548 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 173. 



shire, but in the United States. Mt. Wash- 

 ington, the most elevated summit, has been 

 estimated at about 7,000 feet above the 

 level of the sea." 



Finally, as to Alaska the golden, from 

 which so much of wealth and of disappoint- 

 ment is to come, our author couples it with 

 Greenland and dispatches it in this one 

 sentence : 



"There are also Greenland, on the north- 

 east (of ISTorth America), belonging to Den- 

 mark, and the Russian settlements on the 

 northwest, both of small extent and little 

 consequence." 



These citations serve to indicate the hori- 

 zon of geographic knowledge 70 years ago, 

 a horizon which was steadily widening. 

 Stories of wondrously fertile lands west of 

 the Alleghenies found their way to the 

 rocky and stei'ile fai'ms of the East, and a 

 steady stream of migration to better lands, 

 where the struggle for existence should be 

 less severe, poured over the Alleghenies 

 and onward toward the sunset. In the 

 vanguard was the government surveyor 

 measuring out the land and subdividing it 

 for fai'ms. Working hurriedly in a wilder- 

 ness, among native tribes not always 

 friendly, his surveys were not, perforce, 

 accurate, nor indeed was it important they 

 should be. They yielded a basis for titles 

 to homesteads and for clear and easily un- 

 derstood descriptions. The results of these 

 subdivisional surveys constitute substan- 

 tially the only bases for the maps for much 

 the greater part of all of our ' Great West ' 

 to this day. 



Already before 1840 the question of su- 

 premacy of canal or railroad had been set- 

 tled. In Peter Parley's geography of 1840 

 a tabular exhibit of railroads and of canals 

 in the United States shows that there were 

 then 46 canals, with a total mileage of 

 about 4,800 miles, and 88 railroads, with a 

 total mileage of nearly 7,700 miles. Prog- 

 ress in railroad-building demanded sur- 



veys and maps. Accordingly these were 

 made ; knowledge of geography was in- 

 creased, and increased at a rapid pace. 

 Whenever a little known region is found to 

 possess wealth or the means of its rapid 

 acquirement, knowledge of the geography 

 of that region increases extraordinarily fast. 

 Witness the increase and diffusion of 

 knowledge as to Alaska in the past twelve 

 months. The peaceful expanding of our 

 horizon of geographic knowledge continued 

 steadily and uniformly. But crises in 

 human affairs sometimes hasten progress ; 

 wars, rumors of wars even, sometimes make 

 possible the seemingly impossible. 



The northern boundary of the United 

 States, from Maine to the crest of the 

 Rocky mountains in Montana, as we now 

 see it on the maps, was definitely settled 

 in 1842. For more than half a century 

 prior to that date this frontier had been in 

 dispute between Great Britain and the 

 United States. Repeated attempts to set- 

 tle it had met with repeated failure. 

 Boundary disputes, as we know, are ever 

 long-lived and bitter. In April of the 

 year 1842 Lord Ashburton arrived in 

 Washington with full power to negotiate a 

 treaty for settling this old and irritating 

 controvers3\ Webster was then Secretary 

 of State in the Cabinet of President Har- 

 rison. Before the year had ended, a treaty, 

 now known as the Webster-Ashburton 

 treaty, had been drafted, agreed to, signed, 

 ratified and proclaimed as the law of the 

 land. Webster regarded this settlement as 

 ' the greatest and most important act of his 

 eventful life.' That the settlement was just 

 may be inferred from the fact that it dis- 

 pleased both parties and both Webster and 

 Ashburton were criticised at home for sac- 

 rificing the interests of their respective 

 countries. 



But this treaty line stopped at the crest 

 of the Eocky mountains and immediately 

 there arose the Oregon question. That 



