164 REPORT — 1869. 



On the best Eoute to the North Pole. By Captain R. V. HAMiiTOiir, B.N. 



On the Latitude of Samarcancl. By M. Kicholas de Khanikof. 



Twenty-six years ago (September 1841) the author visited Samarcand, being, 

 after his companion, Lehmann, the first Em-opean who had seen the famous 

 capital of Tamerlane since 1404, when, in the same month of September, Gonzales 

 Clavijo, envoy of Henry the Eighth, of Castille, entered the city. Exhausted by the 

 heat and covered with dust, M. de Khanikof reached the summit of an elevation, on 

 the road from Bokhara, where he first beheld the place he had been permitted to 

 visit, as member of a mining commission, invited by the Khan of Bokhara. M. de 

 Khanikof was not able himself to fix the longitude or latitude of Samarcand ; but 

 M. Struve, who visited Samarcand on a scientific mission in 18C8, has verified the 

 latitude of the city at 39° 38' 45", and the longitude 64° 38' 12" east of Paris. 



ErsMne's Discovery of the Mouth of the Limpopo. By R. J. Mann. 



On the Straits of Magellan and the Passages leading Northward to the Gulf 

 of Penas. By Captain R. C. Matne, E.N. 



The whole distance through the Sti-aits of Magellan is about 300 miles, and the 

 width of the passage varies from 2 miles to 15 or 20. The eastern and western 

 portions are strongly contrasted in scenery and climate ; on the east we have low 

 prairie land, perfectly bare of trees, with a clear bright sky, and hard, fresh wind ; 

 on the west rise, almost perpendicularly from the sea, lofty nioimtains clothed 

 vdth the evergi'een beech, which produce ton-ents of rain, varied by hail and snow 

 in their seasons. From the western end of the Straits is a passage leading north- 

 ward among numberless islands for 360 miles, and ending in the Gulf of Penas. 

 In this part it is scarcely too much to say that the rain never ceases for twenty-four 

 hours together ; the channel is much narrower than the Straits, and lofty mountains 

 close it in on each side, so that the sim scarcely ever penetrates into its recesses. 

 Diuing the recent naval survey, in which Capt. Mayne was engaged, the ship's 

 crew passed three months without being once able to dry their clothes, except by 

 the engine fires. When, however, the mists do clear away from the mountain- 

 tops the scenery is grand beyond description. Dreary as is this passage it is of 

 great commercial importance, enabling the largest steam-vessels to get northward 

 to finer latitudes, without encountering the high seas of the open Pacific, and to 

 reach Valparaiso without the strain to the ship and machinery which the outer 

 passage so frequently involves. Between the date when the celebrated survey of 

 the ' Beagle,' under Capt. FitzRoy terminated, in 1836, and the present day, a new 

 era has commenced in the na\dgation of the southern extremity of America. AU 

 vessels of war, and a great proportion of merchant vessels, are now steamers, and 

 the Straits of Magellan ofler immense advantages to them over the stormy passage 

 round Cape Horn. Many vessels which now pass into the Pacific are 300 to 400 

 feet long, drawing 25 or 26 feet of water : the surveys of thirty or forty years ago, " 

 therefore, which provided only for vessels 100 feet in length, drawing 14 or 15 feet 

 of water, were no longer applicable. In those days, moreover, harbours were 

 sought for and surveyed, into and out of which vessels could work imder sail ; 

 with the monster steamers of the present day such harbours were not requu-ed, 

 and the recent survey had to provide for the new conditions of navigation. In 

 1867 Capt. Mayne went through the Straits in H.M.S. ' Zealous,' an iron-clad of 

 4000 tons, and in that year thirty-eight steamers, in all, passed. At the present time 

 a monthly line of large steamers runs from Liveiiiool to Valparaiso by this route, 

 accomplishing the distance in forty-two days, or quicker than the overland route vid 

 Panama. The work of the Survey, which Capt. Mayne commanded, in the 'Nassau,' 

 commenced in December 1866, and ended May 1869. The surveying parties fre- 

 quently met with Patagonians in the eastern part of the Straits. They were clad 

 in their usual long robes of guanaco skins, which make them look so much taller 

 than they really are. Their chief Casimiro spoke Spanish, and at the first meeting 



