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[> —<o BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF

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' ARCHIBALD ROBERTSON MARVINE.
By J. W. POWELL.
(Reap June 3, 1876.)

Mr. AgcurpaLtD R. MarvineE was born at Auburn, New York,
Sept. 26, 1848. Whena youth he attended the military school
at Sing Sing, and subsequently the School of Technology at
Philadelphia. Leaving the latter he entered the Hooper Mining
School of Harvard University, from which he graduated in 1870,
when he was appointed instructor in the same school, a position
which he held until July, 1871.

In 1869 Professor J. D. Wuitnery, of Harvard University,
conducted a party of students on a trip among the Park Moun-
tains of Colorado for the purpose of making practical studies in
geography and geology. On this trip Mr. Marvin, who was
one of the party, was instructed in both these branches. ‘he
field of study was happily selected, being a portion of the Park
Mountain region including South Park and the lofty mountains
with which it is walled. The geographie features of the region
in its larger outlines are simple. On the north is the great Col-
orado Range, a wilderness of crags and peaks; on the south the
ereat group of mountains of which Pike’s Peak is the culmina-

_ tion; on the east the Front Range, a low, broad, flat-top moun-

tain mass; on the west the Park Range.

The Colorado Range along its main course west of Denver
has a north and south axis, but near its southern end it sweeps
westward in a great curve and abuts against the Park Range,
and this southern curve forms the boundary between North and
Middle Parks. Just here where the Park and Colorado Ranges
unite, South Platte River heads in snow banks that even mid-
summer suns cannot destroy, and running eastward at the foot
of the Colorado Range, it breaks through the Front Range by a
deep, narrow cafion set with crags and pinnacles. In the midst
of the Park are low subsidiary ranges chiefly trending north and
south, and between these ranges there are long, narrow valleys
heading in the Pike’s Peak Mountains and stretching northward
to the foot of the great Colorado Range, where the streams that

meander through these valleys yield their waters to the South
Platte.
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il APPENDIX.

The party climbed Pike’s Peak, and, standing on its summit,
the district of country just described—South Park with its moun-
tain walls, its interior ranges, its deep valleys, its wild gorges,
its silver rivers and its crystal lakes, was all before them in one
grand view. In such a field the young men were instructed in
determining latitudes and longitudes, in determining relative
positions by triangulation, and in delineating the more important
topographic features.

But mountains and valleys have something more than positions
and magnitudes to interest the student of nature—they have
structure; and in this structure are revealed the great facts of
geology relating to displacement, degradation, sedimentation,
metamorphism, and extravasation; and the field of study pre-
sented many interesting facts in each of these categories of phe-
nomena. The great ranges stood before them to attest to the
displacement or corrugation of the Earth’s surface in mountain
wrinkles, and these mountains are seen to be but residuary frag-
ments of upheaved masses as plainly giving evidence of degra
dation as they do of displacement; while the methods of degra-
dation by the wash of rains, by the sapping of cliffs, by the
corrosion of water channels, and by the sculpture of ice, could
be studied on every hand.

To Marvine, the summer’s study was rich in results. He
learned that a mountain was more than a mountain, that it was
a fragment of earth’s history

In the summer of 1860 Mr. MArviInE was appointed assistant
geologist to attend the celebrated Santo Domingo Expedition,
and on his return he prepared a brief report on the economic
geology of some portions of that island which he visited. This
was published with the report of the Commission of Inquiry to
Santo Domingo by authority of Congress. It was a special and
brief study, and contains little of general interest to the geologist.

In 1871 he received an appointment as astronomer to the
Wheeler Expedition, in which capacity he served for several
months,‘and then continued several months longer as geologist.
His report on the geology of a district of country through which
he passed, embraced in southern Nevada, northwestern Arizona,
and southern California, has lately been published as one of the
papers in Volume III. of the United States Engineer Reports
of the Explorations and Surveys west of the 100th Meridian,
Lieut. George M. WHEELER in charge. The region of country
studied by Mr. Marvine during these months of field service was
one of great complexity. On one side of his general route of
travel an extensive series of sedimentary formations are revealed,
embracing Tertiary, Mesozoic, and Paleozoic groups; on the
other, low mountain ranges are seen rising from a desert sea of
sand, the ranges being composed of more ancient sediments and
schists. The former is a portion of the Plateau Province, the

