by the hand of nature, grows in wild luxuriance; the potato and banana yield an overflowing supply of food; fruits of too tempting sweetness present themselves to the hand. Innumerable birds, with varied and splendid plumage, nestle in shady retreats, where they are sheltered from the scorching heats of summer. Painted varieties of parrots and woodpeckers glitter amidst the verdure of the groves, and humming-birds rove from flower to flower, resembling "the animated particles of a rainbow." The scarlet flamingoes, seen through an opening of the forest in a distant savannah, appear the mimic array of fairy armies: the fragrance of the woods, the odour of the flowers, load every breeze. These charms broke on Columbus and his followers like Elysium: "One could live here," said he, " for ever." Is this the terrestrial paradise which nature seems at first sight to have designed-which it appeared to its heroic discoverer? It is the land of slavery and of pestilence; where indolence dissolves the manly character, and stripes can alone rouse the languid arm; where "death bestrides the evening gale," and the yielding breath inhales poison with its delight; where the iron race of Japhet itself seems melting away under the prodigality of the gifts of nature. laborious industry have been employed in felling them, the spaces cleared by man appear but as spots amidst the gloomy immensity of the primitive forest. Farther inland, the shapeless swell of the Alleghany mountains rises to separate the sea-coast from the vast plains in the interior; the forests become loftier, and are composed of noble trees sown by the hand of nature in every variety, from the stunted pine which strikes its roots into the ices of the arctic circle, to the majestic palm, the spreading planetree, the graceful poplar, and verdant evergreen oak which overshadow the marshes of the Floridas and Carolinas. Inexpressible is the beauty of the scenes which nature exhibits in the highlands which lie around the upper valley of the Tennessee river. The vales are there encircled by blue hills rising above hills, of which the lofty peaks kindle with the first rays of the sun, while their overshadowing mass intercepts his noontide beams. Lower down, the slopes are covered with magnolias; flowering forest-trees, decorated with roving climbers in snowwhite cascades, glitter on the hill-sides; the rivers, clear and shallow, rush through the narrow vales amidst thickets of rhododendron and blooming azalia. The fertile soil teams with luxuriant herbage, on which vast herds of deer 4. There is a land, in the same hemi-brouse; the vivifying breeze is laden sphere, of another character. Wash- with fragrance; daybreak is ever weled by the waves of a dark and stormy comed by the carol of birds. Such ocean, granite rocks and sandy pro- are the enchanting features which namontories constitute its sea-front, and ture presents in the highlands of Caroa sterile inhospitable tract, from a hun- lina, Georgia, and Alabama; the most dred to a hundred and fifty miles picturesque and salubrious region to broad, and eleven hundred long, pre- the east of the Mississippi. sents itself to the labours of the colonist. It was there that the British exiles first set their feet, and sought amidst hardship and suffering that freedom of which England had become unworthy. Dark and melancholy woods cover the greater part of this expanse the fir, the beech, the laurel, and the wild olive, are chiefly to be found on the sea-coast; but in such profusion do they grow, and so strongly do they characterise the country, that even now, after two hundred years of 5. The ceaseless activity of nature is seen, without intermission, throughout these pathless solitudes: the great work of creation is everywhere followed by destruction, that of destruction by creation. Generations of trees are perpetually decaying, but fresh generations ever force their way up among the fallen stems; luxuriant creepers cover with their leaves alike the expiring and the reviving race; the frequent rains which almost everywhere stagnate amidst the thickets, attracted by this prodigious expanse of shaded and humid surface, at once hasten decay and vivify vegetation; prolific animal life teems in the leafy coverts which are found amidst these fallen patriarchs; and the incessant war of the stronger with the weaker, strews the earth alike with animal and vegetable remains. The profound silence of these forests is occasionally interrupted alone by the fall of a tree, the breaking of a branch, the bellowing of the buffalo, the roar of a cataract, or the whistling of the winds. It is the land of health, of industry, and of freedom; of ardent zeal, and dauntless energy, and great aspiration. In those forests a virgin mould is formed; in those wilds the foundations of human increase are laid: no gardener could mingle the elements of rural wealth like the contending life and death of the forest; and out of the decayed remnants of thousands of years are extracted the sustenance, the life, the power of civilised man. colours the earth. Dead and mossgrown logs, mounds covered with decomposed vegetable surfaces, the graves of long-past generations of