When Sherman
Began His March To The Sea, Powell Was Given Command Of Twenty Batteries Of
Artillery.
He served on the staff of General Thomas at the battle of
Nashville, and was mustered out in the early summer of 1865.
Even during
these exciting years, his beloved science not only never lost its
attraction for him, but he utilized every possible opportunity to add to
his knowledge. He made a collection of fossils unearthed in the digging of
the Vicksburg trenches, and from the Mississippi swamps gathered land and
river shells. In Illinois, while on detached service, mosses engaged his
attention, and he was indefatigable in studying the geology of the region
through which his section of the army passed.
Begins Geological Explorations in Colorado. After the war he declined a
lucrative political office to take the chair of geology in the struggling
Wesleyan University, of Bloomington, Illinois. He had married his cousin,
Emma Dean, in 1862, and, after a glimpse of the country in 1867, he took
her and a party that he had organized, to make geological explorations in
Colorado. This was the beginning of his work that ultimately wrested the
secrets from the mysterious canyons of the Colorado River. This preliminary
work led him on, as it were, to the greater work, and in 1869, on May 24,
with four boats, the Emma Dean, Kitty Clyde's Sister, Maid of the Canyon,
and No-Name, and nine companions, John C. Sumner, William H. Dunn, Walter
H. Powell, G. Y. Bradley, O. G. Howland, Seneca Howland, Frank Goodman,
William R. Hawkins, and Andres Hall, he set forth from Green River City.
The simple records of that trip, and a later one made in 1871-1873 (in
which Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, the author of "The Romance of the Colorado
River", was engaged, read like a romance.
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