ABSTRACT
The years 1908–12 mark the hey-day of Davis’ work as an educator, scientist and international figure. Surely no man did more for his own cause than Davis. He wrote the play, chose the scenery, collected the audience and acted most of the parts. During this period he conducted a most sustained and elaborate campaign to advertise his theories. The European trip and visiting professorship at the University of Berlin during the years 1908 and early 1909 have already been described. They formed a mighty prelude to still greater efforts in the form of a much longer geographical excursion in Europe, a visiting professorship in Paris and an international trans-continental expedition in the United States. There were, of course, other events that might in lesser men have been highlights but in Davis become incidental and liable to be forgotten. Among these was a field course in advanced physiography in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado in the summer of 1910. It was sponsored by the Harvard Summer School and was attended by Mark Jefferson, a former student of Davis, and two other graduate American geographers. Jefferson made ample notes, sketches and photographs and, if we may quote from the fine book recently written on him by G. J. Martin,
listened intently to Davis’ exposition for more than three weeks in July. Following the departure of Davis, Jefferson spent a further few days with Gregory in the region before composing a 31 page paper entitled ‘The Rocky Mountains of Colorado’, which paper was later submitted to Davis for the latter’s approval. The paper commenced with a statement of purpose:
It was proposed to exemplify the method of description by structure, process and stage by applying it to a number of points in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado visited this summer. The general method has been to note salient items in the topography from the point of view of origin, with these to frame a theory of the genesis of the land forms of today, and then, turning the attention away from the present details, to deduce the logical consequences of the theory adopted, and finally to confront these deductions with the facts of nature. The last two items amount to prediction from theory of forms not observed and then looking for them.
For a thorough account of the physiography of the party’s mountain study one may read ‘The Colorado Front Range’ by W. M. Davis published in 1911. Probably this sixty-two page statement accounts for the reason why Jefferson never published his own writing in whole or in part. More important than an account of the itinerary was the confrontation of Davis by a Jefferson thinking, teaching, and writing a variety of human geography. The letters Jefferson sent to his wife illustrate very clearly his great regard for Davis’ powers of observation and interpretation and reveal his almost fiercely held belief that human geography had a greater appeal than physiography and would one day win for itself total respect from geographers. Excerpts from the correspondence provide:
The rocks were splendid and the weather all right. W. M. Davis showed us many points I should not have seen …
Davis made us see Pene-plains and cycles that I should never have seen without him …
You would laugh to see our strenuous endeavors to draw and suit our leader …
Davis is perpetually hammering at us to describe, to make a theory of origin, to deduce all imaginable consequences of this theory and then to compare these consequences with the facts; also to draw and I think we are making progress.
To finish the work that he urges, I have to spend one week in field work and one in writing up report which I will then send to him. We have to see pene-plains everywhere! After that Gregory and I who are to work together, will spend a week or two out here seeing some of the more human interest.
( Martin, 1968, pp. 135–6; including quotations from letters written by Mark Jefferson to his wife, Theodora, 10 July 1910–28 July 1910)