Produced by Ron Swanson





THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE

VOLUME I, 1889




WASHINGTON

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

1889




OFFICERS OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

1889


GARDINER G. HUBBARD, _President_
HERBERT G. OGDEN  |
GEO. L. DYER      |
A. W. GREELY      | _Vice-Presidents_
C. HART MERRIAM   |
A. H. THOMPSON    |
CHARLES J. BELL, _Treasurer_
HENRY GANNETT  |
GEORGE KENNAN  | _Secretaries_
CLEVELAND ABBE      |
MARCUS BAKER        |
ROGERS BIRNIE, JR.  |
G. BROWN GOODE      |
C. A. KENASTON      | _Managers_
W. B. POWELL        |
O. H. TITTMANN      |
JAMES C. WELLING    |




PRINTERS
TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR,
NEW HAVEN CONN.




Vol. I. No. 1.

THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE.




PUBLISHED BY THE

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY.

WASHINGTON, D. C.


Price 50 Cents.




CONTENTS.


Announcement

Introductory Address by the President

Geographic Methods in Geologic Investigation: Wm. M. Davis

The Classification of Geographic Forms by Genesis: W. J. McGee

The Great Storm of March 11 to 14, 1888: A. W. Greely,
  Everett Hayden

The Survey of the Coast: Herbert G. Ogden

The Survey and Map of Massachusetts: Henry Gannett

Proceedings of the National Geographic Society

National Geographic Society
  Certificate of incorporation
  By-laws
  List of Officers, 1888
  List of Members




PRESS OF TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR, NEW HAVEN, CONN.




ANNOUNCEMENT.


The "NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY" has been organized "to increase and
diffuse geographic knowledge," and the publication of a Magazine has
been determined upon as one means of accomplishing these purposes.

It will contain memoirs, essays, notes, correspondence, reviews, etc.,
relating to Geographic matters. As it is not intended to be simply the
organ of the Society, its pages will be open to all persons interested
in Geography, in the hope that it may become a channel of
intercommunication, stimulate geographic investigation and prove an
acceptable medium for the publication of results.

The Magazine is to be edited by the Society. At present it will be
issued at irregular intervals, but as the sources of information are
increased the numbers will appear periodically.

The National Capital seems to be the natural and appropriate place for
an association of this character, and the aim of the founders has been,
therefore, to form a National rather than a local society.

As it is hoped to diffuse as well as to increase knowledge, due
prominence will be given to the educational aspect of geographic
matters, and efforts will be made to stimulate an interest in original
sources of information.

In addition to organizing, holding regular fortnightly meetings for
presenting scientific and popular communications, and entering upon the
publication of a Magazine, considerable progress has been made in the
preparation of a Physical Atlas of the United States.

The Society was organized in January, 1888, under the laws of the
District of Columbia, and has at present an active membership of about
two hundred persons. But there is no limitation to the number of
members, and it will welcome both leaders and followers in geographic
science, in order to better accomplish the objects of its organization.

October, 1888.




Correspondence with the Society should be addressed to Mr. GEORGE
KENNAN, Corresponding Secretary, No. 1318 Massachusetts Avenue,
Washington, D. C.




THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE.

Vol. I. 1888. No. 1.




INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS.

BY THE PRESIDENT, MR. GARDINER G. HUBBARD.


I am not a scientific man, nor can I lay claim to any special knowledge
that would entitle me to be called a "Geographer." I owe the honor of
my election as President of the National Geographic Society simply to
the fact that I am one of those who desire to further the prosecution
of geographic research. I possess only the same general interest in the
subject of geography that should be felt by every educated man.

By my election you notify the public that the membership of our Society
will not be confined to professional geographers, but will include that
large number who, like myself, desire to promote special researches by
others, and to diffuse the knowledge so gained, among men, so that we
may all know more of the world upon which we live.

By the establishment of this Society we hope to bring together (1) the
scattered workers of our country, and (2) the persons who desire to
promote their researches. In union there is strength, and through the
medium of a national organization, we may hope to promote geographic
research in a manner that could not be accomplished by scattered
individuals, or by local societies; we may also hope--through the same
agency--to diffuse the results of geographic research over a wider area
than would otherwise be possible.

The position to which I have been called has compelled me to become a
student. Since my election I have been trying to learn the meaning of
the word "geography," and something of the history of the science to
which it relates. The Greek origin of the word ([Greek: gê], the earth,
and [Greek: graphê], description) betrays the source from which we
derived the science, and shows that it relates to a description of the
earth. But the "earth" known to the Greeks was a very different thing
from the earth with which we are acquainted.

To the ancient Greek it meant land--not all land, but only a limited
territory, in the centre of which he lived. His earth comprised simply
the Persian Empire, Italy, Egypt and the borders of the Black and
Mediterranean seas, besides his own country. Beyond these limits, the
land extended indefinitely to an unknown distance--till it reached the
borders of the great ocean which completely surrounded it.

To the members of this society the word "earth" suggests a very
different idea. The term arouses in our minds the conception of an
enormous globe suspended in empty space, one side in shadow and the
other bathed in the rays of the sun. The outer surface of this globe
consists of a uniform, unbroken ocean of air, enclosing another more
solid surface (composed partly of land and partly of water), which
teems with countless forms of animal and vegetable life. This is the
earth of which geography gives _us_ a description.

To the ancients the earth was a flat plain, solid and immovable, and
surrounded by water, out of which the sun rose in the east and into
which it set in the west. To them "Geography" meant simply a
description of the lands with which they were acquainted.

Herodotus, who lived about the year 450 B.C., transmitted to posterity
an account of the world as it was known in his day. We look upon him as
the father of geography as well as of history. He visited the known
regions of the earth, and described accurately what he saw, thus laying
the foundations of comparative geography.

About 300 years B.C., Alexander the Great penetrated into hitherto
unknown regions, conquered India and Russia, and founded the Macedonian
Empire. He sent a naval expedition to explore the coasts of India,
accompanied by philosophers or learned men, who described the new
countries discovered and the character of their inhabitants. This
voyage may be considered as originating the science of Political
Geography, or the geography of man.

About the year 200 B.C., Eratosthenes of Cyrene, the keeper of the
Royal Library at Alexandria, became convinced, from experiments, that
the idea of the rotundity of the earth, which had been advanced by some
of his predecessors, was correct, and attempted to determine upon
correct principles its magnitude. The town of Cyrene, on the river
Nile, was situated exactly under the tropic, for he knew that on the
day of the summer solstice, the sun's rays illuminated at noon the
bottom of a deep well in that city. At Alexandria, however, on the day
of the summer solstice, Eratosthenes observed that the vertical finger
of a sun-dial cast a shadow at noon, showing that the sun was not there
exactly overhead. From the length of the shadow he ascertained the
sun's distance from the zenith to be 7° 12', or one-fiftieth part of
the circumference of the heavens; from which he calculated that if the
world was round the distance between Alexandria and Cyrene should be
one-fiftieth part of the circumference of the world. The distance
between these cities was 5000 stadia, from which he calculated that the
circumference of the world was fifty times this amount, or 250,000
stadia. Unfortunately we are ignorant of the exact length of a stadium,
so we have no means of testing the accuracy of his deduction. He was
the founder of Mathematical Geography; it became possible through the
labors of Eratosthenes to determine the location of places on the
surface of the earth by means of lines corresponding to our lines of
latitude and longitude.

Claudius Ptolemy, in the second century of the Christian era, made a
catalogue of the positions of plans as determined by Eratosthenes and
his successors, and with this as his basis, he made a series of
twenty-six maps, thus exhibiting, at a glance, in geographical form,
the results of the labors of all who preceded him. To him we owe the
art of map-making, the origination of Geographic Art.

We thus see that when Rome began to rule the world, the Greeks had made
great progress in geography. They already possessed Comparative,
Political and Mathematical Geography, and Geographic Art, or the art of
making maps.

Then came a pause in the progress of geography.

The Romans were so constantly occupied with the practical affairs of
life, that they paid little attention to any other kind of geography
than that which facilitated the administration of their empire. They
were great road-builders, and laid out highways from Rome to the
farthest limits of their possessions. Maps of their military roads were
made, but little else. These exhibited with accuracy the less and
greater stations on the route from Rome to India, and from Rome to the
further end of Britain.

Then came the decline and fall of Rome, and with it the complete
collapse of geographical knowledge. In the dark ages, geography
practically ceased to exist. In the typical map of the middle ages,
Jerusalem lay in the centre with Paradise on the East and Europe on the
West. It was not until the close of the dark ages that the spirit of
discovery was re-awakened. Then the adventurous Northmen from Norway
and Sweden crossed the ocean to Iceland.

From Iceland they proceeded to Greenland and even visited the main-land
of North America about the year 1000 A.D., coasting as far south as New
England; but these voyages led to no practical results, and were
forgotten or looked upon as myths, until within a few years. For
hundreds of years geography made but little advance--and the
discoveries of five centuries were less than those now made in five
years. In the fourteenth or fifteenth century, the mariner's compass
was introduced into Europe from China, and it then became possible to
venture upon the ocean far out of sight of land. Columbus instead of
coasting from shore to shore like the ancient Northmen, boldly set sail
across the Atlantic. To many of his contemporaries it must have seemed
madness to seek the East by thus sailing towards the West, and we need
hardly wonder at the opposition experienced from his crew. The
rotundity of the earth had become to him an objective reality, and in
sublime faith he pursued his westward way. Expecting to find the East
Indies he found America instead. Five centuries had elapsed since the
Northmen had made their voyages to these shores--and their labors had
proved to be barren of results. The discovery of Columbus, however,
immediately bore fruit. It was his genius and perseverance alone that
gave the new world to the people of Europe, and he is therefore
rightfully entitled to be called the discoverer of America. His
discovery was fraught with enormous consequences, and it inaugurated a
new era for geographic research. The spirit of discovery was quickened
and geographic knowledge advanced with a great leap. America was
explored; Africa was circumnavigated. Magellan demonstrated the
rotundity of the earth by sailing westward until he reached his
starting point. Everywhere--all over the civilized world--the spirit of
adventure was aroused. Navigators from England, Holland, France and
Spain rapidly extended the boundaries of geographical knowledge, while
explorers penetrated into the interior of the new lands discovered. The
mighty impetus given by Columbus set the whole world in motion and it
has gone on moving ever since with accelerated velocity.

The great progress that has been made can hardly be realized without
comparing the famous Borgia map, constructed about one hundred years
before the discovery of America, with the modern maps of the same
countries; or Hubbard's map of New England made two hundred years ago,
with the corresponding map of to-day. The improvements in map-making
originated with Mercator, who, in 1556 constructed his cylindrical
projection of the sphere. But it has been only during the last hundred
years that great progress has been made. Much yet remains to be done
before geographic art can fully accomplish its mission.

The present century forms a new era in the progress of geography--the
era of organized research. In 1830, the Royal Geographical Society of
England was founded, and it already forms a landmark in the history of
discovery. The Paris Society preceded it in point of time, and the
other countries of Europe soon followed the example. Through these
organizations, students and explorers have been encouraged and
assisted, and information systematically collected and arranged. The
wide diffusion of geographical knowledge through the medium of these
societies and the publicity of the discussions and criticism that
followed, operated to direct the current of exploration into the most
useful channels. Before organized effort, darkness gave way at every
step. Each observer added fresh knowledge to the existing store,
without unnecessary duplication of research. The reports of discoveries
were discussed and criticized by the societies, and the contributions
of all were co-ordinated into one great whole.

America refuses to be left in the rear. Already her explorers are in
every land and on every sea. Already she has contributed her quota of
martyrs in the frozen north, and has led the way into the torrid
regions of Africa. The people of Europe, through Columbus, opened up a
new world for us; and we, through Stanley, have discovered a new world
in the old, for them.

Much has been done on land--little on the other three-quarters of the
earth's surface. But here America has laid the foundations of a new
science,--the Geography of the Sea.

Our explorers have mapped out the surface of the ocean and discovered
the great movements of the waters. They have traced the southward flow
of the Arctic waters to temper the climate of the torrid zone. They
have followed the northward set of the heated waters of the equator and
have shown how they form those wonderful rivers of warm water that
flow, without walls, through the colder waters of the sea, till they
strike the western shores of Europe and America, and how they render
habitable the almost Arctic countries of Great Britain and Alaska. They
have even followed these warm currents further and shown how they
penetrate the Arctic Ocean to lessen the rigors of the Arctic cold.
Bravely, but vainly, have they sought for that _ignis fatuus_ of
explorers--the open polar sea--produced by the action of the warm
waters from the south.

American explorers have sounded the depths of the ocean and discovered
mountains and valleys beneath the waves. They have found the great
plateaus on which the cables rest that bring us into instantaneous
communication with the rest of the world. They have shown the probable
existence of a vast submarine range of mountains, extending nearly the
whole length of the Pacific Ocean--mountains so high that their summits
rise above the surface to form islands and archipelagoes in the
Pacific. And all this vast region of the earth, which, a few years ago,
was considered uninhabitable on account of the great pressure, they
have discovered to be teeming with life. From the depths of the ocean
they have brought living things, whose lives were spent under
conditions of such pressure that the elastic force of their own bodies
burst them open before they could be brought to the surface; living
creatures whose self-luminous spots supplied them with the light denied
them in the deep abyss from which they sprang--abysses so deep that the
powerful rays of the sun could only feebly penetrate to illuminate or
warm.

The exploring vessels of our Fish Commission have discovered in the
deep sea, in one single season, more forms of life than were found by
the Challenger Expedition in a three years' cruise. Through their
agency, we have studied the geographical distribution of marine life;
and in our marine laboratories, explorers have studied the life history
of the most useful forms.

The knowledge gained has enabled us to breed and multiply at will; to
protect the young fish during the period of their infancy--when alone
they are liable to wholesale destruction--finally to release them in
the ocean, in those waters that are most suitable to their growth. The
fecundity of fish is so great, and the protection afforded them during
the critical period of their life so ample, that it may now be possible
to feed the world from the ocean and set the laws of Matthews at
defiance. Our geographers of the sea have shown that an acre of water
may be made to produce more food for the support of man than ten acres
of arable land. They have thrown open to cultivation a territory of the
earth constituting three-quarters of the entire surface of the globe.

And what shall we say of our conquests in that other vast territory of
the earth, greater in extent than all the oceans and the lands put
together--the atmosphere that surrounds it.

Here again America has led the way, and laid the foundations of a
Geography of the Air. But a little while ago and we might have truly
said with the ancients "the wind bloweth where it listeth, and we know
neither from whence it comes nor whither it goes"; but now our
explorers track the wind from point to point and telegraph warnings in
advance of the storm.

In this department, the Geography of the Air, we have far outstripped
the nations of the world. We have passed the mob-period of research
when the observations of multitudes of individuals amounted to little,
from lack of concentrated action. Organization has been effected. A
Central Bureau has been established in Washington, and an army of
trained observers has been dispersed over the surface of the globe, who
all observe the condition of the atmosphere according to a
pre-concerted plan.

The vessels of our navy and the mercantile marine of our own and other
countries have been impressed into the service, and thus our
geographers of the air are stationed in every land and traverse the
waters of every sea. Every day, at the same moment of absolute time,
they observe and note the condition of the atmosphere at the part of
the earth where they happen to be, and the latitude and longitude of
their position. The collocation of these observations gives us a series
of what may be termed instantaneous photographs of the condition of the
whole atmosphere. The co-ordination of the observations, and their
geographical representation upon a map, is undertaken by a staff of
trained experts in the Central Bureau in Washington, and through this
organization we obtain a weather-map of the world for every day of the
year. We can now study at leisure the past movements of the atmosphere,
and from these observations we shall surely discover the grand laws
that control aerial phenomena. We shall then not only know, as we do at
present, whence comes the wind and whither it goes, but be able to
predict its movements for the benefit of humanity.

Already we have attained a useful, though limited, power of prediction.

Our Central Bureau daily collects observations by telegraph from all
parts of this continent, and our experts are thus enabled to forecast
the probabilities by a few hours. Day by day the results are
communicated to the public by telegraph in time to avert disaster to
the mariners on our eastern coast, and facilitate agricultural
operations in the Eastern and Middle States.

Although many of the predictions are still falsified by events, the
percentage of fulfilments has become so large as to show that continued
research will in the future give us fresh forms of prediction and
increase the usefulness of this branch of science to mankind.

In all departments of geographical knowledge, Americans are at work.
They have pushed themselves into the front rank and they demand the
best efforts of their countrymen to encourage and support.

When we embark on the great ocean of discovery, the horizon of the
unknown advances with us and surrounds us wherever we go. The more we
know, the greater we find is our ignorance. Because we know so little
we have formed this society for the increase and diffusion of
Geographical knowledge. Because our subject is so large we have
organized the society into four broad sections: relating to the
geography of the land, H. G. Ogden, vice-president; the sea, J. R.
Bartlett, vice-president; the air, A. W. Greely, vice-president; the
geographic distribution of life, C. H. Merriam, vice-president; to
which we have added a fifth, relating to the abstract science of
geographic art, including the art of map-making etc., A. H. Thompson,
vice-president; our recording and corresponding secretaries are Henry
Gannett and George Kennan.

We have been fortunate indeed to secure as Vice-Presidents men learned
in each department, and who have been personally identified with the
work of research.




GEOGRAPHIC METHODS IN GEOLOGIC INVESTIGATION.

BY W. M. DAVIS.

OUTLINE.

Definition of Geography and Geology--Geographic Methods in
Geology--Hutton and Lyell--Marine deposits explained by existing
processes reveal the history of the earth--American Topographers--First
Pennsylvania Survey; geographic form as the result of extinct
processes--Western Surveys; geographic form explained by existing
processes reveals the history of the earth--Deductive
Topography--Comparison with Palæontology--Geographic
Individuals--Classification according to structure--Ideal cycle of
regular development--Interruptions in the Simple Ideal Cycle--Geography
needs ideal types and technical terms--Comparison with the biological
sciences--Teaching of Geography--The water-falls of Northeastern
Pennsylvania as examples of deductive study--Systematic Geography.


The history of the earth includes among many things an account of its
structure and form at successive times, of the processes by which
changes in its structure and form have been produced, and of the causes
of these processes. Geography is according to ordinary definition
allowed of all this only an account of the present form of the earth,
while geology takes all the rest, and it is too generally the case that
even the present form of the earth is insufficiently examined by
geographers. Geographic morphology, or topography, is not yet developed
into a science. Some writers seem to think it a division of geology,
while geologists are as a rule too much occupied with other matters to
give it the attention it deserves. It is not worth while to embarrass
one's study by too much definition of its subdivisions, but it is
clearly advisable in this case to take such steps as shall hasten a
critical and minute examination of the form of the earth's surface by
geographers, and to this end it may serve a useful purpose to enlarge
the limited definition of geography, as given above, and insist that it
shall include not only a descriptive and statistical account of the
present surface of the earth, but also a systematic classification of
the features of the earth's surface, viewed as the results of certain
processes, acting for various periods, at different ages, on divers
structures. As Mackinder of Oxford has recently expressed it, geography
is the study of the present in the light of the past. When thus
conceived it forms a fitting complement to geology, which, as defined
by the same author, is the study of the past in the light of the
present. The studies are inseparable and up to a certain point, their
physical aspects may be well followed together, under such a name as
physiography. Specialization may then lead the student more to one
subject than to the other.

An illustration from human history, where the study of the past and
present has a single name, may serve to make my meaning clear in regard
to the relation of the two parts of terrestrial history, which have
different names. A descriptive and statistical account of a people as
at present existing, such as that which our statistical atlas of the
last Census gives in outline, corresponds to geography in its ordinary
limitation. A reasonable extension of such an account, introducing a
consideration of antecedent conditions and events, for the purpose of
throwing light on existing relations, represents an expanded conception
of geography. The minute study of the rise and present condition of any
single industry would correspond to the monographic account of the
development of any simple group of geographic forms. On the other hand,
history taken in its more general aspects, including an inquiry into
the causes and processes of the rise and fall of ancient nations,
answers to geology; and an account of some brief past stage of history
is the equivalent of paleography, a subject at present very little
studied and seemingly destined always to escape sharp determination. It
is manifest that geology and geography thus defined are parts of a
single great subject, and must not be considered independently.

History became a science when it outgrew mere narration and searched
for the causes of the facts narrated; when it ceased to accept old
narratives as absolute records and judged them by criteria derived from
our knowledge of human nature as we see it at present, but modified to
accord with past conditions.

Geology became a science when it adopted geographic methods. The
interpretation of the past by means of a study of the present proves to
be the only safe method of geologic investigation. Hutton and Lyell may
be named as the prominent leaders of this school and if we admit a
reasonable modification of their too pronounced uniformitarianism, all
modern geologists are their followers. The discovery of the
conservation and correlation of energy gives additional support to
their thesis by ruling out the gratuitous assumption of great results
from vague causes. Causes must be shown to be not only appropriate in
quality, but sufficient in quantity before they can be safely accepted.
But the geographic argument as expounded by the English school deals
almost entirely with processes and neglects a large class of results
that follow from these processes. Much attention is given to the
methods of transferring the waste of the land to the sea and depositing
it there in stratified masses, from which the history of ancient lands
is determined. But the forms assumed by the wasting land have not been
sufficiently examined. It was recognized in a general way that land
forms were the product of denudation, but the enormous volume of
material that had been washed off of the lands was hardly appreciated,
and the great significance of the forms developed during the
destruction of the land was not perceived.

Hutton says a little about the relation of topography to structure;
Lyell says less. The systematic study of topography is largely
American. There is opportunity for it in this country that is not
easily found in Europe. The advance in this study has been made in two
distinct steps: first, in the East about 1840; second, in the West
about 1870. The first step was taken in that historic decade when our
early State surveys accomplished their great work. The Pennsylvania
surveyors then developed topography into a science, as Lesley tells us
so eloquently in his rare little book "Coal and its Topography," 1856,
which deserves to be brought more to the attention of the younger
geographers and geologists of to-day. It presents in brief and
picturesque form the topographical results of the first geological
survey of Pennsylvania. It shows how Lesley and the other members of
that survey "became not mineralogists, not miners, not learned in
fossils, not geologists in the full sense of the word, but
topographers, and topography became a science and was returned to
Europe and presented to geology as an American invention. The passion
with which we studied it is inconceivable, the details into which it
leads us were infinite. Every township was a new monograph." (p. 125.)
Some of the finest groups of canoes and zigzags developed on the folded
beds of the Pennsylvania Appalachians are illustrated from studies made
by Henderson, Whelpley and McKinley, and they certainly deserve the
most attentive examination. I often feel that they have been of the
greatest assistance in my own field work, especially in the efforts I
have made to discover the structural arrangement of the Triassic lava
sheets in the Connecticut valley. But although the intricacies of
Appalachian topography were then clearly seen to depend on the
complications of Appalachian structure, the process of topographic
development was not at that time discovered. "The only question open to
discussion is," says Lesley, "whether this planing down of the crust to
its present surface was a secular or an instantaneous work" (p. 132),
and he decides in favor of the latter alternative. He adds, that to the
field worker, "The rush of an ocean over a continent ... leads off the
whole procession of his facts, and is indispensable to the exercise of
his sagacity at every turn" (p. 166). "The present waters are the
powerless modern representatives of those ancient floods which did the
work" (p. 151).

It is not the least in any spirit of disparagement that I quote these
cataclysmic views, now abandoned even by their author. Great
generalizations are not often completed at a single step, and it is
enough that every effort at advance should have part of its movement in
the right direction. What I wish to show is that topographic form was
regarded in the days of our eastern surveys, even by our first master
of American topography, as a completed product of extinct processes.
Topography revealed structure, but it did not then reveal the long
history that the structure has passed through. The anticlinal valleys,
hemmed in by the even-topped sandstone mountains of middle
Pennsylvania, were found to tell plainly enough that a vast erosion had
taken place, and that the resulting forms depended on the structure of
the eroded mass, but it was tacitly understood that the land stood at
its present altitude during the erosion. The even crest lines of the
mountains and the general highland level of the dissected plateau
farther west did not then reveal that the land had stood lower than at
present during a great part of the erosion, and thus the full lesson of
the topography was not learned. The systematic relation of form to
structure, base level and time; the change of drainage areas by contest
of headwaters at divides; the revival of exhausted rivers by massive
elevations of their drainage areas: all these consequences of slow
adjustments were then unperceived. In later years there seems to be a
general awakening to the great value of these principles, which mark
the second stage in the advance of scientific topography, referred to
above.

