GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1872. 



337 



Nevada, exploring the southern and south- 

 western portions of the Salt-Lake Basin, and 

 the mining regions of Eastern Nevada, estab- 

 lishing astronomical points, by means of which 

 he could determine with greater accuracy the 

 localities of the mineral veins. Among the 

 astronomical stations determined was Mount 

 Nebo, in Southern Utah, which was ascended 

 by two of the party, its latitude and longitude, 

 and altitude (the last being 12,500 feet) ascer- 

 tained, and the descent made safely, though 

 with considerable difficulty. The Wahsatch 

 Mountains constituted the eastern limit of his 

 operations during the year. Lieutenant Wheeler 

 had a large and carefully-selected staff of eigh- 

 teen or twenty persons, three of them officers 

 of the United States Engineer Corps. 



Clarence King's expedition along the 40th 

 parallel continued at its work later in the sea- 

 son than the others, and has not as yet made 

 any report. At present we only know that 

 the exposure of the gigantic Arizona diamond- 

 fields fraud was made by his party, and that 

 his geographical and geological knowledge 

 were both brought into action in tracing it up. 



Still another of these exploring expeditions 

 is that of Prof. Powell in the valley and ca- 

 fions of the Colorado River and its tributaries, 

 now in progress. This is under the direction 

 and mainly at the expense of the Smithsonian 

 Institution. Prof. Powell had, it will be 

 remembered, led two previous expeditions 

 to this region. His preliminary report, made 

 January 13, 1873, states that they had explored 

 a tract 300 miles in length, and about 175 miles 

 | in breadth, and about 700 miles of the course 

 of the river from the point where the Union 

 Pacific Railroad crosses Green River to the 

 mouth of the Little Colorado. They have 

 surveyed all the affluents of the Colorado be- 

 tween these points, ascertained the geological 

 structure of the longitudinal and transverse 

 valleys, and visited the " Seven Ancient Cities 

 of the Province of Tusayan." They had made 

 barometrical observations of the height of all 

 prominent points, and had taken several 

 thousand stereoscopic views of the wonderful 

 scenery. They had, also, made many discov- 

 eries of the mineral wealth of the region 

 in ^silver, copper, gold, and coal, as well 

 as interesting contributions to human knowl- 

 edge in paleontology, botany, archaeology, 

 and linguistics. There have been numer- 

 ous private exploring parties in this inter- 

 esting region of the Rocky Mountains, but 

 their discoveries, if any, are not yet made 

 public. We should have noticed, in speaking 

 of the explorations in the Uintah Mountains, 

 Prof. Hayden's, record of the height of the 

 principal peaks of that range: Gilbert's Peak 

 he makes 13,182 feet; Cox's Peak, 13,250 

 feet; Dawes's Peak, 13,300 feet; Logan's 

 Peak, 13,250 feet, and an unnamed peak on 

 the west side of the Uintah range, estimated 

 at 13,500 feet. Turning now to the Pacific 

 slope, we find that, in 1871 and 1872, Washing- 



VOL. XII. 22 A 



ton Territory was very thoroughly explored 

 and surveyed, the Coast Survey having made a 

 survey of the coast, and government officers of 

 the interior. The results of this exploration 

 have not yet been published, but we find, in 

 the Proceedings of the California Academy of 

 Sciences, the latitude and longitude of Mount 

 Rainier stated as 46 51' 9" north latitude, and 

 121 45' 28" west longitude from Greenwich. 

 . The height of the mountain is definitively set- 

 tled as 14,444 feet. The same authority gives 

 the height of Mount Baker, about which 

 there has been much controversy, as 10,760 

 feet. The decision of the final "arbiter, the 

 Emperor Wilhelm, on the long-pending ques- 

 tion of the true channel of the San Juan de 

 Fuca Strait, confirms what we have always 

 claimed, that the Haro Channel, southeast of 

 Vancouver's Island, is the rightful boundary, 

 and gives us possession of the islands of 

 that archipelago lying northwest of Rosario 

 Straits. We should not forget that Alaska is 

 a part of Washington Territory. Mr. William 

 H. Dall, who has been exploring there, re- 

 turned in the autumn of 1872, after a little 

 more than a year's residence on Unalaska Isl- 

 and, where he had made many 'archaeological 

 discoveries of great interest. Traces were 

 discovered of a race prior to the present in- 

 habitants. This race had attained to a con- 

 siderably higher civilization than the Aleuts, 

 and, though their implements were of stone 

 and bone, they had made garments, and carv- 

 ings in wood and bone, of great ingenuity 

 and merit. They had a rude plan of embalm- 

 ing their dead, and placed their bodies in caves 

 in the positions of active life; men were cov- 

 ered entirely with carved wooden armor, and 

 placed in canoes as if hunting or holding a 

 paddle ; women as if sewing, dressing skins, 

 or nursing their infants, and old men as if 

 beating their drums. 



Proceeding southward, or rather southeast- 

 ward, we find, in the Chicago Railroad Ga- 

 zette, a series of letters from Mr. Stephen 

 Powers, a civil engineer, describing the Rio 

 Grande Valley, which he had been exploring 

 in the interests of the Texas Pacific Railroad, 

 "For a distance of sixty miles above Fort 

 Quitman," he says, "the bottoms on both 

 sides of the Rio Grande will not average above 

 a quarter of a mile in width ; from San Elea- 

 zaro to El Paso, where the Mexican settle- 

 ments are scattered along, they are twice or 

 three times as wide. From these mere ribbons 

 of bottom-lands there slopes easily up to the 

 Sierras, eight or ten miles back, a gravelly mesa, 

 covered with chaparral, and totally worthless, 

 except for its mesquite-beans." Yet he found 

 this narrow valley on both sides densely popu- 

 lated, with a quaint, quiet, unenterprising 

 Mexican population, the one street of El Paso 

 being seven miles long, and abounding in 

 beautiful gardens. " The explanation of this 

 populousness," he says, "must be sought 

 in the extraordinary fertility of the river- 



