NATURE 



265 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 5, 187S 



AMERICAN GEOLOGICAL SURVEYS 



THE United States of America have certainly done 

 noble work in the exploration and mapping of their 

 vast empire. Most of the long-settled States have for 

 many years possessed elaborate maps and reports upon 

 the topography, geology, and agricultural features of their 

 territory. The central Government has likewise carried 

 on extensive and admirable coast surveys, besides innu- 

 merable expeditions and surveys for opening up the less 

 known or wholly unvisited regions of the interior of the 

 continent. Were all the literature connected with this 

 subject gathered together it would be found to form of 

 itself a goodly library. Some of it has been published in 

 most costly and indeed luxurious style ; other portions, 

 and these sometimes not the least interesting or valuable, 

 have to be unearthed from the pages of flimsily printed 

 " blue-books." But whatever be their external guise, 

 these narratives are pervaded by an earnestness and 

 enthusiasm, a consciousness of the magnitude of the scale 

 on which the phenomena have been produced, and yet a 

 restrained style of quiet description, which cannot but 

 strike the reader. Their writers have evidently had their 

 feelings of awe and admiration worked sometimes up to 

 the highest pitch, yet they contrive on the whole to pre- 

 sent just such plain frank statements of facts as to convey 

 clear and definite notions of the regions they describe. 

 Though little is said about hardships and hair-breadth 

 escapes, one can see that these bold explorers could not 

 have accomplished what they so modestly and quietly 

 narrate without a vast amount of privation and danger. 

 Some of them, indeed, like poor young Loring in 1871, 

 have lost their lives by Indian assassins, others have 

 fallen victims to the disease and debility necessarily 

 attendant on so much exposure. But on the whole the 

 work seems to be healthy, and the men engaged upon it 

 like it and keep to it. 



Leaving for the present the consideration of what has 

 been done and is now doing in the more settled States, 

 let us turn to those vast territories lying to the west and 

 stretching across the Rocky Mountains to the shores of 

 the Pacific. At the beginning of this century compara- 

 tively little was known of these regions. But the Govern- 

 ment then resolved to gather some information on the 

 subject, and with that end despatched an expedition in 

 1804 which penetrated the wilderness, reached the western 

 sea-board, and after much hardship brought back a first 

 instalment of knowledge regarding this part of the con- 

 tinent. During the period preceding the year 185 1, 

 somewhere about forty exploring and survey parties were 

 sent by the War Department into the tracts lying to the 

 west of the Mississippi. But in the next twenty years, 

 viz., from 1850 to 1870, the same Department conducted 

 forty-six of these surveys, not merely for military purposes, 

 but to aid in the general opening up of the vast unex- 

 plored territories. As a rule, however, and until com- 

 paratively recently, these expeditions could make no 

 pretensions to geographical accuracy. Their object was 

 merely to fix as well and as rapidly as might be the 

 positions of main landmarks, and to collect such informa* 

 Vol. XII. — No. 301 



tion as to the nature of the country as was most needful, 

 with the view to its early settlement. 



But the discovery of gold in California at once drew 

 attention to the western slope, and awakened a strong 

 desire to open up a better and more expeditious commu- 

 nication with it than had previously been in use. The 

 Pacific Railroad was projected, and surveys were made to 

 ascertain the best routes. In the course of these explora- 

 tions much additional information was obtained, but still 

 in such necessarily rapid work there could be little done 

 towards accurate geographical and topographical deter- 

 minations. Hence we find that prominent points were 

 sometimes placed from three to twenty miles out of their 

 true position. Nor could much be attempted of any 

 value in a geological point of view. It is seldom that a 

 single traverse of the rocks of a wide region can be un- 

 derstood without a knowledge of the country lying on 

 either side of it. 



In a region of which no reliable maps exist, it is of 

 course impossible to conduct a geological survey except 

 in connection with a topographical one. The geologists 

 must either make their own topographical maps, or be 

 accompanied by surveyors who do that for them. Pre- 

 vious to the year 1867 no special geological exploration 

 seems to have been carried on in the territories as the 

 work of any Government Department. But in that year 

 no fewer than three separate and independent geological 

 surveys were organised. One of these, under the direc- 

 tion of the War Department, but conducted entirely by 

 civilians, with Mr. Clarence King at their head, made a 

 careful examination of a tract about a hundred miles 

 broad, stretching along the fortieth parallel, from the 

 eastern boundary of Cahfornia to the eastern slope of the 

 Rocky Mountains. A second survey, under the direction 

 of the Smithsonian Institution, with Mr. J W. Powell in 

 charge, had as its task the exploration of the Colorado of 

 the West and its tributaries. A third survey, or series of 

 surveys, has been conducted with great zeal by the De- 

 partment of the Interior over a vast range of country 

 embracing Nebraska, parts of Colorado and New Mexico, 

 Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho. These surveys 

 have been under the guidance of Dr. F. V, Hayden. 



There appears to have been no concert between the 

 different Government Departments in the organisation 

 and conduct of these various geological explorations. 

 Each survey party was sent out as if it had the boundless 

 wilderness to subdue without the aid of any compatriots 

 or even the chance of seeing human beings save hostile 

 Indians. The Territories, though vast, were not infinite, 

 and it was to be expected that some time or other the 

 independent survey parties should meet. This does not 

 seem to have happened for some years. Meanwhile, 

 however. Dr. Hayden's expedition, supported by increas- 

 ingly liberal grants from Congress, was doing most excel- 

 lent work, making a good general map, and at the same 

 time bringing before the world an annual report full of 

 most interesting and valuable and sometimes remarkably 

 novel information regarding the geology and natural his- 

 tory of the regions visited. The War Department, with 

 a far more powerful organisation, and with the help of a 

 staff of trained civilians, was much more deliberate in its 

 movements. Very little of its work had seen the light, 

 though of the excellence and copiousness of that work 



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