trees, cavities left by the fall of a long-uprooted trunk, dark fungi that flourish about the decayed roots of those about to loose their hold, with a few slender and delicate plants of minor growth, and which flourish in the shade, form the principal features of the scene beneath. In the midst of this gloomy solitude, the foot of man is rarely heard. An occasional glimpse of the bounding deer or trotting moose, is almost the only interruption on the earth itself; while the heavy bear or the leaping panther is occasionally met, seated on the branches of some venerable tree. There are moments, too, when troops of hungry wolves are encountered on the trail of the deer; but these are rather an exception to the stillness of the place, than accessories that should properly be introduced into the picture. Even the birds are in general mute; or, when they do break the silence, it is in discordant notes that suit their wild abode. The wilderness in the midst of many successive changes is always sustained at the point nearest to perfection: since the alterations are so few and gradual as never to innovate on its general character." 6. The vast forests of this primeval continent have been thus described by the hand of a master, whose pictorial eye and graphic powers almost bring the realities he has witnessed before our eyes: "The American forest exhibits in the highest degree the grandeur of repose. As nature never does violence to her own laws, the soil throws out the plant it is best qualified to support, and the eye is not often disappointed by a sickly vegetation. There is a generous emulation in the trees, which is not to be found among others of different families, when left to pursue their quiet existence in the solitude of the fields. Each struggles towards the light; and an equality in bulk and similarity in form are thus produced, which scarce belong to their distinctive characters. The effect may easily be imagined. The vaulted arches beneath are filled with thousands of high unbroken-in all, 2,076,400 square miles, or columns, which sustain one vast and trembling canopy of leaves. A pleasing gloom and an imposing silence have their interminable reign below, an outer and a different atmosphere seeming to rest on the cloud of foliage. While the light plays on the varying surface of the tree-tops, a sombre hue 7. The United States of North America extend from 70° to 127° west longitude, and from 25° to 52° north latitude. They embrace in the territories of the separate States 1,535,000 square geographical miles, or about ten times the area of France, which contains 156,000; and seventeen times that of the British Islands, which amount to 91,000; besides about 500,000 more in the unappropriated western wilds not yet allotted to any separate State, * The total territory of the United States, including the Floridas, is, according to Malte Brun, about 3,000,000 square geographical miles; but that includes the portion covered by water, which is a fifteenth of the whole, and the desert tracts of the Rocky Moun- tains.-MALTE BRUN, xi. 185. in the distance with the blue of heaven. Gradually, as it approaches the stupendous barrier of the Rocky Mountains, the character of nature changes. Charming savannahs, over which innumerable herds of buffaloes range at pleasure, first break the dark uniformity of the forest; wider and more open prairies next succeed, over which the trees are loosely sprinkled, and sometimes attain a prodigious size: naked and dreary plains are then to be traversed, in which a thousand rills meander, with imperceptible flow, towards the great river in the east, almost concealed amidst gigantic reeds and lofty grass which fringe their banks; until at length the vast and snowy ridge of the Rocky Mountains, rising in unapproachable grandeur to the height of fourteen and fifteen thousand, sometimes twenty thousand feet, presents apparently an impassable barrier to the adventurous steps of man. Yet even these, the Andes of Northern America, which traverse its whole extent from Icy Cape to the Isthmus of Darien, do not bound the natural capabilities of its territory. On their western slopes another more broken plain, furrowed by innumerable ravines, is to be seen, descending rapidly towards the Pacific, which embraces 300,000 square miles. Its numerous and rapid streams give it an inexhaustible command of water-power; its rivers, stored with fish and in great part navigable, present vast resources for the use of man: its boundless forests and rich veins of mineral wealth point it out as the future abode of manufacturing greatness. 