Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/94

ceptable in the middle of the last century, for such a survey would not now prove beneficial with reference to any but the unexplored regions.

The parts of the world that have been completely surveyed and the parts about which, from the standpoint of the marine hydrographer, nothing is known are equally beyond our concern at present, for on the one hand the needs of commerce and navigation have been met and on the other hand commerce and navigation have as yet no needs. It is to the vast extent of the coasts of the world concerning which marine hydrographic knowledge exists in varying degrees of incompleteness that we should address ourselves with a view of directing attention to the faults which may be corrected and to the wants which may be supplied.

Leaving our own completely surveyed Atlantic seaboard, we come at once among the oldest colonies in the Western Hemisphere and in a sea of great present and prospective importance, upon coasts concerning which there is no adequate information for the construction of charts and the guidance of shipping. The coasts of the Island of Haiti, outside of the more important ports and harbors, are very imperfectly charted. Our knowledge of the harbors of Cuba has been lately much improved, but the sections of coast connecting these harbors is not yet well represented. No better portrayal of the north coast of South America from Panama to Trinidad has ever been afforded than that which resulted from a cursory examination made in the early part of the last century. There are doubtless many places along this coast where future surveying operations will develop useful anchorages for the improvement of commerce and the safety of vessels. The ports leading to many of the important maritime centers of Brazil have been efficiently surveyed, but the general approaches to the coast are not completely developed. In the Rio de la Plata navigation has been rendered fairly safe, but of the intervening coast, until the Strait of Magellan is reached, it may only be said that, beyond several isolated local surveys lately executed by the Argentine government, nothing has been done since the general examination in 1830. The efforts of British and Chilean hydrographic surveyors have effected much improvement during the last generation in the charts of the Strait of Magellan and throughout the waters of Chile, although the whole labyrinth of channels in southern Chile is still inadequately known for the purposes of the many steamers that are continually passing through; and with reference to the entire western coast of South America, the efficient surveying operations have clustered around local developments that were taking place here and there, leaving no general survey of the whole coast by which it can be laid down in sufficient detail.

The surveys of the immediate approaches to Panama, although imperfect, are serviceable; and the same may be said of the Central American and Mexican coasts which connect the Republic of Panama with the completely surveyed Pacific coast of the United States. Of the coastal waters in the northeastern Pacific much more is known in relation to the waters of the British dominions than with reference to the Alaskan coasts. Indeed the marine hydrographic surveys of Alaska are as yet very incomplete, especially in the Aleutian Islands, where many coasts remain barely explored. Russian Siberia and Korea have for the most part only been hydrographically explored; but nearly all of the coasts of the Empire of Japan have been completely surveyed and charted, and the coasts of China, together with the China Sea, where British surveying ships have worked continuously for fifty years to put in their right positions the multi-