Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. Vol. 13, no. 3.

Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. Vol. 13, no. 3. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/128 (page 140)
    Island, in the Antarctic Regions. Presented by Staff-Commander Davis, r.n. A Bust of Richard Lander, Esq., the first Gold Medalist, discoverer of the course of the River Niger. Presented by Mrs. Elsom. Abyssinia, Eastern portion, showing the line of march of the Army under Lieut.-General Lord Napier of Magdala. On five sheets. Presented by Sir H. James, r.e., Director of Ordnance Survey. Admiralty Charts, 11 in number. Presented by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, through the Hydrographer, Capt. G. H. Richards. The Chairman, in announcing the subject of the paper, said, that it related to a region which had never been explored by scientific travellers, and there- fore offered peculiar interest to geographers, whose motto was terra incognita. The region west and south-west of the Rocky Mountains was interesting in a geological point of view, and also in its ethnology. To the south of it were those peculiar people the Aztecs. The physical character of the country in some respects resembled Abyssinia and Thibet, where the rivers cut deeply into the earth and formed enormous ravines or canons, which served as natural barriers against the extension of nomadic races. The following Papers were read :— 1. On the Physical Geography of the Colorado Basin and the Great Basin Region of North America. By W. A. Bell, Junr., m.b., f.r.g.s. The country treated of in this paper lies between the Rocky Moun- tains on the east and the Sierra Nevada of California on the west, and was shown by the author to present many very remarkable topographical features. A description was first given of the Colo- rado Basin. Dr. Bell joined the survey expedition dispatched by the Union Pacific Railway Company to determine the best route for a southern line of railway through New Mexico and Arizona to California. lie traversed the western part of America between the 33rd and 31st parallels of latitude, rccrossed the great interior plateaux farther north, and travelled through Sonora from north to south. The basin of the Colorado has an area of 200,000 square miles, and the Great Basin an area of 280,000 square miles. These basins are separated by the range of the Wahsatch Mountains, which have a breadth of 60 miles. The basin of the Colorado is of triangular shape, and consists of successive table-lands of from 4000 to 7000, or even 8000 feet in elevation, having abrupt edges and generally barren surfaces. The Green and Grand rivers passing over the table-lands have formed for themselves deep canons. The great canon of the Colo- rado has a length of 300 miles, and tlio sides of its gorge rise from 1000 feet to nearly a mile in perpendicular height. Last year James