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APPENDIX. lil

latter a portion of the Desert Province. Both the Plateau sedi-
ments and the Desert Range rocks are greatly masked by beds
of basalt and other extravasated material. Back and forth across
the zone separating the plateaus from the Basin Ranges he passed
in long rapid marches, studying now the one, now the other re-
gion, and ever examining the volcanic phenomena by which he
was surrounded, and yet his keen and well-trained eye caught
the more important topographic and geologic features, and he
has given in his report a singularly clear and comprehensive ac-
count of the region when we consider the circumstances under
which it was made. He recognized the principal structural cha-
racteristics of the plateaus, and in some instances the structure
of the Basin Ranges. He recognized that he was travelling on
the border between the two. , He discovered the sequence of the
sedimentary groups of the Plateau Province, and collected suffi-
cient paleontological evidence to demonstrate his conclusions.
He closes this report with the following characteristic and vivid
description of the Desert Range Province: “It is a great de-
pressed mountainous region, deeply buried beneath the sediments
which have been eroded from its own mountains by a surrounding
sea. This action has filled the valleys, gradually covered the
foot-hills, and, removing the débris from the mountain bases as
fast as formed, has left their clean and sharp-cut tops projecting
above the surrounding plain without the usual accompaniment of
foot-hills and border region which surround nearly all ranges, the
changes on the contrary from mountain slope to the gentle incline
of the plain being generally very abrupt. The mountains seem
to be of ancient plutonic or metamorphic rocks, or else of lavas;
the former more often forming ranges, of which the majority trend
about northwest and southeast; the latter more frequently occur-
ring as striking isolated peaks. The detrital filling varies from
gravels traceable to the rocks of adjacent hills, to the finest of
alluvium, the dust of which the winds often carry for miles into
Northern Arizona. It is sparsely sprinkled with a dreary vege-
tation, composed principally of scattered individuals of many
species of mimose and of cacti, the most striking of the latter
being the tall and isolated Cereus giganteus.

“To stand on the edge of the Pifal Mountains upon a quiet day
and look off upon these wonderfully silent and arid plains, with
their innumerable “lost mountains’ rising like precipitous islands
from the sea, all bathed in most delicate tints, and lying death-
like in the peculiar, intangible afternoon haze of this region, which
seems to magnify distant details rather than to subdue them,
impresses one most deeply. The wonderful monotony seems
uninclosable by an horizon; and one imagines the scene to con-
tinue on the same and have no end. Though the gulf and ocean
are three hundred miles away, yet here is the continent’s real
southwestern border.

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iy APPENDIX.

“Were the waters of the Gulf of California suddenly changed
to gravel and sand, with its precipitous and rugged mountain
islands left projecting from the surface as now, there would be |
so [produced an excellent representation of these deserts, and,
geologically speaking, it is but as yesterday that precisely the
same action was going on over all this enormous area as is now
in progress in the more confined region of the Gulf. The slow
elevation which has in part probably caused the gradual receding
of the waters, may still be extending the area of our continent.”

Up to this time Mr. Marvine’s geological studies had been
somewhat general and desultory—necessarily so from the condi-
tions under which they were made. But in the following summer
he was engaged with Professor PUMPELLY in the Keweenaw Cop-
per Region on the shore of Lake Superior, and his report on this
work was published by authority of the Legislature of Michigan.

His work during this season was confined to a narrow area,
and was special, and is a fine example of painstaking, minute
geological study. It consisted in tracing a series of geological
beds through two or three counties lying along the lake shore.
This was done by careful triangulation and levelling of the gene-
ral area, and the following of the dips and strikes of the beds
and measuring their thicknesses, and by carefully analyzing their
lithologic and mineralogic constituents. The entire work is pre-
sented in a series of sections and tables carefully and skilfully
arranged, with a general discussion, sufficiently elaborate to set
forth the relations of all the important facts. His work is thus
a fine model for what must be done throughout the Lake Superior
region before any general discussion of the geology of the district
can be made which will have permanent value.

Mr. Marvine thus demonstrated that his experience in the
fragmentary work incident to a geological reconnoissance,had
not led to such habits of hasty conclusion as to incapacitate him
for the more thorough work of a geological survey.

