Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/191

Rh voyage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, around the north coast of Asia, may be made by a suitable steamer in a few weeks at the proper season, but that the route is not likely to be of any practical commercial importance; that there is no difficulty in establishing a regular communication by water between the rivers Obi and the Yenisei and Europe for the purposes of trade+; that in all probability the voyage by sea between the Yenisei and Lena, and between the Lena and Europe, may be utilized for the purposes of trade; that the voyage there and therefrom may be made in the same summer; and that further explorations are necessary to determine whether a practicable communication by water can be established from the river Lena to the Pacific.

Geological and geographical work in the United States has been pushed with vigor, and some interesting results developed. Mr. G. K. Gilbert has surveyed the Henry Mountains of southern Utah, discovered by Professor Powell ten years ago, and has reached the conclusion that the Saskatchewan River, which rises in the Rocky Mountains, was formerly the upper course of the Mississippi, and flowed to the Gulf of Mexico, until, by the rising of the land in Minnesota, a barrier was created which changed the course of the river, and by which Lake Winnipeg came into existence.

Professor J. W. Powell has transmitted to the Government a report on the lands of the arid regions of the United States, west of the one-hundredth meridian and east of the Cascade Range, from which it appears that the abundant rainfall in the eastern portion of the United States diminishes westward, until at last an arid region is reached, in which agriculture is not possible without irrigation. This region, Professor Powell says, begins about midway in the great plains and extends across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, except that there is a greater precipitation of moisture in western Washington and Oregon, and the northwest corner of California, the winds impinging on this region being freighted with moisture, derived from the great Pacific currents, and where this water-laden atmosphere strikes the western coast in full force, as it does in the vicinity of the Columbia River, the precipitation is excessive, but rapidly decreases eastward to the summit of the Cascade Mountains, this humid area being designated by the Professor as the Lower Columbia region. The especially arid portion is the great Rocky mountain region of the United States, and embraces more than two-fifths of the whole country, excluding Alaska.

One of the curious results that surveys in this country have brought out is, that the configuration of a portion of central New York has been incorrectly described and mapped. Mr. J. T. Gardiner, who had charge of the survey, states that in nearly every instance places were misplaced one or two miles, while, in respect to the general features over which the survey extended, Mr. Gardiner says, "Colorado was not a greater surprise to me than has been the structure of my native