National Geographic Society 



181 



•casian road" (which goes to a height 

 of more than 8,000 feet), " but upon 

 Russian roads of all sorts." 



Dr. C. Willard Hayes has been appointed 

 ' ' geologist in charge of geology ' ' in 



the U. S. Geological Survey. The du- 

 ties of the office make Dr. Hayes the 

 administrative head of the geologic work 

 of the Survey, leaving the more imme- 

 diate scientific direction to the chiefs of 

 the different divisions in geology. 



NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 



Meetings op the Society : 



March 21, 1902.— President Graham Bell in 

 the chair. Mr. Robert Dunn, of New York, 

 gave an address describing his explorations of 

 the Wrangell group of mountains in Alaska in 

 1900. 



Lieut. H. T. Allen, 2d TJ. S. Infantry, the 

 first explorer of the Copper River Valley (in 

 18S5), mapped five mountains over 12,000 feet 

 high in the Wrangell group east of the river : 

 Mt. Wrangell, Mt. Tillman, Mt. Sanford, Mt. 

 Dunn, and Mt. Blackburn. Prospectors and 

 others who first entered the valley thereafter 

 in 1S9S could, in several instances, locate only 

 four such mountains. Up to the present year 

 no attempt has been made to map the Wrangell 

 group accurately. The mountain apparently 

 missing was the " Mt. Tillman, 16,600 ft.," o 

 Allen's map, the most southwestern of the 

 whole group, which he mapped in the form of 

 an ellipse. 



When Mr. Dunn visited the slopes of Mt. 

 Wrangell (17,500 feet) in 1900, various stories 

 were current about this " Mt. Tillman." Some 

 men denied and some affirmed its existence, 

 and it was plain that the matter could not be 

 settled without a trip to the spot on the map 

 where Allen placed ' ' Mt. Tillman. " " For in- 

 stance, Schrader in 1898 accepted its exist- 

 ence," said the speaker. "Lieutenant Bab- 

 cock, 8th U. S. Cavalry, who was in the Cop- 

 per River Valley in 1900, believed that Allen, 

 on seeing Mt. Wrangell from two parts of the 

 valley at different times, had reduplicated 

 Wrangell. The clearness of the air, the amount 

 of glaciated country in the valley, and the oval 

 grouping of the peaks contributed to the con- 

 fusion." 



On August 12, 1900, Mr. Dunn made camp 

 where, according to Allen's map, the northern 

 slopes of his " Mt. Tillman" should have 

 been ; but south of him for thirty miles, until 

 the coast mountains were reached, the country 

 was absolutely flat. The mountain, where 



mapped, did not exist. The explanation of 

 Allen's mistake then seemed to be that of 

 Lieutenant Babcock and others. 



Two days later, however, he camped between 

 Mt. Wrangell and Mt. Dunn. According to 

 compass observations, this point lay on a north- 

 east-southwest line between a Mt. Sanford of 

 Allen's map and its " Mt. Tillman. " In line 

 also with this point was that to the southwest, 

 on Copper River, from which Allen, in his re- 

 port, had drawn an outline of the Wrangell 

 group as it appeared to him to lie against the 

 horizon and undoubtedly made the observa- 

 tions which formed a basis for his map. From 

 Mr. Dunn's camp, however, the sky-line of 

 Mt. Sanford was identical with that drawn for 

 Mt. Tillman on the outline. Mr. Dunn saw 

 the Mt. Sanford of the map at exactly the same 

 angle as Allen did, only he was much nearer 

 to it. " Mt. Tillman" of the map having 

 been proved non-existent, it was plain that 

 Allen had confused Sanford and Tillman, not 

 Wrangell and Tillman. 



' ' The mistake in mapping could not have 

 arisen," said Mr. Dunn, " if Allen had seen the 

 group only from this point of view. A study of 

 his itinerary clears the matter up, with the fol- 

 lowing explanation : Allen outlined the five 

 mountains as if he saw them in a straight 

 northwest-southeast line ; he mapped them in 

 an ellipse. In the outline Mt. Sanford appears 

 as a minor peak of Mt. Dunn, northeast of 

 Dunn and of the outlined Mt. Tillman (Mt. 

 Sanford of the map)." 



At the conclusion of Mr. Dunn's address, 

 the President called for remarks from the 

 meml >ers present. 



Dr. William H. Dall referred to the fact that 

 Lieutenant Allen had been the first American 

 to get sight of the great peaks of the Copper 

 River district. The first account of Mount 

 Wrangell was by a Russian party under Bran- 

 icoff , which went up the Copper River a little 

 distance. The party aroused the enmity of the 

 Indians, and every man was massacred. The 