1,328,896,000 acres, upwards of twenty | dure, like the waves of the ocean, blend times the area of the British Islands. This immense territory is portioned out by nature into three great divisions, of which not a third has yet heard the hatchet of civilised man, by the two great chains of mountains which, running from north to south, nearly parallel to the adjacent oceans, separate the continent of North America, as it were, into a centre and two wings. These chains are the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains. The former, gradually rising from the shores of the St Lawrence and the frontiers of Canada, and stretching southward to the Gulf of Florida, a distance of above fourteen hundred miles, divides the sea-coast, which first began to be cultivated by the European settlers, from the vast alluvial plains of Central America. The space between it and the sea is comparatively sterile, and does not embrace above 200,000 square miles. It is beyond the Alleghanies, a comparatively low and shapeless range, seldom rising to five thousand feet in height, that the garden of the world is to be found. In the immense basins of the Missouri, the Ohio, and the Mississippi, to which the waters descend from the whole length of the Alleghanies on the east, and the vast piles of the Rocky Mountains on the west, are contained above 1,000,000 square miles, with hardly a hill or a rock to interrupt the expanse. Of this prodigious space, above six times the whole area of France, and fully eleven times that of Great Britain, two-thirds, being that which lies nearest to the Alleghany range, is composed of the richest soil, in great part alluvial, in others covered with the virgin spoils 9. On the opposite, or eastern bank, of decayed forest vegetation during a very different scene in general preseveral thousand years. The remain-sents itself. Every object in nature is ing third stretches, by a gentle and almost imperceptible slope, to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. 8. Nature exhibits a character so different on the opposite banks of the Mississippi, that it is scarcely possible to believe they belong to the same part of the world. On the western bank vast savannahs stretch as far as the eye can reach; their undulations of ver there new and wonderful. Loud and frequent thunderstorms attest the electricity with which the atmosphere is charged, and refresh the earth when parched by the droughts of summer. Life everywhere abounds; the woods, the savannahs, the morasses teem with existence. Hanging over the watery current, grouped on the rocks and eminences on its banks, clustering in every valley, trees of all sorts, colours, and green and red, creep around the tops perfumes, grow up together in wild of the cypresses; and in the midst of profusion, and reach a height which the jessamine of the Floridas the deadthe aching eye can hardly measure. ly sound of the rattlesnake is heard. Wild vines, bignonias, and other creep- The noise which these innumerable ers, generally adorned by the most tribes of animals make is so prodigious, splendid blossoms, creep up to their as to exceed anything ever heard in the very summits; and, stretching from abodes of civilised man. The roaring one to another, form, as in the Cam- of beasts of prey, the bellowing of bufpagna of Naples, arches of vegetation faloes, the cooing of birds, the hissing at the height of a hundred and fifty feet of serpents, the din of parrots, is all from the ground. Sometimes spread- heard at once, without any one apparing their tendrils out from the trees, ently being disquieted by the others. these adventurous creepers stretch And, when wafted by the breeze from across rivers, over which they throw a little distance, it produces a dull inaerial bridges of flowers. From the cessant roar, like the sound of a dismidst of this verdant wilderness, the tant cataract, which harmonises singumagnolia rears his motionless cone, sur-larly with the deep solitude of these mounted by large white roses. He has untrodden forests. no rival but the palm-tree, which, at his side, waves to every breeze his graceful fan of verdure. 10. If silence, interrupted only by casual sounds, reigns in the vast savannahs on the western, a very chorus arises from the woods on the eastern bank. A multitude of living animals, of all sorts, there attest the prodigality with which life has been spread in the wilderness by the hand of the Creator. Everything has been prepared for their reception. Forests majestic in their growth, and free from underwood, spread over the plains in boundless magnificence; the purling streams and frequent rivers flowing between alluvial banks, quicken the everpregnant soil into unwearied fertility; the strangest and most beautiful flowers grow familiarly in the fields; the woods are replenished with fragrance; the birds with their gay plumage and varied melodies inspire delight. The humming-bird, so brilliant in its plumage, so quick in its motions, so unfearful of man, rebounds from the blossoms like a bee gathering honey. Myriads of pigeons often darken the air with their flocks. Bears of huge size, often reeling from the intoxication of the wild grapes, of which they are passionately fond, cling to the branches; black squirrels sport in the recesses of the foliage; mocking-birds and Virginian pigeons alight on turf made red by strawberries; parrots, resplendent with 11. These are the great geographical divisions of the territory of the United States; but they do not comprehend the whole of the immense continent of North America. MEXICO on the south, and the British provinces on the north, contain within themselves the elements of mighty empires, and are destined to open their capacious arms for ages to come, to receive the overflowing population