LETTER FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY, COMMUNICATING The report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, showing the progress of that work during the year ending November, 1851. January 12, 1852.-Ordered that 6,000 extra copies be printed; 5,000 for the use of the House, and 1,000 for the use of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey. TREASURY DEPARTMENT, December 5, 1851. SIR: I have the honor to submit, for the information of the House of Representatives, the accompanying report, made to the department by Professor A. D. Bache, Superintendent of the Coast Survey, showing the progress of said work during the year ending November, 1851. All of which is respectfully submitted. Hon. LINN BOYD, THO. CORWIN, Speaker of the House of Representatives. REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE COAST SURVEY. COAST SURVEY STATION, Cape Small Point, Maine, November 5, 1851. SIR: I have the honor to submit the annual report, required by the regulations, of the progress of the survey of the coast of the United States, for the information of the department and of the President and Congress. The appropriation asked for the last fiscal year provided for work on portions of the whole extended coast of the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific, in the proportions deemed necessary for the wants of commerce and navigation, or desirable from the different stages of progress at the several points, or economical in reference to the distribution of the parties according to the best working seasons. The plan which has for some years been pursued, with the approval of the executive and legislative authorities, has been steadily adhered The coast of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, extending over to. nearly nineteen and a half degrees of latitude and thirty and a half of longitude, is divided into nine sections of nearly equal extent of shore line, following the minute indentations of the coast; and the survey is begun in each, and advanced each year, as far as the means appropriated permit. A base line measured in each section, and observations made for latitude and azimuth at appropriate points, furnish data for the preliminary maps and charts of the sections, without waiting for the completion of the whole work; while the system provides for the joining of the parts and the verifications, which are necessary in all extended surveys, and without which the accuracy desirable and attainable would by no means be reached. To derive matured fruit from such a plan, it must be steadily prosecuted to its completion. It is most advantageous for reasons which I have, in former reports, dwelt upon in detail. It avoids exclusive attention to one part of the coast and neglect of the rest, permitting a ready adaptation to general or local wants. It accommodates itself to the facilities or difficulties presented by the different natural features of the coast, by which the rate of progress of the whole work in different places, or of different operations in the same region, varies. It facilitates the division of labor, which is an important element of progress and of economy; and permits the execution of each operation at the best season or period, which is equally important. It is not less flexible in lending itself to the scientific, than the practical and economical requirements of different cases. What it is capable of doing when steadily followed out, is illustrated by sections three and four, in which, while the necessary data for maps, charts, and sketches have been furnished from year to year, the triangulations have been advancing-one from Kent Island base, southward, in Maryland and Virginia; the other from the Bodie's Island base, North Carolina-until they are now within less than fifty miles of each other. Two seasons will enable us to join them, and then the results will verify each other. Similar plans are in progress for each of the sections, requiring only careful adjustment to the features of the coast to insure, finally, all the perfection of a geodetic survey. The continuance of the fostering care of the Executive and Congress in the uninterrupted execution of these plans, will bring them certainly to maturity. The time of completion will depend upon the means which a judicious economy may consider available to this portion of the public service. Every increase of the appropriation, up to the point when the work would become unwieldy, and unity of design and execution would be sacrificed to rapidity, is attended with not only a corresponding decrease in time, but with more than a proportionate decrease. I have considered it a duty, while adhering generally to the limits which Congress has determined at a particular time to appropriate, to represent to the Treasury Department the cases in which an increase is demanded for the successful progress of different parts of the survey. The plan for prosecuting the survey of the western coast, so as to meet the wants of a commerce increasing with a rapidity which has no precedent, and the peculiar condition of the country in other respects, was presented in my last report, and is briefly repeated in this. It will require, for a few years, the application of larger means than will after wards be needed. Until we can place that coast at least on a footing in respect to surveys with that which resulted from efforts in colonial times, in respect to the Atlantic coast, I am convinced that duty requires me to urge the supply of more than ordinary means to meet an extraordinary case. On what coast before has commerce been developed, from the outset, by the aid of steam?-altering all the usual relations of time, draught, and course, and I may add, of value from a single loss. When has it before occurred that a locality, marked on charts four years since as a mere trading establishment for skins, should have grown into a city, the fourth-in such a country as the United Statesin the amount of revenue collected for the general treasury? We have assuredly not yet come up to the requirements of such a commerce. I have before remarked that the plan of the survey furnished data. for immediate use. In fact, between one-fourth and one-third of the annual appropriation is devoted to what is classed as office work, consisting in computation, reduction, drawing, engraving, electrotyping, printing, and publishing. Usually, the publication of the results of a work is estimated for separately; but here it goes to swell the total amount. It is advantageous not to separate the two sets of estimates, as it permits the adaptation of the field and water work and of the publication to each other in due relation, notwithstanding the varying circumstances which cannot be anticipated, and which are sometimes beyond control, in changing the amount of one or the other. When a work, from its magnitude, necessarily occupies a number of years, to postpone the publication of its results until its completion is to deprive the public of all advantage from it until the highest is attainable. We have proceeded upon the opposite plan-that of endeavoring to give results as fast as they can be obtained. Not to give those as final which are really only approximate, but stating the degree of approximation; to give them in such a shape as will make them immediately useful, increasing the refinements in the form in which they are presented as the increased accuracy of the determinations permits. The sketches intended to give information to nautical men and others, which accompanied my report in 1849, were fifteen in number, while in the present report they are thirty-three; and eight notices to mariners, some of them very extended, have been published in the course of the year. This not only diffuses the information derived from the survey while it is fresh, but it reacts powerfully on the work itself, giving a strong but healthful stimulus to those who are engaged in it by enabling them at once to realize a portion of the credit of their labors. It improves the details, too, by presenting them in such a shape that their merits or defects can be fairly weighed. It fixes responsibility, and gives immediate credit for well-executed work. I would even go further than this, by publishing the data derived from observation, and, when they admit of it, the observations themselves. I am satisfied that the additional expenditure which would thus be required would repay itself many times in the efficiency of the work, the security from loss, the diffusion of information as to methods and results of observation, and in the great facility for such publication while the persons by whom the observations are made are still actually occupied in the same work, and all the minute particulars are fresh in their minds. This plan is much to |