The Continent

“ But, remembering that the greater half of the continent did remain faithful, the northern and strenuous half, destined to move with sure steps and steady mind to greater growth and higher place among the nations than any of us can now imagine-- would it be as safe to prophesy that such a momentous sailing-day will never be more than the after-dinner fantasy of aristocratic rhetoric? ”

“ How different from the condition even of Europe in the twelfth century, when a whole city or barony, an entire kingdom, or half the continent even, might have sunk beneath, the ocean, and the rest of the world have known nothing of it by its social results! ”

“ I see great waters, and my gaze beholds a sandy wilderness above which a red moon rises. Against a rocky shore a wave mournfully breaks and a mighty girdle of clouds drifts above the new continent. In the clouds a white bird soars and utters a piercing cry. The south wind and the east have clashed, and the first rain has gathered above the new continent. You must think of yourself. Sit down yonder on that promontory. From the new continent gaze out at the five old continents; they are five stars and in their midst the sixth one, the most beautiful of them, with its dark lustre. ”

“ The Continent is noisier, less disciplined, dirtier, madder, subtler, more passionate, more affable, more amorous, fond of enjoyment, wayward, harsh, talkative, more reckless, and somehow less perfect. ”

“ Here one views a continent in the making, beholds the mighty upheavals from the nether abyss, sees how nature, as if ashamed of her rough work, planes with her league-long blades of ice the basaltic ridges and glassy peaks. The traveller beholds a country full of lakes and rivers, and waterfalls the largest in Europe, but a country without any system of mountain chains and drainage to conform to the laws laid down by the physiographer. Mountains there are in abundance and lofty ones, but scattered hither and yon at the strange caprice of Pluto. ”

“ Anon, the sprouts will break our troubled land,
Thrust forth the first red blades, and thence grow on,
Forever and forever!
I see this vast expanse of continent,
That dwarfs the noble states of cultured Europe,
Spread out before me like a map, from pole
To pole, and from the rising to the setting sun.
I see it teem with myriads; I see
Its densely peopled towns and villages;
I see its ports, greater than any known,
Send forth their riches to the hungry world. ”

“ You have subdued a continent, and it stands in the daylight radiant with a material splendor of which the Pilgrims never dreamed. Yet a continent as dark, as unknown, exists. It is yourselves, your future, your national life. ”

“ The continent we inhabit is to be physic and food for our mind, as well as our body. The land, with its tranquilizing, sanative influences, is to repair the errors of a scholastic and traditional education, and bring us into just relations with men and things. ”

“ Here is one, painfully toiling through the tangled depths of a desert continent, to find a highway for commerce or Christianity. Here is another, in the lonely seas around the pole, where the ghostly ice-mountains go drifting through the gray mists, patiently wrestling with the awful powers of nature, to snatch its secret from the hoary deep, and bring it home in triumph. ”

“ Let us suppose that the continent which is to succeed our land is at present beginning to appear above the water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean; it must be evident that the materials of this great body, which is formed and ready to be brought forth, must have been collected from the destruction of an earth which does not now appear. ”

“ This immense tract of land, the largest known which does not bear the name of a continent, as it is considerably larger than all Europe, is thinly inhabited, even to admiration, at least that part of it that we saw. ”

“ I am clearly, positively, and conscientiously persuaded that it is the true interest of this continent to be so; that every thing short of THAT is mere patchwork, that it can afford no lasting felicity,—that it is leaving the sword to our children, and shrinking back at a time, when, a little more, a little farther, would have rendered this continent the glory of the earth. ”

“ The morning, then, brought us the astounding news that in the centre of the ocean there has emerged from the depths of the sea a new land, a new continent.
To the five parts of the world has been added a sixth. A great event has occurred. Its hugeness overwhelms us; its beauty delights and captivates us with a divine awe face to face with the marvels of creation. ”

“ It is impossible for us to realize what a sudden invitation to greed and discord lay in this fair, beautiful, unclaimed continent—eight millions of square miles of land—more than twice the size of all Europe itself. ”

“ You sit in your cosy parlors and offices and think of some friend or relative, perhaps a son or daughter, in the 'far West.' It seems as if a sea spread out between you, or at least the better part of a continent. ”

“ To really enjoy the Continent it is not necessary—at least, for people bred and brought up as we have been—to be very rich; on the contrary, many—ay, and the greatest—advantages of Continental travel are open to very small fortunes and very small ambitions. ”

“ The larger the continent, the easier the communication through all the different parts of it, both by land and by water, the less would any one particular part of it ever he exposed to either of these calamities, the scarcity of any one country being more likely to be relieved by the plenty of some other. ”

“ Yes, in years to come we shall fly on the wings of steam high in the air, over the mighty ocean. The young inhabitants of America will visit the old Continent of Europe. They will come to admire the ancient monuments and ruined cities, just as we make pilgrimages to the fallen glories of Southern Asia. ”

“ Anne. Pray, mamma, is not a continent one of the divisions of the land?
Mrs. Harley. Yes, my dear; for after we have divided the whole globe into land and water, we again subdivide the land into Continents, Islands, Peninsulas, Isthmusses, and Promontories,—the water into Oceans, Seas, Straits, Gulfs, Bays, Lakes, Rivers, and Creeks.
A Continent is a large tract of land containing several countries which are not separated by seas; as Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.
An Island, is a tract of land entirely surrounded by water, as Britain, Ireland, Sicily, &c. ”

“ Four hundred years ago most of the people who lived in Europe thought that the earth was flat. They knew only the land that was near them. They knew the continent of Europe, a small part of Asia, and a strip along the northern shore of Africa.
They thought this known land was surrounded by a vast body of water that was like a broad river. Sailors were afraid to venture far upon this water, for they feared they would fall over the edge of the earth. ”