It is not easy to sketch the history of this awakening. Ramsay years
ago contributed an element in his explanation of plains of marine
denudation; Jukes opened the way to an understanding of cross valleys;
Newberry excluded fractures from the production of the most
fracture-like of all water ways; and our government surveyors in the
western territories have fully developed the all important idea of base
level, of which only a brief and imperfect statement had previously
been current. I cannot say how far European geographers and geologists
would be willing to place the highest value on the last named element;
to me it takes the place of Lesley's ocean flood, in leading off the
whole procession of outdoor facts. It is indispensable at every turn.
Recently, mention should be made of Löwl, of Prague, who has done so
much to explain the development of rivers, and of McGee, who has
explicitly shown that we must "read geologic history in erosion as well
as in deposition."

If it be true that the greater part of this second advance is American
like the first, it must be ascribed to the natural opportunities
allowed us. The topographers of the Appalachians had a field in which
one great lesson was repeated over and over again and forced on their
attention. The patchwork structure of Europe gave no such wide
opportunity. The surveyors of the western territories again found broad
regions telling one story, and all so plainly written that he must run
far ahead who reads it. It is to this opportunity of rapid discovery
and interpretation that Archibald Geikie alludes in the preface to the
recent second edition of his charming volume on the "Scenery of
Scotland." He says that since the book first appeared he has seen many
parts of Europe, "but above all it has been my good fortune to have
been able to extend the research into western America, and to have
learned more during my months of sojourn there than during the same
number of years in the Old Country." (p. vii.)

Our position now is, therefore, while structure determines form as our
earlier topographers taught, and while form-producing processes are
slow, as had been demonstrated by the English geologists, that the
sequence of forms assumed by a given structure during its long life of
waste is determinate, and that the early or young forms are
recognizably different from the mature forms and the old forms. A young
plain is smooth. The same region at a latter date will be roughened by
the channeling of its larger streams and by the increase in number of
side branches, until it comes to "maturity," that is to the greatest
variety or differentiation of form. At a still later date the widening
of the valleys consumes the intervening hills, and the form becomes
tamer, until in "old age" it returns to the simple plain surface of
"youth." Young mountains possess structural lakes and are drained
largely by longitudinal valleys; old mountains have no such lakes and
have transverse drainage, formed as the growing headwaters of external
streams lead out much water that formerly followed the longitudinal
valleys. Young rivers may have falls on tilted beds, but such are short
lived. Falls on horizontal beds are common and survive on the headwater
branches of even mature rivers. All falls disappear in old rivers,
provided they are not resuscitated by some accident in the normal,
simple cycle of river life. The phases of growth are as distinct as in
organic forms. As this idea has grown in my mind from reading the
authors above named, geography has gained a new interest. The different
parts of the world are brought into natural relations with one another;
the interest that change, growth and life had before given to the
biologic sciences only, now extends to the study of inorganic forms. It
matters not that geographic growth is destructive; it involves a
systematic change of form from the early youth to the distant old age
of a given structure, and that is enough. It matters not that the
change is too slow for us to see its progress in any single structure.
We do not believe that an oak grows from an acorn from seeing the full
growth accomplished while waiting for the evidence of the fact, but
because partly by analogy with plants of quicker development, partly by
the sight of oaks of different ages, we are convinced of a change that
we seldom wait to see. It is the same with geographic forms. We find
evidence of the wasting of great mountains in the wasting of little
mounds of sand; and we may by searching find examples of young, mature
and old mountains, that follow as well marked a sequence as that formed
by small, full grown and decaying oaks. If the relative positions of
the members in the sequence is not manifest at first, we have the
mental pleasure of searching for their true arrangement. The face of
nature thus becomes alive and full of expression, and the conception of
its change becomes so real that one almost expects to see the change in
successive visits to one place.

Now consider the deductive application of this principle. Having
recognized the sequence of forms developed during the wasting life of a
single structure, reverse the conception and we have a powerful
geographic method for geologic investigation. On entering a new
country, apply there the principles learned from the inductive study of
familiar regions, and much past history is revealed; the age of
mountains may be deduced from their form as well as from their rocks;
the altitudes at which a district has stood may be determined by traces
of its old base levels, of which we learn nothing from the ordinary
routine of geologic observation, that is, from a study of the structure
and age of the rocks themselves. The principle is commonly employed
nowadays, but its methods are not formulated, and its full value is
hardly yet perceived. Heim has found traces of successive elevations in
the Alps, proved by incipient base levels at several consistent
altitudes on the valley slopes. Newberry, Powell and Dutton have worked
out the history of the plateau and cañon region from its topography;
Chamberlin and Salisbury write of the young and old topographic forms
of the drift-covered and the driftless areas in Wisconsin; LeConte and
Stephenson have interpreted chapters in the history of California and
Pennsylvania from the form of the valleys. Recently McGee has added
most interesting chapters to the history of our middle Atlantic slope,
in an essay that gives admirable practical exposition of the geographic
methods. In the light of these original and suggestive studies one may
contend that when geographic forms in their vast variety are thus
systematically interpreted as the surface features of as many
structures, belonging to a moderate number of families and having
expression characteristic of their age and accidents, their elevation
and opportunity, then geography will be for the wasting lands what
palæontology has come to be for the growing ocean floors.

An interesting comparison may be drawn here. Fossils were first
gathered and described as individual specimens, with no comprehension
of their relationships and their significance. It was later found that
the fossils in a certain small part of the world, England--that
wonderful epitome of geologic history--were arranged in sequences in
the bedded rocks containing them, certain groups of forms together,
successive groups in shelves, as it were, one over another. Then it was
discovered that the local English scale had a wider application, and
finally it has come to be accepted as a standard, with certain
modifications, for the whole world. The exploring geologist does not
now wait to learn if a formation containing trilobites underlies
another containing ammonites, but on finding the fossils in the two,
confidently and as far as we know correctly concludes that such is
their relative position. Thus the sequence of submarine processes is
made out by the sequence of organic forms. In brief, palæontology has
passed largely from the inductive to the deductive stage.

The geographer first regarded the features of the land as completed
entities, with whose origin he was in no wise concerned. Later it was
found that some conception of their origin was important in
appreciating their present form, but they were still regarded as the
product of past, extinct processes. This view has been in turn
displaced by one that considers the features of the land as the present
stage of a long cycle of systematically changing forms, sculptured by
processes still in operation. Now recognizing the sequence of changing
forms, we may determine the place that any given feature occupies in
the entire sequence through which it must pass in its whole cycle of
development. And then reversing this conception we are just beginning
to deduce the past history of a district by the degree of development
of its features. Geography is, in other words, entering a deductive
stage, like that already reached by palæontology.

The antecedent of deductive topography is the systematic study of land
geography. The surface of the land is made up of many more or less
distinct geographic individuals, every individual consisting of a
single structure, containing many parts or features whose expression
varies as the processes of land sculpture carry the whole through its
long cycle of life. There is endless variety among the thousands of
structures that compose the land, but after recognizing a few large
structural families, the remaining differences may be regarded as
individual. In a given family, the individuals present great
differences of expression with age, as between the vigorous relief of
the young Himalaya and the subdued forms of the old Appalachians; or
with elevation over base level, as between the gentle plain of the low
Atlantic coast and the precocious high plateaus of the Colorado river
region; or with opportunity, as between the last named plateaus with
exterior drainage and the high plains of the Great Basin, whose waters
have no escape save by evaporation or high level overflow; or with
complexity of history, as between the immature, undeveloped valleys of
the lava block country of southern Oregon, and the once empty, then
gravel-filled, and now deeply terraced inner valleys of the Himalaya.
When thus studied, the endless variety of the topography will be
considered in its proper relations, and it will not seem as hopeless as
it does now to gain a rational understanding and appreciation of
geographic morphology.

We should first recognize the fact that a geographic individual is an
area, large or small, whose surface form depends on a single structure.
Boundaries may be vague, different individuals may be blended or even
superposed, but in spite of the indefiniteness, the attempt to
sub-divide a region into the individuals that compose it will be found
very profitable. In a large way the Appalachian plateau is an
individual; the Adirondacks, the terminal moraine of the second glacial
epoch are others. In a small way, a drumlin, a fan delta, a mesa, are
individuals. The linear plateaus of middle Pennsylvania are hybrids
between the well-developed linear ridges of the mountains farther east
and the irregular plateau masses farther west.

A rough classification of geographic individuals would group them under
such headings as plains, plateaus, and rough broken countries of
horizontal structure; mountains of broken, tilted or folded structure,
generally having a distinct linear extension; volcanoes, including all
the parts from the bottom of the stem or neck, up to the lateral
subterranean expansions known as laccolites, and to the surface cones
and flows; glacial drift; wind drift. The agents which accomplished the
work of denudation are also susceptible of classification: rivers
according to the arrangement of their branches, and their imperfections
in the form of lakes and glaciers. The valleys that rivers determine
may be considered as the converse of the lands in which they are cut;
and the waste of the land on the way to the sea is susceptible of
careful discrimination: local soil, talus, alluvial deposits, fan cones
and fan deltas, flood plains and shore deltas. Their variations
dependent on climatic conditions are of especial importance. The
structures formed along shore lines are also significant. This list is
intentionally brief, and the lines between its divisions are not
sharply drawn. It undoubtedly requires discussion and criticism before
adoption. It differs but slightly from the common geographic stock in
trade, but for its proper application it requires that the geographer
should be in some degree a geologist.

The changes in any geographic individual from the time when it was
offered to the destructive forces to the end of its life, when it is
worn down to a featureless base level surface, are worthy of the most
attentive study. The immaturity of the broken country of southern
Oregon, as compared with the more advanced forms of the Basin ranges,
is a case in hand. The Triassic formation of the Connecticut valley is
in some ways of similar structure, being broken by long parallel faults
into narrow blocks or slabs, every block being tilted from its original
position. Russell's description of the blocks in southern Oregon would
apply nicely to those in Connecticut, except that the former have
diverse displacements, while the latter all dip one way; but the
Connecticut individual has, I feel confident, passed through one cycle
of life and has entered well on a second; it has once been worn down
nearly to base level since it was broken and faulted, and subsequent
elevation at a rather remote period has allowed good advance in a
repetition of this process. The general uniformity in the height of its
trap ridges and their strong relief above the present broad valley
bottom, require us to suppose this complexity of history. A given
structure may therefore pass through two or more successive cycles of
life, and before considering the resulting composite history in its
entirety, it would be best to examine cases of simple development in a
single cycle. After this is accomplished, it would be possible to
recognize the incomplete partial cycles through which a structure has
passed, and to refer every detail of form to the cycle in which it was
produced.

The most elementary example that may be chosen to illustrate a simple
cycle of geographic life is that of a plain, elevated to a moderate
height above its base level. The case has already been referred to here
and is given in more detail in an article printed in the proceedings of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for 1884, to
which I would now refer. When the succession of forms there described
as developed at a given elevation over base level is clearly perceived,
the occurrence of forms dependent on two different base levels in a
single region can easily be recognized. The most striking example of
such a complex case that I know of is that of the high plateaus of
Utah, as described by Dutton. Northern New Jersey presents another
example less striking but no less valuable: the general upland surface
of the Highlands is an old base level, in which valleys have been cut
in consequence of a subsequent elevation. The plateau developed on the
tilted Triassic beds about Bound Brook is a second base level, cut
during a halt in the rise from the previous lower stand of the land to
its present elevation. There is a parable that illustrates the
principle here presented.

An antiquary enters a studio and finds a sculptor at work on a marble
statue. The design is as yet hardly perceptible in the rough cut block,
from which the chisel strikes off large chips at every blow; but on
looking closer the antiquary discovers that the block itself is an old
torso, broken and weather beaten, and at once his imagination runs back
through its earlier history. This is not the first time that the marble
has lain on a sculptor's table, and suffered the strong blows of the
first rough shaping. Long ago it was chipped and cut and polished into
shape, and perhaps even set up in its completed form in some garden,
but then it was neglected and badly used, thrown over and broken, till
its perfect shape was lost, and it was sold for nothing more than a
marble block, to be carved over again if the sculptor sees fit. Now it
just beginning its second career. We may find many parallels to this
story in the land about us, when we study its history through its form.
The sequence of events and consequently of forms is so apparent here
that no one could have difficulty in interpreting history from form,
and it shall come to be the same in geography. The gorge of the
Wissahickon through the highland northwest of Philadelphia can have no
other interpretation than one that likens it to the first quick work of
the sculptor on the old torso.

An essential as well as an advantage in this extension of the study of
geography will be the definition of types and terms, both chosen in
accordance with a rational and if possible a natural system of
classification. Types and terms are both already introduced into
geographic study, for its very elements present them to the beginner in
a simple and rather vague way: mountains are high and rough; lakes are
bodies of standing water, and so on. It is to such types and terms as
these that every scholar must continually return as he reads accounts
of the world, and it is to be regretted that the types are yet so
poorly chosen and so imperfectly illustrated, and that the terms are so
few and so insufficient. Physical geography is particularly deficient
in these respects, and needs to be greatly modified in the light of the
modern advance of topography. General accounts of continental
homologies of course have their interest and their value, but they are
of the kind that would associate whales with fishes and bats with
birds. The kind of reform that is needed here may be perceived from
that which has overtaken the biological sciences. The better teaching
of these subjects lays representative forms before the student and
requires him to examine their parts minutely. The importance of the
parts is not judged merely by their size, but by their significance
also. From a real knowledge of these few types and their life history
it is easy to advance in school days or afterwards to a rational
understanding of a great number of forms. Few students ever go so far
in school as to study the forests of North America or the fauna of
South America. It is sufficient for them to gain a fair acquaintance
with a good number of the type forms that make up these totals. It is
quite time that geography should as far as possible be studied in the
same way. No school boy can gain a comprehensive idea of the structure
of a continent until he knows minutely the individual parts of which
continents are composed. No explorer can perceive the full meaning of
the country he traverses, or record his observations so that they can
be read intelligently by others until he is fully conversant with the
features of geographic types and with the changes in their expression
as they grow old. Both scholar and explorer should be trained in the
examination and description of geographic types, not necessarily copies
of actual places, before attempting to study the physical features of a
country composed of a large number of geographic individuals. When thus
prepared, geography will not only serve in geologic investigation, it
will prosper in its proper field as well.

Geographic description will become more and more definite as the
observer has more and better type forms to which he may liken those
that he finds in his explorations, and the reader, taught from the same
types, will gather an intelligent appreciation of the observer's
meaning. Take the region north of Philadelphia above referred to.
Having grown up upon it, I called it a hilly country, in accordance
with the geographic lessons of my school days, and continued to do so
for twenty years or more, until on opening my eyes its real form was
perceived. It is a surface worn down nearly to a former base level but
now diversified by ramifying valleys, cut into the old base level in
consequence of a subsequent but not very ancient elevation of a
moderate amount. Maturity is not yet reached in the present cycle of
development, for there is still much of the old base level surface
remaining, into which the valleys are gnawing their head ravines and
thus increasing the topographic differentiation. Perhaps not more than
a sixth of the total mass above present base level is yet consumed. To
say that a country is hilly gives so wide a range to the imagination
that no correct conception of it can be gained, but I venture to think
that one who understands the terms used can derive a very definite and
accurate conception from the statement that a certain country is an
old, almost completed base level, raised from one to three hundred
feet, and well advanced toward maturity in its present cycle of change.

It is from geographic methods thus conceived that geologic
investigation will gain assistance. As the subject is properly
developed it will form an indispensable part of the education of every
explorer, topographer and geologist; and in its simpler chapters it
will penetrate the schools. There is no other subject in which there is
greater disproportion between the instruction, as commonly carried on,
and the opportunity for application in after life. The intelligent part
of the world is travelling from place to place to an extent that our
fathers could not have believed possible, and yet not one person in ten
thousand has any geographic instruction that enables him to see more
than that a river is large or small, or that a hill is high or low. The
meaning of geography is as much a sealed book to the person of ordinary
intelligence and education as the meaning of a great cathedral would be
to a backwoodsman, and yet no cathedral can be more suggestive of past
history in its many architectural forms than is the land about us, with
its innumerable and marvelously significant geographic forms. It makes
one grieve to think of the opportunity for mental enjoyment that is
lost because of the failure of education in this respect.

It may be asked perhaps how can one be trained in geographic types,
seeing that it is impossible for schools to travel where the types
occur. This is surely a great and inherent difficulty, but it may be
lessened if it cannot be overcome. Good illustrations are becoming more
and more common by means of dry plate photography; maps are improving
in number and quality; but the most important means of teaching will be
found in models. No maps, illustrations or descriptions can give as
clear an idea of relief as can be obtained from a well-made model, and
with a set of models, fifty or sixty in number, the more important
types and their changes with age can be clearly understood. Maps,
illustrations and descriptions supplement the models. The maps should
be contoured, for in no other way can the quantitative values be
perceived that are essential to good study. The illustrations should be
of actual scenes; or, if designs, they should be designed by a
geographic artist. The descriptions should wherever possible be taken
from original sources, in which the narrator tells what he saw himself.
It is, to be sure, not always possible to know what kind of a form he
describes, owing to lack of technical terms, but many useful examples
can be found that may then be referred to their proper place in the
system of geographic classification that is adopted.

I shall consider only one example in detail to show how far short, as
it seems to me, geography fails of its great opportunity, both as
taught in schools and as applied in after life.

In northeastern Pennsylvania there are several water-falls that leap
over tilted beds of rock. Such falls are known to be of rare
occurrence, and we may therefore inquire into the cause of their rarity
and the significance of their occurrence in the region referred to.

We may first look at the general conditions of the occurrence of
water-falls. They indicate points of sharply contrasted hardness in the
rocks of the stream channel, and they show that the part of the channel
above the fall has not yet been cut down to base level. When the
channel reaches base level there can be no falls. Now it is known from
the general history of rivers that only a short part of their long
lives is spent in cutting their channels down to base level, except in
the case of headwater streams, which retain youthful characteristics
even through the maturity of their main river. Consequently, it is not
likely that at any one time, as now, in the long lives of our many
rivers, we should see many of them in their short-lived youthful phase.
Falls are exceptional and denote immaturity. They endure a little
longer on horizontal beds, which must be cut back perhaps many miles up
stream before the fall disappears, than on tilted beds, which must be
cut down a few thousand feet at most to reduce them to base level.
Falls on tilted beds are therefore of briefer duration than on
horizontal beds, and are at any time proportionately rarer. On the
headwater branches of a river where youthful features such as steep
slope and sudden fall remain after the main river has a well-matured
channel, we sometimes find many water-falls, as in the still young
branches of the old Ohio. These are like young twigs on an old tree.
But even here the rocks are horizontal, and not tilted as in the cases
under consideration.

The falls of such headwater streams must persist until the plateau is
cut away, for the cap rocks over which the streams leap being
horizontal cannot be smoothed down till the whole plateau is cut
through. They are long-lived features. Moreover every one of the
innumerable branch streams must on its way down from the uplands fall
over the outcropping edges of all the hard beds. The falls will
therefore be common as well as long-lived features. Their frequent
occurrence confirms the correctness of this generalization. On the
other hand, in regions of tilted rocks, the hard beds are avoided by
the streams, which select the softer strata for their valleys. The hard
beds soon stand up as ridges or divides, across which only the large
streams can maintain their courses, and these are the very ones that
soon cut down any fall that may appear in their early stages. Falls on
tilted rocks are therefore rare not only because of their brief
duration, but also because tilted rocks are crossed by few streams,
except the large ones, which soon cut away their falls.

The foregoing considerations show clearly enough that falls like those
of northeastern Pennsylvania are rare, and we have now to consider why
they should be prevalent in the region in question. The Appalachians
contain many water-gaps cut down on tilted beds, every one of which may
have been the site of a fall for a relatively brief period of river
immaturity, but this brief period is now left far in the past. The
streams show many signs of maturity: their slope is gentle and their
valleys are wide open from Alabama to Pennsylvania, but in the
northeastern corner of the latter State we find a group of streams that
leap over high benches into narrow gorges, and the benches are held up
by tilted rocks. Manifestly the streams have in some way been lately
rejuvenated; they have been, in part of their courses at least, thrown
back into a condition of immaturity, at a time not long past, and, as
has so well been shown by White, the cause of this is the obstruction
of their old channels by irregular deposits of glacial drift. Here
first in the whole length of the Allegheny section of the Appalachians
we find an exceptional condition of stream life, and here also we come
into a region lately glaciated, where heaps of drift have thrown the
streams out of their old tracks. The explanation fits perfectly, and if
it had not been discovered by inductive observation in the field, the
need of it might have been demonstrated deductively. It is a case that
has given me much satisfaction from the promise that it holds out of a
wide usefulness for geography, when its forms are systematically
studied and its principles are broadly applied.

A final word as to terminology. The material common to geography and
geology may be included under the name physiography, as used by Huxley.
It is, I think, a subject that is destined to receive much attention.
Physical geography, as ordinarily defined, does not cover the ground
that it might fairly claim. It is too largely descriptive and
statistical. Geographic evolution, as defined by Geikie, is the general
preparation of existing geography by geologic processes. It does not
consider the general scheme of topographic development or the natural
classification of geographic forms.

It is not easy to change the accepted meaning of a term, and I would
therefore suggest that a new term should be introduced to include the
classification of geographic forms, as advocated here, rather than that
any old and accepted term should be stretched over a new meaning. As
the essential of the study here outlined is the systematic relation of
form to structure, base level and time, the new term might be
Systematic Geography.




THE CLASSIFICATION OF GEOGRAPHIC FORMS BY GENESIS.

BY W. J. MCGEE.


Scientific progress may be measured by advance in the classification of
phenomena. The primitive classification is based on external
appearances, and is a classification by analogies; a higher
classification is based on internal as well as external characters, and
is a classification by homologies; but the ultimate classification
expresses the relations of the phenomena classified to all other known
phenomena, and is commonly a classification by genesis.

The early geologic classification was based chiefly upon simple facts
of observation; but with continued research it is found that the
processes by which the phenomena were produced may be inferred, and,
accordingly, that the phenomena may be grouped as well by the agencies
they represent as by their own characteristics. Thus the empiric or
formal laws of relation give place to philosophic or physical laws
indicating the casual relations of the phenomena, and the final
arrangement becomes genetic, or a classification by processes rather
than products.

The phenomena of geography and geology are identical, save that the
latter science includes the larger series: since the days of Lyell the
geologist has seen in the existing conditions and agencies of the earth
a reflection and expression of the conditions under which and the
agencies by which its development has been effected; the far stretching
vista of geologic history is illuminated only by knowledge of the earth
of to-day; and the stages in geologic development are best interpreted
in terms of geography. So a genetic classification of geologic
phenomena (which is rendered possible and intelligible through
geographic research) will apply equally to geography, whether
observational or of the more philosophic nature which Davis proposes to
call Systematic Geography, and which Powell has called Geomorphology.
Such a classification is here outlined.

       *       *       *       *       *

The various processes or movements with which the geologist has to deal
fall naturally into two principal and antagonistic categories and five
subordinate categories; and each category, great and small, comprises
two classes of antagonistic processes or movements.

