rises,
attorneys' fees, &c., so in short Russia really gave her American
possessions to the American people, reaping no direct emolument
whatsoever from the transfer. ("Our Arctic Province," by Henry W.
Elliott.)]

It is sad to think that the once maligned politician who acquired this
priceless treasure did not live to see his golden dream realised. A few
days before his death the Secretary was asked what he considered the
most important measure of his official career.

"The purchase of Alaska," was the reply, "but it will take the people a
generation to find it out."

Alaska may be divided into two great south-east and western districts.
Mount St. Elias, nearly 20,000 ft. high, marks the dividing line at 141
deg. west long., running north from this point to the Arctic Ocean. The
diversity of climate existing throughout this huge province from its
southern coast to the shores of the Polar Sea is naturally very great,
and the marvellous contrast between an Alaskan June and December has
nowhere been more picturesquely and graphically described than by
General Sir William Butler in his "Great Lone Land": "In summer a land
of sound--a land echoed with the voices of birds, the ripple of running
water, the mournful music of the waving pine branch; in winter a land of
silence, its great rivers glimmering in the moonlight, wrapped in their
shrouds of ice, its still forests rising weird and spectral against the
auroral-lighted horizon, its nights so still that the moving streamers
across the Northern skies seem to carry to the ear a sense of sound!"

On the North Pacific coast densely wooded islands are so numerous that
from Victoria in British Columbia to the town of Skagway at the head of
the Lynn Canal there are but a few miles of open sea. Inland, almost as
far as the Arctic Circle, mountain ranges, some of great altitude, are
everywhere visible. There are also many large lakes, surrounded by the
swamps, and impenetrable forests, that formerly rendered Alaska so hard
a nut for the explorer to crack. Only a few miles north of the coast
range fertile soil and luxurious vegetation are replaced by Arctic
deserts. Here, for eight months of the year, plains and rivers are
merged into one vast wilderness of ice, save during the short summer
when dog-roses bloom and the coarse luxurious grass is plentifully
sprinkled with daisies and other wild flowers. In Central Alaska the
ground is perpetually frozen to a depth of several inc