lO ALASKA. 



the one hundred and forty-first meridian would already be marked 

 on the ground. An extract from a letter by Secretary Olney, 

 dated March 1 1, 1896, was as follows: 



"So far as the recent and existing surveys on either side have 

 progressed, they exhibit a close coincidence of results. At one 

 point, as I am informed, the difference between Mr. Ogilvie's loca- 

 tion and that made by the United States Coast and Geodetic Sur- 

 vey is only about 6 feet 7 inches. In another point the difference 

 is in the neighborhood of 500 or 600 feet, and at other points even 

 closer coincidence than this latter is expected when the compari- 

 son of calculations shall have been worked out." 



Mr. Olney proposed that the two Governments should agree 

 upon certain points of the one hundred and forty-first meridian 

 at the intersection of the principal streams, locating the same at 

 points midway between the determinations of the Coast and Geo- 

 detic Survey and of Mr. Ogilvie, and providing for the junction 

 of the points so located by convenient joint surveys, as occasion 

 should require, until the entire line should be established. This 

 would supply a permanent line which for international purposes 

 would be coincident with the one hundred and forty-fifth meridian, 

 stipulated under existing treaties, and would require no further 

 immediate arrangement than the dispatch of a joint surveying 

 party to set up monuments at the points defined, with perhaps the 

 survey of a traverse line connecting the monuments on the Yukon 

 and Forty Mile Creek, and farther south if necessary. 



The Canadian government agreed to this proposition, and the 

 convention is now pending before the Senate of the United 

 States. 



POPULATION. 



No definite idea of the population was obtained until the cen- 

 sus of 1890. In 1868, in a report by Maj. Gen. H. W. Halleck, 

 the number given was 82,400. In the same year Rev. Vincent 



