Various

“ We have looked for some years to the west as the region where river history should be illustrated, because it was there that the pioneers in this branch of study taught us the lessons on which our further work must depend. But home study as well as distant travel has its rewards, and with the progress of good topographic work on this side of the country we confidently await much instruction from a close acquaintance with the curious histories of many of our rivers which we know now only by name. ”

“ I have learned so much from the doctrine of baselevelling, as presented in Major Powell's writings, that I shall hope to profit by the lesson of the Uinta drainage as well: that is, the possibility that an apparently sound conclusion may be overturned when new processes that bear upon it are discovered. It is here said that the drainage of the Watchung crescent in New Jersey is an example of partial adjustment following a superimposed origin: hence the necessity of watching closely for the discovery of new principles in the history of river work that may call for a revision of this conclusion. ”

“ From these simple and common examples, we shall some day, when our knowledge of rivers is better developed, be able to form a complete series leading to what is generally understood as the typical antecedent river, which has outlived deformation as well as elevation without suffering either deflection or ponding. Large rivers of strong slope, well enclosed in steep-sided valleys, or in other words vigorous adolescent rivers have the best opportunity to persist across a belt of rising or writhing country,2 because a great deformation would be required to throw them from their courses. ”

“ The Green river itself rises many miles north of the Uinta range, traverses a relatively low basin before reaching the flank of the mountains, and then instead of turning away, it boldly enters the great uplift and trenches it from side to side in a profound cañon, flowing out to the southwest on its way to the Colorado. There is relatively low ground at the eastern end of the range, several thousand feet lower than the summits of the range on either side of the Green river cañon, and many thousand feet lower than the restored crest of the great uplift ”

“ Only in this way can the deep gap in Rocky Hill be explained. The river is thus consequent on the tilting of the plain, and yet antecedent to the accompanying faulting. It cannot be called an original stream, for it had an ancestor in its very channel. It is not a purely consequent stream, for it runs against the heaved side of a fault. It is not a strictly antecedent stream, for it flows in a direction determined by a disturbance that occurred late in its life. It is too exceptional a stream to have a generic name. We cannot expect to find many others like it. ”

“ Neither from the Chukchi coast nor to the eastward could any extension of the land be observed. If we should continue on our course and happen to have contrary winds we could not get back to Kamchatka before the close of navigation and might be obliged to winter in that region, not only without a harbor, but where no fuel could anywhere be obtained, where the native people do not acknowledge the authority of the Russian government, but are wholly independent and united against us in refusing to pay tribute. ”

“ There is the younger central baselevelled plain, developed during Tertiary time, or thereabouts, on the weaker Triassic and Cretaceous beds; and the associated valleys of the same age that have been sunk into the weakest rocks of the Highlands. There are the shallow valleys in the Central plain, of the latest post-tertiary cycle, requiring the name of this region to be changed from plain, as it was lately, to pastplain, as it is now. The first cycle, in which the Schooley peneplain was produced, witnessed the accomplishment of a great work ”

“ Like the uplift of the Schooley (Highland) peneplain, the uplift of the Central plain, in passing from the second to the third cycle, was not uniform throughout, but was greater in one place than in another. In the neighborhood of the lower Raritan river, a distinct though gentle slope to the northwest is apparent in the unconsumed surface of the pastplain; but this strong river runs southeastward against the slope; it is an anaclinal stream. The tilting of the pastplain is moderate, and its rocks are weak; the river is large and strong. ”

“ The simplest examples of antecedent rivers are therefore found in regions that have been broadly elevated with the gentlest changes of slope, so as to enter a new cycle of topographic development, all the streams retaining their previous courses, but gaining ability to deepen their former channels down to the new baselevel; such streams may be called "revived." Examples of revived streams are very common; nearly all the streams of the Highlands of New Jersey are of this kind; all the streams of central and western Pennsylvania seem to belong in the same class. ”

“ Finally, the land as a whole has been raised a little since the making of the newer plain, and shallow valleys interrupt its broad surface. It is no longer a true plain; it has become a pastplain. A few words may be allowed me concerning these terms, peneplain and pastplain. Given sufficient time for the action of denuding forces on a mass of land standing fixed with reference to a constant baselevel, and it must be worn down so low and so smooth, that it would fully deserve the name of plain. But it is very unusual for a mass of land to maintain a fixed position as long as is here assumed. ”

“ An examination of Struve's paper does not bear out the implication of Lauridsen's reference, as Struve not only makes no mention whatever of Bering's observations there but specifically states that the first observations of precision made in this part of Siberia were those of Krassilnikoff who accompanied Bering's second expedition in 1741. It would seem extraordinary that a determination so important for geography as that of Bering and his companion should be unknown to so distinguished an astronomer as Struve who must have had access to all the archives of the early explorations by Russia. ”

“ No one who had sailed between St. Demetrius and East Cape could have sanctioned such a position for the island with honesty. If a different island is intended the question arises, Why is St. Demetrius omitted? This second chart is obviously the basis upon which in D'Anville's chart of Asia (1753) the configuration of the eastern extreme of Siberia is based, and I suspect that the chart of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg and the reproduction of Jefferys, were also derived from it as far as this region is concerned. ”

