Look at the map and observe the configuration of this extensive region, whose estimated area is more than five hundred and seventy thousand square miles. I speak by authority of our own Coast Survey. Including the Sitkan Archipelago at the south, it takes a margin of the main-land fronting on the ocean thirty miles broad and five hundred miles long to Mount St. Elias, the highest peak of the continent, when it turns with an elbow to the west, and along Behring Strait northerly, then rounding to the east along the Frozen Ocean. Here are upwards of four thousand statute miles of coast, indented by capacious bays and commodious harbors without number, embracing the peninsula of Alaska, one of the most remarkable in the world, twenty-five miles in breadth and three hundred miles in length; piled with mountains, many volcanic and some still smoking; penetrated by navigable rivers, one of which is among the largest of the world; studded with islands standing like sentinels on the coast, and flanked by that narrow Aleutian range which, starting from Alaska, stretches far away to Kamtchatka, as if America were extending a friendly hand to Asia. This is the most general aspect. There are details specially disclosing maritime advantages and approaches to the sea which properly belong to this preliminary sketch. According to accurate estimate, the coast line, including bays and islands, is not less than eleven thousand two hundred and seventy miles. In the Aleutian range, besides innumerable islets and rocks, there are not less than fifty-five islands exceeding three miles in length; there are seven exceeding forty miles, with Oonimak, which is the largest, exceeding seventy-three miles. In our part of Behring Sea there are five considerable islands, the largest of which is St. Lawrence, being more than ninety-six miles long. Add to all these the group south of the peninsula of Alaska, including the Shumagins and the magnificent island of Kadiak, and then the Sitkan group, being archipelago added to archipelago, and the whole together constituting the geographical complement to the West Indies, so that the northwest of the continent answers to the southeast, archipelago for archipelago. DISCOVERY OF RUSSIAN AMERICA BY BEHRING, UNDER INSTRUCTIONS FROM PETER THE GREAT.