|
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)
|
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 remarkable jo...
