The climate of this division is not very cold, the average mean temperature being forty-three degrees twenty-eight minutes; but the rainfall is heavy, ranging from eighty to one hundred inches per annum. The principal settlement of this district is Sitka. Here are the headquarters of the United States naval station for Alaska, and here also resides the collector of customs, who is the civil representative of the government of Washington in the territory. In the time of the Russians, there were several schools and churches at Sitka, but now there is only one church, and the teaching is left practically to the missionaries of the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic bodies. The total population of the whole of the enormous country called Alaska is computed at only 33,426, and of this number, only four hundred and thirty are whites; creoles number 1756; Eskimos, 17,617; Aleuts, 2145; Athabaskans, 3927; Thlinkets, 6763; and Hydas, 788. Of the habits, customs, and beliefs of these curious peoples, we may tell something on another occasion. To sum up, it may be said that the acquisition of Alaska by the Americans has been a good deal of a disappointment to them. They thought it would be an excellent district for extensive settlement for agricultural purposes, and the country, as we have seen, is quite unsuited almost everywhere for such purposes. Then they had glowing dreams of rich mineral deposits; but although gold and silver and coal have been found, and are being partially worked, the mining industry is a secondary feature in Alaskan wealth. The extent of the forests, however, has been found greater than was expected. On this point, the United States Commissioner thus enlarges: ‘The timber of Alaska ... clothes the steep hills and mountain sides, and chokes up the valleys of the Alexander Archipelago and the contiguous mainland: it stretches, less dense, but still abundant, along the inhospitable reach of territory which extends from the head of Cross Sound to the Kenai peninsula, where, reaching down to the westward and south-westward as far as the eastern half of Kadiak Island, and thence across Shelikhof Strait, it is found on the mainland and on the peninsula bordering on the same latitude; but it is confined to the interior opposite Kadiak, not coming down to the coast as far eastward as Cape Douglas. From the interior of the peninsula, the timber-line over the whole of the great area of Alaska will be found to follow the coast-line at varying distances of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles from the seaboard, until the section of Alaska north of the Yukon mouth is reached, where a portion of the coast of Norton Sound is directly bordered by timber as far north as Cape Denbigh. From this point to the eastward and north-eastward, a line may be drawn just above the Yukon and its immediate tributaries as the northern limits of timber to any considerable extent. There are a number of small watercourses