ALASKA, when purchased from Russia in 1867, for the sum of $7,200,000, through the influence of Secretary Seward, was called “Seward’s Folly,” from the supposition that the country was comparatively worthless. But as the country has been explored, and our knowledge of its resources has increased, it is evident that the purchase, on the part of Mr. Seward and the Government, was an act of wisdom and real statesmanship. The country is of vast extent and rich in its resources beyond anything which was anticipated by any one when the purchase was made. This fact is made very apparent in the report of Mr. Sheldon Jackson, General Agent of Education in Alaska, which has just been submitted to the Secretary of the Interior. From this report it appears that Alaska, from the extreme north to the extreme south, is 1,400 miles in an air line, or as far as from Maine to Florida; and from its eastern boundary to the end of the Aleutian Islands it is 2,200 miles in an air line, or as far as from Washington to California. The island of Attu, at the end of the Aleutian chain, is as far west of San Francisco as Maine is east, so that between the extreme eastern and western sections of the United States, San Francisco is the great central city. In brief, it is as large as all the New England and Middle States, together with Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee. It is about one-sixth the area of the whole United States, and it has a coast line twice as long as that of our Atlantic and Pacific shores. In Alaska are the highest mountain peaks in the United States; Mount St. Elias, 19,500 feet high; Mount Cook, 16,000 feet; Mount Crillon, 15,900 feet; Mount Fairweather, 15,500 feet. In one of the gulches of Mount Fairweather is a glacier that extends fifty miles to the sea, where it ends abruptly in a perpendicular ice wall three hundred feet high and eight miles broad. Alaska has an arctic winter and a tropical summer. At Fort Yukon the thermometer often rises above 100° in the summer, and falls as low as 70° below zero in the winter. Along the immense southern coast and in the islands the climate is moist and warm, being in some of the islands much like that of Northwestern Scotland. At Sitka, where a record of the thermometer has been kept for forty-five years, the mean temperature per year has been 43° the year round, or 41° in the spring, 54° in the summer, 44° in the fall, and 32° in the winter. The greatest degree of heat recorded in these forty-five years was 87° above, and of cold 4° below zero. Alaska has a population of 35,843, and 2,000 of these are whites. About one-half of the rest are Eskimos, and 1,756 are called Creoles, and are descendants of natives and Russians. The Eskimo part of the population of Alaska is of a far different nature than is generally supposed by Americans. They are not small, like the inhabitants of Greenland and Labrador, but are tall and muscular, many of them being over six feet in height. The Creoles of Alaska are mixed up somewhat in their living with the Aleuts. There are about two thousand of these last in Alaska, and they occupy the Aleutian chain of islands. These men are smaller than the Eskimos, and they have black hair instead of brown. They look a great deal like the Japanese, and have many civilized instincts. They are fast becoming Americanized. They dress in American garments, and their women study the fashion plates and try to imitate the latest styles. Many of them can read, and most of them are members of the Russo-Greek Church. They ask a blessing at their meals, and when they bid good-by to their friends it is with a “God bless you.” These people live in the great seal islands of Alaska. The Alaska Commercial Company pays the United States Government $55,000 a year as an annual rental of these islands, and it is allowed to take 100,000 seal skins every year, upon which they pay the Government a royalty of $262,500. The revenues of these islands during the past sixteen years have returned to the Government more than half of the sum paid to Russia for the whole country. The rivers of Alaska are among the finest of America. The Yukon is seventy miles wide across its five mouths, and at some points along its lower course one bank cannot be seen from the other. For the first thousand miles it is from one to five miles wide, and in some places it is twenty miles from bank to bank. It is navigable for 2,000 miles, and is computed to be 3,000 miles long. In June, 1885, the Secretary of the Interior directed the establishment of the office of “General Agent of Education” in Alaska, and Mr. Jackson was appointed to the office. In his report he reports the establishment of nine schools during the past year, with an average attendance of above five hundred scholars, embracing all classes of the population, the number of boys in attendance being slightly greater than the number of girls. Considering the difficulties connected with the work of organizing schools and procuring teachers, the report presents an encouraging state of things.—Methodist Recorder.