152 : General Notes. [ February, 
He found that there was an easy communication between Kot- 
zebue sound and the Yukon. Mr. B. McLenegan, with one 
sailor, ascended in a canoe the river Nortauk, which enters the 
Arctic ocean at Hotham inlet, for a distance of 400 miles. Here 
one of the head streams of the river issued from a small lake. No 
inhabitants were met’with. The course of the Nortauk is entirely 
in the Polar circle, and the lake in which it rises is the most 
northerly inland point yet reached by white men in Alaska. 
A rich deposit of coal of good quality has been found at Cape 
Lisburne (69° 37’ N. lat.). From the observations made by 
the Alert, it appears that Hudson’s bay and strait are navigable 
from July to October, and that the climate of the Hudson’s bay 
coast is less severe than that of Northwest Canada. Lieut. 
Allen has returned to San Francisco from an exploration of. the 
Copper river, which he ascended as far as the mountain range of 
Alaska. e then crossed the mountains on snow-shoes, and 
reached the sources of the Tennah, which he followed 800 miles 
to its junction with the Takon. The latter he descended to its 
mouth, a distance of 400 to 500 miles———M. Thonar has left 
Buenos Ayres to complete his explorations on the Pilcomayo. 
Captain L. Gray found, during his visit to the east coast 0 
Greenland last summer, that the land ice was sufficiently open in 
August to afford passage for a steamer. He sailed along the 
coast from Shannon island to the entrance of Scoresby sound. 
J. Hughes and F. Dunsmuir have returned to Juneau, 
Alaska, from the headwaters of the Yukon. Good placers were 
found, mostly in British territory. ‘he governments of the 
gentine confederation and of Brazil have agreed to a joint 
exploration of the neutral or disputed ground on the western 
limit of the Brazilian province of Sta. Cateria, situated between 
the Uruguay and Iguassu rivers. An old treaty between Spain 
and Portugal fixed upon two rivers, the Peperi and San Antonio, 
the first flowing into the Igyassu, the second southward to the 
Uruguay, as the boundary; but the difficulty is to identify the 
rivers so called in the treaty. Lieut. Greely, ina recent lecture 
at Dundee, stated that the temperature observations taken during 
his stay in Grinnell sound confirmed the expectation that it had 
the lowest mean temperature known, about 4° F. below zero. 
The discovery of coal at various points showed how climate had 
changed. He doubted the existence of a palzocrystic sea. 
floe bergs from 100 to 1000 feet thick, are, in his belief, detach- 
ments of slowly moving ice-caps from a land near the pole. ! 
` Kane sea he visited a floe berg a third of a mile wide and a fifth 
to a sixth of a mile thick, and found upon it two valleys thirty 
feet deep, along which were fully 100 large stones polished and 
worn smooth—proofs of the glacial and terrestrial origin of the 
