The city of Los Angeles is now some twenty-four hundred miles south of central Alaska, and since it is moving slowly northward as the San Andreas fault slides irresistibly along, the city is destined eventually to become part of Alaska. If
Alaska did not produce supermen, but in its formative periods it was served by men of character and determination, and it is a fortunate land which knows such public servants.
The movement of animals across the bridge was by no means always in one direction, for although it is true that the more spectacular beasts—mastodon, saber-tooth, rhinoceros—came out of Asia to enrich the new world, other animals like the camel originated in America and carried their wonderful capacities into Asia.
Like a thousand shamans before him, he was learning that the spiritual adviser of a people had best remain aloof from their political and economic quarrels.
but about nine billion years ago a minor portion—staggering in size though only a fraction—began to coalesce into what would ultimately become the galaxy of which we are a part. In this galaxy some two hundred billion stars would form, the one we see rising each morning as our sun being one of the smaller. We must not take too much pride in our galaxy, wonderful as it is, because it is merely one of more than a billion; quite often the others are greater in dimension and larger in their starry populations.
The Aleutian word for Great Land was Alaxsxaq, and when Europeans reached the Aleutian Islands, their first stopping point in this portion of the arctic, and asked the people what name the lands hereabout had, they replied “Alaxsxaq,” and in the European tongues this became Alaska.
If you do go to work straightening things out, take treble precautions to act honorably. I don’t know any other word that applies. I don’t mean honestly, because the law covers that. And I don’t mean sagaciously, because that implies twisting things to your advantage. I suppose I mean honorably, the way a man of honor would behave.
