Vol. XXII, No. o 



N 



June, 1911 



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A GEOLOGIST'S PARADISE 



By Charles D. Walcott 

 Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 



NATURE has a habit of placing 

 some of her most attractive treas- 

 ures in places where the average 

 man hesitates to look for them. Twenty- 

 five years ago rumors came of a won- 

 derful find of glaciers, forests, mountain 

 peaks, and lakes along the line of the 

 rugged pass through which the Canadian 

 Pacific Railway was building. 



A geological reconnaissance by Sir 

 George M. Dawson, of the Canadian 

 Geological Survey, outlined some of the 

 broader geological features, and a some- 

 what closer study by Mr. R. G. McCon- 

 nell in 1886 resulted in a more accurate 

 description of the thousands of feet in 

 thickness of sandstone, shale, and lime- 

 stone that had been arched and broken 

 before being dissected and laid to view 

 by the agents of erosion which formed 

 the canyons, cliffs, and mountains by re- 

 moving grain by grain or by chemical 

 solution the material that formerly occu- 

 pied or surrounded them. 



A young American, Walter Wilcox, 

 taking his surveying instruments and 

 camera, spent summer after summer 

 sketching maps and photographing the 

 scenery, and in 1896 he published the 

 first of several beautiful volumes on 

 "Camping in the Canadian Rockies." 

 Later, with the development of the 



kodak, thousands of pictures were taken 

 by tourists who had little thought of the 

 geological treasures lying all about. 



The study of the glaciers was begun 

 early by an American, George Vaux, of 

 Philadelphia, assisted by his sister Mary, 

 and later an expedition sent out by 

 the Smithsonian Institution under the 

 leadership of William H. Sherzer, of 

 the University of Michigan, resulted in 

 the publication in 1907 of a memoir de- 

 scribing and illustrating many of the 

 glaciers. 



During the past three years an expe- 

 dition from the Smithsonian has been 

 making an examination of the four miles 

 or more in thickness of bedded rocks 

 forming the main range of the Rocky 

 Mountains that has been pushed east- 

 ward by the great mass of the Selkirk 

 ranges to the west. It is a curious and 

 instructive feature of the geology that 

 the strata of the Rockies, although 

 crowded eastward and thrust out over 

 the later rocks of the plains of Alberta, 

 have not suffered nearly as much dislo- 

 cation, injury, and alteration as the ap- 

 parently more massive bedded rocks of 

 the Selkirks. The latter are crumpled, 

 broken, and altered in about the same 

 manner as large blocks of brittle paper 

 would be if subjected to side pressure 

 in a hydraulic press. 