Yet up to this time his work was but fragmentary, but in
March, 1873, he was given a position as geologist in the corps
of the U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Terri-
tories under Dr. HAYDEN.

During the following season his field of research embraced the
region ‘of Middle Park in Colorado Territory, including the
mountains by which it is inclosed, and extending eastward to
the Great Plains, embracing an area of about 5000 square miles.
How thoroughly his work was done, how clearly the geography
and geology of the region was set forth in his report, and what
important conclusions he reached in mountain structure and geo-
logical history, can only be fully appreciated by a careful and
thorough reading of his report. It is impossible to understand
a discussion of the geological structure of a region without first
fully grasping the character and magnitude of its geographic

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APPENDIX. 1

features. Geology is revealed in topography. The details of
topography ‘may seem simple, and taken severally may be simple,
but in groups they become extremely complex, and few persons
readily comprehend the order and system with which topographic
features are gathered about the great geological structure lines
of aregion. It is easy to be lost in a maze of hills and a con-
fusion of mountain peaks unless the grand topographic forms on
which the hills and mountains are sculptured are seen with a
mental vision that reaches further than the eye. He who can see
a mountain range, or a river drainage, or a flock of hills, is more
rare than a poet. In anatomy there is a place for apophysis and
sinus, for arch and. foramen; so in a mountain range there is a
place for peak and valley, a place for amphitheatre and caiion,
and the geologist who seeks to reveal the embryology and growth
of a mountain range must first become thoroughly familiar with
its anatomy. A hill may be a hundred or five hundred feet high,
a mountain a thousand or ten thousand feet in altitude, and these
may be interesting facts, but they give no clue to hill or mountain
structure, and have values of the same order as the size of animals
in systematic zodlogy. Not every geologist has been able to
understand the geography of a region studied, and very few
indeed have been able to describe the geography of a district.
Something more is needed than to make mention of mountains
and hills, of valleys and cafions; the order in which they are
arranged must be set forth, and their relations to the general
structure must be explained.

Mr. MarvineE went into a region which to the common eye would
seem but a wild confusion of mountains and valleys, of crags and
gorges, but in that single summer’s study he discovered the sub-
lime order in which the mountains and hills and ridges were
placed, and in the first few pages of his report he sets forth this
order in language clear and simple, giving a plain bird’s-eye view
of all that five thousand square miles of mountain crag and cafion
gorge. Then he divides the area into three national geographic
divisions, and hence geologically distinct; the zone of ridges
separating the plains from the mountains or mountain border
region; the great range and Middle Park. In the first he found
a series of sedimentary groups having a total thickness of more
than 7000 feet, and a natural grouping was first discovered ;
then he studied the overlaps and out-thinnings, the changes in
conditions of sedimentation, the grand displacements due to or-
ographic movements, and the minor concomitant flexures and
faults. All of these facts he presents in orderly arrangement
with appropriate diagrams and sections. His chapter on this
topic is full of facts and yet it never wearies the reader, for every
fact has a meaning. The geological literature of America is
greatly burdened with inconsequent facts: A geologist repairs
to the field, finds a sandstone, measures it and it is ninety-nine

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vi APPENDIX.

feet in thickness; the next day he finds a limestone, measures it
and it is a hundred and one feet in thickness. He returns and
reports, and his report has the same value as that of the zodlo-
gist who went into the woods and found an animal with four legs.
and atail, and the tail was four inches long as determined by
careful estimation or barometric measurement. But the thick-.
ness of the limestone or the length of the animal’s tail are facts
of. very little value except as related to those of greater signifi-
cance.

The geological report which has no reference to geological
structure is dreary reading, and less interesting as a recreation
than a table of logarithms; while the latter has a logical arrange-
ment and may serve some important purpose, and the student
may find a meaning in the figures, the former is purposeless and
meaningless. Some of our geological literature could be burned
and no harm done. O that a pope would rise and a holy catho-
lic church of geologists—a pope with will to issue a bull for the”
burning of all geological literature unsanctified by geological
meaning. Then there would remain the writings of those inspired:
with the knowledge that a mountain has structure, that every hill
has an appointed place and every river runs in a channel foreor-
dained by earth’s evolution, and Marvine’s work would be a book
of genesis in the bible of the geological priesthood. To those
members of the Society who have not made a special study of
American geology and its literature, this statement may seem an
exaggerated panegyric; but let him wade by months and years
of study through the volumes of valueless records by which geo-
logical literature is encumbered and then take up MARVINE’s paper
on the Middle Park district and his appreciation will be meagre,
his enthusiasm cold if he does not exclaim that order has moved
on chaos.

