [plateau rim] for the dip is that way. . . . Later, having seen more of the +d sandstone I have to 

 limit the description as to cross lamination. The lines do not run through the lines of bedding, though they 

 present that appearance at a distance. At the top of a bed they terminate somewhat abruptly without deflec- 

 tion while at the bottom they become tangent to the line of bedding. The lines may have originally curved 

 at the top also, & have been cut off by the currents that formed the succeeding bed. 



The reason for this exceptional deliberation may be found in a preceding entry: 



Mules and horses strayed this a. m. & some delay in getting them. 



But deliberate as the discussion was, the absence of all suggestion of an aeolian origin for 

 the cross-bedded sandstone is noteworthy. 



In the following year, 1872, the peculiar conditions under which the coal beds of the 

 plateau province had been formed excited inquiry: 



