CLARENCE KING. 



while carrying on their scientific work out of sight of their 

 escort, they were ambushed by a party of Indians and only es- 

 caped death through the coolness of King, who first prevented 

 his companion from making what he perceived to be a futile 

 resistance, and later delayed the preparation of their torture by 

 fire by exciting the curiosity of the Indians by his barometer, 

 which he explained was a new kind of long-distance gun, and 

 thus gained time enough to allow the cavalry to come in sight 

 and effect their rescue. 



In the spring of 1866, further work in Arizona having been 

 rendered impracticable by the substitution of raw infantry from 

 the easi for the California cavalr} 7 , which bad hitherto been an 

 efficient guard against the Apaches, the young men returned to 

 San Francisco, making the difficult and then somewhat dangerous 

 journey across the great deserts of southern California alone, 

 being obliged to travel at night and lie by during the daytime 

 that they might not be seen by the Indians and also to avoid 

 the great heat of midday sun. After working up the results of 

 their field work they resumed their connection with the California 

 Survey and spent the following summer in surveying the high 

 Sierras to the east of the Yosemite Valley. It was during this 

 work, according to Mr. Gardiner, that they planned the system 

 of rapid surveying by triangulation checked by astronomical 

 locations and barometrical measurements which was later so suc- 

 cessfully carried into practice in the Exploration of the 40th 

 Parallel. 



In the early autumn, while still engaged in this work. King 

 received news of the sudden death of his stepfather, Mr. How- 

 land, and at once started home to be near his mother, who, with 

 three young children left dependent upon her, for the second 

 time found herself reduced from affluence to comparative poverty. 



At this crisis he found himself in a position whose difficulties 

 would have daunted a less courageous and sanguine nature. 

 Without other means than his active brain and the experience 

 gathered during his four years' apprenticeship on the California 

 Survey, he had not only to make a career for himself, but to 

 provide for the comfort of those who naturally looked to him for 

 protection and support. That experience, however, was one that 

 was invaluable to him at this time. He had familiarized himself 



