JOHN WKSLKV POWELL III 



these subjects, but in the possible future service to the nation of 

 the lands which he explored. 



Nor, in his observations, was Powell satisfied with descriptive 

 notes. While the facts which he saw were interesting to him, 

 they were chiefly so in that, combined with other facts, they 

 might cause him to see deeper into the laws of nature. He not 

 only described the geographic facts of the region through which 

 he traveled, but he gave many of the basal ideas upon which 

 the science of modern physiography is built. Indeed, the most 

 fundamental of them all, the conception of base-level, is his 

 contribution. It was not sufficient for him to describe the 

 mountains of the Park Ranges, of the Uintas, of the Great 

 Basin ; he must know about their origin and give a genetic 

 classification of them. He became deeply interested in the In- 

 dians and their institutions. He saw that a knowledge of their 

 customs was essential to an understanding of the more complex 

 social life of civilized communities, and out of his keen interest 

 has grown the Bureau of American Ethnology. Thus Powell's 

 irresistible tendency to philosophize — to see the inner meanings 

 of things — runs through all his narrative. He was not con- 

 tent merely to see the phenomena about him ; he must interpret 

 them in the terms of the forces and agents which produced 

 them. 



Also in Powell's accounts of his explorations one catches the 

 exalted moods of the poet. He keenly appreciated the won- 

 ders and beauties of the region through which he traveled, and 

 his descriptions often become prose poetry. 



Finally, Powell gave the benefit of his knowledge of the arid 

 region to the legislators of the nation. He saw that the arid 

 lands, occupying nearly four tenths of the area of the United 

 States, were a possible great resource to the country-, but an 

 exceptional resource, which could not be wisely handled under 

 common law. He saw that here there was no danger of mon- 

 opoly of the land, but that the real danger was the monopoly of 

 water ; that he who controlled the water was master of the land. 

 Consequently he proposed broad and statesmanlike legislation 

 for the division of the lands of the West which are not mining 

 lands into wheat lands, pasture lands, and irrigable lands, and 



