10 
ALASKA. 
the one hundred and forty-first meridian would already be marked 
on the ground. An extract from a letter by Secretary Olney, 
dated March 11, 1896, was as follows: 
“So far as the recent and existing surveys on either side have 
progressed, they exhibit a close coincidence of results. At one 
point, as I am informed, the difference between Mr. Ogilvie’s loca¬ 
tion and that made by the United States Coast and Geodetic Sur¬ 
vey is only about 6 feet 7 inches. In another point the difference 
is in the neighborhood of 500 or 600 feet, and at other points even 
closer coincidence than this latter is expected when the compari¬ 
son of calculations shall have been worked out.” 
Mr. Olney proposed that the two Governments should agree 
upon certain points of the one hundred and forty-first meridian 
at the intersection of the principal streams, locating the same at 
points midway between the determinations of the Coast and Geo¬ 
detic Survey and of Mr. Ogilvie, and providing for the junction 
of the points so located by convenient joint surveys, as occasion 
should require, until the entire line should be established. This 
would supply a permanent line which for international purposes 
would be coincident with the one hundred and forty-fifth meridian, 
stipulated under existing treaties, and would require no further 
immediate arrangement than the dispatch of a joint surveying 
party to set up monuments at the points defined, with perhaps the 
survey of a traverse line connecting the monuments on the Yukon 
and Forty Mile Creek, and farther south if necessary. 
The Canadian government agreed to this proposition, and the 
convention is now pending before the Senate of the United 
States. 
POPULATION. 
No definite idea of the population was obtained until the cen¬ 
sus of 1890. In 1868, in a report by' Maj. Gen. H. W. Halleck, 
the number given was 82,400. In the same year Rev. Vincent 
