Read the excerpt below and answer the questions 34 to 40.

• The transfer of Alaska from Russia to the United States formed one of those unbelievable incidents of
• history because by 1867, Russia was nervously eager to get rid of it, while the United States still
• recovering from the Civil War and immersed in the impending impeachment of President Johnson,
• refused to accept it on any terms.
• At this impasse an extraordinary man monopolized center stage. He was not a Russian, a fact which
• would become important more than a century later, but a soi-disant baron of dubious background; half
• Austrian, half Italian, and a charmer who was picked up in 1841 for temporary duty representing Russia in
• the United States and who lingered there till 1868. In that time, Edouard de Stoeckl, parading himself as a
• nobleman, although no one could say for sure how or when or even if he had earned his title, became
• such an ardent friend of America that he married an American heiress and took upon himself the task of
• acting as marriage broker between Russia, which he called homeland, and the United States, his adopted
• residence.
• He faced a most difficult task, for when the United States showed hesitancy about accepting Alaska,
• support for the sale withered in Russia, and later when Russia wanted to sell, half a dozen of the most
• influential American politicians led by Secretary of State William Seward of New York looked far into the
• future and saw the desirability of acquiring Alaska to serve as America's artic bastion, yet the hard-
• headed businessmen in the Senate, the House and the general public opposed the purchase with all the
• scorn they could summon. 'Seward's Icebox' and 'Seward's Folly' were two of the gentler jibes. Some
• critics accused Seward of being in the pay of the Russians; others accused De Stoeckl of buying votes in
• the House. One sharp satirist claimed that Alaska contained nothing but polar bears and Eskimos, and
• many protested that America should not accept this useless, frozen domain even if Russia wanted to give
• it away.
• Many pointed out that Alaska had no wealth of any kind, not even reindeer, which proliferated in other
• northern areas, and experts affirmed that an arctic area like this could not possibly have any minerals or
• other deposits of value. On and on went the abuse of this unknown and somewhat terrifying land, and the
• castigations would have been comical had they not influenced American thinking and behavior and
• condemned Alaska to decades of neglect.
• But an ingenious man like Baron de Stoeckl was not easily diverted from his main target, and with
• Seward's unflinching support and admirable statesmanship, the sale squeaked by with a favorable margin
• of one vote. By such a narrow margin did the United States come close to losing one of her potentially
• valuable acquisitions, but of course, had one viewed Alaska from the vantage point of frozen Fort Nulato
• in 1867, with the thermometer at minus-fifty-seven and about to be attacked by hostile Athapascans, the
• purchase at more than $7,000,000 would have seemed a poor bargain.
• Now the comedy intensified, became burlesque, for although the U.S Senate had bought the place,
• the U.S. House refused to appropriate the money to pay for it, and for many tense months the sale hung
• in the balance. When a favorable vote was finally taken, it was almost negated by the discovery that
• Baron de Stoeckl had disposed of $125,000 in cash for which he refused to give an accounting. Widely
• suspected of having bribed congressmen to vote for land that was obviously worthless, the baron waited
• until the sale was completed, then quietly slipped out of the country, his life's ambition having been
• achieved.
• One congressman with a keen sense of history, economics and geopolitics said of the whole affair:
• 'If we were so eager to show Russia our appreciation of the help she gave us during the Civil War, why
• didn't we give her the seven million and tell her to keep her damned colony? It'll never be of any use to
• us.'

• Excerpt from: MICHENER, James A. Alaska. Fawcett Books: New York, 1988, p. 369 - 370.