. Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Institution. Archives; Discoveries in science. 566 REPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. Up to 1880 live reports of progress were issued, dealing mainly with economic problems. The plateau country drained by the Colorado River offers facilities for the study of geological problems such as are, perhaps, equaled nowhere else in the world. This is especially true with reference to problems relating to stratigraphic succession, of uplift Powell's Exploration L .. *> . » , \ , of the Grand Can
. Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Institution. Archives; Discoveries in science. 566 REPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. Up to 1880 live reports of progress were issued, dealing mainly with economic problems. The plateau country drained by the Colorado River offers facilities for the study of geological problems such as are, perhaps, equaled nowhere else in the world. This is especially true with reference to problems relating to stratigraphic succession, of uplift Powell's Exploration L .. *> . » , \ , of the Grand Canyon, with a minimum amount of contortion of the beds, and 1869=1874. „ . _. , of erosion. Ihe plateau nature of the country was recognized by Newberry while with the Ives expedition in 1860, and by Blake in connection with the Pacific Railroad surveys in 1850. It remained, however, for Powell, Gilbert, and Dutton to first bring out the salient features of the geology of the region and to work out the problems in a way that, to quote the words of Emmons", has formed the starting point of modern physical geography. In the summer of 1869, J. W. Powell, a retired officer of the Federal Army, made a boat trip clown the Colorado, starting from Green River City on the Union Pacific Railroad May 24, and emerging from the mouth of the Black Canyon, nearly 900 miles below, on August 30 following—a journey that, to quote Emmons again, '•'is unequaled in the annals of geographical exploration for the courage and daring dis- played in its ; In his reports on these explorations,b which were made and published under direc- tion of the Smithsonian Institution, Powell called attention to the fact that the canyons are gorges of corrosion and due to the action of the river upon the rocks, which were undergoing a gradual elevation. As he expressed it, the river pre- served its level, but the mountains were lifted up; as the saw revolves on a fixed pivot while the log thr
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