( i7 ) 
Congress, about 1847, that the Rocky Mountains would be the 
limit of railroad extension across our Continent; that the bar¬ 
rier presented by these mountains and the extensive desert tract 
beyond must prevent the development of the now Pacific States. 
If we compare our present and past knowledge of Africa, we are 
again surprised that we could have been so deceived. In Africa, 
not many years ago, it was to die of pestilential fevers, or by the 
hand of the black assassin, if the ferocious beast was escaped ; 
now, it is to freeze or starve in Alaska. 
Our scientific knowledge of the Territory is comparatively little, 
and has not much increased since its purchase seventeen years ago. 
For the information of this character now in our possession re¬ 
lating to its geography, productions and climate, we are chiefly 
indebted to the director of the Scientific Corps of the Western 
Union Telegraph Expedition. For other valuable information we 
are indebted to adventurous traders and miners, whose intimate 
social relations with the natives, in many cases, gain for them a 
knowledge not quickly acquired by others. Such information as 
has been gained through the United States Signal Station at Point 
Barrow and the late military reconnoissance has not yet been 
officially promulgated. 
The most recent (July, 1883) and perhaps important discovery, 
since the acquisition of the Territory, is that of a river, emptying 
into Hotham Inlet, three-quarters of a mile wide near its mouth, 
and from two and a half to seven fathoms deep. From informa¬ 
tion obtained from the natives it is thought to be three or four hun¬ 
dred miles long, and to connect, after a short portage, with a 
second unknown river flowing north into the Arctic Ocean. The 
discoverer w r ill soon explore this river and his report, which may 
embrace other valuable information, will be awaited with much 
interest. The river was ascended about fifty miles, and it may be 
noted here that the report of the explorer states: “Everywhere 
the natives were kind, harmless and hospitable, many of them 
evidently having never seen a white man before. The heat was 
intense, vegetation rank, and the natives scantily clad. ” 
The attempt of the Western Union Telegraph Company, in 1866, 
to build a telegraph line through Oregon, Washington Territory, 
British Columbia and Alaska, thence by cable across Behring 
