SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. Ixvii 



ment sent out in different directions army officers and engineers to survey 

 the proposed routes, and to publish tlie results in a series of volumes.* For 

 this purpose the Thirty-second Congress appropriated, by an act passed 

 May 3, 1853, the sum of Si 50,000, which was by two later appropriations 

 in 1854 increased to a total of $340,000. A branch of this railroad was to 

 run up the Sacramento Valley to the Columbia River. In this portion the 

 Klamath headwaters were jjrincipally concerned, and it is that which was 

 surveyed by Lieut. Robert Stockton Williamson,! assisted by Lieut. Henry 

 Larcom Abbot, both of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. Their joint 

 report, together with the reports of specialists on zoology, botany, geology, 

 etc., is contained in Vol. VI (1855) J These reports are valuable and on a 

 level with the condition of science as it was in those days ; but the use of 

 the volumes is inconvenient when reference has to be made to the bulky 

 maps, all of which are contained in other volumes than the reports them- 

 selves. Lieutenant Williamson, assisted by Lieutenant Crook, when on the 

 boi'der of Klamath Marsh (August 22, 1855), obtained one hundred and 

 two terms of the Klamath Lake dialect, which are published in Vol. VI, 

 Part I, pp. 71, 72. This vocabulaiy is brimful of mistakes, not through any 

 want of attention of these officers, but because they questioned their inter- 

 preter through the imperfect mediums of gestures and the Chinook jargon. 



The vocabulary taken in 1864 by Dr. William M. Gabb at Kohashti 

 shows the same defects, and was obtained through the "jargon" also; 

 other collections were made by Dr. Washington Matthews, W. C. Clark, 

 and Lewis F. Hadlev. The words of Modoc as quoted in the publications 

 of A. B. Meacham are misspelt almost without exception. From Stephen 

 Powers we possess a short Modoc vocabulary, as yet unpublished. 



Whosoever inspects these word collections will see at once that the 

 study of the Klamath language had never gone beyond the vocabulary 



* Reports of explorati-ms ami surveys to ascertain the most practicable and eco- 

 nomical route for a railroad from t!?e Mississippi River to the Pacitte Ocean, made in 

 1853 and years followin<j. Washington, 1855-1860. Quarto; illustr. with plates and 

 maps. Thirteen volumes. 



t Williamson was boru 1824 in New York, and died 18S2 in San Francisco. 

 Abbot, a native of Beverly, Massachusetts, was born in 1831. 



J: The first part of Vol. VI contains Abbot's report, and is chiefly tO[)ographical. 



