Both the islands and mainland of this latitude afford ample grass for cows, sheep, and horses, also producing, with ordinary care, the usual domestic vegetables, as we have shown, the assertion of certain writers to the contrary notwithstanding. We have not far to look for the cause of this favorable temperature existing at so northerly a range of latitude. The thermal stream known as the Japanese Current, coming from the far south charged with equatorial heat, is precisely similar in its effect to that of the better known Gulf Stream on our Atlantic coast, rendering the climate of these islands and the coast of the mainland of the North Pacific remarkably warm and humid. We speak especially and at length of this subject of the temperature of Alaska, because a wrong impression is so generally held concerning it. At a distance from the coast the temperature falls, and most of the inland rivers are closed by ice half the year. Even in the interior we are in about the same latitude and average temperature of St. Petersburg. Thus on the line of Behring Strait the annual mean at Fort Yukon, which lies just inside of the Arctic circle, six hundred miles inland from Norton Sound, is 16.92°; this is in latitude 64° north. Along the coast of southern Alaska the fall of snow is not greater in amount than is experienced during an ordinary winter in the New England States, and it disappears even more quickly than it does in Vermont and New Hampshire. In the interior and at the far north, the quantity of snow is of course much greater, and covers the ground for about half the year. But where the sun shines continuously throughout the twenty-four hours, the growth of vegetable life is extremely rapid. The snow has hardly disappeared before a mass of herbage springs up, and on the spot so lately covered by a white sheet, sparkling with frosty crystals, there is spread a soft mantle of variegated green. The leaves, blossoms, and fruits rapidly follow each other, so that even in this boreal region there is seed-time and harvest. The annual recurrence of this carnival season is all the more impressive in the realm of the Frost King.