ALASKA AS IT WAS AND IS: 
1865-1895. 
BY 
William Healey Dall. 
[The annual presidential address, delivered before the Philosophical 
Society of Washington, December 6, 1895.] 
In 1864 the apparent hopelessness of the attempts to 
establish a workable transatlantic telegraph cable led those 
interested in telegraphic communication with Europe to 
consider other means of attaining that end. It was thought 
that a short cable across Bering strait might be made to 
work, and no doubt was entertained of the possibility of 
maintaining the enormously extended land lines which 
should connect the ends of this cable with the systems 
already in operation in Europe and the United States. A 
company was formed for this purpose, and an expedition to 
undertake the explorations necessary to determine the route 
was organized. The cooperation of the Russian aud Ameri¬ 
can governments w’as secured and the necessary funds sub¬ 
scribed. Searching for properly qualified explorers, the 
promoters of the enterprise consulted the Smithsonian Insti¬ 
tution and were brought into communication with Robert 
Kennicott, of Chicago, a young and enthusiastic naturalist, 
who had already made some remarkable journeys in the 
Hudson Bay territories in the interest of science. His ex¬ 
plorations had taken him to the most remote of the Hudson 
Bay posts—Fort Yukon, on the river of the same name— 
regardless of every kind of hardship, privation, and isola¬ 
tion. His ardor was so contagious that before returning to 
civilization he had communicated it to almost every one of 
18—Bull. Phil. Soe., Wash., Vol. 13. 
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