The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). rn VOLUME XVII. Later National Literature, Part II.
XIV. Travellers and Explorers, 1846–1900§ 34. Alaska
Besides the outlying possession of the Philippines, the United States became owner by purchase in 1867 of Russian America, afterwards named Alaska. Seward was ridiculed for making such a purchase in the “frozen” north, and it was long derided as Seward’s “Ice-box.” The vast number of publications favourably describing this region belie this term, and it is now well understood that Seward secured a treasure house for a pittance.
Seward’s “Address on Alaska at Sitka, August 12, 1869,” in Old South Leaflets, Vol. 6, No. 133 (1904) is interesting in this connection. There are a great number of reports, and narratives like those of the veteran William H. Dall; Captain W.R. Abercrombie’s Alaska, 1899, Copper River Exploring Expedition (1900); Henry T. Allen’s Report of an Expedition to the Copper, Tanana, and Koyukuk Rivers in the Territory of Alaska in the Year 1885 (1887); M. M. Ballou’s The New Eldorado, a Summer Tour in Alaska (1889); Reports by A. H. Brooks; Miss Scidmore’s Alaska (1885), etc.