North America

“ To the geographer North America presents an example of a region containing within itself essentially all of the elements necessary to a high industrial, social, educational, and ethical development of its inhabitants. The industrial needs are met by a range of products, whether of soils, mines, forests, or fisheries, as varied or nearly so as is presented by the entire earth. ”

“ But in North America there has been a comparatively steady growth from one main continental centre or nucleus, and the records of the principal changes that have occurred are, to a greater degree, simple. Not only in the major features of the relief of the continent, as already described, but in its growth and geological history, it is, so far as can be judged from the present state of our knowledge of the various land areas, the most typical of all the continents. ”

“ In a generation all the best land on this continent will have been taken up. But, thanks to the far-reaching wisdom of our fathers, the greater part of the world will be open to the trade, to the colonizing, and to the enterprise of our children. We shall not be confined to a frozen north or to a single continent. We shall take part in work that is of world-wide significance, and shall act out our belief that God loves not North America only, but the whole world. Only on conditions of the British Empire standing, can this be done. ”

“ Find where we live on the map of North America. Locate our home on all of our maps and globes.
North America is a very large portion of land. You could sail along its shores for thousands of miles. At its widest part you could not cross it in a fast express train in less than five days and nights. There are thousands of cities in this great grand division, for there are millions of people here. Most of them are white or Caucasian. There are also many Indians, negroes, Eskimos and Mongolians.
Much of the land is dense forest, and much is fertile farm land. ”

“ The part of North America most densely inhabited by descendants of Europeans, and the portion of the continent where intellectual development has made the greatest advance, is the east-central portion, where not only the variation of climate from season to season, but the weather changes from week to week and day to day are the most conspicuous. ”

“ England, in this lapse of a century, unknown to herself, but under the providence of God and the influence of events, was fitting herself for the work of colonizing North America, on such principles and by such men, as should spread the English name and English blood, in time, over a great portion of the Western hemisphere. ”

“ The shape of North America makes the existence of distinct peoples within her limits almost impossible. An upturned bowl, with a mountain rim, from which the streams run inward toward the center, she must fuse together all the races that settle within her borders, and the fusion must now be in an English mould. ”

“ For it is to be observed that each English colony in North America is independent of the other, and that each has its proper laws and coin, and may be looked upon in several lights, as a state by itself. ”

“ A number of people from North America, the relics of that populous continent, had set sail for the East with mad desire of change, leaving their native plains for lands not less afflicted than their own. ”

“ In the far northwestern corner of North America is a land that has had few stirring scenes in its history. It is an enormous tract, close to the Arctic Sea, and far from the busy cities of the United States. ”

“ Moreover, the United States occupies the choicest portions of the North American continent. Our neighbor Canada has a cold and snow-bound frontier on her north, while on our south Mexico and the Central American countries lie near the tropics. The heart of temperate America, on the other hand, is included within the territory of the United States. ”

“ To the south of the central eastward track, is the zone of the trade-winds and the great westward flowing equatorial current; and there, again, we find island stepping-stones. Thus nature clearly indicated the two ways by which America might be found; and, for long, the routes followed were the northerly one to the Newfoundland fisheries and New England, and the southerly one to the Canaries, the West Indies, and, thence, to Virginia. The earliest English efforts at colonization in North America were at the two points lying nearest to England by wind and ocean current. ”

“ The answer seems obvious, for North America itself. But what did North America mean? It had a different meaning to different interests. The New Englander cared for little but the New England colonies, and the immediately adjacent lands and seas. To the Acadian settlers the Acadian peninsula, to the Canadian habitant the banks of the St. Lawrence, were all in all. The inland colonists of New York had in their minds not merely the safety of their colony, within its ill-defined boundaries, but also paramount influence over the Five Nations, and unrestricted trade with the western Indians. ”

“ North America is divided into portions belonging to different nations. It embraces every variety of soil and climate, and its peculiar features are great ranges of mountains, long rivers, and extensive lakes. Previously to its discovery by Columbus, it was in possession of tribes of wandering Indians, most of whom were savages. They were remarkable for strength, courage, and activity, and showed all the peculiarities incident to the savage life, in the greatest degree.
VIEW OF THE GREAT SQUARE, AT MEXICO.
Russian America is chiefly valuable on account of its fur trade. ”

“ The great object of colonizing upon the continent of North America, has been to improve and extend the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of this kingdom, upon which its strength and security depend. ”

“ As a whole, the continent of North America, eastward from the Rocky Mountains, may be described as a level area, so slightly modified by any elevated regions throughout its whole extent, from the Arctic circle to the Gulf of Mexico, as to present no other impediment except its forests to the wanderings of nomadic tribes. ”

“ IN that distant age when Nature was still toiling at the foundations of the Eastern Continent, portions of America had become dry land, and mountain-peaks in North Carolina were illuminated by rising and setting suns. It is, therefore, an anachronism to speak of America as the New World, especially when we remember the high antiquity of the fauna of North America. Still it is believed that the Eastern Continent was the original abode of man. ”

“ We have now passed in review the various peoples of North America, from the Arctic circle to the neighbourhood of the isthmus of Darien, and can form some sort of a mental picture of the continent at the time of its discovery by Europeans in the fifteenth century. ”

