August 15, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



265 



Olanclio, Toro and Mosquitia is a quartz- 

 ose conglomerate, 1,000 feet in thick- 

 ness. In the vicinity of Tegucigalpa, the 

 characteristic section is composed of red 

 and green marls nearly a thousand feet 

 thick. These are capped with limestones, 

 red conglomerates, sandstones and shales, 

 very rich in gold and silver. The beds of 

 non-fossiliferous limestones in Honduras 

 are immense, and we find the old sea basins 

 in many places 3,000 feet above present sea- 

 level. 



Granite and syenite occur on the coast 

 west of Trujillo, and basalts and lavas are 

 found all over the country in great abund- 

 ance. 



Geological classification is difficult in 

 Honduras on account of the great mass of 

 eruptive rocks which have been greatly 

 metamorphosed. 



The Great Canyon of the Euphrates River: 



Ellsworth Huntington. 



Although the Euphrates river is known 

 by name to every one certain parts of its 

 upper course are still almost unexplored. 

 One of the least known sections is where 

 the river, after the junction of its two larg- 

 est branches, flows over great rapids 

 through the Taurus mountains in an im- 

 mense canyon. 



In 1883 the great German general von 

 Moltke floated down this part of the stream 

 on a raft of inflated sheepskins manned by 

 Kurds, but the rapids are so formidable 

 that for over sixty years no other Euro- 

 peans visited the region. In the spring of 

 1901 Professor T. H. Norton, U. S. Consul 

 at Harput, Turkey, and the writer made 

 the same journey, using a raft of inflated 

 sheepskins manned by Armenian fishermen. 

 For the first hundred miles no great diffi- 

 culties were met, although at one place the 

 Kurds threatened the party with their 

 guns, because the strangers floated past the 



place where a Kurdish lord had the right 

 of ferriage. In another place a crowd of 

 Turkish villagers stoned the raft because 

 the Armenian fishermen had no fish to sell. 

 In both cases the natives refrained from 

 further violence out of respect for the fact 

 that the travelers wore hats and so must 

 be men of consequence. 



Two small canyons were traversed, the 

 second of which, nearly 2,000 feet deep, 

 was the picturesque home of large herds of 

 ibex. Below this is a holy mountain, with 

 several shrines, at one of which rises an 

 immense square altar of rough stone, all 

 covered with the gore of the numerous 

 goats and sheep which are here offered in 

 sacrifice by both Christian Armenians and 

 Mohammedan Turks. 



The main canyon is cleft through the 

 mountains to a depth of from 2,000 to 

 5,000 feet, and the contracted stream 

 thunders over rapid after rapid between 

 towering walls of frowning basalt or cas- 

 tellated buff limestone. In many ways it 

 resembles the grand canyon of the Colo- 

 rado, with its exceedingly swift current ob- 

 structed here and there by fans of detritus 

 brought in from the sides, its steep walls of 

 naked rocks and its raging rapids. In 

 some places the main stream has cut its 

 gorge so fast that the smaller tributaries 

 could not keep pace with it, and so fall 

 over the walls into the river in a series of 

 cascades. All these facts and many others 

 show that the Euphrates is very young 

 geologically. 



The real difficulties of the voyage began 

 in the great canyon. At the first big rapid 

 a whole day was spent in making a portage 

 of two miles, involving a climb of 1,200 

 feet over an almost impassable road ; in an- 

 other place, while the raft was being let 

 down past a rapid with ropes, a raft of 

 logs floated by, on which were two almost 

 nude Kurds, with tridents for paddles and 



