482 REVIEWS. 



secured the territory, not for the private company, but for the nation. 

 If the country was to pass from the possession of Russia it must needs 

 be transferred to some other recognized government, unless it were to 

 be organized into an independent state. The idea of an American 

 trading company holding it as a possession foreign to the United States 

 of which they were citizens, would have developed novel relations, 

 requiring an entirely new chapter in international law. If such an 

 idea was ever entertained, the projected company no doubt dis- 

 covered that they could exercise no more absolute lordship than that 

 which the fur traders of the neighbouring Hudson Bay territory have 

 so long done under the supremacy of the British crown. Hence the 

 necessity of applying to the American Secretary of State, whose official 

 correspondence relative to the transfer of Alaska from " His Majesty 

 the Emperor of all the Russias,'' is printed here in amplest detail. 

 The acquisition was regarded for a time by the American press as one 

 of Mr. Seward's most sagacious feats of statesmanship; and when, 

 after a little, this had been dwelt upon with characteristic laudation, 

 American writers ran to an opposite extreme; and the worthlessness of 

 " Walrussia," as it was jestingly styled, with its boundless ice-fields, 

 sea-lions, walruses, and polar bears, became a favourite theme for the 

 satirists of the political press. Mr. Dall discusses the value of Alaska 

 to the United States as a territorial acquisition, and does his best to 

 demolish such .unpatriotic satirists. He will no doubt find no lack of 

 *' sympathy with vaticinations so much more accordant with the wonted 

 tone of American writers, when aiming at forecasting their national 

 future. 



" I have seen,'' says Mr. Dall, '' with surprise and regret, that men 

 whose forefathers wielded the axe in the forests of Maine, or gathered 

 scanty crops on the granite hill-sides of Massachusetts, have seen fit to 

 throw contempt and derision on the acquisition of a great territory, 

 naturally far richer than that in which they themselves originated, 

 principally on the ground that it is a cold country." To this complaint 

 he makes indignant response, and then proceeds ; " Two hundred and 

 fifty years hence there may be a New England where there is now a 

 trackless forest. The time may come when we shall call on our Pacific 

 fishermen to man our fleets ; on the lumbermen of Alaska and our 

 hardy northern trappers to don the blue, and strike another blow for 

 unity and freedom." With all the bloody horrors of Saarbruck and 

 Woerth, Wiesenburg, Gravelotte, Forbach, and Sedan, fresh in our 



