1 7 8 Journal of Ti'avd and Natural History 



across Kamschatka, Siberia, and Russia, to St Petersburg. The 

 project was a thoroughly wild-goose scheme, devised in total 

 ignorance of the country, and, as might have been expected, fell 

 through at an early period, — not, however, before extensive pre- 

 parations had been completed, many most excellent explorations 

 made, and a portion of the line built. Staffs of scientific officers 

 were attached to all the surveying and exploring parties, and they 

 have already added much to our knowledge of the country. 

 Amongst those which I shall particularly notice, was the explora- 

 tion made from Lake Tatla, in British Columbia, to the Stikeen 

 River, over 700 miles of unexplored country, in the depth of 

 winter, by Major Frank L. Pope, Mr G. Blenkinsop, and two 

 Indians, — the party being encumbered with no baggage but a 

 couple of buffalo robes and a little hand sledge, on which they 

 dragged their food (a daily ration of six ounces of pemmican) and 

 their guns and ammunition. They were seventy-five days in the open 

 air, went over a flattish country, where they seemed to think the 

 season was earlier than on the coast ; and when I met them at 

 Fort Rupert in May 1866, they looked exceedingly hearty, and 

 nothing the worse of their extraordinary journey. A botanist 

 wintered with the party at Tatla Lake, and Major Pope informed 

 me that he had made a good collection of plants. 



In other portions of British Columbia, Chief Justice Begbie 

 and Mr Oliver Hare, may be mentioned as likely individuals 

 for a naturalist to apply to for information on the zoology of the 

 southern portion of the country. The government are also 

 occasionally sending out little parties of surveyors, in different 

 sections; but science has no part of these expeditions, nor is 

 there any special scientific officer attached to the government, 

 though the revenue depends upon mines for its support. 



The immense region hitherto known as Russian-America (or 

 Alaska, as it is now called by its new masters) is an almost un- 

 known land, at least in the interior. The Telegraph Company 

 have made some explorations, principally under the direction of 

 Robert Kennicott, the well known naturalist ; '^ and the recent 



* By recent advices in the San Francisco " Bulletin," from Michaelowski, the 

 Russian settlement in Norton Sound, the world is informed of the untimely 

 death, in May 1866, of that gentlemen, one of the greatest explorers and natural- 

 ists in the annals of north-west America. Mr K. had travelled extensively through- 

 out the country between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific and Atlantic for 