“ Existing examples of compound, composite rivers are seen in the Catawba, the Yadkin-Pedee, the Cape Fear and the Neuse rivers of North Carolina, which all rise on the inland crystalline area, and traverse the coastal quaternary plain before reaching the sea. But unlike these, there must have been, when the old submerged land rose with the Cretaceous cover on its back, numerous small streams whose drainage area lay entirely within the Cretaceous plain. These were simple streams, flowing over a structure of one kind and one age. ”

“ Of these people some are idolaters, others believe in nothing and are strangers to all honesty. The Russians who live in Kamchatka and the indigenes grow no grain and have no domestic animals except draught dogs. They dress and subsist upon what they can get, principally fish, roots and berries, in summer time wild fowl and large marine animals. At present in the wilderness of Yakutsk, the convent, which is of the same age as the Kamchatka churches, cultivates barley, hemp and turnips. ”

“ One cannot doubt however that it was the island now known as St. Paul when we recall the fact that there are no other islands than the Pribiloff group, in that latitude or within that general area of Bering Sea. The southern Cape of the Chukchi Peninsula, Chukotski Cape of Bering and Müller is represented two degrees too far south. Preobrazhenia Bay is not recognizable but the name is transferred to the bight west and north of Cape Bering of our present charts. This part of the coast was not however approached by Synd, who spent much time on the coast of Kamchatka. ”

“ It is stated by Powell that not only the Green but even the smaller streams of the Uintas are of origin antecedent to the mountains. He writes: "the explanation of the cañons of Green river will assist us in understanding the origin of the lateral valleys and cañons. The streams were there before the mountains were made—that is, the streams carved out the valleys and left the mountains. The direction of the streams is indisputable evidence that the elevation of the fold was so slow as not to divert the streams, although the total amount of elevation was many thousands of feet. ”

“ Rivers of all classes as a rule develop during their adolescence and more mature growth certain "subsequent" branches that were not in any way represented in the early youth of the system. Thus the indefinite members of the consequent drainage of the Jura mountains have developed subsequent streams on soft beds of monoclinal and anticlinal structures, where there could not possibly have been any consequent drainage lines at the birth of this system, unless we admit the supposed fracturing of the anticlinal crests, which seems unnecessary to say the least. ”

“ On the Tunguska, Ilima and Lena rivers to the Vitim live the so-called Tunguses, people who own reindeer which they use as draught animals, while those who do not own deer live near the rivers on fish and travel in canoes made of birch bark. These people are idolaters.
From Uskutsk on fifteen barges, in the spring of 1726, we descended the Lena to Yakutsk. From the river Vitim down to the Lena, on both banks live Yakuts with a smaller proportion of Tunguses. ”

“ If these streams were descended directly or by revival from ancestors antecedent to or consequent upon the monoclinal tilting of the Triassic formation, they could not possibly, in the long time and deep denudation that the region has endured, have down to the present time maintained courses so little adjusted to the structure of their basins. In so long a time as has elapsed since the tilting of the Triassic formation, the divides would have taken their places on the crest of the trap ridges and not behind the crest on the back slope. ”

“ We find that all the authorities who published in the last century copies of Bering's map and accounts of his expedition arrived at what Lauridsen calls an "interesting misunderstanding."
This misunderstanding was that he had sailed along the Chukchi coast, as above suggested, and that his farthest point was in latitude 67° 18' on the coast of northeastern Siberia.
How was it possible that men of such exceptional intelligence as Du Halde and D'Anville and Müller, and Hazius, and Euler and Campbell were all so deceived? ”

“ The dead are not covered with earth but are dragged out and left to be eaten by dogs. The house of a man who has died is abandoned. Among the Kariak people it is the custom to burn the body, although this is forbidden.
By the time of our arrival at the Lower Kamchatka post the ship-timber for our vessel was in large part prepared, and upon the 4th of April, 1728, was put upon the stocks for the vessel, which, with God's help, was finished by the 10th of July, the timber being hauled by dogs. ”

“ Being a large stream, it might persist in an anaclinal course through the northwestward monocline formed by the Jurassic uplift of the Triassic beds, although the smaller streams of the region were then probably extinguished, to be replaced by a new system consequent upon the new order of things.
Large rivers, more or less persistent in the face of opposing disturbance, therefore appear to be generally recognized ”

“ Chaplin's reckoning as given by Lauridsen would have put the Gabriel more than fifty miles off shore when the land spoken of would have been out of sight. Our hypothesis puts her about twenty-eight miles N.E. true from East Cape when the high land of either shore, under favorable circumstances, might have been seen even if the sky were overcast. Clouds do not interfere with seeing, unless attended by fog or haze. During this day the Gabriel had sailed between East Cape and the islands now known as the Diomedes ”

“ Small streams or large ones of faint slope in an open low country are more easily deflected. From the typical antecedent river, the series may be continued by examples in which even the larger streams are less or more ponded or deflected by the deformation, until at the end of the series there is a complete extinction of the antecedent drainage and the establishment of an entirely original consequent drainage. ”

“ The frost strikes early into the ground in this region and the absence of cattle renders it difficult for the people to plow.
The natives described and from whom the yassak [tribute] is collected, belong to the Russian Empire and are all savages. They are known for their dirt and bad passions. If a woman or any animal brings forth twins then one of them is smothered, the hour it is born, and it is regarded as a great fault if one does not smother one of the two. ”