The Appalachian range long served as a great barrier to the Atlantic colonies. It marked off thus a strip of country to which the English colonies were confined until they had laid the foundations of the new nation. It furnished also the sources for the many rivers which intersected the country occupied by the early settlers. The great forests on the slopes were sponges which held the moisture and permitted the rivers to flow with a certain evenness. The climate thus was favorably affected, and the conditions were good for agricultural activity. It was also of much consequence that this great range should have enormous deposits of coal and iron, and should furnish building stone and clays for pottery. It is not easy to see on a map of the small scale of ours one notable feature of this range, the great table-lands which border much of the system. The greater part of the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio lies upon the table-land, and these States enjoy thereby not only a great range of climate, but conditions which render them most serviceable for the uses of man.1 The Rocky Mountains long formed another barrier to the westward movement of population. Indeed it was not till the Pacific coast had become suddenly important by the discovery of gold there, that these mountains were overcome. The great height and width of the range have a marked effect upon the climate of the region to the east of it. Whatever moisture the winds of the Pacific carry is lost in crossing the Sierra Nevadas, and thus they have become dry currents when they pass over the plains lying to the east of the Rocky Mountains. The Coast range is too low wholly to obstruct the moisture from the Pacific, and thus the slopes and valleys lying to the west of the Sierra Nevadas are fertile, and the climate is delightful. For these reasons that region may be regarded 1 See the "Physiography of North America," by N. S. Shaler, in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, Vol. IV. as affording opportunity for abundant human life, second only to what is offered by the Appalachian range. The entire region of the Cordilleras, though dry and sterile, is rich in mineral deposits, especially abounding in the precious metals. The Rivers. So far as the river system is connected with the mountain system, there is a marked difference between the Appalachian range and the Cordilleras. The former is not only the source of many large streams, both on the eastern and western slopes, but is even cut through in one or two instances by rivers. All this section of the country is thus a moist region, and the average rainfall is much higher than in Europe. On the Pacific slope the rivers are few in number, the most important being the Yukon, which flows into Bering Sea, the Columbia, which bisects the Cascade range in Oregon, and the Colorado, which discharges into the bay of Lower California.1 The mountain region, out of which the Colorado proceeds, is so rainless that no great river valleys have been formed. But the great river system is the central Mississippi system with its tributaries; though it might be more exact to call this the Missouri system, since before the junction of the two streams the Missouri River has the largest volume and receives the largest number of contributing streams, watering the greater area. The only system in the world comparable with the Mississippi is the Amazon; but the Amazon, flowing as it does from west to east in one great zone, the tropic, does not so contribute to the welfare of mankind as the Mississippi, which, flowing from north to south, crosses regions greatly varying in temperature and rainfall. The vast extent of navigable waters in this system has 1 It is probable that no other river in the world, except the Nile, flows so far without being joined by streams from the neighboring country. Like the Nile, the Colorado flows through a desert, though the desert which borders the Colorado, unlike that which borders the lower Nile, is very elevated; it lies at a height of about five thousand feet above the sea. Through this tableland the stream has cut a deep gorge, or cañon, the most wonderful narrow valley in the world."- Shaler's The Story of Our Continent. had a powerful influence upon the movement of population. Scarcely had the pioneers crossed the Appalachian range than they found themselves able to make use of streams upon which they could float in comparative security into the heart of the continent. We have seen how the French and Spaniards early sought, by means of the Mississippi, to control the great thoroughfare of the New World; later, the possession of it was held by the Western pioneers almost a reason for separating from the Eastern States; and in the war for the Union, the control of it by the Union forces was the sign of the approaching downfall of the Confederacy. The Forests. Although our map does not indicate the forest lands, these bear so intimate a relation to the rivers, and they have had, and still have, so great an influence on the civilization of the land, that, as natural features of the country, they demand a few words. When the first settlers began to occupy the region now covered by the United States, they found pretty much all the country lying east and south of a line drawn from the Gulf of Mexico due north to the Ozark Mountains, then running easterly by the Ohio to Lake Erie, and so by the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence to the sea, covered with a vast forest. In a few areas the Indians had burned the forests, but the destruction of them since that day has been by the settlers who have cleared them for farms and grazing lands. On the Pacific coast, the surface covered by trees is that of the Coast range of mountains and its neighboring table-land, a belt which widens greatly as it extends northward. The growth in this region is most majestic, and if properly guarded will long remain the source of some of the finest wood in the world; but under the action of unregulated commercial competition, these noble forests are rapidly disappearing. The forests of America have been, and still are, great sources of wealth to the people, but both in the East and the West, the wholesale destruction of them not only is attended by enormous waste but has a very material effect upon agriculture and mill privileges by diminishing the rainfall and impairing the regularity of the streams.1 The Lakes. The scale of our map is too small to permit enumeration of a great number of lakes which diversify the landscape and furnish water power; but the eye at once observes the chain of Great Lakes, and the isolated Salt Lake in the Cordilleras. The Great Lakes have a marked influence upon the climate and soil lying to the south of them, and the wealth under the soil, especially in copper and phosphates, is very great. The lakes themselves afford a succession of inland seas which are like a northern ocean to all the country east of the Mississippi Valley, so that not only is commerce carried on with the country of Canada, lying on the other side of this northern ocean, but a great coastwise trade has grown up, not unlike that which for nearly three hundred years has characterized the States lying along the Atlantic Ocean. The Plains. The word " desert," which occurs on the map between the Sierra Nevadas and the Rocky Mountains, indicates a general condition of the plains that lie in this region; not that this district is throughout actually sterile, but as has been seen the absence of rain renders it arid, and artificial irrigation must largely be relied upon to make the country fertile. How great the results may be are intimated by what we have already found in the history of Utah. But between the two great systems of the Cordilleras and the Appalachian Mountains there exists, save for an arid belt flanking the Cordilleras, and a few isolated mountain districts like the Ozarks and the Black Hills, a vast territory, practically plain, well watered, accessible, and enjoying a great diversity of climate. This is the great farm land of the nation. Once it was far more covered with woods than now; but first the Indian burned away the woods 1 The increasing demand for wood in manufacture for other purposes than formerly has a distinct effect upon the supply. For instance, much of the paper used in newspapers is made from wood pulp, and it is said that for every edition of a certain large Sunday newspaper, ten acres of spruce trees, large and small, are cut down. |