Eastern North America

“ A marked difference exists in this respect between the Atlantic half of the polar regions north of Europe and eastern North America, where disturbance and divisions of the land are the rule, and the Pacific side, north of Siberia and western America, where quiet prevails, with regular coast forms and few islands. The lands on the Atlantic side have, moreover, been gradually rising for an in-calculable length of time, and are still rising, while those on the opposite side have until very recently been subsiding. ”

“ While the Atlantic thus formed a long north-and-south rift across the inhabited world at the period of the great discoveries, the Pacific, strewn with islands and land-rimmed at its northern extremity by the peninsulas of Alaska and eastern Siberia, spread a nebula of population from the dense centers of Asia across to the outskirts of America. ”

“ The influence of the opposite conditions in reference to ocean currents experienced by the eastern and western borders of the continent are even more marked in the life of the adjacent waters than in the vegetation and fauna of the land itself. The plant and invertebrate life of the shoal waters of the Pacific coast, consisting largely of southern species, is exceedingly rich and varied, even to the inlets of the Alaska coast, where glaciers come down to the sea; while on the Atlantic border, northern species occur on the New England coast, and even farther south. ”

“ 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. ”

“ America displays, not in its central but on its western coast, the greatest chain of mountains on the globe, flanked by plateaus of great elevation, but of superficial area quite out of proportion to the length of the mountain chain, and to the extent of the lowlands of both the northern and the southern divisions. And while in Africa the regions of depression are in the north, and in Asia around the great central plateau system, in the Americas, both North and South, they are thrown into the eastern portion. ”

“ The most eastern coast of Asia, which extends to the Korean Sea on the north of China, projects north-east through eastern Tartary and Kamschatka to Siberia, in about sixty degrees of north latitude. Towards which the western coasts of America, from California to the Straights of Annian, extend nearly north-west, and lie in about forty-six degrees of the same latitude. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If we turn to the North Pacific, all doubts vanish in the presence of the most favorable conditions for a migration from our continent to the other. With Latham, we believe that if America had first been discovered from the west, and Alaska and the north-west coast been as well known as our Atlantic coast, North-eastern Asia would have naturally passed for the fatherland of North-western America. ”

“ On the north lies the similar region of Canada: the Great Lakes are in the center of the whole eastern and more thickly settled half of North America, and they bind the Canadian and Middle Western people together. On the south, the provinces meet the apex of that of the Gulf Plains, and the Mississippi unites them. To the west, they merge gradually into the Great Plains; the Missouri and its tributaries and the Pacific railroads make for them a bond of union; another rather effective bond is the interdependence of the cattle of the plains and the corn of the prairies. ”

“ When an unknown land is accessible by water, the shore line offers the easiest means for the first explorations and settlements. So it came about that nearly all the eastern coast of North America was known before men ventured far into the interior. Then the large rivers, like the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, and the Mississippi, seemed to offer inviting routes into the recesses of the continent, but exploration through the pathless woods and rough mountains was slow. ”

“ South America was at first supposed to be a large island, and later an immense south-eastern extension of Asia; subsequent explorations, chiefly that of Magellan, showed the existence of a vast ocean between southern America and southern Asia; official maps left unexplored regions blank, expressing no theory as to the northern extension of the Pacific Ocean; other maps, as we have seen, without any authority whatever, make that ocean extend north and completely separate Asia from the New World. ”

“ In South America the succession is somewhat similar. East of the Andes is a broad slope or depression, which in Argentina continues to the Atlantic; but in eastern Brazil and the Guianas the continuity of the eastward slope is broken by numerous short and comparatively low ranges, corresponding roughly with the Appalachians of the northern continent.
North America. In North America the Cordillera develops its greatest breadth and complexity in the main body of the United States. ”

“ These nations are at present the British, whose possessions of Canada secures them access to the north-western desert of America, the Americans, who have free access to the wilderness that lies between their territories and the Pacific Ocean, and the Russians, whose immense empire borders on the north-west coast of America, giving them ample opportunities, which they have duly improved, of establishing settlements on its shores ”

“ The Neotropical is made up of all South America, the Antilles and Central America, the only doubt being whether to draw the northern boundary so as to exclude or include Mexico, or even the southern part of the United States. To this naturally succeeds, but with an indefinite southern boundary, the Nearctic, comprising the whole of the rest of North America to the shores of the Polar Sea, with the addition of Greenland. ”

“ Central North-America is to an extraordinary degree worked out everywhere in careful detail, in moderate hill and valley, in undulating prairie and fertile plain,—not tossed into barren mountain-masses and table-lands, like that vast desert plateau which stretches through Central Asia,—not struck out in blank, like the Russian steppes and the South American llanos, as if Nature had wanted leisure to elaborate and finish. ”

