THE SCRUPULOUS VERACITY OF VANCOUVER. 55 mountains at distances obtained by estimation, because he could not determine them with the means he had, nor were their distances necessary for his work. Through the Archipelago Alexander, the distances of the mountain range are laid down from ten to twenty-four miles inside the coast. On the ocean coast, as far west as the Saint Elias and Fairweather ranges, he estimated the distances of the notable peaks of the same names as twenty and ten miles from the water; both nearly correct. Vancouver's method of exhibiting all mountain ranges as he saw them from the water should be borne in mind in its bearing upon the words of the Treaty of 1825 that refer to "la crête des montaynes situées parallèlement à la Côte." This was one of the governing features seized upon by the contracting Powers. We elsewhere show that his method has been carried out to the present day. All the circumstances considered, this great navigator, explorer and discoverer, gave the world a remarkable series of charts, and his narrative may be followed, as we have tested it through many years, with the satisfying sense that he was stating the truth as it appeared to him; and the investigator may never doubt "that scrupulous veracity from which Captain Vancouver never departed." It is here proper to say that the able Russian navigator and cartographer, Captain Tebenkof, in 1848, based his great atlas on Vancouver's charts; and that as late as 1867 United States Government vessels sailed the intricate channels leading to and through the Archipelago Alexander by the charts based on Vancouver. We were on the United States revenue steamer Lincoln when the Russian pilot, M. M. Kadin, took her from Victoria to Sitka by the Tebenkof charts. In 1865, the British Admiralty published the large-scale chart No. 2431 of the Archipelago Alexander, based on Vancouver and Russian surveys. This has been republished as new details have been gathered to 1888. In 1869, the Hydrographic Bureau of the United States Navy Department published chart No. 225 of the Archipelago from the British chart No. 2431. DESCRIPTION OF THE ARCHIPELAGO ALEXANDER. Geographically, the Archipelago Alexander is the northern development of that long line of islands and straits that reach from the head of Puget Sound in latitude 47° 03′ to the head of Taiyá Inlet in latitude 59° 29', and having a general direction to the northwest. The Archipelago so named✶ is restricted to the islands and straits and inlets northward of Dixon Entrance in latitude 54° 40', through 375 nautical miles in a straight line with a breadth of 90 miles between the outer coast and the main line of the Continental shore. There are great straits through the many hundreds of islands, capable of deep draught navigation; the channels are safe highways; anchorages are numerous; the walls of the islands are rocky, bold, and attain elevations of three thousand feet. The measured shore line of this Archipelago reaches nearly eight thousand miles. Great, deep fiords with bold shores intrude into the Continental shore for many miles, and that shore is generally bold, high, rugged. All of the shores of the islands and mainland are marked by a growth of trees wherever they can get a foothold up to an elevation of about two thousand feet above the sea. The principal fiords, inlets and canals that penetrate the Continental shore north of latitude 54° 40', are the following, and reckoning the distances in a straight line from the entrance to the head: Portland Inlet and Canal, 76 nautical miles with a depth of over 100 fathoms of water to near the head. Boca de Quadra, 23 nautical miles; 54 fathoms near the head. Burroughs Bay, 5 nautical miles to mouth of Unuk River; 97 fathoms close to head. * In 1788 called by Meares the "Great Northern Archipelago," page 212, his narrative. Vancouver named several minor archipelagoes in the Archipelago Alexander. We applied the present name in 1867. House of Representatives, 40th Congress, 2d Session, Ex. Doc. No. 177, page 234. Bradford Canal, 13 nautical miles; 65 fathoms near head. Thomas Bay, 7 nautical miles; 48 fathoms. Port Houghton, 13 nautical miles; 48 fathoms. Endicott Arm from Port Snettisham, 23 nautical miles; 122 fathoms near head. Tracy Arm from Port Snettisham, 16 nautical miles; 157 fathoms near head. North Arm of Port Snettisham, II nautical miles; 103 fathoms near head. Taku Inlet, 16 nautical miles; 56 fathoms at head; it receives the Taku River, navigable for canoes and small boats about thirtyfive miles (Douglas). Berners Bay, 4 nautical miles; 30 fathoms at head. Taiyá Inlet, 12 nautical miles from head of Lynn Canal; 60 fathoms near head; it carries 230 fathoms. There are no streams that break through the Continental shore with waters deep enough for even moderately sized steamboats. The Stakheen is the largest stream breaking through the mountains that lie between the interior plateau region and the waters of the Archipelago. That river has been navigated with difficulty, when not frozen, by a small steamboat for about one hundred and twenty-five miles. It is full of bars and riffles, and in the lower reaches it has a current of four or five miles per hour; before the upper part is reached by the steamboat there are two reaches where the current runs ten miles per hour. At the mouths of the river the amount of debris brought down has blocked direct navigation of the eastern straits for over ten miles. NEGOTIATIONS LEADING TO THE ADOPTION OF THE LISIÈRE. In February, 1823, Sir Charles Bagot, British Ambassador to Russia, received his instructions from Mr. George Canning, Secretary of the Foreign Office, in relation to the Russian Ukase of 1821, and in relation to establishing a boundary line between the Russian and British possessions in Northwest America. On the 19th of August, 1823, in his letter to Mr. George Canning, he wrote that he had informed Count Nesselrode "that our pretentions had, I believed, always extended to the 59th degree of north latitude, but that a line of demarcation drawn at the 57th degree would be entirely satisfactory to us, and that I believed the Russian Government had in fact no Settlements to the southward of that line."'* But he was in doubt about the last assertion "as the Russian Settlement of Sitka, to which I am told the Russian Government pretends to attach great importance is not laid down very precisely in the map published in 1802 in the Quartermaster-General's Department here, or laid down at all in that of Arrowsmith, which has been furnished to me from the Foreign Office." We continue to follow Sir Charles' proposition in his letters to Mr. Canning. He says he had two interviews with M. Poletica "upon the subject of territorial boundary as it regarded ourselves, and I then gave him to understand that the British Government would, I thought, be satisfied to take Cross Sound, lying about the latitude of 57%, as the boundary line between the two Powers on the Coast, and a meridian line drawn from the head of Lynn Canal, as it is laid down on Arrowsmith's last Map, or about the 135th degree of west longitude, as the boundary in the interior of the continent." Then he acknowledges that he had "put in a claim to something more than I am instructed to do in your despatch above referred to, [because] I thought that it *Fur Seal Arbitration: Volume IV, page 409. + Fur Seal Arbitration: Volume IV, page 412. |