The initial geologic movements (so far as may be inferred from the
present condition of the earth) were distortions or displacements of
the solid or solidifying terrestrial crust, occurring in such manner as
to produce irregularities of surface. These are the movements involved
in mountain growth and in the upheavel of continents. They have been in
operation from the earliest known eons to the present time, and their
tendency is ever to deform the geoid and produce irregularity of the
terrestrial surface. The movements have been called collectively
"displacement" and "diastrophism," but in the present connection they
may be classed as _diastatic_, or, in the substantive form, as
_deformation_. Recent researches, mainly in this country, have
indicated that certain diastatic movements are the result of
transference of sediment--that areas of loading sink, and areas of
unloading rise; but it is evident that the transference of sediment is
itself due to antecedent diastatic movements by which the loaded areas
were depressed and the unloaded areas elevated; and the entire category
may accordingly be divided into _antecedent_ and _consequent_ diastatic
movements. A partially coincident division may be made into
_epeirogenic_, or continent-making movements (so called by Gilbert),
and _orogenic_, or mountain-making movements. Though there is commonly
and perhaps always a horizontal component in diastatic movement, the
more easily measured component is vertical, and when referred to a
fixed datum (_e.g._ sea level) it is represented by _elevation_ and
_depression_.

The second great category of geologic processes comprehends the erosion
and deposition inaugurated by the initial deformation of the
terrestrial surface. By these processes continents and mountains are
degraded, and adjacent oceans and lakes lined with their debris. They
have been in active operation since the dawn of geologic time, and the
processes individually and combined ever tend to restore the geoid by
obliterating the relief produced by deformation. The general process,
which comprises _degradation_ and _deposition_, may be called
_gradation_.

The first subordinate category of movements is allied to the first
principal category, and comprises, (1) the outflows of lavas, the
formation of dykes, the extravasation of mineral substances in
solution, etc., (2) the consequent particle and mass movements within
the crust of the earth, and (3) the infiltration of minerals in
solution, sublimation, etc.,--in short, the modification of the earth's
exterior directly and indirectly through particle movements induced by
the condition of the interior. These processes have been in operation
throughout geologic time, though they perhaps represent a diminishing
series; they have added materially to the superficial crust of the
earth; and it is fair to suppose that they have modified the geoid not
only by additions to the surface but by corresponding displacements in
their vicinity. The category may be tentatively (but rather improperly)
called _vulcanism_, and the antagonistic classes of movements
constituting it are _extravasation_ and its antithesis. The vibratory
movements of _seismism_ probably result from both deformation and
vulcanism under certain conditions.

The second subordinate category of processes is closely linked with all
of the others. It comprises the various chemic and chemico-mechanical
alterations in constitution and structure of the materials of the
earth's crust. The processes have affected the rocks ever since the
solidification of the planet, though probably in a progressively
diminishing degree; and they have materially (but indirectly rather
than directly) modified the internal constitution and external
configuration of the earth. The processes may be collectively called
_alteration_; and the antagonistic classes into which the category is
divisible are _lithifaction_ and _decomposition_ in their various
phases, or _rock-formation_ and _rock-destruction_.

The third subordinate category of processes, viz: _glaciation_, is
related to the second principal category; but since (1) it is probable
if not actually demonstrable that under certain circumstances glacial
grinding tends to accentuate preëxisting irregularities of surface, and
since (2) it is well known that glacial deposition sometimes gives
great irregularity of surface, it is evident that glaciation is not a
simple process of gradation, but must be clearly distinguished
therefrom. A considerable portion of the earth's surface has been
modified by glaciation during later geologic times. The general process
comprises _glacial construction_ and _glacial destruction_.

There is a fourth subordinate category of processes, which is also
allied to gradation, viz: _wind-action_, which may be made to include
the action of waves and wind-born currents; but since the winds scoop
out basins and heap up dunes, while the waves excavate submerged
purgatories and build bars, it is evident that this category, too, must
be set apart. The processes are only locally important as modifiers of
the land surface of the globe. They comprise constructive action and
destructive action.

There is a final category which is in part allied to alteration but is
in part unique, viz: the chemic, mechanical, and dynamic action of
organic life. Ever since the terrestrial crust become so stable as to
retain a definite record of the stages of world-growth, life has
existed and by its traces has furnished the accepted geologic
chronology: at first the organisms were simple and lowly, and affected
the rocks chemically through their processes of growth and decay, as do
the lower plants and animals of the present; later, certain organisms
contributed largely of their own bodily substance to the growing
strata; and still later, the highest organisms, with man at their head,
have by dynamic action interfered directly with gradation, alteration,
and wind-action, and thus, perhaps, indirectly with the more
deep-seated processes of world growth. The vital forces are too varied
in operation to be conveniently grouped and named.

These categories comprise the various processes contemplated by the
geologist, and collectively afford an adequate basis for a genetic
classification of geologic science. Their relations are shown in the
accompanying table:

  _Classification of Geologic Processes_.

            | 1.--Deformation. | Antecedent<Epeirogenic. | Elevation.
 Principal  |                  | Consequent>Orogenic.    | Depression.
Categories. |
            | 2.--Gradation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | Deposition.
            |                                            | Degradation.

                        | 1.--Vulcanism.     | Extravasation.
                        |                    | (Antithesis of Extrav.)
                        |
                        | 2.--Alteration.    | Lithifaction.
                        |                    | Decomposition.
                        |
            Subordinate | 3.--Glaciation.    | Glacial construction.
            Categories. |                    | Glacial destruction.
                        |
                        | 4.--Wind action.   | Wind construction.
                        |                    | Wind destruction.
                        |
                        | 5.--Vital action.  | Various constructive and
                        |                    | destructive processes.

On applying this classification to geographic forms, the various
phenomena immediately fall into the same arrangement. The continents,
great islands, mountain systems, and non-volcanic ranges and peaks
generally, the oceans, seas, and some bays, gulfs and lakes, evidently
represent the diastatic category of movements. These greater geographic
features have long been named and classified empirically, and can be
referred to their proper places in a genetic taxonomy without change in
terminology. The volcanoes, craters, calderas, lava fields, tuff
fields, tufa crags, mesas, volcanic necks, dykes, etc., however
modified by degradation, alteration, glaciation, or wind action,
exhibit characteristic forms which have often received names indicative
of their origin. The glacial drift with its various types of surface,
the moraines, drumlins, kames, roches de moutonnées, rock basins,
kettles, lacustral plains, aqueo-glacial terraces, loess hills and
plains, etc., have been studied in their morphologic as well as their
structural aspects, and the elements of the configuration commonly
assumed have been described, portrayed, and appropriately named; and
they take a natural place in the classification of products by the
processes giving rise to them. The dunes, dust drifts, sand ridges,
etc., and the wind-scooped basins with which they are associated, are
local and limited, but are fairly well known and fall at once into the
genetic classification of forms and structures. But all of these
geographic forms are modified, even obliterated, by the ever prevailing
process of gradation, which has given origin to nearly all of the minor
and many of the major geographic forms of the earth. The forms
resulting from this second great category of geologic processes have
generally engaged the attention of systematic students, but their
prevalence, variety and complexity of relation are such that even yet
they stand in greatest need of classification.

Lesley thirty years ago regarded the mountain as the fundamental
topographic element; Richthofen recognizes the upland and the plain
("aufragendes Land und Flachböden") as the primary classes of
configuration comprehending all minor elements of topography; Dana
groups topographic forms as (1) lowlands, (2) plateaus and elevated
table lands, and (3) mountains; and these related allocations are
satisfactory for the purposes for which they are employed. But the
implied classification in all these cases is morphologic rather than
genetic, and is based upon superficial and ever varying if not
fortuitous characters; and if it were extended to the endless variety
of forms exhibited in the topography of different regions it would only
lead to the discrimination of a meaningless multitude of unrelated
topographic elements.

In an exceedingly simple classification of geographic phenomena, the
primary grouping is into _forms of construction_ and _forms of
destruction_; but it is evident on inspection of the table introduced
above that such a classification is objectionable unless the greater
geographic elements due to diastatic movements (in which the
constructive action is veritable but different in kind from those in
the other categories) be excluded, and this is impracticable without
limiting the classification to subordinate phenomena. Moreover it is
illogical and useless to unite the constructive phenomena of the
remaining categories, since (1) the processes exemplify widely diverse
laws, which must find expression in any detailed classification whether
genetic or not, and since (2) the differences between the forms united
are much greater than the differences between the forms separated in
such a classification--e.g. the differences between a dune, a drumlin
and a mesa (all constructive forms) are far greater than the
differences between a fresh lava sheet and a deeply cut mesa, between a
drumlin and the smallest drift remnant, or between a dune and a
Triassic mound of circumdenudation; and this is true whether the
distinction be made on analogic, homologic, or genetic grounds. Indeed
it seems evident that while discrimination of constructive and
destructive forms is necessary and useful in each genetic category, the
use of this distinction as a primary basis of classification is
inexpedient.

The classification of topographic forms proposed a few years ago by
Davis, who regards "special peculiarities of original structure" as a
primary, and "degree of development by erosion" a secondary basis, and
Richthofen's arrangement of categories of surface forms as (1) tectonic
mountains, (2) mountains of abrasion, (3) eruptive mountains, (4)
mountains of deposition, (5) plains, and (6) mountains of erosion,[1]
in addition to depressions of the land (Die Hohlformen des Festlandes),
are more acceptable, since they are based in part on conditions of
genesis. But it is clearly recognized by modern students of dynamic
geology that waterways are the most persistent features of the
terrestrial surface; and the most widely applicable systems of
classification of the surface configuration of the earth thus far
proposed have been based substantially on the agencies of gradation.
Thus Powell, Löwl and Richthofen classify valleys by the conditions of
their genesis; Gilbert classifies drainage; and Phillipson, unduly
magnifies the stability and genetic importance of the water parting,
classifies the hydrography through the divides; and, although these
geologists have not dwelt upon and perhaps have failed to perceive the
relation, the same classification is as applicable to every feature of
the local relief as to the streams by which the relief was developed.

[Footnote 1: (1) Tektonische Gebirge, (2) Rumpfgebirge oder
Abrasionsgebirge, (3) Ausbruchsgebirge, (4) Aufschüttungsgebirge, (5)
Flachböden, und (6) Erosionsgebirge.]

In a general classification of the topographic forms developed through
gradation, it would be necessary to include the forms resulting from
deposition as well as degradation, and also to discuss the relation of
base-level plains to antecedent and consequent relief; but in a brief
résumé it will suffice to consider only the modifications produced by
degradation upon a surface of deposition after its emergence from
beneath water level as a regular or irregular terrane; and the
influence of base-level upon the topographic forms developed upon such
a surface may be neglected in a qualitative discussion, though it is
quite essential in quantitative investigation.

The hydrography developed upon terranes affected by displacement both
before and after emergence has already been satisfactorily classified.
Powell, years ago, denominated valleys established previous to
displacement of the terrane by faulting or folding, _antecedent_
valleys; valleys having directions depending on displacement,
_consequent_ valleys; and valleys originally established upon superior
and subsequently transferred to inferior terranes, _superimposed_
valleys; and these valleys were separated into orders determined by
relation to strike and again into varieties determined by relation to
subordinate attitude of the terranes traversed. Gilbert adopted the
same general classification, and so extended as to include certain
special genetic conditions. Tietze, in the course of his investigation
of the Sefidrud (or Kizil Uzen) and other rivers in the Alburs
mountains of Persia, independently ascertained the characteristics of
the class of waterways comprehended by Powell under the term
antecedent; Medlicott and Blanford observed that many of the Himalayan
rivers are of like genesis; and Rütimeyer, Peschel and others have
recognized the same genetic class of waterways; but none of these
foreign geologists have discussed their taxonomic relations. Löwl, who
upon _a priori_ grounds denies the possibility of antecedent drainage,
has recently developed an elaborate taxonomy of valleys which he groups
as (_a_) tectonic valleys, and (_b_) valleys of erosion
(Erosionsthäler). The first of these categories is separated into two
classes, viz: valleys of flexure and valleys of fracture, and these in
turn into several sub-classes determined by character of the
displacement and its relations to structure; and the second, whose
genesis is attributed to retrogressive ("rückwärts fortschreitende" or
"rückschreitende") erosion, is vaguely separated into several
ill-defined classes and sub-classes determined by structure, climate,
and various other conditions. The second of Löwl's categories is also
recognized by Phillipson. Still more recently, Richthofen, neglecting
antecedent drainage, designated the superimposed class of Powell
_epigenetic_, and formulated a classification of the remaining types of
continental depressions (Die Hohlformen des Festlandes) as (_a_)
orographic depressions (Landsenken); (_b_) tectonic valleys, and (_c_)
sculptured valleys; and the last two categories are separated into
classes and sub-classes, corresponding fairly with those of Löwl,
determined by their relations to structure and by various genetic
conditions.

These several classifications have much in common; their differences
are largely due to the diversity of the regions in which the
investigations of their respective authors have been prosecuted; but
combined they probably comprehend all the topographic types which it is
necessary to discriminate.

The American classification and nomenclature, particularly, is
unobjectionable as applied to montanic hydrography; but it does not
apply to the perhaps equally extensive drainage systems and the
resulting topographic configuration developed on emergent terranes
either (_a_) without localized displacement or (_b_) with localized
displacement of less value in determining hydrography than the
concomitant erosion, terracing and reef building; neither does it apply
to the minor hydrography in those regions in which the main hydrography
is either antecedent or consequent; nor does it apply even to the
original condition of the superimposed or antecedent drainage of
montainous regions.

Upon terranes emerging without displacement and upon equal surfaces not
yet invaded by valleys, the streams depend for their origin on the
convergence of the waters falling upon the uneroded surface and
affected by its minor inequalities, and for their direction upon the
inclination of that surface. They are developed proximally (or seaward)
by simple extension of their courses by continued elevation, and
distally by the recession of the old and the birth of new ravines; and
since in the simple case it follows from the law of probabilities that
the receding ravine will retain approximately the old direction and
that the new ravines will depart therefrom at high angles, the drainage
systems thus independently developed become intricately but
systematically ramified and more or less dendritic in form. Löwl,
Phillipson, Richthofen, and other continental, as well as different
British and Indian geologists, and Lesley in this country, indeed
recognize this type of drainage, but they do not correlate it with the
montanic types; and Löwl's designation, derived from the manner in
which he conceives it to be generated ("rückschreitende Erosion"), does
not apply to either the completed drainage, or the coincident
topography.

Although its subordinate phases are not yet discriminated on a genetic
basis, this type or order of drainage is sufficiently distinct and
important to be regarded as coördinate with the type represented by the
entire group of categories recognized by Powell and clearly defined by
Gilbert. Such hydrography (which either in its natural condition or
superimposed characterizes many plains, some plateaus, and the sides of
large valleys of whatever genesis) may be termed _autogenous_; while
the drainage systems imposed by conditions resulting from displacement
(which characterize most mountainous regions) may be termed _tectonic_.
Gilbert's classification of drainage may then be so extended as to
include topography as well as hydrography, and so amplified as to
include the additional type.

Drainage systems and the resulting systems of topography (all of which
belong to the degradational class of forms) are accordingly.--

  Type 1, Autogenous.
  Type 2, Tectonic--
      Order A, Consequent, upon
          Class _a_, Displacement before emergence, and
          Class _b_, Sudden displacement after emergence;
      Order B, Antecedent; and
      Order C, Superimposed, through
          Class _a_, Sedimentation (when the superimposed drainage may
                     be autogenous),
          Class _b_, Alluviation or subaerial deposition, and
          Class _c_, Planation (in which two cases the superimposed
                     drainage may simulate the autogenous type).

In brief, the entire domain of geologic science is traversed and
defined by a genetic classification of the phenomena with which the
geologist has to deal; and the same classification is equally
applicable to geographic forms, as the accompanying table illustrates:

  _Representative Geographic Forms as classified by Genesis_.

  -----------------------------------+---------------------------------
        GENETIC PROCESSES.           |      GEOGRAPHIC FORMS.
   _Category_.      _Class_.         |
  -----------------------------------+---------------------------------
               | ELEVATION           | Continents, great islands, most
               |                     |   mountain ranges, etc., not
  DEFORMATION  |                     |   classified in detail.
               | DEPRESSION          | Oceans, great seas and bays,
                                     |   some inland valleys and
                                     |   lake-basins, etc., not
                                     |   classified in detail.
               | DEPOSITION          | Newly emerged ocean-bottoms
               |                     |   (_e.g._, portions of the
               |                     |   Coastal plain), playas and
               |                     |   mountain-bound deserts, many
  GRADATION    |                     |   flood-plains, marshes, etc.,
               |                     |   not classified in detail.
               | DEGRADATION         | Drainage-systems and resulting
                                     |   topographic elements which
                                     |   are--
                                     |     1--Autogenous (not
                                     |        classified in detail);
                                     |        and
                                     |     2--Tectonic--
                                     |   Consequent, upon Displacement
                                     |     before emergence, and Sudden
                                     |     displacement after
                                     |     emergence;
                                     |   Antecedent; and
                                     |   Superimposed, through
                                     |     Sedimentation, Alluviation,
                                     |     and Planation.
               | EXTRAVASATION       | Volcanic peaks, craters,
               |                     |   lava-fields, tufa-crags,
               |                     |   sinter-cones, volcanic necks,
               |                     |   mesas, dykes, some mineral
  VULCANISM    |                     |   veins, etc., not classified in
               |                     |   detail.
               | (ANTITHESIS OF DO.) | Sinks, caverns, some fissures,
                                     |   etc., not classified in
                                     |   detail.
               | LITHIFICATION       | Minor features of certain
               |                     |   topographic forms, _e.g._,
               |                     |   reefs, crags, pinnacles,
               |                     |   salients, out-cropping veins,
  ALTERATION   |                     |   some cataracts, etc., not
               |                     |   classified in detail.
               | DELITHIFICATION     | Minor features of certain
                                     |   topographical forms, _e.g._,
                                     |   pools and basins, reëntrants,
                                     |   some fissures and caverns,
                                     |   etc., not classified in
                                     |   detail.
               | GLACIAL             | Drift-plains, moraines of
               |   CONSTRUCTION      |   whatever character, drumlins,
               |                     |   kames, aasar, drift-dammed
               |                     |   lakes, loess-plains and
  GLACIATION   |                     |   ridges, etc., not classified
               |                     |   in detail.
               | GLACIAL DESTRUCTION | Rock-basins, U-cañons, roches de
                                     |   moutonnées, etc., not here
                                     |   classified in detail.
               | WIND CONSTRUCTION   | Dunes, sand-ridges, bars, spits,
               |                     |   etc., not here classified in
  WIND ACTION  |                     |   detail.
               | WIND DESTRUCTION    | Ponds associated with dunes,
                                     |   "blow-outs," "purgatories,"
                                     |   etc., not classified in
                                     |   detail.
  VITAL ACTION | (Not discriminated) |
  -----------------------------------+---------------------------------




THE GREAT STORM OF MARCH 11-14, 1888.

A SUMMARY OF THE REMARKS MADE BY BRIGADIER-GENERAL A. W. GREELY, CHIEF
SIGNAL OFFICER OF THE ARMY.


This storm is by no means as violent as others which have occurred in
the eastern part of the United States. It is noted, however, as being
one in which an unusual amount of snow fell, which, drifted by the high
winds caused by the advance of an anticyclonic area in rear of the
storm depression, did an enormous amount of damage to the railways in
Massachusetts, southern New York, and New Jersey.

The storm centre was first noticed in the North Pacific on March 6th;
whence it passed southeast from the Oregon coast to northern Texas by
the 9th. The centre instead of maintaining the usual elliptical form,
gradually shaped itself into an extended trough of low pressure, which
covered the Mississippi and Ohio valleys during the 10th. On the
morning of March 11th the barometer trough extended from Lake Superior
southward to the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico; in the northern
section over Lake Superior, and the southern part, over Georgia,
distinct centres, with independent wind circulation, had formed.

The northern storm centre moved northeastward and disappeared, while
the southern centre moved slowly eastward, passing off the Atlantic
coast near Cape Hatteras. The pressure on the afternoon of March 11th
was about 29.07 at the centre of both the northern and southern storms,
but during the night of the 11-12th the pressure decreased in the
southern storm centre, and the area instead of continuing its easterly
direction moved almost directly to the north, and on the morning of
March 12th was central off the New Jersey coast.

The causes which underlie the decrease of pressure and consequent
increase in the violence of storms are, as yet, undetermined. The
theory of "surges," that is, atmospheric waves independent of the
irregular variations consequent on storms, has been urged by some, and
especially by Abercromby, as the cause of the deepening of depressions
in some cases or of increasing the pressure in other cases. It is
possible that under this theory a "surge," passing over the United
States to the eastward, as its trough became coincident with the centre
of low pressure increased its intensity or decreased its pressure, and
the consequent increase in barometric gradients added to the violence
of the winds. It should be pointed out, however, that the very heavy
rainfalls from Philadelphia southward to Wilmington during the 11th,
and even the heavier ones over the lower valley of the Hudson and in
Connecticut during the 12th, may have exercised a potent influence in
depressing the barometer at the centre of this storm. However this may
be, it is certain that the storm remained nearly stationary, with
steadily decreasing pressure until midnight of March 12th, at which
time it was central between Block Island and Wood's Holl, with an
unusually low barometer of 28.92 at each station. During this day the
winds were unusually high along the Atlantic coast from Eastport to
Norfolk; the maximum velocities at the various stations ranging from 48
miles at New York City and New Haven to 60 miles at Atlantic City and
70 miles per hour at Block Island. These winds, though high, are not
unprecedented, and if they had been accompanied only by precipitation
in the form of rain, the damage on land would have been inconsiderable,
but, unfortunately for the commercial interests of New York and other
neighboring great cities, the passage of the low area to the eastward
was followed by a cold wave of considerable severity and of unusual
continuance.

The northern storm centre, which had passed eastward on the 11th, had
had the usual effect of drawing in a large quantity of cold air from
British America; a cold wave following the wake of this storm, as is
usual during the winter season. This usual effect was intensified by
the advance of a second, and more violent, cyclonic centre northward;
the effect of which was to augment the cold wave already in progress by
drawing in a still larger amount of cold air to re-enforce it.

As has been already alluded to, the quantity of snowfall was unusually
great. The easterly and northeasterly winds had drawn a large amount of
aqueous vapor from the Atlantic over New England in advance of the low
area. The sudden change of temperature precipitated by far the greater
portion of the aqueous vapor in the air, with the result of an almost
unprecedented fall of snow over western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and
the valley of the Hudson.

Professor Winslow Upton, Secretary of the New England Meteorological
Society, has gathered estimates of snow from 420 different observers,
which go to show that 40 inches or more of snow fell over the greater
part of the districts named.

The deepening of the area of low pressure and the augmentation of the
cold high area advancing from British America resulted in barometric
gradients of unusual intensity; there being gradients in excess of 6,
when gradients of 5 rarely occur either in the United States or Great
Britain. The high winds caused by these unusual gradients had the
effect of drifting the snow to an unusual extent, so that, as is well
known, nearly every railroad in New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and
Massachusetts was snow-bound; the earliest and most prolonged effects
being experienced in Connecticut, which doubtless received the full
benefit of the heavy snowfall in the Hudson River valley in addition to
that in the western part of that State.

It is thought by some that the storm re-curved and passed northwest
into Connecticut; an opinion in which I cannot concur. The
international map and reports tend to show that this storm passed
northeastward and was on the Banks of Newfoundland on the 17th of
March. The peculiar shape of the isobars, while the storm could be
clearly defined from observations at hand, was such that it is not
unreasonable to believe that the change of wind to the south at Block
Island was due simply to an off-shoot of the storm from the main
centre, in like manner as the storm itself was the outgrowth of a
previous depression.

The track of this storm across the sea is left to Professor Hayden.
These remarks are necessarily imperfect, as my official duties have
been such as to prevent any careful study or examination of the storm
apart from that possible on the current weather maps of the Signal
Service.




THE GREAT STORM OFF THE ATLANTIC COAST OF THE UNITED STATES, MARCH
11TH-14TH, 1888.

