MEMORIAL OF C. W. HAYES 103 



settlement of Taral. Here Indians were engaged for the final journey 

 to the coast, which, in a good boat, presented no difScnlties, though not 

 without serious dangers. The journey of a thousand miles, much of it 

 through entirely unknown regions, was accomplished without accident 

 and exactly as had been planned. To Schwatka, the leader, must be 

 given all due credit, but the tangible results were almost entirely the 

 work of Hayes. Throughout the journey he not only made a track 

 survey of remarkable accuracy, based on pacing by land and estimates of 

 distances by water, but his geologic record was unbroken. Whether toil- 

 ing through a swamp, bearing a heavy burden, finding a precarious foot- 

 ing on canyon walls, or shooting the rapids of unknown rivers in a frail 

 craft, his eye was ever alert for geologic and geographic facts. He was 

 the pioneer in Alaska surveys in substituting precise observations, accu- 

 rately located, for the random notes of the old-fashioned explorer. It 

 was characteristic of Hayes that, leaving the detailed mapping of his own 

 special province and trained only in this class of field-work, he at once 

 adapted both his mental attitude and methods of investigations to the 

 work of rapid exploration. Throughout his professional career he showed 

 the same mental quality of almost at once grasping the essentials of new 

 problems in fields which had previously been entirely foreign to him. 

 Thus he passed directly from the chemical laboratory to tectonic geology 

 and almost at once mastered physiography. These were left, in turn, 

 for the fields of exploration and applied geology. In all these branches 

 of his chosen science he showed the master hand. 



This exploration led to an understanding of the larger bedrock features 

 of the region. An incidental contribution to science was the tracing to 

 its approximate source of the white volcanic ash so widely distributed in 

 the upper Yukon basin. He was also the first geologist to describe the 

 occurrence of copper in the region traversed by him. By far the most 

 important result of this study was Hayeses classification of the larger 

 physiographic features. This, only in part elaborated in his paper deal- 

 ing with this expedition, was more fully set forth in a later publication, 

 but never published in graphic form. The broad grasp he had on the 

 problem is shown by the fact that though at the time of his classification 

 much of Alaska was unknown, yet the physiographic subdivisions he pro- 

 posed have been but little modified after twenty years of surveys and 

 investigations. 



The knowledge that Hayes gained by his northern journey was a very 

 important element in the sncoess of Alaska surveys begun several years 

 later. His familiarity with the physical conditions of travel and the 

 broader features of Alaskans relief and geology made the National Survey 



VIII — Bull. Geol. Soc. Am,, Vol, 28, 1916 



