196 The American Geologist. ^p"^- ^^^^• 
Frederick Bennett Wright, his room-mate during this year 
at Baltimore, writes: "In the autumn of 1897 Mr. Hall en- 
tered the graduate department of geology. His enthusiasm 
in the work, together with his attractive personal character- 
istics, soon won for him a genuine popularity within the cir- 
cle of geological professors and students among whom he had 
come. Although his interest in the work before him was gen- 
eral, he was more attracted by structural and physiographic 
subjects than by those of mineralogy and paleontolog}^ His 
life at Fargo, in the old bed of lake Agassiz, naturally gave 
him a keen interest also in glacial geology. During his stay 
at Johns Hopkins, he worked for a short time on the Mary- 
land Geological Survey, along the Potomac river. There his 
work was so thorough and satisfactory that he was offered a 
position in that state survey, for field work on tiie coastal 
plain the following summer. But his teaching and plans for 
field work in North Dakota were more attractive and caused 
him to return there. Personally he was very modest about his 
accomplishments, but yet had a sufficient sense of their im- 
portance to give him the confidence in himself necessary for 
success. I was greatly impressed with his broad views on all 
subjects, and his wide interest in general topics. We often 
had heated discussions, though perfectly friendly, which some- 
times lasted till after midnight, on all conceivable subjects:, 
from geology, evolution, and theology, to music and art." 
Returning in the summer of 1898 to the Agricultural Col- 
lege of North Dakota, and being promoted to its professorship 
of geology. Hall was constantly engaged, through the remain- 
ing four and a half years of his life, in his duties as a college 
instructor, including frequent excursions with his classes, and 
in more extensive examinations of distant parts of the state 
during vacations. 
In the summer of 1900 he began a systematic investigation 
of the artesian wells and underground water resources of 
North Dakota, through co-operation by the Agricultural Col- 
lege with the United States Geological Survey. Previously 
also' he had aided professor J. E. Todd, during one or two 
summers, on similar work in a part of the James river valley 
in South Dakota. 
Besides the hydrographic work, he began at the same time 
a survey of the soils of North Dakota, being associated with 