In his third chapter Mr. Marvine discusses the structure of the
great Colorado Range. ‘Two great facts appear: first, that the
range is composed of metamorphic schists and granites having a
detailed structure independent of the grand topographic forms
now existing, but related to a topography antecedent to the pre-
sent and which was buried by encroaching waters prior to the
upheaval of what we now know as the great Colorado Range ;
and, second, that the great orographic movements producing the
present grand features of the country brought up once more that
ancient and buried land; and the present drainage system, deter-
mined by these later upheavals, while conforming to the later
structure, was superimposed on the earlier; and his facts are
assembled in such manner in this chapter that his grand conclu-
sions are fully demonstrated.

His fourth chapter is on the Middle Park proper. This is an
exceedingly complex piece of geology, and to properly character-
ize the chapter it would be necessary to substantially reproduce

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vill APPENDIX.

he was especially attracted to chemical physics, and had he lived
to continue his labors as a geologist, his predilection for these
studies would doubtless have greatly modified all his geological
investigations.

Personally and socially his.modesty was great, and this trait
of character is evinced in his writings; and those who knew him
intimately loved him for his honesty, a trait of character that
appeared everywhere in his collection of facts and in every step
made toward conclusions, and he leaves behind many to mourn
the logs of his genial presence, and the labors of his vigorous and
comprehensive mind.

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APPENDIX. vii

it. The vestiges of earth’s history found here where the sea and
clouds have alternate dominion over the land, are set forth in a
manner simple and perspicuous.

Oue very important conclusion reached by Mr. Marvin must
not be neglected, viz., that the ranges about this park were not
upheaved “as great appressed folds, but that the upheaval was
along lines by faulting, or narrow zones by abrupt flexure—an
important characteristic of displacement throughout much of the
interior of this contineut—and these facts are eventually destined
to modify if not revolutionize the geological theories concerning
the constitution of the earth.

After the preparation of this report, in the spring of 1874,
Mr. MaArVINE again returned to Colorado Territory for the pur-
pose of extending his geological studies in the region west of -
Middle Park. From my intimacy with Mr. Marvine I know |
well with what eagerness he resumed these studies and how
anxious he was to. pursue lines of investigation suggested by
facts discovered in his previous work. And so, fired with an
enthusiasm for the discovery of the secrets of the mountains, he
plunged into the wilderness far away from civilization. All that
summer long he toiled, climbing only where the geologist would
climb, seeing only what the geologist could see; and still eager
for more knowledge, he pressed his work until the desolate moun-
tains were mantled with the winter’s snow, and a further study
of geology was impossible; then he returned.’ But the labor and
hardships of the summer’s travel, though unheeded at the time,
were too great for his physical endurance, and on his return he
was prostrated with the disease that held him in firm grasp for
many long weeks. Slowly during the following spring he par-
tially recovered, and then, although he was not able to work with
vigor, those with whom he was more intimate and who loved to
talk with him on the subjects of his investigation, learned the
great results and significance of the past year’s study. Not
recovering health and strength, he was unable to return to the
field or to prepare the results of his former work for publication ;
still he worked on his map, coloring it for the purpose of showing
the geographic distribution of the geological formations within
his field of study, and this was done with elaboration. Then he
thoroughly arranged and systematized his notes and determined
his plan of discussion. Here his work ended, for health and
strength failed again, and he relapsed into a condition that his
friends soon found was hopeless. On the second of March, in
the city of Washington, Marving, the young, enthusiastic, and
brilliant geologist, died.

Mr. Marv INE’S S preparation for work as a geologist was very
thorough, and for one of his age, very broad. In chemistry,
astronomy, and physics, his studies had been careful and thorough,
and his grasp of these subjects was comprehensive and firm; but

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