Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/52

 Public attention was focused on Alaska by the discovery of the rich placers of the Klondike in 1896. Though these deposits lay in the Canadian-Yukon, it was close to the boundary, and the public generally regarded all of Alaska as lying within the gold field. Congress in 1898 increased the appropriation for Alaskan surveys and has since that time been liberal in supplying funds for this purpose.

There was an urgent demand for immediate information about routes, conditions of travel and occurrence of mineral wealth, on the part of the thousands who had started, or were about to start, north. Plans had to be formulated and parties organized in great haste, for the money did not become available until about the end of February. The task which confronted the Geological Survey was far from being easy. But little was known of this vast region which stretched toward the pole, much of which was locked in the ice over half the year. The field of operations could be reached only by long journeys by sea and land, and there was little in the way of experience to base the plans upon. Thanks to Spurr's journey into the Yukon, something was known of the conditions of travel, and the first season's plans were largely formulated by him. It appeared that the most important work was to make explorations to determine the geographic features and, as far as possible, to establish the distribution of the placer gold. Detailed surveys were out of the question; with the funds available they could not be made rapidly enough to meet the public demand. Moreover, so little was known of the region, that it was impossible to make choice as to which were the more important districts. It was, therefore, necessary to precede areal surveys by a system of explorations. Such had been the procedure in the western part of the United States during the preceding half century. The explorer was the first in the field, and it was only after the unknown regions had been honeycombed by many explorations that areal surveys were undertaken.

The routes leading inland from the coast appeared of first importance, and hence received the first attention. A bold mountain barrier stretches along the entire shore line of Alaska, as far west as Cook Inlet, and, previous to 1898, inland travel had crossed the barrier only at Chilkoot Pass, which leads to. the Yukon through northern British Columbia. To the west two large rivers, the Alsek and the Copper, empty into the Pacific. Both had been traversed by white men and reported as unnavigable. Of a third, the Sushitna River, emptying into Cook Inlet, little was known. The problem was to seek a feasible route which should avoid traversing Canadian territory, and an important part of the first year's plan was explorations looking to this end.

In cooperation with the War Department, one geologist explored inland from Prince William Sound, while another mapped a route from the head of Cook Inlet. A Geological Survey party carried on