28 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



In the summer of 1870 Joseph LeConte, Professor Frank Soule, Jr., and eight 

 students camped in the Sierras for six weeks. LeConte said, "I never enjoyed 

 anything else so much in my life — perfect health, the merry party of young men, 

 the glorious scenery, and, above all, the magnificent opportunity for studying 

 mountain origin and structure." This summer's foray was the theme of his 

 Journal of Ramhlmgs through the High Sierras of California by the University 

 Excursion Party, published in 1875. 



The third of the trilogy of mountain essays was Clarence King's Mountaineer- 

 ing in the Sierra Nevada, published in 1871. Clarence King, Sheffield Scientific 

 graduate, was twenty years old when, almost providentially, he met Brewer, a 

 Sheffield alumnus, on the steamer plying between Sacramento and San Francisco 

 on August 31, 1863. King w^as traveling with his college chum James Terry 

 Gardiner, and in a letter to his mother Gardiner described Brewer in these words : 



. . . nothing peculiar about him, yet liis face impressed me. . . . the roughest 

 dressed person on the steamboat [with] an old felt hat, a quick eye, a sunburned face 

 with different lines from the other mountaineers, a long weather-beaten neck pro- 

 truding from a coarse grey flannel shirt and a rough coat, a heavy revolver belt, and 

 long legs, made up the man; and yet he is an intellectual man — I know it. 



Three days after meeting Brewer, Clarence King was made an assistant geologist 

 of the State Geological Survey. He lived to climb many of the highest peaks of 

 the Sierra Nevada ahead of others, but King "was an amateur, not a scientific 

 climber, and he delighted in thrills." By his thirtieth birthday he was in charge 

 of the Fortieth Parallel Survey, and soon afterwards he became the first director 

 of the U. S. Geological Survey. 



Louis Agassiz visited San Francisco in 1872 en route home from Brazil by 

 way of Cape Horn aboard the Hassler. Agassiz visited Joseph LeConte in 

 Oakland on this trip. 



During September (or October ?), 1872, Benedict Eoezl, native of Bohemia, 

 passed through the city on a plant-collecting foray for European horticultural 

 firms, en route from Panama via Acapulco. The details of Roezl's visit, which 

 must have been brief, as Tiling's was before him, are confused in the few accounts 

 in the literature. The beautiful dull-red flowered gooseberry of middle elevations 

 in the Sierra Nevada, Rihes roezlii, was named for him by the botanist Kegel. 



Gustavus Augustus Eisen, born in Stockholm, Sweden, came to tlie United 

 States in October, 1872, after taking his Doctor of Philosophy degree at L'psala 

 earlier that year. He apparently headed for California, for he soon settled at 

 Fresno, then a pioneer community. Eisen 's most important work was in horti- 

 culture. By lectures and pamphleteering he fostered the introduction of the 

 Smyrna fig and avocado into the State. He joined the Academy in 1874 and 

 served as curator from 1892 to 1900. From time to time he collected plants in 

 Fresno County; for example, Phacelia eisenii, named by Brandegee. Eisen must 

 be credited, too, for his part in the creation of Sequoia National Park by execu- 

 tive decree. Mount Eisen, elevation 12,000 feet, in the Park, perpetuates his 

 name. Dr. Eisen led Academy expeditions — apparently the first under the Acad- 

 emy's sponsorship — to Lower California in 1892, 1893, and 1894. During those 

 years his interests included helminthology, archaeology, and geology, in addition 

 to botany. 



In the 1870's one of the leading taxidermists in San Francisco was Saxon-born 



