CLARENCE KING. 



In whatever he was engaged, whether study or recreation, he was 

 naturally accepted as a leader by his fellows. 



In 1862 he was graduated from Yale College with the degree 

 of B. S., his class being the first to which this degree was v ac- 

 corded by the University. During his college life his strong 

 natural taste for scientific and artistic study of the greater 

 features of natural scenery had been stimulated by reading the 

 then popular works of Tyndal'l and Euskin on the Alps of 

 Europe, and Winthrop's stirring pictures of Northwestern Amer- 

 ica ; and an even more direct impulse was given by the incidental 

 hearing, in a letter to Erofessor Brush, of an account of the 

 ascent by the members of the Geological Survey of California 

 of Mt. Shasta, then supposed to be the highest peak in North 

 America. 



Immediately upon graduation he planned a boat trip from 

 Lake Champlain down the St. Lawrence Eiver to Quebec, which 

 was carried out in company with his friends, James T. Gardiner, 

 Samuel Earsons, Jr., and Daniel Dewey, in the autumn of 1862. 

 They rowed themselves in a four-oared boat from Whitehall, on 

 Lake Champlain, to Quebec, camping out en route and support- 

 ing themselves largely by the fruit of their rods and guns. 



During the winter of 1862-'3 King was for a time a student 

 of glacial geology under the elder Agassiz, and an enthusiastic 

 member of an art club which, under the guidance of Eussell 

 Sturgis, devoted itself to the study of Euskin and the pre-Baph- 

 aelite school of art. 



The final impulse to the step which had the most influence 

 upon his life was characteristically given by his solicitude for 

 the welfare of another; his life-long friend Gardiner, having 

 broken down in health through overstudy and an open-air life 

 having been recommended to him, King planned a trip across 

 the continent to the sunny skies of California. In May, 1863, 

 the two young men proceeded to St. Joseph, Missouri, then the 

 westernmost terminus of railroads and the starting point for 

 emigrant travel across the plains. On the train between Han- 

 nibal and St. Joe King's kindly attention to the young children 

 of a well-to-do emigrant family led to the adoption of Gardiner 

 and himself as members of their party. The route followed by 

 the party led up the valley of the North Elatte Eiver into 



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