JULES MARCOU. . 653 



Richmond, Virginia, to Cape Breton and Quebec in Canada, and even as 

 far west as Pittsburg and Cincinnati and Lake Superior. 



In 1850 he married Miss Jane Belknap of Boston, and from that 

 time he was actively seconded and assisted by this lady, whose devotion 

 lightened the strains of his severest trials, including even that of his last 

 sickness. Soon after his marriage he went back to France with his wife, 

 but resigned before doing so the arduous post of Travelling Geologist, 

 the duties of which had already begun to tell upon his not over strong 

 constitution. He returned to America the following year, and im- 

 mediately began the more minute study of the geology of New England, 

 and also to write his " Geology of North America," the first work that 

 attempted to assemble what was then known of the geology of this 

 continent. This was published in 1853, and gave him naturally the 

 best claim to be appointed geologist of one of the great expeditions 

 then being organized by the United States for the survey of feasible 

 routes for the projected railroads which were destined to unite the 

 Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. 



Professor Marcou accompanied the expedition under command of Lieu- 

 tenant Whipple, which took the most southern route, departing from 

 Napoleon on the Mississippi at the mouth of the Arkansas River in 1853. 

 The main geological results of this expedition were the discovery of the 

 wonderful structure of the great plateaus and the enormous deposits of 

 secondary rocks in the Southwest, especially in the neighborhood of the 

 Red River, and, although the age of these has since been settled differ- 

 ently from what was maintained by Professor Marcou, the importance 

 of the facts and the credit due him as their first explorer have always 

 been acknowledged. Unfortunately ill health obliged him to leave the 

 United States for Europe in 1854, and he was forced to resign his posi- 

 tion, and give up the hope of publishing his results in the official reports 

 of the United States Survey. 



The notes he had made were edited by W. P. Blake, and appeared 

 in the Report published by the Senate, entitled "Explorations and Sur- 

 veys of a Railroad Route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific 

 Ocean," Vol. III., Washington, 1856. 



Marcou was never satisfied with this necessarily meagre presentation 

 of his views, and subsequently himself published a " Geology of North 

 America, with two Reports on the Prairies of Arkansas and Texas, the 

 Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, and the Sierra Nevada of California, 

 originally made for the United States Goverment," Zurich, 1858, with 

 three maps and seven plates of fossils. 



