26 RECONNAISSANCE IN NORTHERN ALASKA IN 1901. 



located Whale Island, so named by him from the large number of white whales 

 observed at this point. He also made observations on the tide of the Arctic Ocean. 

 His descriptions and locations of channels were later found by Sir John Franklin to 

 be very complete and accurate. 



In the year 1815 Lieutenant von Kotzebue," of the Russian Navy, penetrated 

 Bering Strait and explored the sound which bears his name, together with the north- 

 west region as far north as Cape Lisburne. After this time we have no record of 

 this part of the coast until the voyage of Captain Beeche\*, who explored the larger 

 part of the entire Arctic coast in the years 1825-1828. 



In 1S26, under the auspices of the Earl of Bathurst, Sir John Franklin descended 

 the Mackenzie to its mouth and surveyed the coast line to the west as far as Return 

 Reef, near longitude 119° W. Acting in conjunction with Franklin, Captain Beechey, 

 of the Blossom, had entered Bering Strait and sent a boat expedition in charge of 

 Master Thomas Elson, which in the same year explored the coast as far north as 

 Point Barrow, the northwestermnost point of the American continent. 6 The explora- 

 tion of the intervening distance, consisting of 160 miles of coast line, between the 

 points reached by Beechey and Franklin on the west and east, respectively, was sub- 

 sequently completed, and the north coast of the continent was outlined about ten 

 3 r ears later, in 1837, by Dease and Simpson, by whom many of the natural features 

 along this section of the coast were named. 



In his westward advance beyond the mouth of the Mackenzie, Franklin was the 

 first to round the great chain of the northern Rocky Mountains, consisting here, as 

 he perceived from the coast, of several parallel ranges. These are the Richardson, 

 Buckland, British, Romanzoff, and Franklin mountains. According to Dease and 

 Simpson the portion of the Rocky Mountains visible from the coast does not termi- 

 nate, as conjectured by Franklin, in the RomanzofF chain, but after a brief interval 

 the Romanzoff Mountains are succeeded on the west by another chain, less lofty but 

 equally picturesque, which was named by Dease and Simpson the Franklin Moun- 

 tains. These mountains present a precipitous front to the coast. 



Iti the days of these earlier discoverers the above-named parallel ranges, rising 

 from 2,000 to 3,000 feet, were apparently supposed to be the final termination of the 

 Rocky Mountains extending northward from the United States and British Columbia. 

 The great extension of the main axis to the west along the sixty-eighth parallel and 

 its development into a range nearly 100 miles in breadth and 6,000 feet high were 

 unknown. Not until the performance of the work forming the basis of this report 

 was a correct idea of this obtained. 



At the same time that Franklin was conducting his discoveries westward along 

 the coast, a detachment of his party proceeded from the mouth of the Mackenzie 



aDall, w. H., Alaska and its Resources, London and Boston, 1S70, pp. 329-330. 

 b Voyage of Captain Beechey to the Pacific and Behring's Straits, London, 1836. 



