240 SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1884. 



Work upon a detailed map on a seal 3 of 1:62500, of the Yellow, 

 stone Park was carried forward during the season, so that at its close 

 nearly all that part of the park lying west of the Yellowstone River has 

 been mapped upon this scale, while the triangulation from the Boze- 

 man base has been extended until a connection has been formed with 

 that of the old Hayden survey coming up from the south. 



The season in Northern California proved to be unusually favorable to 

 topographic work, and the single party which was engaged upon gen- 

 eral work, on a scale of 1 : 250000, made rapid progress. A second 

 party was engaged during the season in making a detailed map of Mount 

 Shasta and its immediate surroundings, the scale of the field-sheets 

 being 1 : 20000. 



Besides the work detailed above, a number of special mining maps, 

 upon large scales, have been made during the past year. 



The total area surveyed during the past season, upon all scales, is 

 about 54,000 square miles, which has been done at an average cost of 

 about $3 per square mile. 



Bulletin No. 5 of the United States Geological Survey is a valuable 

 dictionary of altitudes in the United States, compiled and arranged by 

 Henry Gannett, esq., chief geographer of the Survey. The States and 

 stations are alphabetically arranged, the number of altitudes given being 

 about 18,000, referred to mean tide-level as the datum ijoiut. 



Lieut. G. M. Stouey, U. S. N., commanding the Coast Survey schooner 

 Ouualaska, and Lieutenant Cantwell, of the United States revenue 

 steamer Corwin, have separately made explorations of the river Kowak 

 or Kuak, a large river emptying into Hotham Inlet, Kotzebue Sound, on 

 the western coastof Alaska, nearly under the Arctic Circle. First entered 

 by ofQcers of Captain Beechey's expedition in 182G, it was examined 

 partially and its name was ascertained by oflBcers of Her Mtijesty's ship 

 Plover in 1849. It has been proposed to call this river Putnam River, 

 after Lieutenant Putnam, U. S. N., lost from the United States steamer 

 Rodgers, but geographers will probably adhere to the earlier name of 

 Kowak or Kuak (the big river). The exploring parties traveled a dis- 

 tance of about 370 miles from the mouth of the river, finding it very 

 crooked. The river banks are thickly wooded, and the country through 

 which it runs is rugged and mountainous. Specimens of coal, gold, and 

 copper were brought away. From the headwaters of one of the affluents 

 of the Kowak a short i)ortage could be made to the headwaters of an 

 affluent of the Yukon, and from the sources of the Kowak it is but a 

 short distance across the watershed to the waters of the Colville River, 

 which empties into the Arctic Ocean. It is thought that commercially 

 the most important result of the expeditions will be the indication of a 

 route from the Arctic Ocean, available for the crews of ice-bound 

 whalers, by way of the Colville and Kowak Rivers, to the settlements 

 on the Yukon. Lieutenant Stoney, with a light-draught steamboat, will 



