NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



minating point of the whole Sierra, they gave the name of "Mt. 

 Whitney" in honor of their respected chief. This King at- 

 tempted to climb later in the same season, hut when near the 

 summit he found his further progress stopped by a sheer wall of 

 granite which rendered its ascent from that side impossible. 

 To show the great unwillingness of the man to abandon any im- 

 portant enterprise that he had undertaken, it may be stated that 

 long after he had severed his connection with the California 

 Survey he twice repeated the attempt from the other side of the 

 range. In 1871 he supposed he had attained "the highest point, 

 but a storm coming up just as he had reached it, the clouds in 

 which he was enveloped hid the true summit, which was a little 

 higher than the one which he was on. Two years later the news 

 came to him in New York that observations by a member of the 

 California Survey had proved his error, and without a moment's 

 delay he crossed the continent and climbed it again, this time 

 reaching the actual summit, the highest peak within the United 

 States. 



In the summer of 1868, with William Ashburner, the distin- 

 guished mining engineer, he was for a time engaged in an eco- 

 nomic survey of the Mariposa land grant under F. L. Olmsted, 

 and it was during the progress of this work that he made the 

 discovery of the fossil that finally settled the cjuestion of the 

 age of the auriferous slates of the Sierra Nevada. In the follow- 

 ing winter, the Survey funds being exhausted through lack of 

 appropriations, he with his friend Gardiner returned to the east 

 by the Nicaragua route, spending two weeks on the Isthmus 

 while waiting for a steamer to New York. On his arrival he 

 was detained for a long time at the house of his stepfather, 

 George S. Howland, at Irvington-on-the-Hudson, by an attack 

 of malaria, after which he took a post-graduate course in field 

 and practical astronomy at Yale. 



Eeturning again to California in the autumn of 1865, the two 

 young men were soon after their arrival engaged as geological 

 and topographical engineers for an exploratory expedition 

 through Arizona, made by General McDowell with a company 

 of cavalry. This expedition occupied the winter of 1865-'6 and, 

 carried on as it was in a desert country infested by hostile 

 Apaches, involved no little hardship and danger. At one time, 



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