Valleys Formed by Rivers
One strong voice before 1860 appears to have called Americans back to truths expounded by Desmarest and Hutton. Dana in 185020 amply demonstrated that valleys on the Pacific Islands owe neither their origin, position or form to the sea or to structural factors. They are the work of existing streams which have eaten their way headwards. Even the valleys of Australia cited by Darwin as type examples of ocean work are shown to be products of normal stream work. Dana went further and gave a permanent place to the Huttonian idea that many bays, inlets, and fiords are but the drowned mouths of stream-made valleys. In the same volume in which these conclusions appeared, Hubbard (1850)21 announced that in New Hampshire the “deepest valleys are but valleys of erosion.” The theory that valleys are excavated by streams which occupy them was all but universally accepted after F. V. Hayden’s description22 of Rocky Mountain gorges (1862) and Newberry’s interpretation of the canyons of Arizona (1862); but the scientific world was poorly prepared for Newberry’s statement:23
“Like the great canons of the Colorado, the broad valleys bounded by high and perpendicular walls belong to a vast system of erosion, and are wholly due to the action of water.... The first and most plausible explanation of the striking surface features of this region will be to refer them to that embodiment of resistless power—the sword that cuts so many geological knots—volcanic force. The Great Canon of the Colorado would be considered a vast fissure or rent in the earth’s crust, and the abrupt termination of the steps of the table lands as marking lines of displacement. This theory though so plausible, and so entirely adequate to explain all the striking phenomena, lacks a single requisite to acceptance, and that is truth.”
With such stupendous examples in mind, the dictum of Hutton seemed reasonable: “there is no spot on which rivers may not formerly have run.”