CLARENCE KING. 



It was with the object of impressing this view upon Congress 

 and influencing their favorable action that in the winter of 

 1866-'7 King, then barely 25 years old and looking still more 

 youthful, presented himself at Washington armed only with a 

 few letters of introduction from his college professors and from 

 friends whom he had made in California. It was to his earnest- 

 ness and the magnetic influence of his personality rather than to 

 these letters, however, that was due the favorable impression he 

 soon made upon the leading men to whom he first addressed 

 himself. Chief among these were John Conness, of California, 

 and Abram S. Hewitt, of New York, who became his legisla- 

 tive advisers and champions upon the floors of the Senate and 

 the House respectively; General A. A. Humphreys, Chief of 

 Engineers, eminent not only as a military commander, but also 

 as a scientist, under whose administrative control the survey 

 was carried on, and Spencer F. Baird, Secretary of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, his scientific adviser, all of whom soon became 

 and always remained his warm and sympathetic friends. 



On the second of March, 1867, Congress approved a bill whose 

 last clause authorized the Secretary of War "to direct a geological 

 and topographical exploration of the territory between the Eocky 

 Mountains and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, including the 

 route or routes of the Pacific Kailroad." No definite sum was 

 appropriated at that time, as the bill provided that the expense 

 should be met out of existing appropriations, but it had been 

 arranged beforehand that certain unexpended balances of appro- 

 priations for surveys for a military wagon road across the conti- 

 nent should be used for this purpose. 



Five days later King received his formal appointment as 

 Geologist in Charge of the Geological Exploration of the 40th 

 Parallel, and at once proceeded to organize his corps. As all the 

 resources of the country were to be studied, animal and vegetable 

 as well as mineral, this included, besides geologists and topog- 

 raphers, also a zoologist and a botanist; a feature novel at that 

 time was the addition of a photographer, to which position a man 

 was selected who had had wide field experience with the Army of 

 the Potomac during the Civil War. An escort of cavalry was 

 also provided as a guard against possible danger from hostile 



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