BY EVERETT HAYDEN,

In charge of the division of Marine Meteorology, Hydrographic Office,
Navy Dept.


INTRODUCTION.

The history of a great ocean storm cannot be written with any
completeness until a long interval of time has elapsed, when the
meteorological observations taken on board hundreds of vessels of every
nationality, scattered over the broad expanse of ocean, and bound, many
of them, for far distant ports, can be gathered together, compared,
and, where observations seem discordant, rigidly analyzed and the best
data selected. It is only when based upon such a foundation that the
story can fully deserve the title of history, and not romance, fact and
not hypothesis. At best, there must be wide areas where the absence of
vessels will forever leave some blank pages in this history, while
elsewhere, along the great highways of ocean traffic, the data are
absolutely complete. Last August a tropical hurricane of terrific
violence swept in toward our coast from between Bermuda and the
Bahamas, curved to the northward off Hatteras, and continued its
destructive course past the Grand Banks toward northern Europe;
hundreds of reports from masters of vessels enabled us accurately to
plot its track, a great parabolic curve tangent to St. Thomas,
Hatteras, Cape Race, and the northern coast of Norway. Six months later
a report forwarded by the British Meteorological Office, from a vessel
homeward bound from the Equator, indicated that it originated far to
the eastward, off the coast of Africa, and only the other day the log
of a ship which arrived at New York, March 30th, from Calcutta,
supplied data by means of which the storm track can be traced still
more accurately, westward of the Cape Verde islands. Not only that, but
this same vessel on the 11th of March was about 500 miles to the
eastward of Bermuda, and, while the great storm was raging between
Hatteras and Sandy Hook, was traversing a region to the northeastward
of Bermuda from which our records are as yet very incomplete. It will
thus be clearly understood that while the most earnest efforts have
been made, not only to collect and utilize all available information,
but to be careful and cautious in generalizing from the data at hand,
yet this study must be considered as only preliminary to an exhaustive
treatise based on more complete data than it is now possible to obtain.

Four charts have been prepared to illustrate the meteorological
conditions within the area from 25° to 50° north latitude, 50° to 85°
west longitude, at 7 A.M., 75th meridian time, March 11th, 12th, 13th
and 14th respectively. Data for land stations have been taken from the
daily weather maps published by the U. S. Signal Service, and the set
of tri-daily maps covering the period of the great storm has been
invaluable for reference throughout this discussion. Marine data are
from reports of marine meteorology made to this office by masters of
vessels, and not only from vessels within the area charted, but from
many others just beyond its limits. The refined and accurate
observations taken with standard instruments at the same moment of
absolute time all over the United States by the skilled observers of
the Signal Service, together with those contributed to the Hydrographic
Office by the voluntary co-operation of masters of vessels of every
nationality, and taken with instruments compared with standards at the
Branch Hydrographic Offices immediately upon arrival in port, make it
safe to say that never have the data been so complete and reliable for
such a discussion at such an early date.

It will not be out of place briefly to refer to certain principles of
meteorology that are essential to a clear understanding of what
follows. The general atmospheric movement in these latitudes is from
west to east, and by far the greater proportion of all the areas of low
barometer, or centers of more or less perfectly developed wind systems,
that traverse the United States, move along paths which cross the Great
Lakes, and thence reach out over the Gulf of St. Lawrence across the
Atlantic toward Iceland and northern Europe. Another very
characteristic storm path may also be referred to in this connection,
the curved track along which West Indian hurricanes travel up the
coast. The atmospheric movement in the tropics is, generally speaking,
westward, but a hurricane starting on a westward track soon curves off
to the northwest and north, and then getting into the general eastward
trend of the temperate zone, falls into line and moves off to the
northeast, circling about the western limits of the area of high
barometer which so persistently overhangs the Azores and a great
elliptical area to the southwestward. The circulation of the wind about
these areas of low barometer, and the corresponding changes of
temperature, are indicated graphically on the map: the isobars, or
lines of equal barometric pressure, are, as a rule, somewhat circular
in form, and the winds blow about and away from an area of "high" in a
direction _with the hands of a watch_ (in nautical parlance, "with the
sun"), toward and about "low" with an opposite rotary motion, or
against the hands of a watch; in front of a "low" there will therefore
be, in extra tropical latitudes, warm southeasterly winds, and behind
it cold northwesterly winds, the resulting changes of temperature being
shown by the isotherms, or lines of equal temperature. Moreover, in a
cyclonic system of this kind the westerly winds are generally far
stronger than the easterly winds, the motion of the whole system from
west to east increasing the apparent force of the former and decreasing
that of the latter. Upon reaching the coast, such areas of low
barometer, or storm systems, almost invariably develop a great increase
of energy, largely due to the moisture in the atmosphere overhanging
the ocean, which, when the air is chilled by contact with the cold dry
air rushing in from the "high," is precipitated and becomes visible in
the form of clouds, with rain or snow. The latent heat liberated by the
condensation of this aqueous vapor plays a most important part in the
continuance of the storm's energy and, indeed, in its increase of
energy: the warm light air flowing in towards the central area of the
storm rises rapidly into regions where the pressure is less, that is,
where the thickness and consequently the weight of the superincumbent
atmosphere is less; it therefore rapidly expands, and such expansion
would result in a much more rapid cooling, and a corresponding decrease
in its tendency to rise still higher, were it not for the latent heat
liberated by the condensation of the moisture which it contains. Thus
the forces that are conspiring to increase the energy of the storm are
powerfully assisted by the presence and condensation of aqueous vapor,
and the increasing updraught and rarefaction are at once marked by the
decreasing barometric pressure at the center. For example, a storm was
central over the Great Lakes on Jan. 25th, with lowest barometer 29.7;
the following day it was central off Nantucket, barometer 29.2; and on
the 27th and 28th, over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with barometer below
28.6. But such instances are so common as to make it the rule, and not
the exception. As stated above, the isobars about an area of low
barometer are somewhat circular in form; more strictly speaking, they
are somewhat oval or elliptical in shape, and the more elongated the
north and south axis of this ellipse, the greater the resulting changes
of temperature, because, as it moves along its broad path toward the
Atlantic, the indraught, or suction, is felt in front far down toward
the tropics, and in rear far to the northward, beyond the territorial
limits of the United States.

Similarly with regard to the general movement of areas of high
barometer, certain laws of motion have been clearly established by
means of studies of the daily international charts; instead of a motion
toward east-northeast, these areas when north of the 40th parallel,
have in general a motion towards east-southeast, and as a rule move
more rapidly and with greater momentum than "lows," so that they may be
said to have the right of way, when the tracks of two such systems
converge or intersect. These laws, or at least that relating to the
Great Lake storm track, as it may be called, soon become evident to
anyone who watches the weather map from day to day, upon which are
charted the systems of low and high barometer as they follow one
another across the continent, bringing each its characteristic weather.


MARCH 11TH, 7 A.M.

The first of the accompanying weather charts indicates graphically the
meteorological conditions over the wide area charted, comprising about
3,000,000 square miles, of which one-third is land and two-thirds
water. Over the land there is a long line, or trough, of low barometer,
extending from the west coast of Florida up past the eastern shore of
Lake Huron, and far northward toward the southern limits of Hudson Bay.
In front of this advancing line the prevailing winds are southeasterly,
and the warm moist air drawn up from southern latitudes spreads a warm
wave along the coast, with generally cloudy weather and heavy rains,
especially south of Hatteras; the Signal Service observer at Pensacola,
for example, reports the heavy rain-fall of 4.05 inches on the 10th.
About midway of this trough of low barometer there is a long narrow
region of light variable winds; of rapid changes in meteorological
conditions; calms, shifts of wind, intervals of clearing weather; then
overcast again, with cooler and fresh northwesterly winds, increasing
to a gale. The front line of this advancing battalion of cold
northwesterly winds is more than a thousand miles in length, and covers
the whole breadth of the United States: its right flank is on the Gulf,
its left rests on the Great Lakes, or even farther north; the
temperature falls rapidly at its approach, with frost far south into
Louisiana and Mississippi, and heavy snow in central Kentucky and
eastern Tennessee. The long swaying line is advancing toward the coast
at the rate of about 600 miles a day, followed by a ridge of high
barometer reaching from Texas to Dakota and Manitoba. At points along
the trough the barometer ranges from 29.70, a hundred miles north of
Toronto, to 29.86 at Pittsburg, 29.88 at Augusta, and 29.94 at Cedar
Keys. Along the ridge the barometer is very high; 30.7 to the northward
about Lake Winnipeg, 30.6 in Wyoming, 30.7 in Indian Territory, and
30.5 south of the Rio Grande. The difference of pressure from trough to
ridge is thus measured by about an inch of mercury in the barometer.
Moreover, the chart shows that there is another ridge of high barometer
in advance, curving down off the coast from northern Newfoundland,
where the pressure is 30.6, toward Santo Domingo, where the pressure is
30.3, and passing midway between Hatteras and Bermuda. Farther to the
eastward the concentric isobars show the presence of a storm which
originated about Bermuda on the 9th, and is moving off toward Europe
where, in a few days, it may cause northwesterly gales with snow to the
northward of its track, and southeasterly gales with rain to the
southward. Storm reports from various vessels show that this storm was
of hurricane violence, with heavy squalls and high seas, but it need
not be referred to in this connection further than to say that it sent
back a long rolling swell from northeast, felt all along the Atlantic
sea-board the morning of the 11th, and quite distinct from that caused
by the freshening gale from the southeast.


METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS OFF THE COAST.

While this trough of low barometer, with all its attendant phenomena,
is advancing rapidly eastward toward the Atlantic, and the cold wave in
its train is spreading over towns, counties and states--crossing the
Great Lakes, moving up the Ohio valley, and extending far south over
the Gulf of Mexico--we may pause for a moment to consider a factor
which is to play a most important part in the warfare of the elements
so soon to rage with destructive violence between Hatteras and Block
Island, and finally to disturb the weather of the entire North Atlantic
north of the 20th parallel.

The great warm ocean current called the Gulf Stream has, to most
people, a more or less vague, mythical existence. The words sound
familiar, but the thing itself is only an abstract idea; it lacks
reality, for want of any personal experience or knowledge of its
characteristic effects. To the navigator of the North Atlantic it is a
reality; it has a concrete, definite existence; it is an element which
enters into the calculations of his every-day life--sometimes as a
friend, to help him on his course, sometimes as an enemy, to endanger,
harass, and delay. Briefly, the warm waters of the tropics are carried
slowly and steadily westward by the broad equatorial drift-current, and
banked up in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, there to constitute
the head or source of the Gulf Stream, by which the greater portion is
drained off through the straits of Florida in a comparatively narrow
and swiftly moving stream. This great movement goes on unceasingly,
subject, however, to certain variations which the changing seasons
bring with them. As the sun advances northward in the spring, the
southeast trades creep up toward and across the equator, the volume of
that portion of the equatorial current which is diverted to the
northward of Cape San Roque is gradually increased, and this increase
is soon felt far to the westward, in the Yucatan and Florida straits.
Figures fail utterly to give even an approximate idea of the amount of
heat thus conveyed from the tropics to the north temperate zone by the
ceaseless pulsations of this mighty engine of oceanic circulation. To
put it in some tangible shape for the mind to grasp, however, suppose
we consider the amount of energy, in the form of heat, that would be
liberated were this great volume of water reduced in temperature to the
freezing point. Suppose, again, that we convert the number of
heat-units thus obtained into units of work, so many foot-pounds, and
thence ascertain the corresponding horse-power, in order to compare it
with something with which we are familiar. Considering only the portion
of the Gulf Stream that flows between Cape Florida and the Great Bahama
bank, we find from the latest and most reliable data, collected by the
U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, that the area of cross section is
10.97 square miles (geographic or sea miles, of 6,086 feet each); mean
velocity, at this time of the year, 1.305 miles per hour; mean
temperature, 71° F. These figures for mean velocity and temperature
from surface to bottom are, it will be noticed, far below those for the
surface current alone, where the velocity is often as great as five
knots an hour, and the temperature as high as 80°. The indicated
horse-power of a great ocean steamship--"La Bourgogne," "Werra,"
"Umbria" and "City of New York," for example--is from 9,000 to 16,000;
that of some modern vessels of war is still greater; the "Vulcan," now
building for the British Government, is 20,000, and the "Sardegna," for
the Italian Government, 22,800. Again, if we convert into its
equivalent horse-power the potential energy of the 270,000 cubic feet
of water per second that rush down the rapids of Niagara and make their
headlong plunge of 160 feet over the American and Horse-shoe falls, we
get the enormous sum of 5,847,000. The Gulf Stream, however, is every
hour carrying north through the straits of Florida fourteen and
three-tenths cubic miles of water (more than three thousand times the
volume of Niagara), equivalent, considering the amount of heat it
contains from 71° to 32° F., to _three trillion and sixty-three
billion_ horse-power, or more than five hundred thousand times as much
as all of these combined; indeed, considering only the amount of heat
from 71° to 50°, it is still two hundred and seventy-five thousand
times as great.

Sweeping northward toward Hatteras with its widening torrent, its
volume still further increased by new supplies drawn in from the
Bahamas and the northern coast of Cuba, its color a liquid ultramarine
like the dark blue of the Mediterranean, or of some deep mountain lake,
it then spreads northeastward toward the Grand banks of Newfoundland,
and with decreasing velocity and lower temperature gradually merges
into the general easterly drift that sets toward the shores of Europe
about the 40th parallel.

The cold inshore current must also be considered, because it is to
great contrasts of temperature that the violence of storms is very
largely due. East of Newfoundland the Labrador current flows southward,
and during the spring and summer months carries gigantic icebergs and
masses of field-ice into the tracks of transatlantic steamships. Upon
meeting the Gulf Stream, a portion of this cold current underruns it,
and continues on its course at the bottom of the sea; another portion
is deflected to the southwest, and flows, counter to the Gulf Stream,
along the coast as far south as Hatteras.

The broad features of these great ocean currents have thus been briefly
outlined, and, although they are subject to considerable variation as
to temperature, velocity, and limits, in response to the varying forces
that act upon them, this general view must suffice for the present
purpose.

Now to consider for a moment some of the phenomena resulting from the
presence and relative positions of these ocean currents, so far as such
phenomena bear upon the great storm now under consideration. With the
Pilot Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean for March there was issued a
Supplement descriptive of water-spouts off the Atlantic coast of the
United States during January and February. Additional interest and
importance have been given to the facts, there grouped together and
published, by their evident bearing upon the conditions that gave rise
to the tremendous increase of violence attendant upon the approach of
this trough of low barometer toward the coast. In it were given
descriptions, in greater or less detail, of as many as forty
water-spouts reported by masters of vessels during these two months, at
various positions off the coast, from the northern coast of Cuba to the
Grand banks; and since that Supplement was published many other similar
reports have been received. Moreover, it was pointed out that the
conditions that gave rise to such remarkable and dangerous phenomena
are due to the interaction between the warm moist air overhanging the
Gulf stream and the cold dry air brought over it by northwesterly winds
from the coast, and from over the cold inshore current, and the greater
the differences of temperature and moisture, the greater the resulting
energy of action. Reports were also quoted showing that the Gulf Stream
was beginning to re-assert itself after a period of comparative
quiescence during the winter months, and with increasing strength and
volume was approaching its northern limits, as the sun moved north in
declination.

Such, then, were the meteorological conditions off the coast, awaiting
the attack of the advance guard of this long line of cold northwesterly
gales,--conditions still further intensified by the freshening gale
that sprung up from the southeast at its approach, drawing
re-enforcements of warm, moist ocean air from far down within the
tropics. The energy developed when storm systems of only ordinary
character and severity reach the Atlantic on their eastward march
toward northern Europe is well-known, and need not be referred to
further: let us now return to the consideration of this storm which is
advancing toward the coast at the rate of about 600 miles a day, in the
form of a great arched squall whose front is more than a thousand miles
in length, and which is followed, far down the line, by northwesterly
gales and temperatures below the freezing point.


THE NIGHT OF THE 11TH-12TH.

Sunday afternoon, at 3 o'clock, the line of the storm center, or
trough, extended in a curved line, convex to the east, from Lake
Ontario down through New York State and Pennsylvania, along about the
middle of Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, across North Carolina to Point
Lookout, and thence down through eastern Florida to Key West.
Northeasterly, easterly, and southeasterly gales were therefore felt
all along the coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Florida Keys,
except in the bight between Lookout and Cañaveral, where the barometer
had already reached and passed its lowest point and the wind was
northwest, with much cooler weather. Reference to the Barometer Diagram
shows pretty clearly that the trough passed Norfolk a short time before
it reached Hatteras, where the lowest reading was undoubtedly lower,
the evening of the 11th, than it was at Norfolk.

By 10 P.M. the line has advanced as far east as the 74th meridian.
Telegraphic reports are soon all in from signal stations along the
coast. The barometer is rising at Hatteras and Norfolk and still
falling at Atlantic City, New York, and Block Island, but there is
little or no indication of the fury of the storm off shore along the
74th meridian, from the 30th to the 40th parallel, where the cold
northwesterly gale is sweeping over the great warm ocean current,
carrying air at a temperature below the freezing point over water above
75° Fahrenheit, and where the barometer is falling more and more
rapidly, the gale becoming a storm, and the storm a hurricane. Nor are
there any indications that the area of high barometer about
Newfoundland is slowing down, blocking the advance of the rapidly
increasing storm, and about to hold the center of the line in check to
the westward of Nantucket for days, which seem like weeks, while a
terrific northwest gale plays havoc along the coast from Montauk Point
to Hatteras, and until the right flank of the line has swung around to
the eastward far enough to cut off the supply of warm moist air pouring
in from the southeast. Long before midnight the welcome "good night"
message has flashed along the wires to all the signal stations from the
Atlantic to the Pacific slope, whilst at sea, aboard scores of vessels,
from the little fishing-schooner and pilot-boat to the great
transatlantic liner, a life-or-death struggle with the elements is
being waged, with heroism none the less real because it is in
self-defence, and none the less admirable because it cannot always
avert disaster.

The accompanying Track Chart gives the tracks of as many vessels as can
be shown without confusion, and illustrates very clearly where data for
this discussion are most complete, as well as where additional
information is specially needed. Thus it is here plainly evident that
vessels are always most numerous to the eastward of New York (along the
transatlantic route), and to the southward, off the coast. To the
southeastward, however, about the Bermudas, there is a large area from
which comparatively few reports have been received, although additional
data will doubtless be obtained from outward-bound sailing vessels,
upon their return. Of all the days in the week, Saturday, in
particular, is the day on which the greatest number of vessels sail
from New York. The 10th of March, for instance, as many as eight
transatlantic liners got under way. Out in mid-ocean there were plowing
their way toward our coast, to encounter the storm west of the 50th
meridian, one steamship bound for Halifax, five for Boston, nineteen
for New York, one for Philadelphia, one for Baltimore, and two for New
Orleans. Northward bound, off the coast, were six more, not to mention
here the many sailing vessels engaged in the coasting or foreign trade,
whose sails whiten the waters of our coasts.

Of all the steamships that sailed from New York on the 10th, those
bound south, with hardly a single exception, encountered the storm in
all its fury, off the coast. Eastward-bound vessels escaped its
greatest violence, although all met with strong head winds and heavy
seas, and, had the storm not delayed between Block Island and Nantucket
on the 12th and 13th, would have been overtaken by it off the Grand
banks. Without quoting in detail the reports received, let us see what
they indicate regarding the general character of the storm during the
night, preparatory to our consideration of the weather chart for 7 A.M.
March 12th. To do so, be it remembered, is a very different task from
that which is involved in the study and comparison of observations
taken with standard instruments at fixed stations ashore. Here our
stations are constantly changing their positions; different observers
read the instruments at different hours; the instruments themselves
vary greatly in quality, and while some of them may have been compared
with standards very recently, there are others whose errors are only
approximately known. Moreover, when a vessel is pitching and rolling in
a storm at sea, in imminent danger of foundering, it is, of course,
impossible to set the vernier of the barometer scale and read off the
height of the mercury with very great precision. It will thus be
readily understood that the many hundreds of observations carefully
taken and recorded for the Hydrographic Office by masters of vessels
are necessarily more or less discordant, although the results obtained
rest on the averages of so many reports that the probable error is
always very small. An exhaustive study of reports from vessels at
various positions along the coast, from the Straits of Florida to Sandy
Hook, together with the records of the coast stations of the U. S.
Signal Service, indicates a continuous eastward movement of the trough
of low barometer during the night, accompanied by a rapid deepening of
the depression. All along the coast we have the same sequence of
phenomena, in greater or less intensity, according to the latitude of
the vessel, as we noticed here in Washington that Sunday afternoon,
when the warm southeasterly wind, with rain, died out, and after a
short pause a cold northwesterly gale swept through the city, piling up
the snow in heavy drifts, with trains belated or blockaded, and
telegraphic communication cut off almost entirely with the outer world.
It was a wild, stormy night ashore, but it was ten-fold more so off the
coast, where the lights at Hatteras, Currituck, Assateague, Barnegat,
and Sandy Hook mark the outline of one of the most dangerous coasts the
navigator has to guard against. To bring the scene vividly before the
mind would require far more time than I have at my disposal, and I can
only regret that I cannot quote a few reports to give some idea of the
violence of the storm.

By means of a careful comparison of many reports, it is evident that
although the general trough-like form of the storm remained, yet
another secondary storm center, and one of very great energy, formed
off shore, north of Hatteras, as soon as the line had passed the coast.
It was this center, fully equal to a tropical hurricane in violence,
and rendered still more dangerous by freezing weather and blinding
snow, which raged with such fury off Sandy Hook and Block Island for
two days,--days likely to be long memorable along the coast. Its long
continuance was probably due to the retardation of the center of the
line, in its eastward motion, by the area of high barometer about
Newfoundland; thus this storm center delayed between Block Island and
Nantucket while the northern and southern flanks of the line swung
around to the eastward, the advance of the lower one gradually cutting
off the supply of warm moist air rushing up from lower latitudes into
contact with the cold northwesterly gale sweeping down from off the
coast between Hatteras and Montauk point. So far as the ocean is
concerned, the 12th of March saw the great storm at its maximum, and
its wide extent and terrific violence make it one of the most severe
ever experienced off our coast.

The deepening of the depression is well illustrated by the fact that
the lowest reading of the barometer at 7 A.M. was 29.88, at Augusta,
Ga.; at 3 P.M., 29.68, at Wilmington, N. C.; at 11 P.M., on board the
"Andes," 29.35; and at 7 A.M., the following morning it was as low as
29.20,--an average rate of decrease of pressure at the center of very
nearly .23 in eight hours, and a maximum, from reliable observations,
of .33.


MARCH 12TH, 13TH, AND 14TH.

The Weather Chart for 7 A.M., March 12th, shows the line, or trough,
with isobars closely crowded together southward of Block Island, but
still of a general elliptical shape, the lower portion of the line
swinging eastward toward Bermuda, and carrying with it violent squalls
of rain and hail far below the 35th parallel. The high land of Cuba and
Santo Domingo prevented its effects from reaching the Caribbean Sea,
although it was distinctly noticed by a vessel south of Cape Maysi, in
the Windward channel, where there were three hours of very heavy rain,
and a shift of wind to NW by N. The isotherm of 32° F. reaches from
Central Georgia to the coast below Norfolk, and thence out over the
Atlantic to a point about one hundred miles south of Block Island, and
thence due north, inshore of Cape Cod, explaining the fact that so
little snow, comparatively, fell in Rhode Island and southeastern
Massachusetts; from about Cape Ann it runs eastward to Cape Sable, and
farther east it is carried southward again by the northeasterly winds
off the Grand banks. These northeasterly winds are part of the cyclonic
system shown to the eastward of this and the preceding chart; farther
south they become northerly and northwesterly, and it will be noticed
that they have now carried the isotherm of 70° below the limits of the
chart. Thus this chart shows very clearly the positions of warm and
cold waves relative to such cyclonic systems: first there is this cool
wave in rear of the eastern cyclonic system, then a warm wave in front
of the system advancing from the coast, and finally a cold wave of
marked intensity following in its train.

