opinion it is the best one we could have for these people—but until this substitution of our language for the Russian is done, no very satisfactory work, in my opinion, will be accomplished in the way of an English education on the Seal Islands. The Alaska Commercial Company deserves and will receive a brief but comprehensive notice at this point. In order that we may follow it to these islands, and clearly and correctly appreciate the circumstance which gave it footing and finally the control of the business, I will pass back and review a chain of evidence adduced in this direction from the time of our first occupation, in 1867, of the territory of Alaska. It will be remembered by many people, that when we were ratifying the negotiation between our Government and that of Russia, it became painfully apparent that nobody in this country knew anything about the subject of Russian America. Every school-boy knew where it was located, but no professor or merchant, however wise or shrewd, knew what was in it. Accordingly, immediately after the purchase was made and the formal transfer effected, a large number of energetic and speculative men, some coming from New England even, but most of them residents of the Pacific coast, turned their attention to Alaska. They went up to Sitka in a little fleet of sail and steam vessels, but among their number it appears there were only two of our citizens who knew of or had the faintest appreciation as to the value of the Seal Islands. One of these, Mr. H. M. Hutchinson, a native of New Hampshire, and the other, a Captain Ebenezer Morgan, a native of Connecticut, turned their faces in 1868 toward them; also an ex-captain of the Russian-American Company, Gustav Niebaum, who became a citizen immediately after the transfer, knowing of their value, chartered a small vessel, and hastened so as to land there a few days even before Captain Morgan arrived in the _Peru_, a whaling ship.