MR. PRESIDENT,--I now conclude this examination. From a review of the origin of the treaty, and the general considerations with regard to it, we have passed to an examination of these possessions under different heads, in order to arrive at a knowledge of their character and value. And here we have noticed the existing government, which was found to be nothing but a fur company, whose only object is trade; then the population, where a very few Russians and Creoles are a scanty fringe to the aboriginal races; then the climate, a ruling influence, with its thermal current of ocean and its eccentric isothermal line, by which the rigors of the coast are tempered to a mildness unknown in the same latitude on the Atlantic side; then the vegetable products, so far as observed, chief among which are forests of pine and fir waiting for the axe; then the mineral products, among which are coal and copper, if not iron, silver, lead, and gold, besides the two great products of New England, “granite and ice”; then the furs, including precious skins of the black fox and sea-otter, which originally tempted the settlement, and remain to this day the exclusive object of pursuit; and, lastly, the fisheries, which, in waters superabundant with animal life beyond any of the globe, seem to promise a new commerce. All these I have presented plainly and impartially, exhibiting my authorities as I proceeded. I have done little more than hold the scales. If these incline on either side, it is because reason or testimony on that side is the weightier. WHAT REMAINS TO BE DONE. As these extensive possessions, constituting a corner of the continent, pass from the imperial government of Russia, they will naturally receive a new name. They will be no longer Russian America. How shall they be called? Clearly, any name borrowed from classical antiquity or from individual invention will be little better than misnomer or nickname unworthy of the historic occasion. Even if taken from our own annals, it will be of doubtful taste. The name should come from the country itself. It should be indigenous, aboriginal, one of the autochthons of the soil. Happily such a name exists, as proper in sound as in origin. It appears from the report of Cook, the illustrious navigator, to whom I have so often referred, that the euphonious designation now applied to the peninsula which is the continental link of the Aleutian chain was the sole word used originally by the native islanders, “when speaking of the American continent in general, which they knew perfectly well to be a great land.”[225] It only remains, that, following these natives, whose places are now ours, we, too, should call this “great land” Alaska.[226]