48 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Public attention was focused on Alaska by the discovery of the rich 

 placers of the Klondike in 1896. Though these deposits lay in the 

 Canadian- Yukon, it was close to the boundary, and the public generally 

 regarded all of Alaska as lying within the gold field. Congress in 

 1898 increased the appropriation for Alaskan surveys and has since 

 that time been liberal in supplying funds for this purpose. 



There was an urgent demand for immediate information about 

 routes, conditions of travel and occurrence of mineral wealth, on the 

 part of the thousands who had started, or were about to start, north. 

 Plans had to be formulated and parties organized in great haste, for 

 the money did not become available until about the end of February. 

 The task which confronted the Geological Survey was far from being 

 easy. But little was known of this vast region which stretched toward 

 the pole, much of which was locked in the ice over half the year. The 

 field of operations could be reached only by long journeys by sea and 

 land, and there was little in the way of experience to base the plans 

 upon. Thanks to Spurr's journey into the Yukon, something was 

 known of the conditions of travel, and the first season's plans were 

 largely formulated by him. It appeared that the most important work 

 was to make explorations to determine the geographic features and, 

 as far as possible, to establish the distribution of the placer gold. 

 Detailed surveys were out of the question; with the funds available 

 they could not be made rapidly enough to meet the public demand. 

 Moreover, so little was known of the region, that it was impossible to 

 make choice as to which were the more important districts. It was, 

 therefore, necessary to precede areal surveys by a system of explora- 

 tions. Such had been the procedure in the western part of the United 

 States during the preceding half century. The explorer was the first 

 in the field, and it was only after the unknown regions had been honey- 

 combed by many explorations that areal surveys were undertaken. 



The routes leading inland from the coast appeared of first impor- 

 tance, and hence received the first attention. A bold mountain barrier 

 stretches along the entire shore line of Alaska, as far west as Cook 

 Inlet, and, previous to 1898, inland travel had crossed the barrier only 

 at Chilkoot Pass, which leads to. the Yukon through northern British 

 Columbia. To the west two large rivers, the Alsek and the Copper, 

 empty into the Pacific. Both had been traversed by white men and 

 reported as unnavigable. Of a third, the Sushitna Eiver, emptying 

 into Cook Inlet, little was known. The problem was to seek a feasible 

 route which should avoid traversing Canadian territory, and an impor- 

 tant part of the first year's plan was explorations looking to this end. 



In cooperation with the War Department, one geologist explored 

 inland from Prince William Sound, while another mapped a route 

 from the head of Cook Inlet. A Geological Survey party carried on 



