from the mould-boards of old ploughs found on the abandoned plantations.  All this time wherever possible he continued his studies in natural science.  He made a collection of fossils unearthed in the trenches around Vicksburg, land and river shells from the Mississippi swamps, and a large collection of mosses while on detached duty in Illinois.  He also familiarised himself with the geology of regions through which the armies passed to which he was attached.  Time and again he was commended for his services and declined promotion to higher rank in other arms of the service.  “He loved the scarlet facings of the artillery, and there was something in the ranking of batteries and the power of cannon,” writes Thompson, “that was akin to the workings of his own mind.”

In 1862 he was married to his cousin, Miss Emma Dean, of Detroit, who still lives in Washington with their daughter, an only child.  Mrs. Powell was often his companion in the army and early Western journeys.  Upon the return of Powell to civil life in 1865 he was tendered a nomination to a lucrative political office in Du Page County, Illinois, and at the same time he was offered the chair of geology in the Wesleyan University, a struggling Methodist College at Bloomington, Illinois.  There was no hesitation on his part.  He declined the political honour and its emoluments and accepted the professorship, which he retained two years.  At the session of the Illinois Legislature in 1867 a bill was passed, largely through his effort, creating a professorship of geology and natural history in the State Normal University at Normal, Illinois, with a salary of fifteen hundred dollars and an appropriation of one thousand dollars annually to increase the geological and zoological collections.  He was elected to this chair and at about the same time was also chosen curator of the Illinois State Natural History Society, whose collections were domiciled in the museum of the Normal University.  Attracted by the Far West as a field for profitable scientific research, the summer of 1867 found him using his salary and the other available funds to defray the expense of an expedition to the then Territory of Colorado for the purpose of securing collections.  He organised and outfitted at Plattsmouth, Nebraska.  All his assistants were volunteers except the cook.  A. H. Thompson, afterwards so closely associated with him in the detailed exploration of the Colorado and in subsequent survey work, was the entomologist of the party.  They crossed the plains with mule teams to Denver, worked along the east slope of the Front Range, climbed Pike’s Peak, and went westerly as far as South Park.  Without realising it, apparently, Powell was all these years steadily approaching the great exploit of his life, as if led on and prepared by some unseen power.  Now the project of exploring the mysterious gorges of which he heard such wonderful tales dawned upon him.  It was as near an inspiration as can be imagined.  Henceforth his mind and energy were