TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 647 



rude map a head-water lake, on Indian information, which must, I think, be 

 identical with a lake in that reserve. ' Je s^ais,' says his biographer, ' que tous 

 les voyageurs sont sujets a caution, et que s'ils ne sont point parvenus au 

 privilege des poetes et des peintres, il ne s'en faut giiere : mais il faut excepter de 

 la noblesse ; est il croyable qu'un baron voulut en imposer P ' But I am not 

 pursuing the attractive theme offered by historical geography, and must not dwell 

 on the memorable expeditious of Franklin and Richardson, of Back and Simpson and 

 Rae, but proceed to point out the many agencies at work of late years to open up 

 the continent : the military operations, for example, of the United States' Govern- 

 ment against Mexico ; the discovery of the precious metals ; the explorations for 

 the Union Pacific and Canada Pacific Railways ; International Boundary Surveys ; 

 the geological surveys of the American and Canadian Governments. These have 

 all resulted in a surprising extension of geographical knowledge, without any of 

 them having it particularly in view. It was a bold figure of speech of Lord 

 Dufi'erin's which described the Rocky Mountains in 1877 as being nearly ' as full 

 of theodolites as they could hold,' but the Dominion Government has spent about 

 three-quarters of a million sterling on explorations or surveys for their railway, and 

 we have only to glance at a recent map to discover nine sovereign states, and seven 

 territories, west of the Mississippi, bounded by right lines, which neither war nor 

 diplomacy has determined, laid out like garden-plots, to see that neither Asia nor 

 Africa have unfolded more of their secrets in our times, than has the nobler 

 continent where Britain has cast her swarms. 



The thoroughness characteristic of the scientific operations of the American 

 Government has been greatly favoured by the physical features of the region of 

 their trigonometrical survey, in the American Cordilleras. Sharp roclry peaks, bare 

 of vegetation, rise to altitudes of 10,000 to 12,000 feet, at convenient distances of 

 60 to 80 miles apart, so situated as to form well-conditioned triangles, while the 

 purity of the atmosphere makes observation easy. In this manner has an im- 

 mense region comprising some 87,000 square miles in Nevada, Utah, and Colo- 

 rado, been topographically surveyed since 1867 ; not indeed with the detail of a 

 Eiuopean national survey, but with all the accuracy required for first settlement. 

 The two prehistoric seas, now designated Lake Bonneville, of which Salt Lake is 

 the remains, aud Lake La Hontan, already referred to, have been defined, and 

 facts of remarkable physical interest have been ascertained. The evaporation of 

 Great Salt Lake, for example, is no longer in excess of its annual tribute ; it has 

 risen 11 feet since 1806. The natural basin of Pyramid Lake is now full, its 

 level has risen 9 feet, and the overflow is filling up Winuemucca Lake in like 

 manner ; the latter lake has risen 22 feet, and its area has doubled within the 

 same short period. We cannot allow the geologists to monopolise the interest 

 of these physical changes, which the magnificent volume of Mr. Clarence King has 

 presented to them. 



Lying a little to the east and south of the region just referred to is another, 

 which includes yet loftier mountains, and has been surveyed by Professor Haj'deu. 

 Here, on the tributaries of the rivers Colorado and S. Juan, we find those mj'sterious 

 monuments of an extinct civilisation and a dying people, the cliff-houses on the 

 Rio Mancos and Rio de Chelly, the Pueblos of the Chaso Canon ; and here the 

 wandering Apaches still practise on their prisoners those revolting and indescribable 

 cruelties which make humanity shudder, and which seal their doom of extermina- 

 tion. No less than eighteen summits in the Sierra Blanca have been found to rise 

 above 14,000 feet. Blanca Peak, in South Colorado, attains 14,464 feet, and is the 

 monarch of mountains, if such there may be, in the great Republic. Lake Tahoe, 

 the largest of western lakes, familiar to readers of the brilliant pages of Miss Bird, 

 was surveyed by Lieutenant Macomb in 1877, and the height of Pyramid Peak 

 ascertained to be 10,003 feet. A town of 20,000 inhabitants (Leadville, Colo.) has 

 sprung into being at an elevation of 11,000 feet, which ranks it among the highest 

 inhabited places on the globe. 



Very different in their character are the survey operations of the Canadian 

 Government in the north-west, where the problem presented is to prepare a vast 

 territory, wholly wanting in conspicuous points, for being laid out in townships of 