of the Old World. The former of these has been already described in treating of Spanish America, to which division of the New World it properly belongs [ante, Chap. LXVII. § 26]. Canada, and the other British possessions in North America, though apparently blessed with fewer physical advantages, contain a noble race, and are evidently reserved for a lofty destination. Everything there is in proper keeping for the development of the combined physical and mental energies of man. There are to be found, at once, the hardihood of character which conquers difficulty, the severity of climate which stimulates exertion, the natural advantages which reward enterprise. Nature has marked out this country for exalted destinies; for if she has not given it the virgin mould of the basin of the Missouri, or the giant vegetation and prolific sun of the tropics, she has bestowed upon it a vast chain of inland lakes, which fit it one day to become the great channel of commerce between Europe and the in terior of America and eastern parts of Asia. miles, or nearly a ninth part of the whole terrestrial surface of the globe.* 12. The river St Lawrence, fed by Probably seven-eighths of this immense the immense inland seas which separate surface are doomed to eternal sterility Canada from the United States, is the from the excessive severity of the cligreat commercial artery of North Ame- mate, which yields only a scanty herbrica. Descending from the distant age to the reindeer, the elk, and the sources of the Kaministiquia and St musk ox; but the two Canadas alone Louis, it traverses the solitary Lake contain three hundred thousand square Winnipeg and Lake of the Woods, miles, of which ninety-five thousand opens into the boundless expanse of are in the upper and richer province; Lake Superior, and, after being swelled and, altogether, there are probably not by the tributary volumes of the Michi- less than six hundred thousand square gan and Huron waves, again contracts miles, in the British dominions in that into the river and lake of St Clair; a part of the world, capable of profitable second time expands into the broad cultivation, being nearly seven times surface of Lake Erie, from whence it the superficies of the whole British is precipitated by the sublime cataract Islands, if the wastes of Scotland, not of Niagara into "wild Ontario's bound- less sterile than the Polar snows, are less lake," and, again contracting, finds deducted. Of this arable surface, about its way to the sea by the magnificent one hundred and thirty thousand square estuary of the St Lawrence, through miles, or somewhat more than a fourth, the wooded intricacies of the Thousand have been surveyed, or are under cultiIslands. Nor are the means of water vation. The climate is various, being navigation wanting on the other side much milder in the upper or more of this marvellous series of inland seas. southerly province of Canada than in The Rocky Mountains, sunk there to the lower; but in both it is extremely five or six thousand feet in height, cold in winter, and surprisingly warm contain valleys capable of being opened in summer. In the lower province, the to artificial navigation by human enter- thermometer has been known to stand, prise; no considerable elevation re- in July and August, at 93° of Fahrenquires to be surmounted in making heit in the shade, and it is frequently the passage from the distant sources of from 80° to 90°; while in winter it is the St Lawrence to the mountain feed- sometimes as low as 40° below zero, so ers of the Columbia; the rapid decli- as to freeze mercury. But, notwithvity of the range on the western side standing this extraordinary range of soon renders the latter river navigable, temperature, the climate is not only and a deep channel and swelling stream eminently favourable to the health of soon conduct the navigator to the shores the European race, but brings to matuof the Pacific. As clearly as the Medi-rity, in many places, the choicest gifts terranean Sea was let in by the Straits of nature. of Gibraltar to form the main channel of communication and the great artery of life to the Old World, so surely were the vast lakes of Canada spread in the wilderness of the New, to penetrate the mighty continent, and carry into its remotest recesses the light of European knowledge and the blessings of Christian civilisation. 13. The superficial extent of the British possessions in North America is prodigious, and greatly exceeds that which is subject to the sway of the United States; it amounts to above four millions of square geographical 14. Vast pine forests, scantily intersected, in the vicinity only of the great rivers, by execrable roads, cover indeed nine-tenths of the northern provinces, as of the corresponding districts of Russia and Sweden in the Old World. But they constitute no inconsiderable portion of the national wealth, for in them is found an inexhaustible store of timber, the exportation of which con *The exact amount is 4,109,630 square geographical miles. The terrestrial globe embraces about 37,000,000.-MALTE BRUN, North America contains 1,340,000 square miles of water.—Ibid. xi. 179. Besides this land surface, British |