bad reputation since the days of the Russian occupation. Bremner expected to winter at Taral, just below the junction of the Copper and its great eastern tributary, the Chittyna, and he carried. out his intention in spite of the difficulties which the undertaking involved. The Indians stole his flour, so he snared and ate rabbits. They tested his powers as a shaman by calling him in in cases of sickness. He prescribed thorough baths and applied mustard plasters, curing his patients and making illness a thing to be dreaded at Taral. All of this and more is recorded in a diary whose English and spelling are as original as the tale they tell.

Bremner describes the phenomena which he witnessed of Mount Wrangell in eruption, and gives a brief account of his attempt during the winter to climb the volcano. He estimated it to be 25 or 30 miles from Taral; its actual distance is 40 miles. The natives, always superstitious concerning the mountain, declined to go with him, so he started out alone. He failed of course in midwinter to reach a summit 14,000 feet above the sea, and had his ears and toes badly frozen as a result of the attempt.

In the early spring of 1885, under orders from the War Department, Lieut. Henry T. Allen, U. S. Army, the present efficient head of the native constabulary in the Philippine Islands, undertook an exploration of the Copper and of the Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers. Because of the resolution displayed, the difficulties overcome, and the results achieved, Lieutenant Allen's work stands as a model to this day. At Taral he found Bremner and added him to the party which already contained, in addition to Sergeant Robertson and Private Fisher, Bremner's partner, Peder John

the Copper, and explored it nearly to its source. Later the ascent of the Copper was resumed, and the portage was made from the Indian village of Batzulnetas on the upper Copper to the Tanana Valley by way of Suslota Pass. While within the Copper Valley, Lieutenant Allen went almost around the group of mountains of which Mount Wrangell is the center. He made constant observations on the individual peaks of the group, and later published, in an account of his work, the first map upon which the companion peaks of Wrangell appear. These he named Blackburn, in honor of Senator Blackburn; Sanford, after an ancestor of the explorer; Drum, for the Adjutant General of the Army, and Tillman, in honor of Professor Tillman of the U. S. Military Academy. Mount Wrangell had already been named by the Russians, so that upon Lieutenant Allen's map five great peaks are shown where one had been known before. The actively volcanic character of Mount Wrangell, which had been referred to in Bremner's diary, is repeatedly confirmed by Allen, to whom the smoke column was frequently visible.

After Allen's explorations, the next geographically important work in the area was done by Dr C. Willard Hayes, who in 1891, in company with Frederick Schwatka and Mark Russell, made the long journey on foot from Fort Selkirk on the Yukon to the Copper Valley. Discovering and crossing Scolai Pass, unknown before this time, the hardy explorers built a boat on the upper Nizina from the canvas in which their blankets had been wrapped, and in this frail craft floated down the Nizina and the Chittyna to the Copper. Scolai Pass, which with its approaches was mapped by Doctor Hayes, is properly to be regarded as the eastern limit of the group whose dominant summits had been indicated by Allen.

In 1898, during the first year of the

View taken from the government trail above Tonsina bridge, 45 miles from the summit of the mountain

Photo by W. C. Mendenhall

rush to Alaska, some additional mapping in the Copper Valley was done by army officers and by prospectors, and especially by Schrader and Mahlo, attached to Military Expedition No. 1. This work was confined, however, to the district south and west of the mountain group and added little to our knowledge of their geography. In 1899 a journey was made, which in its daring and success equals those of Allen, Hayes, and Schwatka as a geographic feat. The distance covered was not nearly so great, but the time consumed was also much less. Oscar Rohn, topographer and geologist to the military expedition under command of Captain Abercrombie, with a small pack train, penetrated for the first time with animals the rough country lying between the Chittyna River and the south slope of the Wrangell Alps. Reaching the Nizina or north fork of the Chittyna in September, and seeing, as he thought, the possibility of crossing the range to the north of him by way of one of the glaciers tributary to this stream, Mr Rohn sent the pack train back to Valdez and with one companion, Mr McNeer, started across the mountains.

The pass

at the head of the glacier proved to be 8,000 feet above sea-level, and the distance from the beginning of the journey over the ice on the Nizina side to its end at the source of the Chisana (Tanana) was nearly 50 miles. The route, the character of the ice to be traversed, the distance, and the point to be reached on the other side were unknown. After 15 days on the glacier and many delays from the storms which prevail at this season of the year in these latitudes, the two explorers found themselves at the source of the Chisana, the eastern fork of the Tanana, nearly out of supplies and with a difficult and little-known region separating them from the Copper Valley. On foot, and On foot, and carrying their light outfit, they crossed Cooper Pass to what they hoped would

be the Copper, only to find that it was. the Nabesna, the great western fork of the Tanana, and that the Copper was still to the west of them. Ice was forming in all the streams and snow lay thick in the passes, but with the aid of natives they reached the Copper in early October, Copper Center a week later, and crossed Lowe River divide to Valdez through 3 feet of new snow on the 25th. This work, although a reconnaissance, added valuable details to our knowledge of the northern and southern flanks of the Wrangell Mountains.

All of the work which has been outlined, up to the close of the season 1899, was general in its character. Allen had indicated the presence of five great peaks in the Wrangell group where four existed, and his longitude was in error by 30 minutes. Mahlo, in 1898, corrected much of this error in longitude, but since he descended the Klutena to Copper Center, and then went down the Cooper, he could add little to the geography of the mountain group proper, which lay well to the northeast of his route. Rohn, in his work along the southern flank of the range, sketched details previously unknown there, and in his trip from the Nizina to the Tanana studied a high area which is not likely to be investigated soon again. Peters and Brooks, during the same year, contributed to our knowledge of the Chisana and the Nabesna and outlined the northern edge of the range.

In 1900, however, Messrs Gerdine and Witherspoon, of the U. S. Geological Survey, as members of a party in charge of Mr F. C. Schrader, carried a stadia line into the interior from a Coast Survey base on Prince William Sound. From locations given by this line a triangulation network was expanded and extended eastward over practically the entire valley of the Chittyna and its tributaries. For the first time Mount Blackburn was measured accurately, and the topographic features of all this southern