In that year it was sold to the United States for $7,200,000.

At the time of the purchase Alaska was looked upon as a very barren land;
no one ever dreamt that gold and silver and other valuable minerals would
be found in it. The money spent for the purchase was seriously begrudged
by many people, and Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State who had made the
bargain, was much blamed, people saying that it was a foolish waste of
the public money.

The one source of income which Alaska was known to possess in those days
was its seal fisheries. A great herd of fur-bearing seals lived in the
Alaskan waters, and the Government expected to make these seals very
profitable to it.

Under the Russian rule, the fur seal regions had been very carefully
protected, and when the United States bought Alaska the Government decided
to care for the animals in the same way that the Russians had done,
allowing only a certain number of seals to be killed each year.

The fisheries were leased to a company called the Alaska Commercial
Company of San Francisco, which had the entire rights to them, under
certain rules and regulations laid down by the Government.

Soon after Alaska and its seal fisheries came into the possession of the
United States, English and American vessels--the latter not belonging to
the Commercial Company--entered the Bering Sea, and slaughtered any seals
they could reach, without regard to the proper rules for seal fishing.

The Company complained to the Government, and in 1887 this seal poaching