THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY SURVEY 

 I—INTR OD UCTION 



BY 



Dr t. c. mendenhall 



{Presented before the Society March 4-, 1892) 



As an introduction to what Mr McGrath and Mr Turner will 

 have to say to you to-night, I have been requested to say some- 

 thing with regard to the origin of the expedition from which they 

 have so recently returned. Everybod}^ present is doubtless famil- 

 iar with the fact that in 1867 the United States government jjur- 

 chased from Russia that which was then known as Russian 

 America and is now known as Alaska, paying for the same the 

 sum of $7,200,000. There can l)e no doubt that this was a wise 

 and profitable investment at the time, as it can readily be shown 

 fhat the territory has returned to the United States in cash more 

 than it cost, and Ave are just beginning to measure and to under- 

 stand the real resources which will some time in the future be 

 available. It was perhaps not generally expected at the time, if 

 indeed it was expected at all, that in the purchase of the terri- 

 tory we were also coming into possession of two or three inter- 

 esting and somewhat provoking controversies. One of these is 

 with regard to the boundary line which separates Alaska from 

 the possessions of Great Britain in North America. This bound- 

 ary line was originally defined in a treaty between Great Britain 

 and Russia in the year 1825 ; and in purchasing Alaska from 

 Russia we acquired an interest in the boundary line as defined in 

 that treaty. 



Although it was doubtless thought at first that the bound- 

 ary line was well and satisfactorily defined, it has since come to 

 be generally recognized that the definition is very unsatisfactory, 

 by^reason of the fact that it was based upon the very meager 

 information available at the time the treaty was made. I may 

 remind you briefly that the treaty defines the line as beginning 



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