482 



GEOGRAPHICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS. 



30' "W. from Greenwich, near the boundaries 

 of Dakota, Nebraska, and Idaho, on the eastern 

 slope of the Wind River Mountains. The great 

 yield of gold in the placers of this region has 

 already attracted a very considerable population 

 thither, and a new territory will probably be 

 organized there by the next Congress. 



Considerable investigations have also been 

 made concerning the flora and fauna of Lower 

 California, by Mr. John Xantus, at Cape St. 

 Lucas, under the direction of the Smithsonian 

 Institution ; and of the region lying south of 

 Hudson's Bay, by some of the officers of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, especially by Mr. 

 Bernard R. Ross, chief factor of the Mackenzie 

 River district at Fort Simpson, and Mr. Law- 

 rence Clark, jr., of Fort Rae, on Slave Lake. 

 These gentlemen have not only contributed large 

 collections of specimens of the flora and fauna 

 of these regions, but have added materially to 

 our knowledge of the character, habits, and 

 customs of the Esquimaux. . 



Mr. Robert Kennicott has been for some 

 years past employed, at the joint expense of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company and the Smithsonian 

 Institution, in exploring the northwestern por- 

 tion of this continent. In September, 1860, he 

 reached Fort Yukon, a port on the Yukon river 

 in Russian America, lat. G5, long. 146 W. 

 from Greenwich, where he remained till the 

 summer of 1861, and after spending the season 

 in exploring that part of Russian America, 

 hitherto almost wholly unknown, returned to 

 Fort Simpson in the early autumn, and expected, 

 in the spring of 1862, to penetrate to Fort An- 

 derson, at the mouth of the Anderson river (a 

 stream between the Mackenzie and Coppermine 

 rivers), and collect the fauna of that portion of 

 the Arctic Ocean in the summer of 1862, and 

 return during the present year to the United 

 States. The region thus explored has, much 

 of it, not hitherto been penetrated by any com- 

 petent observer, and Mr. Kennicott's report will 

 undoubtedly be replete with interest. 



An English expedition sent out in 1861, and 

 composed of Messrs. Hind, Montgomery, and 

 several other gentlemen, have explored the in- 

 terior of Labrador, and ascended the Moise river 

 for several hundred miles; but they find little 

 of interest to report; the country is hopelessly 

 sterile. The eiforts of our countryman, Tal. P. 

 Shaffner, Esq., to procure the laying of a tele- 

 graphic line between Great Britain and Amer- 

 ica by way of the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Green- 

 land, and Labrador, have been powerfully 

 seconded in England by Captain McClintock, 

 and the route proposed has been examined, but 

 as yet without practical result. There seems 

 to be reason to fear that the icebergs in their 

 resistless movements would destroy some of the 

 cables of this line, though it would have much 

 less length of submerged cable than the 

 route proposed and once constructed through 

 the efforts of Mr. Cyrus W. Field. This last is 

 to be again attempted, the obstacles being so 

 far removed that the organization of a company 



and the preparation of a cable is rendered cer- 

 tain, though it will probably not be laid before 

 the summer of 1864. 



The latest, though probably not the last, of 

 the arctic explorations was completed in the 

 autumn of 1862. Mr. 0. F. Hall, formerly of 

 Cincinnati, whose departure from New Lon- 

 don, Conn., in the whale ship George Henry, 

 on the 29th of May, 1860, we chronicled in the 

 " Annual Cyclopaedia " of 1861, returned to that 

 port on the 13th of September, 1862. He 

 reached Frobisher's Strait, as it has been called 

 for about 300 years, in August, 1860, and soon 

 after his arrival a fearful gale arose, which de- 

 stroyed the shallop in which he had intended 

 penetrating to the open sea around the north 

 pole, and came near wrecking the George 

 Henry. By the advice of the Esquimaux, lie 

 postponed efforts to proceed northward to the 

 next summer, and explored, as far as he was 

 able, the shores of the waters in which the ves- 

 sel was compelled to winter. He discovered 

 that the so-called Frobisher's Strait was a deep 

 bay, terminating in lat. 63 48', and long. Y0 

 W.. the entire shore of which he traversed. 

 In the spring of 1861, he procured a whale boat 

 from the George Henry, and with a crew of six 

 natives, started on his northern journey to the 

 Countess of Warwick's Sound, and after much 

 difficulty succeeded in discovering the place 

 where Frobisher, in 1574 or 1575, had attempt- 

 ed to plant a colony. Numerous relics of this 

 ill-fated colony were found, consisting of pieces 

 of coal, wood, iron, broken bottles, and trenches 

 dug for holding a supply of water. Among the 

 natives he found a woman called Oo-ki-zox-i- 

 noo, or the " White Bear," more than 100 years' 

 old, who had heard from her parents about the 

 capture and final death of the white men, and 

 who recounted the story with great fidelity. 

 At the head of Frobisher's Bay, he discovered 

 a large mountain id which was an extensive de- 

 posit of fossils. Near Queen Elizabeth's Land, 

 he found an immense glacier more than 3,000 

 feet high, one hundred miles in length, and 

 fifty in width, which he named, in honor of Mr. 

 Henry Grinnell, "The Grinnell Glacier." He 

 also believes that he has determined the fate 

 of two of the boats' crews of Sir John Franklin. 

 During the winter of 1861-'2, the ship's com- 

 pany were subsisted mostly by the generous 

 hospitality of the Esquimaux. Mr. Hall speaks 

 in high terms of the bravery, honesty, truth- 

 fulness, and hospitality of the Esquimaux. He 

 brought home with him a family of this people, 

 whose intelligence and ability as interpreters 

 he had fully proved. 



During the year, the Northwest Boundary 

 Survey, conducted under the direction of Mr. 

 Archibald Campbell, completed its labors, and 

 returned to Washington. The commission met 

 with a great loss in the death, in Feb., 1862, 

 of its surgeon and naturalist, Dr. C. B. Ken- 

 nerly. The report of the survey has not as yet 

 been published. 



A French savant, M. Brasseur de Bourbourg, 