It was probably during the night of the 12th that the lowest barometric
pressure and the steepest gradients occurred. Although several vessels
report lower readings, yet a careful consideration of all the data at
hand indicates that about the lowest reliable readings are those taken
at 10 P.M. at Wood's Holl, Mass. (28.92), Nantucket (28.93),
Providence, R. I. (28.98), and Block Island (29.00). The steepest
barometric gradients, so far as indicated by data at hand, are also
those that occurred at this time, and are as follows, taking Block
Island as the initial point and distances in nautical miles: at New
London, 26 miles, the barometer stood 29.11, giving a difference of
pressure in 15 miles of .063 inch; New Haven, 62 miles, 29.36, .087;
New York, 116 miles, 29.64, .083; Albany, 126 miles, 29.76, .090. At 7
A.M. the following day, very low readings are also reported: New
Bedford, Mass., 28.91, Block Island, 28.92, and Wood's Holl, 28.96.

The chart for 7 A.M., March 13th, shows a marked decrease in the
intensity of the storm, although the area over which stormy winds are
blowing is still enormous, comprising, as it does, almost the entire
region charted. From the Great Lakes and northern Vermont to the
northern coast of Cuba the wind is blowing a gale from a direction
almost invariably northwest, whilst westerly winds and low temperatures
have spread over a wide tract of ocean south of the 40th parallel.
North of this parallel, the prevailing winds are easterly, the isobars
extending in a general easterly and westerly direction. At the storm
center off Block Island the pressure is 28.90, but the gradients are
not so steep as on the preceding chart, and the severity of the storm,
both ashore and at sea, has begun to diminish. About this center, too,
the isobars are noticeably circular in form, showing that, although it
first formed as an elliptical area, it gradually assumed the character
of a true revolving storm, remaining almost stationary between Block
Island and Nantucket until it had actually "blown itself out," while
the great storm of which it was a conspicuous but not essential part
was continuing its eastward progress. The enormous influx of cold air
brought down by the long continued northwesterly gale is graphically
shown on this chart by the large extent and deepening intensity of the
blue tint, where the temperatures are below the freezing point. From
the northwestern to the southeastern portion of the chart we find a
difference in temperature of more than 80° F. (from below -10° to above
70°); the steepest barometric gradient is found to the northwest of
Block Island, where the pressure varies 1.80 inches in 750 miles
(gradient, .036 inch in 15 nautical miles), and .66 inch in 126 miles
(Block Island to Albany, N. Y.; gradient, .079).

On the chart for 7 A.M., March 14th, the depression off Block Island
has almost filled up, and the stormy winds have died out and become
light and variable, with occasional snow squalls. The other storm
center has now regained its ascendency, and is situated about two
hundred miles southeast from Sable Island, with a pressure about 29.3.
The great wave of low barometer has overspread the entire western
portion of the North Atlantic, with unsettled squally weather from
Labrador to the Windward Islands. The area of high pressure in advance
has moved eastward, to be felt over the British Isles from the 17th to
the 21st of the month, followed by a rapid fall of the barometer as
this great atmospheric disturbance moves along its circuit round the
northern hemisphere. The isotherm of 32° is still south of Hatteras,
reaching well out off shore, and thence northward, tangent to Cape Cod,
as far as central Maine, and thence eastward to St. Johns,
Newfoundland. Great contrasts of temperature and pressure are still
indicated, but considerably less marked than on the preceding chart,
and the normal conditions are being gradually restored.


CONCLUSION.

The great storm that has thus been briefly described, as well as can be
done from the data now at hand and in the limited time at our disposal,
has furnished a most striking and instructive example of a somewhat
unusual class of storms, and this on such a grand scale, and in a part
of the world where the data for its study are so complete, that it must
long remain a memorable instance. Instead of a more or less circular
area of low barometer at the storm center, there is here a great trough
of "low" between two ridges of "high," the whole system moving rapidly
eastward, and including "within the arc of its majestic sweep," almost
the entire width of the temperate zone. The "trough phenomena," as an
eminent meteorologist has called the violent squalls, with shifts of
wind and change of conditions at about the time of lowest barometer,
are here illustrated most impressively. Such changes are, of course, to
be expected and guarded against in every storm, and sailors have long
ago summed them up, to store away in memory for practical use when
occasion demands, in the well-known lines,--

  "First rise after low
   Indicates a stronger blow."

One thing to which attention is particularly called is the fact that
storms of only ordinary severity are likely, upon reaching the coast,
to develop greatly increased energy. As has been already pointed out,
there can be no doubt but that this is especially so in a storm of this
kind, where the isobars are elongated in a north and south direction.
The accompanying Barometer Diagram, if studied in connection with the
Track Chart and the Weather Chart for March 11th, illustrates very
clearly this deepening of the depression at the storm center. The
formation and persistency off Block Island of a secondary storm center
of such energy as was developed in this case, however, it would seem
wholly impossible to have foretold, and a prediction to that effect
made under similar circumstances would probably prove wrong in at least
nine cases out of ten. But it may be safely said that the establishment
of telegraphic signal stations at outlying points off the coast is a
matter of great importance, not only to our extensive shipping
interests, but to the people of all our great seaboard cities as well.
To the northward, telegraphic reports from such stations would furnish
data by which to watch the movement of areas of high barometer, upon
which that of the succeeding "low" so largely depends; and to the
southward, to give warning of the approach and progress of the terrific
hurricanes which, summer after summer, bring devastation and
destruction along our Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and of which this great
storm is an approximate example and a timely reminder. In this
connection, also, there is another important result to be gained:
scientific research and practical inventive genius, advancing hand in
hand for the benefit of mankind, have discovered not only the laws
governing the formation of the dense banks of fog that have made the
Grand Banks dreaded by navigators but also the means by which certain
facts may be observed, telegraphed, charted, and studied a thousand
miles away, and the occurrence of fog predicted with almost unfailing
accuracy, even whilst the very elements themselves are only preparing
for its formation. By means of such predictions, the safety of
navigation along the greatest highway of ocean traffic in the world
would be vastly increased,--routes traversed yearly at almost railway
speed by vessels intrusted with more than a million human lives, and
property of an aggregate value of fully a billion dollars. What is
everybody's business is too often nobody's business, and if no single
nation is going to undertake this work, an international congress
should be formed to do so, with full authority to act and power to
enforce its decisions.

Probably nothing will more forcibly attract the attention of the
practical navigator than the new and striking illustrations which have
been furnished by reports from various masters of vessels, caught in
the terrific winds and violent cross seas of this great storm, relative
to the use of oil to prevent heavy broken seas from coming on board.
Although this property of oil has been known from time immemorial, it
has only recently come into general use, and it is good cause for
congratulation, considering the great benefits to be so easily and so
cheaply gained, that the U. S. Hydrographic Office is acknowledged to
have taken the lead in the revival of knowledge regarding it, and in
its practical use at sea. It is difficult to select one from among the
many reports at hand, but the following brief extract from the report
made by boat-keeper Robinson, in behalf of the pilots of New York
pilot-boat No. 3 (the "Charles H. Marshall"), cannot fail to be read
with interest. The gallant and successful struggle made by the crew of
this little vessel for two long days and nights against such terrific
odds is one of the most thrilling incidents of the storm, and well
illustrates the dangers to which these hardy men are constantly
exposed.

The "Charles H. Marshall" was off Barnegat the forenoon of the 11th,
and, as the weather looked threatening, two more reefs were put in the
sails and she was headed to the northward, intending to run into port
for shelter. During the afternoon the breeze increased to a strong
gale, and sail was reduced still further. When about 18 miles S.E. from
the lightship, a dense fog shut in, and it was decided to remain
outside and ride out the storm. The wind hauled to the eastward toward
midnight, and at 3 A.M. it looked so threatening in the N.W. that a
fourth reef was taken in the mainsail and the foresail was
treble-reefed. In half an hour the wind died out completely, and the
vessel lay in the trough of a heavy S.E. sea, that was threatening
every moment to engulf her. She was then about 12 miles E.S.E. from
Sandy Hook lightship, and in twenty minutes the gale struck her with
such force from N.W. that she was thrown on her beam ends; she
instantly righted again, however, but in two hours was so covered with
ice that she looked like a small iceberg. By 8 A.M. the wind had
increased to a hurricane, the little vessel pitching and tossing in a
terrific cross-sea, and only by the united efforts of the entire crew
was it possible to partially lower and lash down the foresail and
fore-staysail. No one but those on board can realize the danger she was
in from the huge breaking seas that rolled down upon her; the snow and
rain came with such force that it was impossible to look to windward,
and the vessel was lying broadside to wind and sea. A drag was rigged
with a heavy log, anchor, and hawser, to keep her head to sea and break
the force of the waves, but it had little effect, and it was evident
that something must be done to save the vessel. Three oil bags were
made of duck, half filled with oakum saturated with oil, and hung over
the side forward, amidships, and on the weather quarter. It is admitted
that this is all that saved the boat and the lives of all on board, for
the oil prevented the seas from breaking, and they swept past as heavy
rolling swells. Another drag was rigged and launched, although not
without great exertion and danger, and this helped a little. Heavy iron
bolts had to be put in the oil bags to keep them in the water, and
there the little vessel lay, fighting for life against the storm,
refilling the oil bags every half hour, and fearing every instant that
some passing vessel would run her down, as it was impossible to see a
hundred feet in any direction. The boat looked like a wreck; she was
covered with ice and it seemed impossible for her to remain afloat
until daylight. The oil bags were replenished every half hour during
the night, all hands taking turn about to go on deck and fill them,
crawling along the deck on hands and knees and secured with a rope in
case of being washed overboard. Just before midnight a heavy sea struck
the boat and sent her over on her side; everything movable was thrown
to leeward, and the water rushed down the forward hatch. But again she
righted, and the fight went on. The morning of the 13th, it was still
blowing with hurricane force, the wind shrieking past in terrific
squalls. It cleared up a little towards evening, and she wore around to
head to the northward and eastward, but not without having her deck
swept by a heavy sea. It moderated and cleared up the next day, and
after five hours of hard work the vessel was cleared of ice, and sail
set for home. She had been driven 100 miles before the storm, fighting
every inch of the way, her crew without a chance to sleep,
frost-bitten, clothes drenched and no dry ones to put on, food and fuel
giving out, but they brought her into port without the loss of a spar
or a sail, and she took her station on the bar as usual.

Do the pages of history contain the record of a more gallant fight!
Nothing could show more graphically than this brief report, the
violence and long duration of the storm. No wonder that this terrific
northwest gale drove the ocean itself before it, so that the very tides
did not resume their normal heights for nearly a week at certain ports
along the coast, and the Gulf Stream itself was far south of its usual
limits. The damage and destruction wrought ashore are too fresh in mind
to be referred to here, and losses along the coast can only be
mentioned briefly. Below Hatteras there was little damage done to
shipping. In Chesapeake Bay, 2 barks, 77 schooners, and 17 sloops were
blown ashore, sunk, or damaged; in Delaware Bay, 37 vessels; along the
New Jersey coast and in the Horse-shoe at Sandy Hook, 13; in New York
harbor and along the Long Island coast, 20; and along the New England
coast, 9. The names of six vessels that were abandoned at sea have been
reported, and there are at least nine others missing, among them the
lamented New York pilot boats "Phantom" and "Enchantress," and the
yacht "Cythera." Several of these abandoned vessels have taken their
places amongst the derelicts whose positions and erratic tracks are
plotted each month on the Pilot Chart, that other vessels may be warned
of the danger of collision; the sch. "W. L. White," for instance,
started off to the eastward in the Gulf Stream, and will soon become a
source of anxiety to the captains of steamships along the transatlantic
route, and furnish a brief sensation to the passengers when she is
sighted. There is thus an intensely human side to the history of a
great ocean storm, and to one who reads these brief records of facts
and at the same time gives some little play to his imagination, there
is a very pathetic side to the picture. In the words of Longfellow,--

  "I see the patient mother read,
   With aching heart, of wrecks that float
   Disabled on those seas remote,
   Or of some great heroic deed
   On battle fields, where thousands bleed
   To lift one hero into fame.
   Anxious she bends her graceful head
   Above these chronicles of pain,
   And trembles with a secret dread
   Lest there, among the drowned or slain,
   She find the one beloved name."

[Illustration: WEATHER CHART.--MARCH 11.

Meteorological conditions at noon, Greenwich mean time (7 A.M., 75th
meridian time).

Barometer.--Isobars in full black lines for each tenth of an inch,
reduced pressure. The trough of low barometer is shown by a line of
dashes.

Temperature.--Isotherms in dotted black lines for each ten degrees
Fahr. Temperatures below freezing (32° F.) in shades of blue, and above
freezing in red.

Wind.--The small black arrows fly with the wind at the position where
each is plotted. The force of wind is indicated in a general way by the
number of feathers on the arrows, according to the scale given in the
following table:

  PLOTTED ON   | FORCE, BY SCALES IN PRACTICAL USE.
  CHART.       |  0-12 |  0-10 |  0-8 |  0-7 |  0-6
  -------------+-------+-------+------+------+------
  O      Calm. |  0    |  0    |  0   |  0   |  0
  Feathers 1   |  1- 2 |  1- 2 |  1   |  1-2 |  1
     "     2   |  3- 4 |  3- 4 |  2   |  3-4 |  2
     "     3   |  5- 7 |  5- 6 |  3-4 |  5   |  3
     "     4   |  8-10 |  7- 8 |  5-6 |  6   |  4-5
     "     5   | 11-12 |  9-10 |  7-8 |  7   |  6
  -------------+-------+-------+------+------+------

  PLOTTED ON | POUNDS PER   | MILES PER   | KILOMETERS  | METERS PER
  CHART.     | SQUARE FOOT. | HOUR.       | PER HOUR.   | SECOND.
  -----------+--------------+-------------+-------------+-----------
  O    Calm. |  0.          |   0.        |   0.        |  0.
  Feath. 1   |  0.  -  .40  |   0. - 9.   |   0. - 14.4 |  0. - 4.
    "    2   |  0.41- 2.53  |   9.1-22.5  |  14.5- 36.2 |  4.1-10.1
    "    3   |  2.54- 8.20  |  22.6-40.5  |  36.3- 65.2 | 10.2-18.1
    "    4   |  8.21-22.90  |  40.6-67.5  |  65.3-108.7 | 18.2-30.1
    "    5   | 22.91 and    |  67.6 and   | 108.8 and   | 30.2 and
             |    over.     |    over.    |    over.    |   over.
  -----------+--------------+-------------+-------------+-----------

It will be noticed that the Beaufort scale (0-12), in general use at
sea, has been converted into the international scale (0-10) for the
sake of clearness in plotting data on the chart. The absence of arrows
over large areas indicates absence of simultaneous data; at sea,
however, this has been partly compensated for in the construction of
the chart by information obtained from journals and special storm
reports of vessels in the vicinity.]

[Illustration: WEATHER CHART.--MARCH 12.

Meteorological conditions at noon, Greenwich mean time (7 A.M., 75th
meridian time).

Barometer.--Isobars in full black lines for each tenth of an inch,
reduced pressure. The trough of low barometer is shown by a line of
dashes.

Temperature.--Isotherms in dotted black lines for each ten degrees
Fahr. Temperatures below freezing (32° F.) in shades of blue, and above
freezing in red.

Wind.--The small black arrows fly with the wind at the position where
each is plotted. The force of wind is indicated in a general way by the
number of feathers on the arrows, according to the scale given in the
following table:

  PLOTTED ON   | FORCE, BY SCALES IN PRACTICAL USE.
  CHART.       |  0-12 |  0-10 |  0-8 |  0-7 |  0-6
  -------------+-------+-------+------+------+------
  O      Calm. |  0    |  0    |  0   |  0   |  0
  Feathers 1   |  1- 2 |  1- 2 |  1   |  1-2 |  1
     "     2   |  3- 4 |  3- 4 |  2   |  3-4 |  2
     "     3   |  5- 7 |  5- 6 |  3-4 |  5   |  3
     "     4   |  8-10 |  7- 8 |  5-6 |  6   |  4-5
     "     5   | 11-12 |  9-10 |  7-8 |  7   |  6
  -------------+-------+-------+------+------+------

  PLOTTED ON | POUNDS PER   | MILES PER   | KILOMETERS  | METERS PER
  CHART.     | SQUARE FOOT. | HOUR.       | PER HOUR.   | SECOND.
  -----------+--------------+-------------+-------------+-----------
  O    Calm. |  0.          |   0.        |   0.        |  0.
  Feath. 1   |  0.  -  .40  |   0. - 9.   |   0. - 14.4 |  0. - 4.
    "    2   |  0.41- 2.53  |   9.1-22.5  |  14.5- 36.2 |  4.1-10.1
    "    3   |  2.54- 8.20  |  22.6-40.5  |  36.3- 65.2 | 10.2-18.1
    "    4   |  8.21-22.90  |  40.6-67.5  |  65.3-108.7 | 18.2-30.1
    "    5   | 22.91 and    |  67.6 and   | 108.8 and   | 30.2 and
             |    over.     |    over.    |    over.    |   over.
  -----------+--------------+-------------+-------------+-----------

It will be noticed that the Beaufort scale (0-12), in general use at
sea, has been converted into the international scale (0-10) for the
sake of clearness in plotting data on the chart. The absence of arrows
over large areas indicates absence of simultaneous data; at sea,
however, this has been partly compensated for in the construction of
the chart by information obtained from journals and special storm
reports of vessels in the vicinity.]

[Illustration: WEATHER CHART.--MARCH 13.

Meteorological conditions at noon, Greenwich mean time (7 A.M., 75th
meridian time).

Barometer.--Isobars in full black lines for each tenth of an inch,
reduced pressure. The trough of low barometer is shown by a line of
dashes.

Temperature.--Isotherms in dotted black lines for each ten degrees
Fahr. Temperatures below freezing (32° F.) in shades of blue, and above
freezing in red.

Wind.--The small black arrows fly with the wind at the position where
each is plotted. The force of wind is indicated in a general way by the
number of feathers on the arrows, according to the scale given in the
following table:

  PLOTTED ON   | FORCE, BY SCALES IN PRACTICAL USE.
  CHART.       |  0-12 |  0-10 |  0-8 |  0-7 |  0-6
  -------------+-------+-------+------+------+------
  O      Calm. |  0    |  0    |  0   |  0   |  0
  Feathers 1   |  1- 2 |  1- 2 |  1   |  1-2 |  1
     "     2   |  3- 4 |  3- 4 |  2   |  3-4 |  2
     "     3   |  5- 7 |  5- 6 |  3-4 |  5   |  3
     "     4   |  8-10 |  7- 8 |  5-6 |  6   |  4-5
     "     5   | 11-12 |  9-10 |  7-8 |  7   |  6
  -------------+-------+-------+------+------+------

  PLOTTED ON | POUNDS PER   | MILES PER   | KILOMETERS  | METERS PER
  CHART.     | SQUARE FOOT. | HOUR.       | PER HOUR.   | SECOND.
  -----------+--------------+-------------+-------------+-----------
  O    Calm. |  0.          |   0.        |   0.        |  0.
  Feath. 1   |  0.  -  .40  |   0. - 9.   |   0. - 14.4 |  0. - 4.
    "    2   |  0.41- 2.53  |   9.1-22.5  |  14.5- 36.2 |  4.1-10.1
    "    3   |  2.54- 8.20  |  22.6-40.5  |  36.3- 65.2 | 10.2-18.1
    "    4   |  8.21-22.90  |  40.6-67.5  |  65.3-108.7 | 18.2-30.1
    "    5   | 22.91 and    |  67.6 and   | 108.8 and   | 30.2 and
             |    over.     |    over.    |    over.    |   over.
  -----------+--------------+-------------+-------------+-----------

It will be noticed that the Beaufort scale (0-12), in general use at
sea, has been converted into the international scale (0-10) for the
sake of clearness in plotting data on the chart. The absence of arrows
over large areas indicates absence of simultaneous data; at sea,
however, this has been partly compensated for in the construction of
the chart by information obtained from journals and special storm
reports of vessels in the vicinity.]

[Illustration: WEATHER CHART.--MARCH 14.

Meteorological conditions at noon, Greenwich mean time (7 A.M., 75th
meridian time).

Barometer.--Isobars in full black lines for each tenth of an inch,
reduced pressure. The trough of low barometer is shown by a line of
dashes.

Temperature.--Isotherms in dotted black lines for each ten degrees
Fahr. Temperatures below freezing (32° F.) in shades of blue, and above
freezing in red.

Wind.--The small black arrows fly with the wind at the position where
each is plotted. The force of wind is indicated in a general way by the
number of feathers on the arrows, according to the scale given in the
following table:

  PLOTTED ON   | FORCE, BY SCALES IN PRACTICAL USE.
  CHART.       |  0-12 |  0-10 |  0-8 |  0-7 |  0-6
  -------------+-------+-------+------+------+------
  O      Calm. |  0    |  0    |  0   |  0   |  0
  Feathers 1   |  1- 2 |  1- 2 |  1   |  1-2 |  1
     "     2   |  3- 4 |  3- 4 |  2   |  3-4 |  2
     "     3   |  5- 7 |  5- 6 |  3-4 |  5   |  3
     "     4   |  8-10 |  7- 8 |  5-6 |  6   |  4-5
     "     5   | 11-12 |  9-10 |  7-8 |  7   |  6
  -------------+-------+-------+------+------+------

  PLOTTED ON | POUNDS PER   | MILES PER   | KILOMETERS  | METERS PER
  CHART.     | SQUARE FOOT. | HOUR.       | PER HOUR.   | SECOND.
  -----------+--------------+-------------+-------------+-----------
  O    Calm. |  0.          |   0.        |   0.        |  0.
  Feath. 1   |  0.  -  .40  |   0. - 9.   |   0. - 14.4 |  0. - 4.
    "    2   |  0.41- 2.53  |   9.1-22.5  |  14.5- 36.2 |  4.1-10.1
    "    3   |  2.54- 8.20  |  22.6-40.5  |  36.3- 65.2 | 10.2-18.1
    "    4   |  8.21-22.90  |  40.6-67.5  |  65.3-108.7 | 18.2-30.1
    "    5   | 22.91 and    |  67.6 and   | 108.8 and   | 30.2 and
             |    over.     |    over.    |    over.    |   over.
  -----------+--------------+-------------+-------------+-----------

It will be noticed that the Beaufort scale (0-12), in general use at
sea, has been converted into the international scale (0-10) for the
sake of clearness in plotting data on the chart. The absence of arrows
over large areas indicates absence of simultaneous data; at sea,
however, this has been partly compensated for in the construction of
the chart by information obtained from journals and special storm
reports of vessels in the vicinity.]

[Illustration: TRACK CHART.

Positions of the trough of low barometer and tracks of vessels, March
11-14, 1888.

Positions at 7 A.M. (Greenwich noon) are indicated on the chart by a
point; at noon, ship's time, by a small circle.

Black.--The line of dashes indicates the position of the trough of low
barometer, or the line of sudden change from easterly to westerly
winds, with brief intervals of calm, shifts of wind in heavy squalls of
rain or snow, colder, and, finally, clearing weather.

Red.--Positions and names of land stations and names and tracks of
vessels plotted in red are those whose barometer curves are shown in
the accompanying Barometer Diagram.

Blue.--The tracks of certain other vessels from which storm reports
have been received are plotted in blue. In addition to these, however,
storm reports have been received from the following vessels, omitted
from the chart in order to avoid confusion:

_Transatlantic steamships, westward bound:_ Glendevon, Lydian Monarch,
St. Ronans, Werra.

_Coasting steamships, bound south:_ El Monte, Morgan City, New Orleans.
_Bound north:_ Newport.

