directed irresistibly toward the accomplishment of this conception.  Again in 1868 he was in the field with the same financial backing, to which was added a small allotment from the Illinois Industrial University at Champaign, Illinois, a State school.  All but Mrs. Powell and his brother Walter, of this 1868 party, returned East on the approach of autumn, while with these and several trappers and hunters, among whom were the two Rowlands, William Dunn, and William Rhodes Hawkins, afterwards of his party to explore the canyons, he crossed the range to White River and wintered there near the camp of Chief Douglass and his band of Utes.  When spring came in 1869 he went out to Granger, on the Union Pacific Railway, and there disposed of his mules and outfit, proceeding immediately to Washington, where he induced Congress to pass a joint resolution endorsed by General Grant authorising him to draw rations from Western army posts for a party of twelve men while engaged in making collections for public institutions.  Never was assistance better deserved.  Then he returned to Illinois and obtained from the trustees of the Normal University permission to again divert his salary and the other funds to Western work.  The trustees of the Illinois Industrial University allotted him five hundred dollars, and the Chicago Academy of Sciences, through the influence of Dr. Andrews, the curator, also contributed two hundred and fifty or five hundred dollars.  In addition some personal friends contributed small sums.

The object proposed was to make collections in natural history to be shared accordingly with the contributing institutions.  While these collections were one of Powell’s objects, others were the examination of the geology, and particularly the solution of the greatest remaining geographical problem of the United States, the canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers.  The Green, as has been explained in preceding pages, was known as far as the Uinta Mountains, and here and there at widely separated points on down to about Gunnison Valley.  But there were long gaps, and below Gunnison Crossing as far as the Grand Wash the knowledge of the canyons as already pointed out was vague in the extreme.  The altitude of Green River Station, Wyoming, was known to be about six thousand feet above sea level, and that of the mouth of the Virgen less than one thousand.  How the river made up this difference was not understood and this problem was what Powell now confronted.  His fortitude, nerve, courage, and war experience served him well in this endeavour upon which he started, as previously described, in the spring of 1869.  The War Department and perhaps the Smithsonian Institution, furnished some instruments.  This expedition met with so many disasters that Powell deemed a second descent in the interest of science desirable, and for a continuation of his explorations, Congress voted in 1870 an appropriation of ten thousand dollars.  This second expedition