“ The mere existence of a western continent was a phantasy of dream-land, when the mysteries of that mighty waste of waters which separated the then known world from all beyond, was shrouded in obscurity as unfathomable as its deepest depths ”

“ Within the mighty domains of our own continent, upon the immense plains reaching from Labrador to the Pacific, upon the sterile coasts of Alaska, in the land of the Montezumas, in Central America, in South America, from Panama to Terra-del-Fuego, equally marvelous have been the steady gains resulting from a Christianity the forces of which, like the waters that enrich the continent, penetrate all the bays and estuaries of human society and influence all classes and conditions of men. ”

“ Europe is one continent attached to still another even greater land mass. That other is the continent of Asia, filled with many strange races, all speaking different languages. Even Europe itself is split up into many nations speaking more than thirty different tongues. ”

“ For on that day men from Europe, then the centre of civilization, first gazed on a rich new land beyond the seas, a great virgin continent, destined to become the seat of flourishing civilizations and to play a leading part in the later history of the world. ”

“ And when we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side. In the infinite universe there is room for our swiftest diligence and to spare. ”

“ Thou hast now fallen on the clue of an important mystery, Ensign Dudley. This continent was created with a design. The fact is apparent by its riches, its climate, its magnitude, its facilities of navigation, and chiefly in that it hath been left undiscovered until the advanced condition of society hath given opportunity and encouragement to men of a certain degree of merit, to adventure in its behalf. ”

“ A great rugged continent, lying hidden in the distant Pacific main, is encountered by [205] human enterprise; and in a few years we witness towns and cities thronging its seaboard, and all along the surf-beaten shores is heard the hum of industry. We mark the inalienable love of home, of the mother-country, in a thousand tokens, and find the measureless ocean bridged by sympathy and memory, and Old England renewed in such forms as make us scarcely conscious of our distance from it ”

“ You as a botanist are familiar with the evidence that a vast shadowy continent existed in the Pacific—a continent that was not rent asunder by volcanic forces as was that legendary one of Atlantis in the Eastern Ocean. ”

“ Whether the Continent of America stretches any farther north than these straights, and joins to the eastern parts of Asia, agreeable to what has been asserted by some of the writers I have quoted, or whether the lands that have been discovered in the intermediate parts are only an archipelago of islands verging towards the opposite continent, is not yet ascertained. ”

“ From the Northern Atlantic and the Pacific it commanded the trade of Europe and Asia. This region embraces the best climates of the continent for the habitation of a vigorous race of men, and contains all the elements of imperial power. ”

“ Europe lies between these extremes. Limited in area, diversified in surface, and deeply indented in its coast-line, it has experienced all the advantages which a continent needs for its development, and for that historical greatness which Europe has won for itself. ”

“ And as no single continent furnishes all the conditions necessary to the complete development of man, and each of the three northern continents, by virtue of its structure and climate and physical conditions, has a special function to fulfill in the education of mankind, so God, in his providence, has led the human family from east to west, over the continents of the Temperate Zone, in order to secure the education, the moral advancement, and the final perfection of our race. ”

“ It is the fate of continents, no less than of the human communities that inhabit them, to have their first origin shrouded in obscurity. When the curtain of darkness begins to rise from our primeval Europe, it reveals to us a scene marvelously unlike that of the existing continent. The land then lay chiefly to the north and northwest, probably extending as far as the edge of the great submarine plateau by which the European ridge is prolonged under the Atlantic for 230 miles to the west of Ireland. ”

“ To hear of a nation, separated by an ocean, we may, indeed, say two, and a vast continent, from the civilized portions of Asia, Europe, and Africa, located in a mountainous tract, where soil and water were scanty, and locomotion was rendered difficult from the configuration of the land ”

“ Nor is it likely that there were any large continents as at the present time, but rather a host of islands lying where the great lands now are, the budding tops of the continents just appearing above the sea. ”

“ The continents are never to be regarded as high, dead masses of land, but as vital and effective instruments, working upon each other ceaselessly, and helping each other to attain the consummation intended in the counsels of the Divine Mind. The unity of the earth, the unity of the continents, the unity of every physical feature of the continents, and the building all up together in a perfect symmetry and mutual adaptation of parts, is the crowning thought of Geographical Science. ”

“ It would have been but reasonable to have expected that the opening of an inhabited continent — more than half the land surface of the globe — to the intelligent curiosity of the representatives of the civilization of the Old World, would have contributed largely to the sum and the elements of our knowledge of the origin and history of our human race. ”

“ We never forget that on the map of Europe there is the big continent, and away in a corner, by themselves, extraneous, cut off, and "very superior," physically and morally isolated and self-contained, are our two not over enormous islands. ”

“ Or, to compare the continents to a still higher class of forms, Europe may be called the Face of the Old World, out of which the soul of humanity could look more clearly into the great and promising future. ”

“ If we look out over the earth, we see that the limbs of the continents, so to speak, the coasts, the peninsulas, and the adjacent islands, are the most favored places of all for civilization to find its true home upon. With the degree of diversity in the structure of a country, the value of its organisms advances. In this respect, Europe may be considered as the branches and foliage of a great tree, whose trunk and root are to be traced to Central Asia, Africa being a stunted side-shoot. ”

“ And thus, by these adventures, vast millions of that continent have been brought into contact with civilized men; with the fabrics of civilized nations; with the quickening ideas of superior men; and the whole continent itself, save a slight belt on either side of the Equator, has been opened to the scrutiny of travellers ”