_Sailing vessels off the coast from Montauk point to cape Cañaveral:_
Spartan, Charles H. Marshall, Caprice, Coryphene, Phebe, Isaac Orbeton,
John H. Krantz, Arcot, Iroquois, Welaka, Serene, Warren B. Potter,
Normandy, Lottie Stewart, Melissa Trask, Wilhelm Birkedal, Johanna,
James S. Stone, Anita.]

[Illustration: BAROMETER DIAGRAM.

Illustrating the fluctuations of the barometer from noon, March 11, to
noon, March 14 (75th meridian time).

Barometer Curves.--As it is only practicable to illustrate graphically
the barometer records of a few vessels and land stations, the following
have been selected as being of special interest; the small circles mark
the points of observation:

  SIGNAL STATIONS.    VESSELS.
  Norfolk.            British steamship Andes.
  Hatteras.           American schooner Kensett.
  Atlantic City.      British steamship Lord Clive.
  New York.           American schooner Lida Fowler.
  Block Island.       American schooner George Walker.
  Nantucket.          British steamship Serapis.
  Yarmouth, N. S.     British ship Glenburn.

Barometer Normal.--The barometer normal for the 5°-square from latitude
35° to 40° N., longitude 65° to 70° W., assumed for the present purpose
as the normal for the entire area, is 29.98, and is indicated by the
blue line on the diagram.

The positions of the above-mentioned signal-stations and the tracks of
these seven vessels are all indicated in red on the accompanying Track
Chart. This diagram should therefore be studied in connection with the
chart, in order to form a clear idea of the general eastward movement
of the trough of low barometer, and the accompanying rapid deepening of
the depression upon reaching the coast.]




THE SURVEY OF THE COAST.

BY HERBERT G. OGDEN.


At the inception of the Coast and Geodetic Survey in the early years of
the century, so little was known of the dangers attending navigation
along our extensive seaboard, that those who engaged in commercial
enterprises were constrained to rely upon local knowledge and the
reports of the hardy navigators who might carry their ventures to
success. The charts available were by no means a sure reliance, and it
has since been shown, contained many serious errors. The great
headlands and outlying shoals that present the greatest obstacles to
the safety of coastwise navigation, had not been carefully surveyed,
and their relative positions to one another were only approximately
determined.

The capacities of the harbors had not been ascertained, many were
unknown; and even at the great port of New York, the Gedney or Main
channel, was not developed until after the permanent establishment of
the Survey in 1832, and the thorough exploration of the entrance was
undertaken. A list of the sunken dangers and new channels that have
been discovered during the progress of the work would fill pages. It is
true such developments were to be expected in making a precise survey
of the comparatively uncharted coast; but they, nevertheless, clearly
point to the necessity of the work. We may also assume that the men who
were controlling the destinies of the republic, realized that a
knowledge of the coast was essential if they would succeed in building
up a commerce, without which it was believed the prosperity of the
people could not be assured. The deep draught vessels of the present
day could not have traded along our shores on any margin of safety with
the little that was known, and it is largely due to the perfect
charting of the coast, that commercial enterprise has found it
practicable to build the larger vessels of modern type to meet the
increasing demands of trade.

The survey proposed was also required in providing for the public
defence; as it is a self-evident proposition, that if we would protect
a harbor from a hostile fleet, we must know not only the channels by
which the fleet might enter, but their relations to each other and the
points of vantage that should be utilized in obstructing them; and in
modern warfare to know these things only approximately will not
suffice, for precision is practiced now in the art of war, as well as
in the arts of peace.

The lack of charts of our extensive Coast line, or indeed, of any
practical information that could be utilized in a systematic defence
against foreign aggression, was only one of the many perplexities that
surrounded our forefathers in building the nation. By their valor they
had wrested a jewel from the British Crown, and had inaugurated a
system of government by the people, which on their sacred honors they
had sworn to defend. But not a generation had passed away when they saw
new dangers, and were forced to contemplate again taking up arms in
defence of their rights. The land was theirs, even far towards the
setting sun, pioneers had explored it, and they knew whence might come
a hostile foe. But of the waters from far away to the eastward, that
flowed on until they washed every shore and filled the great Bays, even
to the heart of the Republic, they knew little, save that over that
almost immeasurable expanse might come the fleet of destroyers to
penetrate they knew not where, and inflict incalculable damage months
ere the dreary tales might be told. It must be remembered there were no
telegraphs, no railroads, no steamboats, in those days, and time taken
by the forelock was time gained. The speed of man could not be
overtaken as we see it to-day in the wondrous inventions of the last
generations. Each community was dependent upon itself, alone, in time
of danger, to ward off the blow or yield to a more powerful foe;
assistance could hardly be obtained in months and perhaps not then. It
was not possible for any man to study or to learn the points of danger,
and prepare a system of defence.

President Jefferson in his far-seeing statesmanship, threatened with
war, realized the danger. A survey of the coast he believed essential
to the national defence, and to the prosperity of the nation in time of
peace. Had his wise counsels prevailed and the survey been prosecuted
with vigor, instead of being almost immediately suspended for a quarter
of a century, there can be no question but that it would have saved the
people millions of dollars in expenditures and put other untold
millions into their coffers, through the impetus it would have given to
commerce years before commerce actually had a name in many that are now
thriving seaport towns.

But it is not to be supposed the commercial importance of a knowledge
of the coast and harbors was underrated because the Survey was not
prosecuted. The people were poor, the task would be expensive and
laborious. The appliances for the work were not in the possession of
the Government, and above all, war came sooner than was anticipated and
the energies of the people were taxed to the utmost in combat with
their powerful foe; and when peace came again, there was the inevitable
commercial depression that follows a resort to arms. The men of the day
fully realized how illy they were prepared to invite commerce to our
shores, or incite our own people to more extensive trade. There was
nothing to adequately represent those magnificent harbors that have
since become famous the world over; nor of that long line of coast with
its treacherous shoals, whereby those seeking new ventures might judge
of the dangers to be encountered. The absolute ignorance that existed
was aptly described in the Albany Argus in 1832, when the propriety of
reviving the act of 1807 was under discussion, as follows:

"It had been discovered by an American statesman that parent countries
always keep the commercial knowledge of their colonies as a
leading-string in their own hands, and that as practical navigators,
American seamen knew less of their own shores than the country and its
allies from whose subjection we had recently delivered ourselves by
force of arms. In large vessels, three nations, the Dutch, the French,
and the English, approached our harbors with less risk than those
bearing our own flag; at the same time that in small and more
manageable vessels, we had long been known as a match for the
strongest. The president, Jefferson, saw the defect and the manner in
which it must be remedied. We were at that time on the brink of war,
about whose justice some of our politicians differed in opinion and it
was, of course, more necessary to pray for a fortunate result than to
preach the causes which had occasioned the quarrel. To have procured
for the nation (even had it been practicable so to do) the old charts
from the Dutch, French, and English governments, would have only been
to put our knowledge on a par with theirs, while to execute more recent
and accurate surveys, was advancing the new country above the old. With
the clear and bold perception, which always distinguishes men of genius
when they are entrusted in times of danger with the destinies of a
nation, the president recommended a survey of the whole coast with all
the aid of the more recent discoveries of science."

The proposed survey was strongly advocated by President Jefferson, and
the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Gallatin, and in February, 1807,
Congress passed the first act providing for the work. Thirteen separate
plans, or schemes, were submitted for consideration; among the number
was one by Professor F. R. Hassler, which was finally adopted, and
Professor Hassler was appointed the first superintendent. It is not
necessary to dwell, in detail, upon the varying fortunes of the survey
during the three-quarters of a century that have passed since the
original act authorizing it. The first thirty years of experiment,
before it was finally established as a bureau of the Treasury
Department, show only too clearly the ignorance and prejudice against
which the supporters--we may say founders--of the survey had to
contend. But they had only the experience of all men who attempt the
inauguration of new things of which it cannot be shown that they will
return a cash profit at the end of six months. To the opponents of the
measure cash could not be seen at all, and the profit, whatever it
should be, was only an intangible kind of benefit to be realized in the
future by additional security to their property and commerce; but, in
reality, as has since been appreciated, the direct saving of many
millions of dollars annually.

The war of 1812 interrupted Professor Hassler's labors and it was not
until 1817 that he actually commenced work; but he was stopped the next
year by a limitation of the law requiring the work to be performed by
the Military Departments. In 1832 Congress passed a special act
reviving the law of 1807 and Professor Hassler was again appointed
Superintendent. A further interruption occurred in 1834 by the transfer
of the bureau to the Navy Department, but this was of short duration,
as it was re-transferred to the Treasury Department in 1836, where it
has since remained. Professor Hassler continued as Superintendent until
his death in November, 1843. He was succeeded by Professor A. D. Bache,
who was fortunate in assuming the charge under much more favorable
auspices than had prevailed under his predecessor.

By the appropriation bill passed in March, 1843, the President was
directed to appoint a Commission to reorganize the Bureau and prescribe
methods for its future conduct. The plan recommended by the Commission
was substantially that which had been followed by Professor Hassler. It
was approved by the President a few months before Professor Bache
assumed the superintendency and has since been the law for the
execution of the work. To have a law specifying in detail the methods
that should be employed in prosecuting the surveys, that had been drawn
by a special commission of experts and approved by the administration,
relieved the Superintendent of much of the responsibility that had been
borne by Professor Hassler, although it did not put an end to the
carpings of the critics, or their advocacy of the less expensive
"nautical surveys."

The reorganization provided for the employment of civilians and
officers of the Army and Navy to serve directly under instructions from
the Superintendent; thus securing for the service the opportunity to
procure the best talent from either civil or military life. The civil
element, it was assumed, would form a body of experts for the
prosecution of those branches of the work not properly falling in the
direct line of the military, and experience has demonstrated that while
the results anticipated have been fully realized, the organization has
not only proved effective but conducive to the advancement of the
survey in many ways. The Civil War was a serious interruption, but
alone, proved the wisdom of the civil organization of the Bureau. On
the outbreak of hostilities the military element was necessarily
withdrawn for duty with the Army and Navy; and it was not until ten
years after the close of the war that officers of the Navy were again
available, while officers of the Army, through the exigencies of the
Military service, have not returned at all.

The organization was preserved through these fifteen years by the
permanent civil nucleus, and the work suffered no deterioration, but
steadily advanced, notwithstanding that the larger number of the
civilians were constantly employed during the four years of the war
with the Armies and Navy, in different capacities on the staffs of
commanding officers; and that the urgent necessities of the government
devolved additional labor, and temporarily, a new class of work upon
the office force in compiling, draughting and publishing maps of the
interior for the use of the Armies in the field. And when finally, our
Armies were disbanded and our fleets reduced to a peace basis, and
officers of the Navy resumed the execution of the Hydrographic work, it
was but to step into the duties of their predecessors; they had, too,
the additional advantage of the fifteen years' experience of the purely
civil administration of the Survey, during which time the trained
surveyors of the land had become equally expert as surveyors of the
water, and had added not a little to the improvement of Hydrographic
methods. The History of the Survey shows a steady advance in methods of
work from its foundation to the present day. But so equally has the
march of improvement been due to the zeal and untiring efforts of the
civilians and officers of the Army and Navy alike, that any distinction
would be invidious.

The plan of reorganization of 1843 provided for a detailed survey of
precision. It was to be based on an exact triangulation that would
insure positive results, that the location of a danger or the
development of a new channel, should be beyond doubt; and that the
survey, when completed, should fit together as one continuous line, in
which the distance and direction of any object on the map from any
other object should be true, whether the objects were in hailing
distance of one another, or at the extremes of our boundaries. So well
was the scheme conceived, so perfect has it proved in operation, that
it is substantially the guide for the closing labors of the great work,
notwithstanding the many improvements that experience has wrought in
the details.

Those engaged upon the Survey have been quick to profit by experience,
and the master mind of Professor Bache, the second Superintendent, was
not slow to adopt that which promised increased economy, rapidity or
improvement. He drew from all sources, Science contributed her quota
and the great inventive genius of the American people played an equal
share in producing the final results.

The researches that were necessary to obtain the information required
by law "for completing an accurate chart of every part of the coasts,"
have produced results of great economic and scientific value to the
whole people, aside from their bearing on the interests of commerce and
navigation; and which will contribute to the welfare of mankind long
years after those who labored for them have passed away. A brief
reference to a few of the many instances that might be cited to
illustrate this perpetual influence to benefit our fellow men, may not
be without interest to some of you present.

The application of the method of determining latitude by the
measurement of small zenith distances, introduced by Captain Andrew
Talcott of the Engineer Corps, U. S. A., while serving as an Assistant
on the Survey, developed such radical errors in the star places given
in the catalogues, that it led to an almost immediate call for better
places, and arrangements were made with the observatories of the
country to obtain the necessary observations, the Survey to pay for the
labor involved. Stimulated by the knowledge that better work was
required to meet the new demand, observatories deficient in instruments
procured new ones, and soon furnished more accurate star places.
Continued observation has added still further improvement until to-day
we have catalogues that furnish the highest degree of precision.
Professor Chauvenet defines "Talcott's method" as "one of the most
valuable improvements in practical astronomy of recent years,
surpassing all previous known methods (not excepting that of Bessel by
prime vertical transits) both in simplicity and accuracy." But the
advantages of the method have been found to be of a practical nature
also; as it is productive of large economy in time and labor and has
reduced the cost of the Survey many thousands of dollars.

The introduction of the Electric Telegraph was utilized by the Survey
immediately on the practical accomplishment of the first line built, as
a ready and improved means for determining longitude. Indeed, before
Professor Morse had demonstrated to the world the truthfulness of his
theories and experiments, the bare possibility of their success, and
availability in the instant transmission of time, had been discussed on
the Coast Survey, and the method to be first employed fully considered.
But as in the application of all things under new conditions,
experience is the teacher, and improvements were frequently made, until
finally the invention and perfection of the "chronograph" has brought
the method to a degree of precision that little more can be looked for.
This method of determining longitude, introduced, fostered and
perfected on the Coast Survey, has been more far reaching than
geographical boundaries. All civilized nations have adopted it as the
"American Method," and by the greater accuracy and reliability of the
results the whole world has profited. The saving that has accrued by
the more perfect determination of longitudes and the consequent
increased safety to commerce, may be counted by millions every year;
until one stands aghast in contemplation of the immensity of the sum,
and fears to reckon it, even approximately, much less to prophecy what
it may reach in the future. The system is but a natural sequence of the
development of the telegraph, but emphasizes in a marked degree the
spirit of progress that has ever been the active principle and guide in
the conduct of the work, and advanced its methods to a state of
perfection that has called forth the admiration of the scientific
world.

The determination of the magnetic elements has been a subject of
investigation from the early days of the survey; the knowledge sought
was essential to the navigator, and in recent years, especially, has
proved to be of the greatest practical value on shore. Limited by small
appropriations the research was at first slow. But a trust fund left by
Professor Bache, who always evinced the warmest interest in this
particular investigation, added largely to the rapidity with which
observations could be obtained, until now we have magnetic maps of the
United States of such reasonable precision that they are authoritative,
and are in almost daily demand. The results are more far reaching than
their mere tabulation for the current year, as laws have been
determined by which the declination in a locality can be ascertained
for any year in the past.

There are but few places where the needle remains stationary, or points
in the same direction, for any great length of time; it even changes
daily and during the hours of a day; but the aggregate for a year will
rarely exceed three or four minutes of arc. If we reflect then, upon
the great use made of the compass in the settlement of the continent,
and the proverbial neglect of the country surveyor of those days to
record the local variation, or declination, with his work, we may see a
little of the utility and practical purposes to which the results are
constantly being applied. Property so little thought of a hundred years
ago that a few acres more or less, lost or acquired, in its transfer
defined by compass surveys, may suddenly assume a value in these days
of progress that every square foot is worth dollars. When a dispute
arises, deeds are examined, lost or obliterated marks are diligently
sought for, perhaps one is found, surveyors are employed to run out the
lines but only make the confusion worse. Instead of a few rods that
were in doubt according to the best information, the surveyor's line
makes it acres, and litigation looms up to eat the profits of the
sudden rise, and there seems even then no satisfactory solution of the
vexing problem. How valuable then must be the fact, that it is possible
to compute the variation for years back, to the time the original
survey was made, and furnish the deflection that will re-run the lines
so clearly as to render the descriptions in the deed intelligible. This
is but a single instance of the practical application of the knowledge
gained; and if its general usefulness may be judged by the numerous
inquiries made of the Bureau, it is not unreasonable to assume that
time will bear increasing testimony of its great economic value from
those who traverse the land, as well as those who sail on the waters.

The study of the recurrence of the tides along our extensive Coast
lines, and determination of laws that would satisfy the great variance
in the different periods, was a problem of no little magnitude but the
greatest possible importance to our commerce. Much of the traffic along
the coasts literally moves with the tides, and the cost of
transportation is enhanced or diminished as the tide retards or
advances it. Hundreds of dollars of expense may be incurred on a single
cargo that must enter on the high water, but through imperfect
knowledge of the master of the ship, is forced after sighting his port,
to wait for the next tide, perhaps over night, and is driven to sea by
a sudden storm and the voyage made several days longer. Such mishaps
are not infrequent, and even at the great port of New York certain
classes of vessels must "wait for the tide." The investigation of this
complex subject has resulted in the acquirement of a knowledge that
enables the prediction of the time of high and low water, and the
height of the tidal wave, years in advance; and the mariner may now
carry with him the tables published on the subject wherever he goes,
and be independent of the doubtful communications he may otherwise
receive from the shore. How many lives, how many dollars, have been
saved by the knowledge gained?

But the investigation of the Tidal phenomena is of great scientific
importance also; and a practical assistance in the great problems
involved in the preservation and improvement of our harbors, but in
this connection it probably falls more properly under the head of that
greater study of the currents and their effects in the erosion, and
building of the shores; the movement of the sands and formation of
shoals and channels; termed "Physical Hydrography." Our commerce
depends largely on this study for its perpetuation, for without harbors
commerce must cease; and without harbors that will admit vessels of the
largest class it must deteriorate. If commerce finds increased profits
in large vessels it demands increased facilities, and the bars to the
harbors with but six or eight feet of water on them a few years ago,
must have ten, perhaps fifteen feet now, or the people must suffer
their trade to pass to some more fortunate or energetic neighbor. This
may be a hardship; but the demands of trade are inexorable, the profits
must be reasonably assured, and those who would have the trade must
comply with the requirements. Thus we see the striving for harbor
improvements; the weakest making the greatest outcry that they shall
not be left in the race. And the improvements must come in the end, or
at least be attempted, for it is as much a law of commerce not to be
hampered by small freights, as it is the law of nature that water flows
down hill.

The outcry for "improvements" never grows weaker; it is the expression
of a sincere conviction that the life of the community and the welfare
of the "back country" depend upon its success for prosperity; it will
not admit a rebuff and knows no such word as failure. Alleged
authorities are consulted, a scheme of improvement is proposed and
Congress is asked to vote the money, and finally the improvements are
attempted. To be successful, the plan must conform to known general
laws and the peculiarities of local conditions, many of which are only
ascertainable by comparison of surveys at different periods. Theories
advanced on data collected by one survey, may be strengthened or
disproved by the facts ascertained in a subsequent survey; and it is
only when the plan proposed meets the general laws and the local
conditions at the same time, that it holds out promise of success. The
study of the questions involved has been greatly aided by the work of
the Coast Survey in improvements already attempted, and will be of
greater assistance in the future. A positive knowledge of what the
local conditions were when a harbor was at its greatest capacity, is of
the greatest help in indicating the improvements necessary to restore
it, after deterioration, or to maintain it in the full measure of its
usefulness. Reliable charts do this, but they tell only half the story.
A cause must be found for the effects that have been produced, and the
remedy suggested must overcome that cause or control it, that it may
work good instead of evil. In Physical Hydrography we learn the forces
that nature has given us in the tides, the currents and the winds, and
divert them from powers of destruction, as man in his ignorance may
have led them, or in their warfare with one another they may have led
themselves; and bring their mighty influence to protect, improve or
maintain that which we originally had. Many harbors have suffered
incalculable injury through the recklessness of these who live upon
them, and whose daily bread is dependent upon their preservation; until
the evil has become so great that commercial cities have now "Harbor
Commissions," whose special function is the preservation and
improvement of the harbors. The original surveys made by Coast Survey
are the foundations on which they very generally must build, while
re-surveys point out to them the obstacles that must be overcome. And
thus it will ever be; and future generations endeavoring to meet the
demands of commerce for increased facilities, will have still greater
cause for thankfulness, that the wise men who inaugurated the work of
the Coast Survey, determined that it should be executed with every
improvement that science could devise; and that the able men who
conducted it, did not yield to the clamor for quick returns and cheap
results, of only momentary value. They will realize by the benefits
they will derive from it, as do those now living who have watched its
progress and development, that the best is the cheapest as it will be
useful through all time.

In 1871 Congress authorized the execution of a Geodetic triangulation
across the continent to connect the great primary triangulations along
the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and provided that the triangulation
should determine positions in those States that made requisite
provision for topographical and geological surveys of their own
territories. Each year since then, a small sum has been expended on
these works with gratifying results to the States that have availed
themselves of the assistance. But it was not until 1878 that Congress
designated the Bureau as the "Coast and Geodetic Survey," the official
title it bears at this time. Many comments have been passed upon the
action of Congress in extending the field of the survey to the interior
in the establishment of a "Geodetic Survey," which has been looked upon
as a purely scientific research for which the people had no immediate
use, and could well afford to wait. But if the tree can be judged by
its fruit, there will be no lack of testimony to the economic value of
the Geodetic Survey in the near future; aside from its scientific and
practical usefulness in perfecting the Survey of the Coasts. It will
eventually be the basis for a precise survey of the whole country,
determining boundaries, settling disputes, and furnishing
incontrovertible data by which later generations can reproduce the
marks placed by the local surveyors who make use of it, should they
become obliterated or lost; thereby causing a direct increase in the
security of property boundaries, and diminution in litigation that now
costs millions of dollars annually. Some of the practical advantages to
be derived from such a work, are now being demonstrated in
Massachusetts in the "Town boundary Survey," as it is called, in which
the corners, or turning points of the boundaries are being determined
trigonometrically in a subsidiary work based upon the Geodetic
triangulation of the Coast Survey. Each boundary corner in this scheme
becomes a fixed point, and the direction and distance of many other
corners are at once accurately ascertained in their true relations to
it. The town boundaries will in due time be made the bases of reference
for all local surveys and subdivisions of property; so that,
eventually, there will be developed a cadastral map of unrivaled
excellence, to supplement the Topographical map that has just been
completed.

The imperfections of our "land surveys," brilliant as the scheme was
conceived to be at the time of its inauguration, demonstrate only too
clearly the extravagance of primitive methods in matters intended to be
enduring. As time passes and property taken up under the "land survey"
becomes more valuable, the difficulty of accurately identifying
boundaries becomes more serious, until finally, it is only after long
litigation that rights are determined. The inherent defect in the land
survey to accomplish the purpose for which it was designed, lies in the
fact, that while it parcels out the land, or a section of land, in a
given number of lots, it fails to provide the means for identifying the
boundaries of the lots at any future time; the marks placed for this
purpose become obliterated or perhaps are moved by designing men, until
a large area may be involved in great uncertainty. A triangulation
covering the same ground and controlled by Geodetic work, determining
the true positions of the old marks that may be left, would be the most
economical and precise method of relieving these uncertainties and
fixing for all time the location and boundaries of the lots originally
parcelled out, by observations and marks that cannot be lost or
obliterated.

