2 C. H. Dall — Bemeasurement of Mt. St. JSlias. [Jan. 



one and then another vessel, the " Humboldt" and the " Yukon," specially built 

 for the often dangerous work of sailing among unknown reefs and currents, 

 and charting out (a dozen or more) good harbours, just now opened to com- 

 merce. One test of the general success of this work is found in the fact 

 that Alaska has already paid back more, I think, than twenty per cent, of 

 its cost to the United States. I may here say that when I was leaving Ame- 

 rica, less than three months ago, Mr. Dall gave me for this Society an 

 Atlas of twenty-four new charts and maps of his, just published in good 

 style, by the Coast Survey Department. These maps are coming to Cal- 

 cutta, with other books, round the Cape. The Asiatic Society need hardly 

 be reminded that the best surveys of the N. West coast of the American 

 continent, antedating those of Mr. Dall, were made a century ago, — of course 

 with instruments inferior to those we now possess, — by the faithful and able 

 French explorer La Perouse. If I am rightly informed, he trusted mainly 

 to observations taken with his quadrant or sextant ; and generally from the 

 deck of his ship. Important changes and adjustments must come of the 

 instruments and facilities of observation that are ours to-day. These make 

 it no wise incredible that Mr. Dall's rectifications of latitude and longitude 

 should have shifted the whole coast line from 3 to 5 leagues westward, for 

 hundreds of miles; — added eight hundred square miles to British (the 

 Hudson's Bay) territory, and done many other things besides lifting Mt. 

 St. Elias from being " 13,000 feet high" to a clear elevation of over 19,000 

 feet. The quarto pamphlet, of thirty-two pages, now on the table, records 

 attempts to measure the mountain, as made by several travellers since the 

 time of La Perouse, and gives the results of sixty-four observations of it, 

 taken by Mr. Dall, with better instruments, on sea and shore. The final 

 working out of these has been done, with extra care, at his present home, 

 and for the last ten years his hailing-point, the Smithsonian* Institution in 

 Washington, D. C. 



Thanking the Chairman for his call upon me, I do not doubt that it 

 will encourage and cheer the author of this pamphlet to learn that his per- 

 sistent sacrifice of home and society for science, natural and geographical, 

 from his nineteenth year, has the approving sympathy of the President and 

 Members of this Society. 



The following gentlemen duly proposed and seconded at the last 

 jneeting, were balloted for and elected ordinary members — 



W, McGregor, Esq. 



Ottokar Feistmantel, Esq., M. D. 



The following are candidates for ballot at the next meeting — 



E. B. Shaw, Esq., late British Resident at Kashgar, proposed by 

 Dr. J. Scully, seconded by Gapt. J. Waterhouse. 



