Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/49

 Rh A geologic map can not be constructed without an adequate base map. As in the west there were practically no adequate and systematic topographic surveys of the interior before the organization of state and federal geologic bureaus, it naturally fell to these organizations to construct base maps for their work. The same holds true of Alaska, where the conditions have been even less favorable because of the many large areas which have been practically unexplored. It is no exaggeration to state that, at the inception of this work, there was not a single area, large or small, except at the actual coast line, of which there was a map of even approximate accuracy. A few explorations had, to be sure, been made; but the resulting maps were absolutely worthless for geologic mapping and of little use for anything else. Thus the survey of one of the largest rivers of the territory proved to be thirty to forty miles out in location, near-by mountains, whose altitude had been indicated at seventeen to nineteen thousand feet, proved to be less than fifteen thousand feet in altitude. It is evident, then, that an investigation of the mineral wealth had to be preceded or accompanied by accurate geographic surveys. Maps were needed not only by the geologist, but also by the prospector and miner. The mining interests demanded that watercourses should be surveyed and passes and watersheds explored. During the Klondike excitement of 1898 there were at least 10,000 people in Alaska who were attempting to follow unexplored routes and to navigate unmapped rivers. It is no exaggeration to state that the cost of these fruitless efforts aggregated several million dollars, many times the cost of a survey of the entire territory. In view of these conditions, much of the money, therefore, appropriated for the investigation of Alaska's mineral wealth was necessarily used for explorations and for topographic surveys.

It will be well to review briefly the progress of Alaskan explorations previous to the time when the Geological Survey entered this field. When, in 1867, Russia ceded all her North American possessions to the United States, so little was known of this province that it is hard to understand what was the basis for the purchase price of $7,200,000. To Russia Alaska had been a field for private speculation rather than an integral part of the empire. First, ravaged by the itinerant and half savage fur trader, and then, for two thirds of a century, in the complete control of an incorporated company, the territory was probably not regarded as a valuable asset by the Czar and his advisers. To be sure, during the last two decades of the Russian dominion, naval officers had been been sent from St. Petersburg to govern the colony, and a semblance of imperial authority was thereby kept up; but this control was limited to but a fraction of the coast line and to the lower