The system of weights and measures in use throughout the country is
largely due to the patient labor of the Coast Survey. Required by law
to have standards of length, the only bureau in the public service that
required such a measure of precision, it was in the natural order of
events that the Superintendent of the Survey should also be charged
with the maintenance of standards of Weight and Capacity. The
duplication of standards for the use of the people was begun under Mr.
Hassler, so long ago that the system has really grown with the
population. Wise legislation has fostered the sentiment of uniformity
until we are indeed blessed, that wherever we may be in all our broad
domain, a pound is a pound, a yard is a yard, and a bushel is a bushel.
Manufacturers receive their standards from the Bureau, and in special
cases have their products tested and certified. And individuals engaged
upon work of great refinement, seek the stamp of the Bureau, also, upon
the measures on which they must rely. But so careful is the Bureau to
preserve the integrity of its certificate, that the stamp is refused
except on weights or measures of approved metal and workmanship.
Business men realize in every day life the benefits that have been
derived from the simple legislation that inaugurated a supervision over
the weights and measures of the country early in her history, though
they may have no conception of the endless annoyances they would have
been subjected to had the preservation and duplication of standards not
been provided for.

The limited time assigned to me will not permit a detailed statement of
the researches made by the Bureau in all the different branches of
science related to the practical conduct of the work, much less a
reference, even, to the many improvements instituted in the practice of
surveying. As in the case of the observatories called upon to replace
their defective instruments with those more refined, to enable them to
furnish star places of sufficient precision to meet the improved method
of determining latitude, so has the demand ever been upon the experts
employed upon the work in all its branches. The Triangulation,
Topography, Hydrography, Astronomy and Magnetics have all passed
through several stages of development and improvement in methods and
instruments, to meet the requirements put forth by those charged with
the conduct of the work, that the full measure of harmony desired
should be secured and that they might supply the demands made upon them
for information. Imperfect results indicate defects to be remedied, and
it is to the credit of those who performed the labor, that they
overcame one difficulty after another as they were developed, until now
the methods and instruments in the hands of experts, will produce far
superior results at a much less cost than was possible at the time the
Survey was inaugurated.

The charting of the great ocean currents, has long been an interesting
investigation to hydrographers the world over. A sketch of the efforts,
projects, and devices that have been resorted to by the Coast Survey in
the attempt to unravel the mysteries of the Gulf Stream, would
exemplify the continuous demand for improvement and new exertions under
which those employed upon the work have always labored, although the
full measure of knowledge sought has not yet been obtained. But it is
not necessary to enter into these details at this time; let it suffice
that many experiments and failures pointed out the path to be followed
by subsequent observers, and stimulated to new efforts, until at last
appliances have been perfected that have already produced wonders, and
it is safe to predict, will ere many years show the ocean currents on
the charts of the world with the same relative precision that the
currents in a river or harbor can now be indicated. Lieutenant Maury
gave us current charts that were a marvel in their day, but his
information, or data, was defective, and his conclusions, therefore,
only approximate; and how to improve on the data he had, has ever since
been the subject of research. The depth of the ocean is necessarily an
important factor in the study of its features, as erroneous depths lead
to false hypotheses. The introduction by the English of a method of
sounding with a wire, has therefore proved an important advance.
American officers have perfected the apparatus and severely tested the
methods, demonstrating the reliability of the results and the total
unreliability of the old deep sea soundings taken with a line. These
accurate wire soundings have revealed new facts, disproved old theories
and formed new ones to guide future researches. So successful is the
improved apparatus that specimens of the bottom of the ocean have been
brought up from a depth of five miles. The great value of this system,
however, is not confined to the mere ascertainment of depths for the
hydrographer and cartographer, as may be readily demonstrated by
referring to the reports of the Fish Commissioner. A further step
towards improving on Maury's results; the crowning glory that is to
shed light on much that has been dark, and trace out those ocean
currents we have heretofore vainly endeavored to follow, is found in
the invention and devices of a naval officer attached to the Survey,
whereby he can anchor the ship in mid-ocean and observe the direction
and velocity of the current as from a stationary body, and with a
"current meter," also his own invention, determine the same factors
hundreds of feet below the surface; thus ascertaining not only the
movement at the surface, but the depth of the body of water that moves,
and the velocity at various depths, so that finally we have the
volume--a quantity--to be followed until it meets other currents or is
absorbed in the vast expanse. Already current observations have been
recorded with the ship anchored at the great depth of eighteen hundred
fathoms; and arrangements have been perfected that it is believed will
prove successful at the greater depth of three thousand fathoms. It is
impossible with our superficial knowledge of the great ocean currents
to estimate the benefits that will be derived from their systematic
exploration. It is not probable that the absolute determination of
their limits would produce such a revolution in navigation, as was
caused by Maury's wind charts, but it is reasonably certain they would
prove a valuable assistance to the navigator, and in the great channels
and bays of the world increase his facilities for the successful
navigation of his ship. Not a little of their value, perhaps the larger
part, will be of an indirect nature, resulting from their study by
investigators in the natural sciences interested in utilizing the
bounties of nature for benefit of man.

The Survey was instituted for the determination of facts, and the
presentation of them in an intelligible form. It does not promulgate
theories, and has no use for them beyond the assistance they may be in
indicating the line of research necessary to ascertain the facts; but
rather leaves to the student the formulation of the theories that may
be deduced from the facts presented. The publications of the Survey
are, therefore, calculated to contain only useful, practical
information, on the subjects of which they treat. An examination of
them will show this to be the case, and further, that error has more
likely been committed by over-caution, than a too free use of the
material at command. Doubtless much has been suppressed through lack of
means, as it has always been the aim of the Superintendents to expend
the appropriations in producing the most useful results, whether in
surveys to be made or facts to be published. It necessarily requires
many years to complete a precise survey over a large area; and in the
work of the Coast Survey, with the people in all sections of our
extended coast line petitioning for surveys at the same time, the
problem was beset with additional difficulties. Fortunately Congress
prescribed the method on which the work should be conducted, and that
the method permitted making surveys widely separated with the certainty
that they could eventually be joined and form a consistent whole. Soon
after the plan of reorganization of 1843 had been adopted, surveying
parties were on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts at many points; the
principal harbors and headlands with outlying shoals were first
surveyed and it was but a few years before charts of them were
published. The less important shores between these points were left for
future work, but Hydrographic examinations or Nautical surveys, were
made of them, and preliminary charts of long stretches of coast were
issued, to be followed when the surveys had been completed by the
finished chart of reliable data. So elastic was the system adopted for
the conduct of the work, that its availability was limited only by the
annual appropriations. Soon after the annexation of Texas surveying
parties were on that coast, and on the acquisition of California a few
years subsequently parties were soon at work there also; and after the
close of the war and purchase of Alaska, the immense field thus opened
was attacked with equal promptness, and a reconnaissance made that
resulted in a map of considerable accuracy. As the precise surveys were
extended the charts and plans published from the preliminary surveys
were withdrawn, the new charts necessarily having later dates.

The original surveys of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are now
practically completed, but very little more remaining to be done in a
few comparatively unimportant localities. On the Pacific coast precise
surveys supplemented by careful reconnaissance of less important
sections, define nearly the whole outline, excepting Alaska, but a
great deal of work is still required to obtain the full measure of
information necessary to accurately chart it. And in Alaska, Nautical
surveys have developed long stretches of the "Inland passage" and the
most important anchorages, supplementing the general reconnaissance of
the whole coast line. A very large proportion of our shores, however,
are subject to such radical changes from natural causes, that the
survey of the coast can never be brought to final completion.
Examinations and re-surveys are as essential as was the original work,
if the material already acquired is to be maintained in the full
measure of its usefulness, and commerce is to continue to reap the
legitimate benefit of the expenditures already incurred. Fortunately
the survey has been conducted on such sound principles it meets the
increasing requirements for accuracy demanded by the navigation of
to-day, as fully as it did the more simple needs of the navigator of
forty years ago, and it is fairly believed, whatever may be the
necessities of the future, that it will still supply the information
desired.

The Surveys are published in four hundred and fifty charts designed to
meet the various needs of the Navigator and Civil Engineer, for either
general or local purposes; over thirty thousand copies of these are
issued annually and there is a steadily increasing demand.

The assistance rendered to the armies and fleets of the Union, in the
late Civil War, is a chapter in the history of the Survey that should
not be forgotten. The office in Washington was beset with demands for
information from all over the country, for descriptions not of the
coast alone, but all sections of the interior representing the seat of
war. Fortunately the experts were there who, under the direction of
able chiefs, could collect and compile such material as was available.
The labor of the office in this cause resulted in the publication of a
series of "War Maps" of the interior, for which there is frequent
demand even at the present day. This was all additional work to a force
already overburdened in the preparation of manuscript maps and special
information, compiled from the reports of the Field parties; especially
of those localities that had only recently been surveyed. And in all
the din and excitement of the call to arms, with hosts of stalwart,
honest men assembled around him, that might give in their learning the
wisdom of the world, the controlling mind of the Survey, that had
labored diligently and sought knowledge patiently, was a chosen
counsellor of the Chief of the Nation. Declining military honors, the
profession in which he had been educated, he devoted himself with
renewed energy to assisting the nation's efforts in those special
duties he knew so well how to perform. A patriot himself of the purest
type, he inspired those around him by his ennobling spirit and zeal in
the cause.

An average of twenty parties were maintained with the Army and Navy
during all the years of the war, rendering services of acknowledged
value to the military forces. An officer of the Coast Survey piloted
the fleet into Port Royal; another led the Iron Clads in the attack on
Sumter; a third stationed the fleet in the bombardment of Jackson and
St. Philip; and a fourth rendered signal services in the assault on
Fort Fisher. They were on the Peninsula, guides in the wilderness on
the retreat to Malvern Hill; at Chickamauga, Knoxville, Missionary
Ridge; the march to the Sea and pursuit through the Carolinas; on the
Red river; before Petersburgh; in the Sounds of North Carolina; the Sea
Islands of Georgia and Florida and the swamps of Louisiana; and,
wherever they went, few in numbers though they were, they gained honor
for their cause and credit for their Chief.

The Survey of the Coast has excited the admiration of the whole
civilized world for its thoroughness and accuracy, and has not been
excelled by the most advanced nations. It has justly been claimed to be
a scientific work, as well as a practical one, for science has guided
those who have conducted it and led them through the fields of their
labors on the only sure basis to produce knowledge. And the great
knowledge that has been acquired by its scientific prosecution, is
beyond comparison with the little that would have resulted had it been
conducted on the less thorough methods of Nautical Surveying that have
been so earnestly advocated. We cannot compute the value of what has
been learned in dollars and cents; that it has saved to the Nation many
times over, all that it has cost, does not admit of a doubt. Its
educational influence has been widespread, extending beyond the seas,
and coming back to us with cheering words of encouragement and praise.
Practical men utilizing the results of the great work in the business
affairs of life, use no stinted phrases in the encomiums they bestow
upon it; Military men compelled to rely upon it in the perils of
warfare, have not found it wanting, and have given only praise for the
great help it was to them; Scientific men, ever watchful of that which
is true, have approved it the world over, and cite it as an example of
the great profit that may come to a people, free to utilize Science in
the conduct of practical work. Our institutions of learning have
adopted its publications in text-books. Our merchants venture millions
of dollars daily on the veracity of its statements, and our mariners
risk their lives on the truthfulness of the Surveys. It has added to
the prosperity of the nation in peace--to her glory in war; and when
history shall record its awards to our people, there will be no page of
the galaxy with more honor than that which bears tribute to the genius
of American Science, in the work of the Coast Survey. From ignorance
most profound we have been raised to knowledge almost perfect; and well
may the commercial communities by their associations and exchanges bear
the testimony to its value that they do, and have done in times past;
as might the whole people for the wise legislation that established the
work, that has defended it, and we may hope will perpetuate it for its
inestimable benefits to them all.




THE SURVEY AND MAP OF MASSACHUSETTS.

BY HENRY GANNETT.


The Geological Survey is engaged in making a map of the United States.
This work was commenced as an adjunct to the geological work, and was
rendered necessary by the fact that, except in limited areas, no maps
of the country on any but the smallest scales were in existence. While
these maps are thus primarily made to aid in the geologic work and in
the delineation of geologic results, they are being made of such a
character as to meet all requirements which topographic maps on their
scales should subserve.

The work is being carried on in various parts of the country and is
being prosecuted on a considerable scale, the annual output being
between 50,000 and 60,000 sq. miles of surveyed area. Commenced in
1882, the work has been extended over more than 300,000 sq. miles at
the present time. Of this work the survey of Massachusetts forms a
part.

In some of its features this survey was an experiment. It was the joint
work of the State and the United States, and, so far as I know, was the
first example of such joint work. In the summer of 1883 the U. S.
Geological Survey commenced topographic work within the State, the
scale adopted being very nearly 2 miles to an inch. Only a beginning
was made during the season, and in the following winter the Governor of
the State recommended to the legislature that if practicable advantage
be taken of the opportunity, and an arrangement for coöperation be made
between the State and the Geological Survey, by which a map upon a
larger scale and with a greater degree of detail might be obtained as a
result of this survey. Accordingly, after some correspondence with the
Director of the U. S. Geological Survey, the legislature authorized the
appointment of a commission, with power to make an arrangement with the
Director of the Geological Survey looking toward the result above
indicated, and appropriated $40,000, being half the estimated cost of
the survey upon the larger scale, $10,000 of which was to be available
the first year and $15,000 in each of the two subsequent years. The
following is the text of the bill, which is in many respects a model
legislative document:

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.

_Resolve_ to Provide for a Topographical Survey and Map of the
Commonwealth. (Chapter 72, 1884.)

_Resolved_, That the governor, with the advice and consent of the
council, be and is hereby authorized to appoint a Commission to consist
of three citizens of the Commonwealth, qualified by education and
experience in topographical science, to confer with the director or
representative of the United States Geological Survey, and to accept
its coöperation with this Commonwealth in the preparation and
completion of a contour topographical survey and map of this
Commonwealth hereby authorized to be made. Said Commission shall serve
without pay, but all their necessary expenses shall be approved by the
governor and council, and paid out of the treasury. This Commission
shall have power to arrange with the Director or representative of the
United States Geological Survey concerning this survey and map, its
scale, method, execution, form and all details of the work in behalf of
the Commonwealth, and may accept or reject the plans of the work
presented by the United States Geological Survey. Said Commission may
expend in the prosecution of this work a sum equal to that which shall
be expended therein by the United States Geological Survey, but not
exceeding ten thousand dollars, during the year ending on the first day
of June, eighteen hundred and eighty-five, and not to exceed the sum of
fifteen thousand dollars in any one year thereafter, and the total cost
to the Commonwealth of the survey shall not exceed forty thousand
dollars.


In pursuance of this resolution Gov. Robinson appointed the following
gentlemen as commissioners on the part of the State: Gen. Francis A.
Walker, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr.
Henry L. Whiting, Assistant U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and Prof.
N. S. Shaler of Harvard College. The Director of the Geological Survey,
upon being notified of this action, laid before the commissioners a
proposition for a joint survey in the following terms:

1. It is proposed to make a topographic map of the State of
Massachusetts, the expense of which shall be borne conjointly by the
Geological Survey and the State of Massachusetts.

2. The Borden triangulation and the Coast and Geodetic Survey
triangulation will be utilized as far as possible, and additional
triangulation will be made to such extent as may be necessary.

3. The topographic work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey will be
utilized as far as it extends.

4. The survey will be executed in a manner sufficiently elaborate to
construct a topographic map on a scale of 1:62,500.

5. The topographic reliefs will be represented by contour lines with
vertical intervals varying from ten to fifty feet, as such intervals
are adapted to local topography.

6. As sheets are completed from time to time copies of the same will be
transmitted to the commission.

7. When the work is completed and engraved for the Geological Survey,
the Commission, or other State authorities, may have, at the expense of
the State, transfers from the copper plates, thus saving the State the
cost of final engraving.

8. The survey will be prosecuted at the expense of the Geological
Survey for the months of July, August and September. During the last
half of the month of September the Commission shall examine the work
executed up to that time, and if the results, methods and rates of
expenditure are satisfactory to the Commission, the expenses of the
work for the month of October shall be borne by the State of
Massachusetts, for the month of November by the Geological Survey, and
the work thereafter shall continue to be paid alternately by months, by
the Geological Survey, and the State of Massachusetts severally. But as
the larger expense incident to the beginning of the work is imposed on
the Geological Survey, at the close of the work the State of
Massachusetts shall pay such additional amount as may be necessary to
equalize the expenditures; provided that the total expenditure of the
State of Massachusetts shall not exceed forty thousand dollars
($40,000); and if the completion of the survey of the State of
Massachusetts and the preparation of the necessary maps on the plan
adopted by the survey shall exceed in amount eighty thousand dollars
($80,000), then such excess shall be wholly paid by the Geological
Survey.

The commissioners suggested some minor amendments to this proposition,
which were accepted, and under these provisions work was commenced and
carried forward continuously to its completion. The field work of the
state was finished with the close of the season last fall, and the
drawing of the maps is now substantially done. The work was done in the
field with such accuracy and such degree of detail as to warrant the
publication of the map upon a scale of one inch to a mile, or, what is
practically the same thing, 1:62,500. The relief of the surface is
represented by the contour lines, or lines of equal elevation above
sea, traced at vertical intervals of 20 feet. These contour lines,
which are becoming a common feature of modern maps, add an additional
element. They express quantitatively the third dimension of the
country, viz: the elevation. An inspection of such a map not only shows
the horizontal location of points, but their vertical location as well.
It gives the elevations of all parts of the country represented, above
the sea.

The map represents all streams of magnitude sufficient to find place on
the scale, and all bodies of water, as lakes, swamps, marshes, etc. In
the matter of culture, in which definition is included all the works of
man, it seemed desirable to represent only such as are of a relatively
permanent nature, and to exclude temporary works, for the very apparent
reason that if temporary works were included, the map would be not only
a constant subject for revision, but even in the interval between the
survey and the publication, the culture might change to a large extent,
and the published map be correspondingly incorrect from the outset. In
searching for a criterion which could be consistently followed in
distinguishing between culture which should and should not be
represented, it was found that by limiting the representation to that
which may be denominated public culture, that is, that which has
relation to communities, as distinguished from individuals, a
consistent line could be drawn. Adopting this criterion, the map
contains all towns, cities, villages, post offices,--in short, all
settlements of any magnitude, all railroads and all roads, with the
exception of such as are merely private ways, all public canals,
tunnels, bridges, ferries and dams. There were excluded under this
ruling isolated houses, private roads, fences and the various kinds of
crops, etc. Forest areas are shown. Subsequently, however, in response
to the urgent wish of the commissioners, the survey consented to locate
the houses upon the maps, although in the engraving these have been
omitted. The omission of all private culture leaves the maps very
simple and easy to interpret. For convenience the field work was done
upon a larger scale than that upon which the maps were to be published,
viz: a scale of 1:30,000, or a little more than double the publication
scale. The map of the state as planned is comprised in 52 atlas sheets,
each of which comprises 15 minutes of latitude by 15 minutes of
longitude and an area of about 225 square miles. These sheets upon the
scale of publication are about 17½ inches by 13 in dimensions. In two
or three cases along the coast it seemed to be in the interest of
economy to vary from this arrangement slightly, in order to avoid the
multiplication of sheets. Many of the sheets upon the borders of the
state project over into other states, and, in cases where the area
lying without the state was small, the survey was extended beyond the
limits of the state, in order to complete the sheets.

Every map is a sketch, which is corrected by the geometric location of
a greater or less number of points. Assuming entire accuracy in the
location of the points, that is, assuming that the errors of location
of the points are not perceptible upon the map, the measure of accuracy
of the map consists in the number of these geometric locations per unit
of surface, per square inch, if you will, of the map. The greater the
number of these locations the greater the accuracy of the map, but
however numerous they may be the map itself is a sketch, the points
located being simply mathematical points. Whatever method be employed
for making these geometric locations, the sketching is substantially
the same everywhere. The methods of making these locations must differ
with the character of the country, as regards the amount and form of
its relief, the prevalence of forests and other circumstances. There
are two general methods of making the geometric locations used in
surveying; one, by triangulation; the other by the measurement of a
single direction and a distance, which is the method employed in
traverse surveying. In practice, the two methods are often combined
with one another. Both methods have been employed in Massachusetts. The
fundamental basis of the work was the triangulation which had been
carried over the state by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. By this
survey points were located at wide intervals over the state. Besides
this there was executed between 1830 and 1840, at the expense of the
state, a triangulation known as the "Borden Survey." This located a
much larger number of points, but less precisely. The Coast and
Geodetic Survey kindly undertook the adjustment of this triangulation
to an agreement with its own work, and, as many of the lines were
common to the two pieces of work, the locations made by the Borden
Survey were by this adjustment greatly strengthened. Even after this
work was done, however, there remained considerable areas which were
destitute of located points, and it became necessary to supplement it.
This was done in part by the Coast and Geodetic Survey and in part by
the Geological Survey. By these several agencies upwards of 500 points
were made available for the use of the topographers. These are in the
main well distributed, furnishing upon each sheet a sufficiency, while
upon many the number is greatly in excess of the requirements.

The work of location has been done in different parts of the state by
different methods as seemed most applicable to the differing conditions
of relief, forest covering and culture. Throughout most of the western
part of the state the work was done entirely with the plane table,
using the method of intersections as the means of location. Each plane
table sheet comprised one-half of an atlas sheet, cut along a parallel
of latitude. The plane tabler, starting with three or more locations
upon his sheet, furnished by the triangulation, expanded over the sheet
a graphic triangulation, locating thereby a considerable number of
points, before commencing detailed work. This was done as rapidly as
possible consistent with a high degree of precision. The reason for
covering the sheet with the graphic triangulation beforehand lay in the
necessity for locating a considerable number of points before the sheet
had opportunity to become distorted by alternations of moisture and
drying. This done, the plane tabler went on with his usual routine of
work, locating minor points and sketching the topography in contours.
The map was as far as possible completed upon the stations, with the
country in view. Elevations were determined as the work progressed,
with the vertical circle of the alidade, and minor differences of
elevation between points whose height was known were measured by
aneroid barometer.

In this work several different forms of plane table have been employed.
It was commenced with the large heavy movement designed I believe by
the Coast and Geodetic Survey. This, however, was found unnecessarily
heavy and cumbersome, and it was discovered that the requisite degree
of stability could be obtained with much less weight. For this plane
table movement there was soon substituted another form in use in the
Coast and Geodetic Survey, which is very much lighter. This was soon
improved by taking off the slow motion in azimuth, which was found to
be unnecessary, and the addition of more powerful clamps, for the
purposing of rendering it more stable. A still more stable form,
however, coupled with even less weight, was designed by Mr. W. D.
Johnson, of the U. S. G. S. and was immediately adopted. This is
substantially a modification of the ball and socket movement. It
consists of two cups of large size fitting closely to one another and
working within one another in such a way as to allow of the adjustment
in level, and the clamping of the level adjustment independently of the
azimuth movement, clamps for both level and azimuth adjustments being
underneath the instrument. This form is extremely stable, admits of
quick adjustment and leveling, and it has been from the time of its
invention in general use in this state and elsewhere in the Survey.

In the undulating, forest-covered, region in the southeastern part of
the state it was found impracticable to use economically the method of
intersections, and resort was had to the traverse method for making
locations. In this method, as is well known, one station is located
from another by the measurement of a distance and direction, the line
of stations being connected at each end either upon stations in the
triangulation or upon other lines, while from the stations in these
traverse lines, points off the lines are located by intersections, if
practicable, or by distance and direction measurement. For this kind of
work the plane table, at least such a plane table as is generally in
use is an inconvenient instrument. The plane table with the telescopic
alidade is too cumbersome an instrument to be carried about and set up
as frequently as is necessary in this work. Therefore for this purpose
theodolites, fitted with stadia wires and stadia rods, have been used.
Distances are measured by the angles subtended by the stadia wires upon
the rod, whose divisions are of known length, while the directions are
measured by the compass attached to the theodolite, and differences of
elevation by spirit level and vertical angles. With this instrument
lines were run along all the roads and along the principal streams in
this part of the state and from these lines the country lying between
them was located and sketched.

