Wednesday Book : Beasts beyond the mountains of the Old West; A River Running West: the life of John Wesley Powell by Donald Worster (Oxford University Press, pounds 25.00).(Comment) From: The Independent (London, England) | Date: August 8, 2001| Author: Hawtree, Christopher | COPYRIGHT 2001 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

DURING THE American Civil War, there was a Union soldier called John Wesley Powell, who had antecedents from Wales and Hull. At Shiloh, he lost an arm in freeing the slaves. Powell allied innate vigour with his doughty upbringing and that continued craving for knowledge so often maligned as autodidactism. In 1869, aged 35, he found his one arm no handicap in leading an oddball crew in a boat 1,000 miles along the rapids of the Colorado, to discover the Grand Canyon.

This...