74: National Geographic Magazine. 



all sections of our extended coast line petitioning for surveys at 

 the same time, the problem was beset with additional difficulties. 

 Fortunately Congress prescribed the method on which the work 

 should be conducted, and that the method permitted making sur- 

 veys widely sej)arated with the certainty that they could eventu- 

 ally be joined and form a consistent whole. Soon after the plan 

 of reorganization of 1843 had been adopted, surveying parties 

 were on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts at many jDoints; the princi- 

 pal harbors and headlands with outlying shoals were first sur- 

 veyed and it was but a few years before charts of them were pub- 

 lished. The less important shores between these points were left 

 for future work, biit Hydrographic examinations or Nautical sur- 

 veys, were made of them, and preliminary charts of long stretches 

 of coast were issued, to be followed when the surveys had been 

 completed by the finished chart of reliable data. So elastic was 

 the system adopted for the conduct of the work, that its availa- 

 bility was limited only by the annual appropriations. Soon after 

 the annexation of Texas surveying parties were on that coast, and 

 on the acquisition of California a few years subsequently parties 

 were soon at work there also ; and after the close of the war and 

 purchase of Alaska, the immense field thus opened was attacked 

 with equal promptness, and a reconnaissance made that resulted 

 in a map of considerable accuracy. As the precise surveys were 

 extended the charts and plans published from the preliminary 

 surveys were withdrawn, the new charts necessarily having later 

 dates. 



The original surveys of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are now 

 practically completed, but very little more remaining to be done 

 in a few comparatively unimportant localities. On the Pacific 

 coast precise surveys supplemented by careful reconnaissance of 

 less important sections, define nearly the whole outline, excepting 

 Alaska, but a great deal of work is still required to obtain the 

 full measure of information necessary to accurately chart it. 

 And in Alaska, Nautical surveys have developed long stretches of 

 the " Inland passage " and the most important anchorages, sup- 

 plementing the general reconnaissance of the whole coast line. 

 A very large proportion of our shores, however, are subject to 

 such radical changes from natural causes, that the survey of the 

 coast can never be brought to final completion. Examinations 

 and re-surveys are as essential as was the original work, if the 

 material already acquired is to be maintained in the full measure 