In the northeastern and in much of the middle portion of the state a
mixed method of work was employed, the plane table being used for
carrying on the intersection work wherever it could be done, while by
traversing the roads, their details, which could not be obtained by the
plane table in this region, were reached. These traverses were platted
in the office and the maps drawn from notes and sketches made in the
field.

The degree of accuracy of the map depends upon the accuracy of the
locations, their number and the uniformity of their distribution. Of
their accuracy it is only necessary to state that their errors are not
sufficiently large to be appreciable upon the scale of the map, for
instance the scale being one inch to a mile, an error of 50 feet in the
location of a point would be upon the map but one hundredth of an
inch,--a barely appreciable quantity, and it is of course easy to make
the locations within this limit. Of the number of locations per unit of
map surface I shall give statistics drawn from the full experience of
the Survey in this state. The area surveyed by the method of
intersections exclusively comprises 3,500 square miles, or about
two-fifths of the state. In this area 3,123 stations were occupied with
the plane table, or slightly less than one to a square mile, or,
measured upon the map, one to a square inch. Besides these, 17,846
points were located in this area by intersections, making, with the
occupied stations, a total of 20,969 locations within the area, or 6.2
horizontal locations per square inch. In the same area the heights of
34,893 points were measured, being 10 per square inch. I am expressing
these figures in terms of inches of the final map, because it is the
map with which we are concerned.

The area surveyed by the traverse method is 2500 sq. miles. In this
area 5615 miles of traverse lines were run, being 2.2 linear inches per
square inch of the map. In running these lines 46,524 stations were
made with the theodolite, being 8.3 per linear mile of traverse and
18.6 per sq. inch of map. The number of measurements of height was
92,561, being 37 to the square inch.

The area surveyed by the mixed method comprised 3000 sq. miles. In this
900 stations were made with the plane table, and from them 3718 points
were located by intersection, making altogether 4618 points located
with the plane table. In addition to this, 6767 miles of traverse were
run, being 2.2 linear miles per square mile of area. In these traverses
31,708 instrumental stations were made, or 4.7 per linear mile and 10.6
per sq. mile. The sum of the plane table stations, locations, and the
traverse stations, which makes up the total of horizontal locations in
this area, is 36,326, being a total of 12.1 points per sq. inch of map.
The number of measurements of height in this area is 67,119, being 22.4
per sq. inch. It will be seen that the number of horizontal locations
and of height measurements in the area traversed is much greater than
in that surveyed by the intersection method, and it might be inferred
that the former work is better controlled than the latter. I do not
judge, however, that this is the case, owing to the fact that traverse
stations are not of as much value for purposes of location as those by
intersection. The latter are selected points. The former are not
selected points, but on the contrary, a large proportion of them are
located simply for carrying forward the line and are of no further
service, and very few of them are such as would be fitted for the
purpose of controlling areas.

Within the area surveyed by traverse nearly every mile of road has been
run. With the exception of those in the cities, nearly every house and
every church in the commonwealth has been located, either by
intersection with the plane table or by traverse.

The organization of the surveying parties has been of the simplest
character. Plane table work has been carried on by one man with an
assistant, the latter doing little more than attend the plane tabler
and assist him in carrying the instruments. Each of these little plane
table parties was furnished with a horse and buggy for transportation.
The organization for traverse work has been equally simple, consisting
of a traverse man and a rodman. As a horse and buggy would be an
impediment in this work, this feature of the outfit has been omitted.
In the mixed work the traverse men have been under the immediate
control of the plane tabler, so that their movements have been directed
by him in detail. The average output per working day of the plane
tabler has been for the whole survey 3.1 sq. miles, and of the traverse
man 2.8 sq. miles, and, as the expenses of the former have been
slightly greater than those of the latter, the cost per square mile of
the two methods of work has been substantially the same.

The average cost per square mile of the survey of the State has been a
trifle less than $13. This includes the salaries of all men engaged
upon the work during the field season, their traveling, subsistence and
all other expenses, the salaries of the men engaged in drawing the maps
in the office, the cost of supervision and of disbursement,--in short
all expenses of whatever character, incurred in the production of the
map.




PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY.


ABSTRACT OF MINUTES.

_First Regular Meeting, Feb. 17, 1888_.--Held in the Law Lecture room
of Columbian University, the president, Mr. Hubbard, in the chair.

The president delivered an inaugural address.

Major J. W. Powell lectured on the Physiography of the United States.

_Second Regular Meeting, March 3, 1888_.--Held in the Law Lecture room
of the Columbian University, vice-president Bartlett in the chair.

Paper: Patagonia, by Mr. W. E. Curtiss.

_Third Regular Meeting, March 17, 1888_.--Held in the Assembly Hall of
the Cosmos Club, the president, Mr. Hubbard, in the chair.

Paper: Physical Geography of the Sea, by Commander J. R. Bartlett.

_Fourth Regular Meeting, March 31, 1888_.--Held in the Assembly Hall of
the Cosmos Club, the president, Mr. Hubbard, in the chair.

Discussion was had on the proposed Physical Atlas of the United States,
participated in by Messrs. Gannett, Gilbert, Ogden, Greely, Marcus
Baker, Willis, Bartlett, Merriam, Ward, Henshaw and Abbe.

_Fifth Regular Meeting, April 13, 1888_.--Held in the Assembly Hall of
the Cosmos Club, vice-president Merriam in the chair.

The discussion of the proposed Physical Atlas of the United States was
continued, and was participated in by Messrs. Marcus Baker, Greely,
Willis, Cosmos Mindeleff, Gilbert Thompson, Kenaston, Gannett and Van
Deman.

Paper: The Survey of the Coast, by Mr. Herbert G. Ogden.--(_Published
in Vol. 1, No. 1, "National Geographic Magazine."_)

_Sixth Regular Meeting, April 27, 1888_.--Held in the Assembly Hall of
the Cosmos Club, the president, Mr. Hubbard, in the chair.

Papers: The Great Storm of March 11-14, 1888, by Gen. A. W. Greely and
Mr. Everett Hayden.--(_Published in Vol. 1, No. 1, "National Geographic
Magazine."_)

Geographic Methods in Geologic Investigation, by Prof. W. M.
Davis.--(_Published in Vol. 1, No. 1, "National Geographic Magazine."_)

_Seventh Regular Meeting, May 11, 1888_.--Held in the Assembly Hall of
the Cosmos Club, vice-president Merriam in the chair.

Papers: The Survey and Map of Massachusetts, by Mr. Henry
Gannett.--(_Published in Vol. 1, No. 1, "National Geographic
Magazine."_)

Graphic Triangulation, by Mr. W. D. Johnson.

_Eighth Regular Meeting, May 25, 1888_.--Held in the Assembly Hall of
the Cosmos Club, vice-president Merriam in the chair.

Papers: The Classification of Geographic Forms by Genesis, by Mr. W. J.
McGee.--(_Published in Vol. 1, No. 1, "National Geographic Magazine."_)

The Classification of Topographic Forms, by Mr. G. K. Gilbert.

The North Winds of California, by Mr. Gilbert Thompson.




NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY.

CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION.


This is to Certify that we whose names are hereunto subscribed,
citizens of the United States, and a majority of whom are citizens of
the District of Columbia, have associated ourselves together pursuant
to the provisions of the Revised Statutes of the United States relating
to the District of Columbia, and of an act of Congress entitled: "An
Act to amend the Revised Statutes of the United States relating to the
District of Columbia and for other purposes," approved April 23, 1884,
as a Society and body corporate, to be known by the corporate name of
the National Geographic Society, and to continue for the term of one
hundred years.

The particular objects and business of this Society are: to increase
and diffuse geographic knowledge; to publish the transactions of the
Society; to publish a periodical magazine, and other works relating to
the science of geography; to dispose of such publications by sale or
otherwise; and to acquire a library, under the restrictions and
regulations to be established in its By-Laws.

The affairs, funds and property of the corporation shall be in the
general charge of Managers, whose number for the first year shall be
seventeen, consisting of a President, five Vice Presidents, a Recording
Secretary, a Corresponding Secretary, a Treasurer and eight other
members, styled Managers, all of whom shall be chosen by ballot at the
annual meeting. The duties of these officers and of other officers and
standing committees, and their terms and the manner of their election
or appointment shall be provided for in the By-Laws.

  GARDINER G. HUBBARD.  J. W. POWELL.
  C. E. DUTTON.         HENRY GANNETT.
  O. H. TITTMANN.       A. H. THOMPSON.
  J. HOWARD GORE.       A. W. GREELY.
  C. HART MERRIAM.      HENRY MITCHELL.
  J. R. BARTLETT.       GEORGE KENNAN.
  ROGERS BIRNIE, JR.    MARCUS BAKER.
             GILBERT THOMPSON.




BY-LAWS.


ARTICLE I.

NAME.

The name of this Society is the "NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY."


ARTICLE II.

OBJECT.

The object of this Society is the increase and diffusion of geographic
knowledge.


ARTICLE III.

MEMBERSHIP.

The members of this Society shall be persons who are interested in
geographic science. There may be three classes of members, active,
corresponding and honorary.

Active members only shall be members of the corporation, shall be
entitled to vote and may hold office.

Persons residing at a distance from the District of Columbia may become
corresponding members of the Society. They may attend its meetings,
take part in its proceedings and contribute to its publications.

Persons who have attained eminence by the promotion of geographic
science may become honorary members.

Corresponding members may be transferred to active membership, and,
conversely, active members may be transferred to corresponding
membership by the Board of Managers.

The election of members shall be entrusted to the Board of Managers.
Nominations for membership shall be signed by three active members of
the Society; shall state the qualifications of the candidate; and shall
be presented to the Recording Secretary. No nomination shall receive
action by the Board of Managers until it has been before it at least
two weeks, and no candidate shall be elected unless he receives at
least nine affirmative votes.


ARTICLE IV.

OFFICERS.

The Officers of the Society shall be a President, five Vice Presidents,
a Treasurer, a Recording Secretary and a Corresponding Secretary.

The above mentioned officers, together with eight other members of the
Society, known as Managers, shall constitute a Board of Managers.
Officers and Managers shall be elected annually, by ballot, a majority
of the votes cast being necessary to an election; they shall hold
office until their successors are elected; and shall have power to fill
vacancies occurring during the year.

The President, or, in his absence, one of the Vice Presidents, shall
preside at the meetings of the Society and of the Board of Managers; he
shall, together with the Recording Secretary, sign all written
contracts and obligations of the Society, and attest its corporate
seal; he shall deliver an annual address to the Society.

Each Vice President shall represent in the Society and in the Board of
Managers, a department of geographic science, as follows;

  Geography of the Land,
  Geography of the Sea,
  Geography of the Air,
  Geography of Life,
  Geographic Art.

The Vice Presidents shall foster their respective departments within
the Society; they shall present annually to the Society summaries of
the work done throughout the world in their several departments.

They shall be elected to their respective departments by the Society.

The Vice Presidents, together with the two Secretaries, shall
constitute a committee of the Board of Managers on Communications and
Publications.

The Treasurer shall have charge of the funds of the Society, shall
collect the dues, and shall disburse under the direction of the Board
of Managers; he shall make an annual report; and his accounts shall be
audited annually by a committee of the Society and at such other times
as the Board of Managers may direct.

The Secretaries shall record the proceedings of the Society and of the
Board of Managers; shall conduct the correspondence of the Society; and
shall make an annual report.

The Board of Managers shall transact all the business of the Society,
except such as may be presented at the annual meeting. It shall
formulate rules for the conduct of its business. Nine members of the
Board of Managers shall constitute a quorum.


ARTICLE V.

DUES.

The annual dues of active members shall be five dollars, payable during
the month of January, or, in the case of new members, within thirty
days after election.

Annual dues may be commuted and life membership acquired by the payment
of fifty dollars.

No member in arrears shall vote at the annual meeting, and the names of
members two years in arrears shall be dropped from the roll of
membership.


ARTICLE VI.

MEETINGS.

Regular meetings of the Society shall be held on alternate Fridays,
from October until May, inclusive, and, excepting the annual meeting,
shall be devoted to communications. The three regular meetings next
preceding the annual meeting shall be devoted to the President's annual
address and the reports of the Vice Presidents.

The annual meeting for the election of officers shall be the last
regular meeting in December.

A quorum for the transaction of business shall consist of twenty-five
active members.

Special meetings may be called by the President.


ARTICLE VII.

AMENDMENTS.

These by-laws may be amended by a two-thirds vote of the members
present at a regular meeting, provided that notice of the proposed
amendment has been given in writing at a regular meeting at least four
weeks previously.




OFFICERS.

1888.


_President_.

GARDINER G. HUBBARD.


_Vice Presidents_.

HERBERT G. OGDEN.

J. R. BARTLETT.

A. W. GREELY.

C. HART MERRIAM.

A. H. THOMPSON.


_Treasurer_.

CHARLES J. BELL.


_Secretaries_.

HENRY GANNETT.

GEORGE KENNAN.


_Managers_.

CLEVELAND ABBE.

MARCUS BAKER.

ROGERS BIRNIE, JR.

G. BROWN GOODE.

WILLARD D. JOHNSON.

HENRY MITCHELL.

W. B. POWELL.

JAMES C. WELLING.




MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY.


_a_., original members.

_l_., life members.

In cases where no city is given in the address, Washington, D. C., is
to be understood.


Cleveland Abbe, _a_. _l_.,    U. S. Signal Office.

S. T. Abert,                  725 20th st.

Jeremiah Ahern,               U. S. Geological Survey.

J. A. Allen,                  Am. Museum of Nat. Hist., New York.

Clifford Arrick, _a_.,        U. S. Geol. Survey.

Miss E. L. Atkinson,          918 Mass. ave.

W. R. Atkinson, _a_.,         U. S. Geol. Survey.

Miss S. C. Ayres, _a_.,       U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.

Frank Baker, _a_.,            1315 Corcoran st.

Marcus Baker, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

H. L. Baldwin, _a_.,            "         "

E. C. Barnard, _a_.,            "         "

J. R. Bartlett, _a_.,         Navy Department.

C. C. Bassett, _a_.,          U. S. Geol. Survey.

Lewis J. Battle,                "         "

A. Graham Bell, _a_.,         1336 19th st.

Chas. J. Bell, _a_.,          1437 Penna. ave.

Julius Bien, _a_.,            New York City.

Morris Bien, _a_.,            U. S. Geol. Survey.

Rogers Birnie, Jr., _a_.,     War Department.

H. B. Blair, _a_.,            U. S. Geol. Survey.

J. H. Blodget, _a_.,            "         "

S. H. Bodfish, _a_.,            "         "

C. O. Boutelle, _a_.,         U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

Andrew Braid, _a_.,             "         "         "

L. D. Brent,                  U. S. Geol. Survey.

H. G. Brewer, _a_.,           Hydrographic Office.

Wm. Brewster,                 Cambridge, Mass.

Miss L. V. Brown,             1312 S st.

A. E. Burton, _a_.,           Boston, Mass.

Z. T. Carpenter, _a_.,        P. O. Box 387.

R. H. Chapman, _a_.,          U. S. Geol. Survey.

H. S. Chase, _a_.,            Navy Department.

T. M. Chatard, _a_.,          U. S. Geol. Survey.

A. H. Clark,                  National Museum.

E. B. Clark, _a_.,            U. S. Geol. Survey.

Verplanck Colvin, _a_.,       Albany, N. Y.

E. E. Court,                  Hydrographic Office.

R. D. Cummin, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

W. E. Curtis, _a_.,           513 14th st.

Mrs. Caroline H. Dall, _a_.,  1603 O st.

C. C. Darwin, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

Geo. Davidson, _a_.,          San Francisco, Cal.

Arthur P. Davis, _a_.,        U. S. Geol. Survey.

Mrs. A. P. Davis,

Wm. M. Davis,                 Philadelphia, Pa.

W. H. Dennis, _a_.,           U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

J. S. Diller, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

E. M. Douglas, _a_.,            "         "

B. W. Duke, _a_.,               "         "

A. F. Dunnington, _a_.,         "         "

A. H. Dutton, _a_.,           Hydrographic Office.

C. E. Dutton, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

G. L. Dyer,                   Navy Department.

G. W. Dyer, _a_.,             1003 F st.

J. R. Edson, _a_.,            1003 F st.

W. P. Elliott, _a_.,          Navy Department.

George A. Fairfield, _a_.,    U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

Walter Fairfield, _a_.,         "         "         "

B. Fernow, _a_.,              Dept. of Agriculture.

J. P. Finley, _a_.,           U. S. Signal Office.

E. G. Fischer, _a_.,          U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

C. H. Fitch, _a_.,            U. S. Geol. Survey.

L. C. Fletcher, _a_.,           "         "

Robert Fletcher, _a_.,        Army Medical Museum.

W. C. Ford, _a_.,             State Department.

Gerard Fowke, _a_.,           Bureau of Ethnology.

N. P. Gage, _a_.,             Seaton School.

Henry Gannett, _a_.,          U. S. Geol. Survey.

S. S. Gannett, _a_.,            "         "

G. K. Gilbert, _a_.,            "         "

D. C. Gilman, _a_.,           Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, Md.

G. Brown Goode, _a_.,         National Museum.

R. U. Goode, _a_.,            U. S. Geol. Survey.

Edward Goodfellow, _a_.,      U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

R. O. Gordon, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

F. D. Granger,                U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

A. W. Greely, _a_.,           U. S. Signal Office.

Morris M. Green,              Dept. of Agriculture.

W. T. Griswold, _a_.,         U. S. Geol. Survey.

F. P. Gulliver,                 "         "

Merrill Hackett, _a_.,          "         "

Dabney C. Harrison, _a_.,       "         "

E. M. Hasbrouck,                "         "

E. E. Haskell, _a_.,          U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

Everett Hayden, _a_.,         Navy Department.

A. J. Henry, _a_.,            U. S. Signal Office.

H. W. Henshaw, _a_.,          Bureau of Ethnology.

Gustave Herrle, _a_.,         Hydrographic Office.

W. H. Herron, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

George A. Hill, _a_.,         U. S. Signal Office.

W. F. Hillebrand, _a_.,       U. S. Geol. Survey.

H. L. Hodgkins, _a_.,         Columbian University.

C. L. Hopkins,                Dept. of Agriculture.

D. J. Howell, _a_.,           1003 F st.

E. E. Howell, _a_.,           Rochester, N. Y.

W. T. Hornaday, _a_.,         National Museum.

Gardiner G. Hubbard, _a_.,    1328 Connecticut ave.

C. T. Iardella, _a_.,         U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

J. H. Jennings, _a_.,         U. S. Geol. Survey.

A. B. Johnson, _a_.,          Light House Board.

S. P. Johnson,                Le Droit Park.

W. D. Johnson, _a_.,          U. S. Geol. Survey.

Anton Karl, _a_.,               "         "

S. H. Kaufmann, _a_.,         1000 M st.

C. A. Kenaston, _a_.,         Howard University.

George Kennan, _a_.,          1318 Massachusetts ave.

Mark B. Kerr, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

E. F. Kimball,                Le Droit Park.

S. I. Kimball, _a_.,            "         "

Harry King, _a_.,             U. S. Geol. Survey.

F. J. Knight, _a_.,             "         "

F. H. Knowlton, _a_.,           "         "

Peter Koch, _a_.,             Bozeman, Mont.

Wm. Kramer,                   U. S. Geol. Survey.

W. E. Lackland, _a_.,           "         "

Boynton Leach,                Hydrographic Office.

R. L. Lerch, _a_.,                "          "

A. Lindenkohl, _a_.,          U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

H. Lindenkohl, _a_.,            "         "         "

R. L. Longstreet, _a_.,       U. S. Geol. Survey.

W. H. Lovell,                   "         "

James A. Maher, _a_.,           "         "

Van H. Manning, Jr., _a_.,      "         "

Henry L. Marindin,            U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

C. C. Marsh, _a_.,            Navy Department.

Washington Matthews, _a_.,    Army Med. Museum.

W. J. McGee, _a_.,            U. S. Geol. Survey.

R. H. McKee, _a_.,              "         "

R. C. McKinney, _a_.,           "         "

George Melville, _a_.,        Navy Department.

A. G. Menocal, _a_.,            "         "

C. Hart Merriam, _a_.,        Dept. of Agriculture.

Cosmos Mindeleff,             Bureau of Ethnology.

Victor Mindeleff,               "         "

Henry Mitchell, _a_.,         Nantucket, Mass.

A. T. Mosman, _a_.,           U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

Robert Muldrow, _a_.,         U. S. Geol. Survey.

A. E. Murlin,                   "         "

Miss J. C. Myers,             804 11th st.

E. W. F. Natter,              U. S. Geol. Survey.

Louis Nell, _a_.,               "         "

Charles Nordhoff, _a_.,         "         "

Herbert G. Ogden, _a_.,       U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

T. S. O'Leary, _a_.,          Hydrographic Office.

F. H. Parsons, _a_.,          U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

W. W. Patton, _a_.,           Howard University.

A. C. Peale, _a_.,            U. S. Geol. Survey.

E. T. Perkins, Jr., _a_.,       "         "

G. H. Peters, _a_.,           Navy Department.

W. J. Peters, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

J. W. Powell, _a_.,             "         "

W. B. Powell, _a_.,           Franklin School.

D. W. Prentiss, _a_.,         1101 14th st.

J. H. Renshawe, _a_.,         U. S. Geol. Survey.

Eugene Ricksecker, _a_.,      Portland, Oreg.

C. V. Riley, _a_.,            Dept. of Agriculture.

Homer P. Ritter, _a_.,        U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

A. C. Roberts, _a_.,          Hydrographic Office.

I. C. Russell, _a_.,          U. S. Geol. Survey.

C. S. Sargent, _a_.,          Brookline, Mass.

W. S. Schley, _a_.,           Navy Department.

S. H. Scudder, _a_.,          Cambridge, Mass.

N. S. Shaler, _a_.,             "         "

John S. Siebert,              Hydrographic Office.

Edwin Smith, _a_.,            U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

Middleton Smith, _a_.,        1616 19th st.

E. J. Sommer, _a_.,           U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

Leonhard Stejneger, _a_.,     National Museum.

*James Stevenson, _a_.,       U. S. Geol. Survey.

Chas. H. Stockton, _a_.,      Navy Department.

Frank Sutton,                 U. S. Geol. Survey.

Mary C. Thomas, _a_.,         U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

A. H. Thompson, _a_.,         U. S. Geol. Survey.

Gilbert Thompson, _a_.,         "         "

Laurence Thompson, _a_.,      Denver, Colorado.

R. E. Thompson,               War Department.

O. H. Tittmann, _a_.,         U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

R. M. Towson, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

W. L. Trenholm, _a_.,         Treasury Dept.

Frank Tweedy, _a_.,           U. S. Geol. Survey.

Chas. F. Urquhart, _a_.,        "         "

H. C. Van Deman,              Dept. of Agriculture.

George Vasey, _a_.,             "         "

W. I. Vinal, _a_.,            U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

A. Von Haake,                 Post Office Dept.

C. D. Walcott, _a_.,          U. S. Geol. Survey.

H. S. Wallace, _a_.,            "         "

Lester F. Ward, _a_.,           "         "

W. H. Weed, _a_.,               "         "

J. B. Weir, _a_.,             U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

J. C. Welling, _a_.,          Columbian University.

C. A. White, _a_.,            U. S. Geol. Survey.

C. H. White,                  Navy Department.

J. T. Wilder, _a_. _l_.,      Roan Mt., Tenn.

Miss Mary Wilder,               "         "

Bailey Willis, _a_.,          U. S. Geol. Survey.

Mrs. Bailey Willis,

A. E. Wilson,                 U. S. Geol. Survey.

H. M. Wilson, _a_.,             "         "

Thos. Wilson,                 National Museum.

Isaac Winston,                U. S. Coast and Geod. Survey.

R. S. Woodward, _a_.,         U. S. Geol. Survey.

H. C. Yarrow, _a_.,           Army Medical Museum.

Chas. M. Yeates, _a_.,        U. S. Geol. Survey.

  * Deceased.