“ When we speak of the vast mainland of North America becoming wholly European, mainly English, from Ocean to Ocean, we mean that it has become so, not by the adoption of the earlier people by invaders who were also teachers, but by the gradual vanishing of the earlier people before invaders who to them at least have been destroyers. ”

“ As all these open toward Europe, the situation of this whole region has been especially adapted to the most speedy advance in civilization. The pride of the American can no more plume itself on an independent progress than can that of the European; to the former, Europe is the Orient from which he receives, in an already advanced stage, what the European receives from Asia, his own Orient.
The less important peninsulas of North America, and the side most destitute of them, are turned toward the northern Pacific. ”

“ The continent of North America is, of all the triangular continents, the most nearly akin in its structure to the great Old-World land. In the first place, it is the only one of these continents that has the same general conditions of climate; then it has a far greater diversity of form than the similar masses of South America, Africa, and Australia. North America has several considerable seas inclosed within its limits or bordering upon its shores; its mountain systems are more varied in their disposition than in the other regular continents. ”

“ Of the nations of Europe, the strongest influx has come from Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. To a marked degree this westward migration has been along parallels of latitude, but the migratory streams on reaching North America subdivided into many distributaries, and a mingling of nationalities on a vast scale has resulted. This amalgamation has been so great and so long-continued that several new and somewhat strongly individualized nationalities 421 have arisen, the most instructive being in the temperate portion of the continent. ”

“ But the development of commerce in the Pacific, as the middle of the century approached, pointed unmistakably to the young republic of North America as the power destined to bring about that important event. ”

“ We have already seen the first attempts of the French and English in the exploration of the north-eaat coast of North America; but during the sixteenth century very little was done to settle on such inhospitable shores, which did not offer anything like the rich prizes that Tropical America afforded. ”

“ Indeed, our geological surveys, as well as the information otherwise obtained concerning the primitive condition of North America and the gradual accessions it has received in more recent periods, point to a very early circumscription of the area which, in the course of time, was to become the continent we now inhabit, with its modern features. ”

“ It was all water, and the continents were lifted into their places, much as you model a continent in making a relief map; they were sketched out and then filled in. North America, for example. First of all up came that mass in the northeast in what is now Canada; the Laurentian Highlands, as they are called in your geography. They rose very, very slowly, you understand, only a few feet in a thousand years; for Nature has all the time there is and never hurries. ”

“ Much has been written about the marvelous scenery of western North America, but few have spoken a word of praise in regard to the beauty of our eastern highlands.
The pleasure we take in travel as well as in literature is enhanced by a knowledge of Nature. ”

“ When one observes attentively the maps of South and North America, no feature appears more striking than the provision which Nature seems to have made, in both continents, for water-communication across the breadth of each. ”

“ North America divided into two vast regions, one inclining towards the Pole, the other towards the Equator—Valley of the Mississippi—Traces of the Revolutions of the Globe—Shore of the Atlantic Ocean where the English Colonies were founded—Difference in the appearance of North and of South America at the time of their Discovery—Forests of North America—Prairies—Wandering Tribes of Natives—Their outward appearance, manners, and language—Traces of an unknown people. ”

“ From what is very commonly known of the state of North America, it need not be said, how often, and to what distance, several of the nations on that continent are used to migrate; who, though thinly scattered, occupy an immense extent of country. ”

“ To close this brief account of the physical conditions of the first European settlements in North America, we may say, that the English colonies were peculiarly fortunate in those physical conditions upon which they fell. There is no area in either of the Americas, or for that matter in the world outside of Europe, where it would have been possible to plant English colonies that would have been found so suitable for the purpose: climate, soil, contact with the sea, and a chance of dominion over the whole continent were given them by fortune. ”

“ They found sea channels evidently leading towards the west; they saw the great river of Canada7 come widening down from the same quarter; and thus, long after the quest of the Indies had in Central America been swallowed up in the riches found on the way, in North America it remained the one great object of the men who went out from Europe, and of the Kings who sent them out. ”

“ Two mighty oceans on the east and west, two mighty continents on the north and south, and embracing, in the singular arrangement of its slopes and levels, all the climates and productions of both and of all, it seems to have been, for ages, we know not how far back, the theatre of all the art, the seat of all the power, the centre of all the refinement and luxury, of the western hemisphere. There are some remarkable works of art, and wonderful traces of ancient civilization in South America, as well as some singular remains of a once numerous and powerful people in the north. ”

“ The colonists of North America had all the qualities to secure a permanent foothold, and to extend territorial dominion. They seem to have counted the cost of relinquishing the attractions and advantages of European civilization, and having determined to cast their lot in a distant land, and settle in a wilderness, were ready to undergo the privations, hardships, and frequent perils incident to so bold an undertaking. ”

“ Such are the means by which North America, which one hundred years ago was nothing but a vast forest, is peopled with three millions of inhabitants ; and such is the immense, and certain benefit of agriculture, that notwithstanding the war, it not only maintains itself where-ever it has been established, but it extends to places which seems the least favourable to its introduction. ”