234 
BAKER. 
Finally, as to Alaska the golden, from which so much of 
wealth and of disappointment is to come, onr author couples 
it with Greenland and dispatches it in this one sentence: 
“There are also Greenland on the northeast (of N. America), be¬ 
longing to Denmark, and the Russian settlements on the northwest, both 
of small extent and little consequence.” 
These citations serve to indicate the horizon of geographic 
knowledge 70 years ago, a horizon which was steadily widen¬ 
ing. Stories of wondrously fertile lands west of the Alleghe¬ 
nies found their way to the rocky and sterile farms of the 
east, and a steady stream of migration to better lands, where 
the struggle for existence should be less severe, poured over 
the Alleghenies and onward toward the sunset. In the 
vanguard was the Government surveyor measuring out the 
land and subdividing it for farms. Working hurriedly in 
a wilderness, among native tribes not always friendly, his 
surveys were not, perforce, accurate, nor indeed was it impor¬ 
tant they should be. They yielded a basis for titles to home¬ 
steads and for clear and easily understood descriptions. The 
results of these subdivisional surveys constitute substantially 
the only bases for the maps for much the greater part of all 
of our “ Great West ” to this day. 
Already before 1840 the question of supremacy of canal or 
railroad had been settled. In Peter Parley’s geography of 
1840 a tabular exhibit of railroads and of canals in the United 
States shows that there were then 46 canals, with a total 
mileage of about 4,800 miles, and 88 railroads, with a 
total mileage of nearly 7,700 miles. Progress in railroad¬ 
building demanded surveys and maps. Accordingly these 
were made; knowledge of geography was increased, and in¬ 
creased at a rapid pace. Whenever a little known region is 
found to possess wealth or the means of its rapid acquire¬ 
ment, knowledge of the geography of that region increases 
extraordinarily fast. Witness the increase and diffusion of 
knowledge as to Alaska in the past twelve months. The peace¬ 
ful expanding of our horizon of geographic knowledge con¬ 
tinued steadily and uniformly. But crises in human affairs 
