340 



GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES 



1866. 



one cause or another, been undertaken. The 

 Royal Geographical Society urged upon the 

 British Government the desirability of com- 

 pleting the Arctic researches not now in fur- 

 ther search for Sir John Franklin, for his fate 

 and that of his comrades is very fully ascer- 

 taine'd, but to solve the questions of the extent 

 of Greenland to the north, the boundaries of 

 the open polar sea, and various other questions 

 of scientific interest. Their representations were 

 enforced by the great geographical societies of 

 the continent, but the British Admiralty, pro- 

 bably feeling that enough had already been ex- 

 pended, with only negative results, on these ex- 

 peditions, refused to entertain their application; 

 The German geographical societies, following 

 the lead of Dr. A. Petermann of Gotha, editor 

 of the Mittheilungen, attempted to send an ex- 

 pedition to explore the polar regions by way 

 of Spitzbergen, and seemed in a fair way to 

 succeed, but the political troubles, and eventu- 

 ally the war which so materially changed the 

 map of central Europe prevented the execution 

 of their plans. Meantime one of the younger 

 associates of the Royal Geographical Society 

 of London, Mr. Edward "Whymper, a member 

 of the Alpine Club, resolved from his own 

 resources to make an expedition along the sur- 

 face of some of the glaciers of Greenland into 

 the interior of that snow-clad continent, with a 

 view of penetrating to the northern line of 

 Greenland, if possible. Mr. Whymper expected 

 to start upon his expedition during the present 

 spring (1867), and would take with him from 

 Copenhagen an, experienced Danish guide. 

 Baron Schilling, a Russian geographer, has 

 proposed, and has perhaps already undertaken, 

 an expedition by a new route to enter the open 

 polar sea. He proposes to enter and pass up 

 Behring's Strait, and advancing, if possible, as 

 far as New Siberia, to follow thence the south- 

 western current, known to exist there, which 

 he attributes to the existence of a vast body of 

 land of triangular form existing in the polar 

 sea, which divides the waters into two currents, 

 the southeastern and southwestern. The south- 

 western current, reasoning from analogy, will 

 be found moderately free from ice and open for 

 four or five months. The character and extent 

 of this polar sea may be ascertained, and the 

 lands which bound it determined by such an ex- 

 pedition, if it can be conducted with success, 

 but there seem to be serious difficulties to be 

 encountered. 



The attempt has been made during the past 

 year to construct the so-called Russo- American 

 telegraph line through Russian America, and it 

 was at one time hoped that it would prove a 

 success, but the parties who undertook it, met 

 with such difficulties in the desolate and moun- 

 tainous regions into which they penetrated 

 that they considered themselves compelled to 

 abandon the enterprise. It may be under- 

 taken under more favorable circumstances by 

 the Russian government, but this is doubt- 

 ful. 



2. British North America. Little or noth- 

 ing in the way of geographical exploration 

 has been attempted in the British colonies in 

 North America, during the year 1866. The 

 British astronomers sent out to British Co- 

 lombia, have reported the latitude and longi- 

 tude of twenty-one points in that province and 

 Vancouver Island, which they have ascertained 

 with great precision. The most important of 

 these are Fort Vancouver, 45 38' N. lat., 

 122 28' "W. Ion. from Greenwich; Ni squ- 

 ally, 47 7' N. lat., 122 25' W. Ion. ; Esqui- 

 mault, 48 26' N. lat., 123 27' W. Ion. ; Col- 

 ville, 48 40' N. lat., 118 5' W. Ion. ; Tobacco 

 Plains, 48 57' N. lat., 115 8' W. Ion. ; Sumas 

 Prairie, 49 1' N. lat., 122 12' W. Ion. The 

 attempt has been made, though without com- 

 plete success, to estimate the amount of forest 

 lands in Canada. The returns give 287,711 

 square miles of forest lands, not reckoning the 

 dwarf birches, firs, and elms of the Tadousac 

 country. The amount of lumber and timber 

 prepared for market in 1861, was 982,060,145 

 feet, valued at $8,621,149. This production 

 has greatly increased since that time, the ex- 

 port of timber and deals to Great Britain alone 

 being, in 1865, of the value of $7,971,991. 



2. In the United States, there has been no gen- 

 eral geographical survey the past year. The 

 coast survey has been somewhat languidly pros- 

 ecuted, owing to the hopeless illness of its able 

 chief, who died early in 1867. The geological 

 survey of California has been diligently prose- 

 cuted, and has thrown some further light on 

 the altitude and character of some of the higher 

 summits of both the Coast Range and the Si- 

 erra Nevada. The construction of the western 

 division of the Pacific Railroad through Califor- 

 nia, known as the Central Pacific Railroad, has, 

 in the prosecution of the tunnel through the sum- 

 mit of the pass of the Sierra, brought to light tho 

 existence of valuable mineral treasures, where 

 their existence had not previously been antici- 

 pated. The report of Mr. James "W. Taylor, 

 who was appointed by the Secretary of the 

 Treasury, in September, 1866, to investigate the 

 present and prospective of gold and silver in 

 the various fields of tho precious metals in the 

 United States, was published in March, 1867. 

 A few facts gleaned from it will be of interest, 

 geographically. The Rocky Mountains proper, 

 which designation does not now include the 

 Sierra Nevada or the Coast Range of Califor- 

 nia, but only the Sierra Madre, or Mother 

 Mountain, from which the two former diverge 

 in Mexico, divides the gold and silver fields of 

 the west into two distinct classes ; those on its 

 western slope, and in the Sierra Nevada and 

 Coast Range, in which the placers are large and 

 rich, and the gold-bearing quartz contains gold 

 in a free state, and easily extracted after tho 

 quartz is crushed, by the process of amalgama- 

 tion, and those on the eastern slope, in which 

 the gold is found mainly in perplexing and very 

 intractable combinations with the sulphurets of 

 iron and copper. The veins or lodes are fra 