“ In Greenland, the arctic archipelago, and throughout the immense extent of coast-lands from Labrador to Alaska they have been isolated and withdrawn from contact with other peoples for a long period of time, and their slow development unmodified by extraneous influences. In Newfoundland and Alaska, however, they have been in contact with the Indians, trade relations established, and to a limited extent an interchange of ideas as well as some intermarriage has taken place. ”

“ 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 Central America the influence of mountains on the climate is much the same as in the West India islands; in fact, the narrow rugged belt of land connecting the two Americas may, from our present point of view, be considered as a great island situated mainly within the trade-wind belt, and similar to Jamaica, for example, in its influences on the winds blowing across it. ”

“ Where North America, is bathed by icy waters full of seals and floating ice South America is bathed by warm seas full of flying-fish and coral reefs. The northern continent is broadest in the cool latitudes that are most favorable for human activity. The southern expands most widely in latitudes whose debilitating monotony of heat and moisture is the worst of handicaps to human progress. ”

“ From the bleak coasts of Labrador and the icy borders of the Frozen Sea, in the east, through the river-threaded steppes and plains of the interior with all their charming lakes, over the tremendous, gleaming white heights of the Canadian Rockies, and onwards by cañon and pass to the more pacific climate of the western coast—it is a far sweep of country, this British North America, and occupied in bygone times by many a tribe of red men. ”

“ For this reason, and doubtless also because the maritime regions offered greater attractions to primeval man than the inland areas, the earliest lines of migration appear to have followed the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the Eastern Hemisphere into the northern latitudes, where the shore lines of the Eurasian continent stretch out toward America. ”

“ North America has entirely taken the palm from South America in the progress of its culture, just as has uniformly been the case with all the continents of the northern hemisphere compared with the southern; and yet the tropical southern continent is far more profusely endowed with the gifts of nature than the temperate northern one. The northern half, on the other hand, enjoys a far greater advantage in its broken coast-line, numerous bays, gulfs, islands, peninsulas, harbors, as well as by reason of its greater want of conformity to a rigid triangular form. ”

“ The east and west division, represents—according to our views—a more fundamental diversity; since we find the northern continent itself so divided in the earliest Eocene, and even in Cretaceous times; while we have the strongest proof that South America was peopled from the Nearctic, and Australia and Africa from the Palæarctic region: hence, the Eastern and Western Hemispheres are the two great branches of the tree of life of our globe. ”

“ And again, if we look for the natural causes which tend to promote or retard association, we find in climates and continental configurations the chief agencies. The continent of the two Americas, in its greatest length, lies north and south, the eastern continental group extends east and west. ”

“ When the middle of the northern continent of America, about the meridian of Mexico, is examined in the same way, the opposite part passes very exactly through the middle of the Indian ocean. The southern continent of America is opposed by that eastern sea which contains the East India islands. The southern continent of New Holland is opposite to the Atlantic ocean. ”

“ On the east side of the main continental area are the Atlantic mountains, extending from near the Gulf coast northward to beyond Hudson Strait; in the central part is the broad continental basin, a vast region of low relief reaching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean; west of the continental basin are the Pacific mountains, the greatest of all the elevations on the continent, which begin abruptly in south-central Mexico and extend northward, expanding to a width of about 1,000 171 miles in the United States and reach the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea. ”

“ The way to the West Indies is made easy by the north-easterly trade winds, whereas the passage to North America is in the teeth of the prevailing wind from the west. Those who take ship from Europe to North America meet the opposing force of the Gulf Stream; voyagers to the south-west, on the contrary, are borne by the Equatorial Current from the African coast to the Caribbean Sea. ”

“ European explorers penetrated into and crossed the continent rather from the north and west than from the east; and Spanish colonization on the Pacific coast was, outwardly at least, more imposing and effective than Portuguese colonization on the Atlantic seaboard. The great mass of land on the earth's surface is in the northern hemisphere; and in the extreme north the shores of the Old and New Worlds are closest to each other. Here, where the Arctic Sea narrows into the Behring Straits, it is easier to reach America from the west than from the east, from Asia than from Europe ”

“ The inhabitants of Western Europe, and more particularly those of the British Isles, have a peculiar interest in the North Polar Regions. Deriving their wealth and importance from their commercial enterprise, and that commercial enterprise leading their ships and seamen into the furthest seas, they have necessarily a vital concern in the discovery of the shortest possible route from that side of the Earth which they inhabit to the other, or eastern side; and this, more particularly, because the East is rich in natural productions which are of high value to the peoples of the West. ”

“ Although the access to the continent of North America is much more easily had upon its western side, and though all the early settlements were probably made that way, the configuration of the land is such that it is not possible to get easy access to the heart of the continent from the Pacific shore. So that although the Atlantic Ocean was most forbidding and difficult as a way to America, once passed, it gave the freest and best access to the body of the continent. ”