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Height of Mount St. Elias.

235

Mr. S. S. Gannett, of the United States Geological Survey. The results of the computation, so far as they relate to Mount St. Elias, are given below:

Computation of the Height of Mount St. Elias.

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Mean elevation above sea level 18099 ft.; or in round numbers 18,100 ft.

Mr. A. Lindenkohl, of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and Mr. S. S. Gannett have each computed the geographic position of Mount St. Elias, using the azimuth and angle of elevation of the mountain obtained by the U. S. Coast Survey at Port Mulgrave in 1874,* and the elevation given above. From

* Report of the Superintendent of the U. S. Coast Survey for 1875. Appendix 10, pp. 157–188.

these data the approximate position of Mount St. Elias was found to be:

Lat.,, 60° 17′ 51′′ N.

Long., 140° 55′ 30′′ W.

The computation by which these results were obtained is given below:

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* A, B and C are terms depending on the size and figure of the earth

and the latitude of the place.

Height of Mount St. Elias.

237

The geographic position of Mount St. Elias is of popular interest in connection with the boundaries of Alaska.

In the convention between Great Britain and Russia,* wherein the boundaries of Alaska are supposed to be defined, it is stated that the boundary, beginning at the south, after leaving Portland channel, shall follow the summit of the mountains situated parallel to the coast as far as the 141st meridian, and from there northward the said meridian shall be the boundary to the Arctic ocean. Whenever the summit of the mountains between Portland channel and the 141st meridian "shall prove to be at the distance of more than ten marine leagues from the ocean, the limit between the British possessions and the line of coast which is to belong to Russia, above mentioned, shall be formed by a line parallel to the windings of the coast and which shall never exceed the distance of ten marine leagues therefrom."

As Mount St. Elias is approximately in longitude 140° 55′ 30′′ west from Greenwich, as already shown, it is therefore only 4' and 30" of longitude or 2 statute miles east of the boundary of the main portion of Alaska. Its distance from the nearest point on the coast is 33 statute miles. There is no coast range in southeastern Alaska parallel with the coast within the limits specified by the treaty, and the boundary must therefore be considered as a line parallel with the coast and ten marine leagues, or 34 statute miles, inland. The mountain is thus one and one-half miles south of the boundary and within the territory of the United States. Its position is so near the junction of the boundary separating southeastern Alaska from the Northwest Territory with the 141st meridian that it is practically a corner monument of our national domain.

* Message from the President of the United States, transmitting Report on the boundary line between Alaska and British Columbia. 50th Congress, 2d session, Ex. Doc. No. 146, Senate, 1889.

32-NAT. GEOG. MAG., VOL. III, 1891.

THE HEART OF AFRICA.

BY

E. C. HORE.

(Abstracts of two Lectures presented before the Society March 6 and March 13, 1891.)

I.

The subject of Africa and its people has recently become a most interesting and popular one. We are but now beginning to realize the size and importance of Africa, as we are reminded that it contains nearly one-fourth part of the land area of the world; that it has mountains at least 1,000 feet higher than the most lofty American peaks; that the known extent of the Nile and the Congo now make them the rivals of the Yang-tse-Kiang and the Mississippi as the longest rivers in the world; that its central regions, instead of the great desert blank so long shown on our maps, is a rich and beautiful elevated region, having upon its heights a splendid collection of fresh-water lakes or inland seas, fertilizing by their outflowing streams the whole continent; and that it is known to contain over 250,000,000 people, or about one-seventh part of the world's population. It is called the dark continent:" rather should it be called the "new world," in which our interest and responsibility-political, commercial and social-is rapidly growing.

For purposes of general description, there are three great divisions of the African continent and its peoples and affairs:

The northern division, stamped and characterized—men, manners and things-by the orientalism of its conquering settlers, so intimately blended by blood, religion and character with the natives as to have become essentially African, its original peoples so thoroughly influenced by the incoming foreigners as to be now essentially oriental;

The southern division, overrun in more modern times by foreigners of other races, and having its own peculiar civilization and characteristics due to that influx; and

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Central Africa, including all that portion of the continent lying between, say, the Albert Nyanza and the river Zambesi, and Zanzibar and the Congo mouth, and which, although no part now remains of it that is not nominally the territory either of the Congo Free state or some European power, is still almost entirely in the possession and occupation of its lawful owners, the native uncivilized tribes.

As well as this transverse political division of Africa, we may make what may be called a concentric analysis. Commencing with the outer skin, the 16,000 miles of African coast, we find upon it certain excrescences, which, if our examination went but skin-deep, might well lead us to regard Africa not as a "new," but as an "old, old" world. On the north and east the remains of ancient civilizations, Morocco, Tangier, Egypt, remind us of Africa's bygone grandeur-remind us how very much of forms of beauty and secrets of science and art came to us in the birth of civilized Europe from or through Africa. On the south and west again, memorials of Phoenician, of Portuguese, of Dutch, English and American conquering visitors and adventurers remind us of the constant preying of the nations on the dark continent-remind us, through certain prison castles still to be seen on the western coast, of the great world's crime, the slave trade. But on the outer surface of Africa other signs are to be read: North, south, cast and west there are ports and roadsteads forested with the masts of the world's shipping conveying to Africa's every shore those products of the civilized world which, according to their nature for good or harm, are to influence and civilize the Africans; carrying away from her shore the land's products-a constant stream, increasing perhaps just now, but which has always been flowing-of wool, cotton, oil, rich spices, dyes and medicinal and ornamental woods, india-rubber, gumcopal, ivory, precious stones, gold. Are these the products of a desert land inhabited only by a lazy and savage people?

Following our concentric analysis, the first layer behind the outer skin of Africa may be said to consist of a verdant slope, broad and luxuriant in the tropics, where nature herself has been lavish, narrower, but still ever widening, in the drier north and south, as the oriental and the European respectively advance their groves of fruit and fields of corn, maintained in luxuriance alike by the vapors of the sea and the down drainage from the higher lands, and from the same causes also malarious and un

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