二级阅读补充.docVIP

PAGE PAGE 1 二级阅读补充 Passage 79 Alaska, which was called Russian America before it was sold to the United States, joined the Union as the forty-ninth state in 1959. (Hawaii was the fiftieth state to join the Union.) Alaska is now the largest of all the 50 states in the U.S. It was in 1867 that President A. Johnson’ s Secretary of State, Seward, bought Alaska from the Russians at a cost of $ 7.2 million. The buying of the huge northern land mass seemed at first something foolishly done. Not only was Alaska difficult to reach, but it was also hard to live in, and it appeared to have no imp