1878. | Geography and Travels. 571 
the Columbia River basin. Another portion will move south 
rom Carson, Nevada, and occupy triangulation points on the 
Sierras, and survey a portion of the ra nge south of Mono Lake. 
A party is assigned to the Washoe mining region. 
The Atlas of Colorado has now been completed by the U. S. 
Geological Survey, and gives the results of the riche of Dr: E. 
V. Hayden, and his corps, in geography and geology. 
Colorado is now better known topographically than any other 
State. 
In an article in the Geographical Magazine, on the productive 
zones of Russia in Europe, five of these regions are enumerate 
There are, starting from the north, the zvzdras, then the forest 
and agricultural region (forming three zones), and the steppes. 
The ¢unxdras, those bare, damp Arctic wastes, are as a rule to be 
found between the Arctic Circle and the Polar ocean. They are 
frozen in winter and generally thaw to the depth of a foot or so 
in summer. Turf moss (Sphagnum) and reindeer moss (Cladonia 
rangiferina) are both to be found, and the latter is a product of 
economic importance, though in eight or ten days a herd of rein- 
deer will generally exhaust a pasture of it. These animals yield 
so little milk that it takes at least a hundred of them to support 
one family. The entire area of the tundras in Europe amounts 
to about 144,820 square miles (English). 
The two-masted schooner Eothen, of 102 tons, a sixteen-year 
old whaling vessel, recently refitted, sailed from New York on 
the toth of June for Repulse Bay. She has on board the mem- 
bers of the Franklin Search Party, consisting of the commander 
Lieut. Frederick Schwatka, U: S. A., Col. W. H. Gilder, Joseph 
Eberling—* Esquimaux Joe,” of the Polaris Expedition, — 
Henry W. Klutchack and F. F. Melvers. At Repulse Bay they 
are to be reinforced by seven Esquimaux, and, as soon as there is 
sufficient snow, they go by sledging to a point near Cape Engel- 
field, where they expect to find a cairn containing relics of the 
Franklin expedition. They are to return during the winter of 
1879-1880 to Repulse Bay. They take with them a valuable 
equipment of scientific instruments and are directed to take daily 
observations. Dr. John Rae, in a letter to Chief-Justice Daly, 
Aiei of the American Geographical Society, published in the 
w York Herald, again expresses his disbelief in the pes 
of. this cairn for the “following reasons I. at it is most i | 
probable that any of the crew of Franklin's ships should abe 
reached the locality mentioned, situated a distance of 300 miles 
over the very rough and parti ally open ice of Boothia Gulf and 
where no aid could be obtained. (2.) That in 1854, when he 
visited the regions between Repulse Bay and Boothia Gulf, he 
examined the Esquimaux of this region, but heard nothing of the _ 
existence of this cairn, although they knew of the cairn erected 
by him near Cape Englefield in 1847 and of the cache left oy 5 
