188 NARRATIVE OF 1853. 
Mr. Doty now followed the usual trai to Walla-Walla, which he reached on the Tth October. 
Неге he was unable to procure guides to cross the Snoqualmoo Pass; for he was instructed by 
me to observe for altitude and carefully carry the railroad line down from that pass to the 
sound, and, as his barometers were broken, he concluded to follow the emigrant road over the 
Nachess Pass. Crossing the Columbia on the 11th, the next day he started, and reached 
Olympia on the 24th of the same month. 
Besides his explorations, Mr. Doty made several reports on the Blackfeet Indians, and acted 
as their agent during the whole time he was among them. Не visited their winter posts on 
the Milk and Marias rivers, during the winter of 1853. By the measurement of several hun- 
dred Indians, taking them indiscriminately, he found the average height of the adult males was 
about five feet eleven inches. 
We had the great misfortune to lose nearly the whole bulk of our meteorological observa- 
tions, which, in charge of Lieutenant Donelson, on his return from Olympia to Washington 
City, were placed in the hands of the express company for safe transportation, and were lost 
by them on the steamer. It is sufficient, for the vindication of the exploration, to say that 
every means was taken to recover them. As I have frequently observed, the observations 
were exceedingly numerous, not only those by Mr. Moffett and his assistants, moving with the 
main train, but of Mr. Tinkham, Mr. Lander, and others, in side work. Often there were 
twenty or thirty different observations on and off the route; for, to the extent of the force, 
every effort was made to get positive and fixed data for an approximate location of the road 
and determination of the whole amount either of excavation or embankment required for its 
grading. Lieutenant Donelson, in his anxiety to get the observations, very cheerfully complied 
with the orders of the War Department to repair to San Francisco in search of them. I met 
him at Acapulco, on his return to the States, when all hope of recovering them had to be 
abandoned.  . 
While in the city of Washington I urgently pressed upon the War Department the continua- 
tion of the survey, and particularly an instrumental, properly speaking, survey of mountain 
passes found, by reconnoissance, to. be most practicable. Especially did I dwell upon the 
importance of the instrumental survey of the Snoqualmoo Pass, and of carrying the line down 
to the sound. With the ordinar 
y instruments used in exploring parties the work is simply that 
of reconnoissance, and, excepting some few mountain passes, which had been carefully levelled 
and the direction properly taken with the more refined instruments of engineers, there had 
been and have been no instrumental examinations of any of the routes. On my return to 
Olympia, and on possessing myself of all the information which had reached me subsequent to 
my leaving the city of Washington, I became the more impressed with my duty to urge this 
matter upon the department; and when I relieved Lieutenant Mullan from duty and directed 
him to report at the city of Washington, I urged his being assigned to the duty of going up 
the Missouri with the party for the Blackfeet council to be sent from that side, in order to 
carry a line of levels from Fort Benton westward, to examine certain routes deemed by him, 
and by me,to be, probably, practicable and feasible, and thus, while gaining additional informa- 
tion, to get a new line of observations to replace those which we had so unfortunately lost. I 
will remark that all the observations of the eastern party were lost, except those of Lieutenant 
Donelson up the Missouri, and those made at the winter posts at Fort Benton and Cantonment 
Stevens. 
It is not my intention to do more than simply refer to my duties as Indian commissioner in 
connexion with its bearing upon a knowledge of the country. During these winter months, 
