614 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



Miocene lake of the east, through the subsidence of the surrounding 

 country, was so increased as to cover almost the entire province of the 

 Great Plains. 



The beginning of the Pliocene period found, then, two enormous 

 fresh-water lakes, the one covering the basin country of Utah, Nevada, 

 Idaho, and eastern Oregon, the other occupying the Plains province. 

 The period was brought to an end by crustal movement which, how- 

 ever, affected the two areas quite differently, the sediments of the 

 Great Basin area being broken through the middle and the halves 

 depressed from 1,000 to 2,000 feet, while those of the Plains were 

 bodily tilted toward the south and east. 



The result of the post-Pliocene movement in the department of the 

 Plains was to give thereafter a free drainage .to the sen. The result 

 in the area of the Gre"at Basin, on the other hand, was to leave two 

 deep depressions, one at the western base of the Wasatch and one at 

 the base of the Sierra Nevada, which in Quaternary times received the 

 abundant waters of the Glacial period and formed the two now nearly 

 extinct lakes known as Lake Lahontan and Lake Bonneville, noted 

 elsewhere. 



King was born at Newport, Rhode Island, in 184:2, and graduated 

 from the Sheffield Scientific School in 1862, being a member of the 

 first class to receive degrees from that institution. The year following 

 his graduation he, in company with James T. Gardner, 

 sketch of King joined an emigrant train starting from St. Joseph, Mis- 



souri, on an overland trip to California. It is stated that 

 it was during this trip, at that time a slow and eventful one, that he con- 

 ceived the idea, afterwards carried into execution, of a geological section 

 across the entire Cordilleran system. Reaching California, he attached 

 himself as a volunteer assistant to the State survey of California, under 

 J. D. Whitney. Later he was connected with parties under General 

 McDowell in the examination of the mineral resources of the Mariposa 

 grant. It was during this expedition that he and his companion were 

 captured by Apaches, but were fortunately rescued just as the fires 

 were being prepared for their torture. 



After the civil war and the passage of the bill subsidizing the Pacific 

 Railroad, King recognized that the time had come for carrying out 

 his scheme for connecting the geology of the East with that of the 

 West and making the cross section above referred to. With this pro- 

 ject in view he went to Washington in the winter of 180*)-»;T, and in 

 spite of the disadvantage of his youth — being then scarcely 25 3'ears 

 of age, and still more youthful appearance — he was so successful in 

 impressing Congress with the importance of ascertaining the character 

 of the mineral resources of the country about to be opened that not 

 only was a generous annual appropriation voted, but King was him- 



