No act of any part of the Government can be held to be a law which has not all the sanctions to make it law."(2) The territory which we thus acquired is of vast extent, exceeding in its entire area a half million square miles.

Its extreme length is about eleven hundred miles; its extreme width about eight hundred.
It stretches nearly to the seventy-second degree of north latitude, three hundred and fifty miles beyond Behring's Straits; and borders upon the Arctic Ocean for more than a thousand miles.

The adjacent islands of the Aleutian group are included in the transfer, and reach two-thirds of the way across the North Pacific in the latitude of 60 degrees,--the westernmost island being within six hundred miles of the coast of Kamtchatka.

The resources of the forests of Alaska are very great,--the trees growing to a good height on the mountain sides as far as two thousand feet above the tide level.

The timber is of the character generally found in Northern climates: yellow cedar of durable quality, spruce, larch, fir of great size, and hemlock.