Next to the quality of the soil, the forest covering of a country does the most to determine its uses to man. Although the Western prairies have the temporary advantage that they are more readily brought under cultivation than wooded regions, the forests of a land contribute so largely to man's well-being, that without them he can hardly maintain the structure of his civilization. The distribution of American forests is peculiar. All the Appalachian mountain system and the shore region between that system and the sea, as well as the Gulf border as far west as the Mississippi, were originally covered by the finest forest that has existed in the historical period, outside of the tropics. In the highlands south of Pennsylvania and in the western table-land north to the Great Lakes, this forest was generally of hard-wood or deciduous trees; on the shore-land and north of Pennsylvania in the highlands, the pines and other conifers held a larger share of the surface. The parts of the land bordering the Mississippi on the west, as far as the central regions of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri, are forest clad. Michigan and portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota have broad areas of forests, but the cis-Mississippian States of Indiana and Illinois, and the trans-Mississippian country west to the Sierra Nevada, is only wooded, and that generally scantily, along the borders of the streams. Data for precise statements are yet wanting, but there is no doubt that this area is untimbered over about seven eighths of its surface, and the wood which exists has a relatively small value for constructive purposes. North of the regions described, except along the Pacific coast, where fine soft-wood forests extend from near San Francisco to Alaska, the forest growth rapidly diminishes in size, and therefore in value, the trees becoming short and gnarled, and the kinds of wood inferior. So that the region north of the St. Lawrence and of the Great Lakes is not to be regarded as having any very great value from the forest resources it affords. In estimating the value of North America to man, the limitation of good forests to the region east of the Mississippi must be regarded as a disadvantage which is likely to become more serious with the advance of time. Undoubtedly the timberless character of the prairie country for at least two hundred miles west of the Mississippi is in the main due to the constant burning over of the surface by the aborigines. It seems possible that these regions may yet be made to bear extensive woods. The elevated plains that lie farther to the west seem to have too little rainfall for the support of forests.

The rivers of a country are a result and a measure of its climate. The generally large rainfall of the eastern half of North America is shown by the number and size of its streams, which, area for area, are longer and more frequent than those of the Old World, except on the eastern coast of Asia. The heaviest rainfall and the greatest average of streams is found about the Gulf of Mexico and the southern part of the Appalachian district. Hence, northerly, westerly, and northwesterly, the rainfall decreases in amount. The average of the region east of the Mississippi and south of the Laurentian Mountains is probably about fifty inches per annum, somewhere near one-third more than that of Europe. North America, despite the very dry district of the Cordilleras, has an average rainfall about as great as that of Europe, and probably rather greater than Asia; indeed its water-supply is rather greater than the average for lands situated so far from the equator.

VOL. IV.-C.

The rivers of America have been of very great importance in the settlement of the land. They afford more navigable waters than all the streams of Asia put together. Without the system of the Mississippi, which has more navigable waters than any river except the Amazons, it would not have been possible for America to have been brought under the control of colonies with such speed.

The elevation of the surface of North America, at least of its more habitable portions, is very favorable to man. A large part of its fertile soils lie from five hundred to fifteen hundred feet above the sea. It has a larger part of its surface within the limits of height that are best suited to the uses of man than Asia, but less than Europe has.

In considering the fitness of this continent for the use of European races, it will not do to overlook the mineral resources of the country. It may be stated in general terms that North America is richer in the mineral substances which have most contributed to the development of man than any other continent. The precious metals may be briefly dismissed. They occur constantly in two areas: the Cordilleran, which, from Mexico, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado, has doubtless furnished more gold and silver than any other one mountain district, and the Appalachian region, which has given about sixty million dollars to the world's store of gold. The precious mineral resources of the Cordilleran region are probably greater than those of any other continent. They have already exercised a very great influence on the commercial and political history of the continent, and are likely to become of more importance as time goes on, for at least half a century to come.

In the so-called baser, yet really more precious, metals this continent is even more fortunate. The supplies in the most important metal, iron, are very great, certainly greater than in Europe. This metal is distributed, with much uniformity over the country, there being scarcely a State except Florida that cannot claim some share of this metal. Especially rich in deposits of this metal are the States which share the Appalachian district, and the States of Missouri and Michigan. The Rocky Mountains also abound in iron ores, which there often contain a certain proportion of the precious metals; so that it is possible that the exploitation of the two metals may in time be carried on there together. There is probably no other continent that contains as large a share of iron, the most important metal for the uses of man.

The other less used, but still commercially important, metals, zinc, lead, and copper, are found in considerable abundance in the Appalachian, the Laurentian, and the Cordilleran regions, especially in the last-named district. The only metal that is rarely found in North America, never yet in quantities of economic importance, is tin. Some specimens of bronze implements have been found in Mexico and Peru. They seem to afford the only evidence that the aboriginal peoples knew how to smelt any metals. Though the natives in the more northern districts used copper, they never discovered the art of smelting it.

Considering the useful metals as a whole, North America is proportionally richer than any other country that is well known to us.

The most considerable of the resources that the rocks of America offer, are found in the deposits of coal which they contain. These deposits are of vast extent, and

are excellently fitted for the various uses of this fuel. While the other mineral resources of the country are most abundant in the region of the Cordilleras, the best of these deposits of coal are accumulated in and about the Appalachian district. At least nine tenths of the coal of America lies to the east of the Mississippi River. New England, New York, South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana are the only States that are practically without coal; and even in New England, Rhode Island and the neighboring parts of Massachusetts have promising but essentially undeveloped fields. In the Cordilleran district coal deposits of small area occur; but the material is generally of poor quality, and is not likely to have a great utility.

As a whole, the resources in the way of subterranean fuel are far richer on this continent than in Europe. The area of coal-bearing rocks is at least eight times as great, and the deposits are much better disposed for working. No other continent save Asia is likely to develop anything like these coal resources; in China the coal area seems much larger than that of North America, but the richness of the field has not yet been fully proven: it is, however, undoubtedly great.

As the latent power of any modern society depends in an intimate way upon the buried stores of solar energy in coal-beds, the large area and good quality of the American coal-fields are very important advantages, and are full of promise for the economic future of its people.

Among the less important resources of the rocks in North-America are the various classes of coal-oils which were first brought into commerce from its fields. Although these oils are not peculiar to North America, the small amount of disruption which its rocks have undergone have caused them to be retained in the subterranean storehouses; while in other countries, where the rocks have been more disturbed, these oils have been allowed to escape to the streams or the air. The areas where these oils occur on the continent are widely scattered. They are, however, principally confined to the Upper Ohio Valley; they are known to exist also in the Valley of the Cumberland River, in California, and in Western Canada north of Lake Erie. Besides these flowing oils there are immense areas of black shales, which yield large quantities of oil to distillation. These are not now of value, on account of the abundance of these flowing oils; but as in the immediate future these flowing wells are likely to cease their production, we may look to these shales for an almost indefinite supply of oil. In the Ohio Valley, extending eastward in Virginia into the valleys of the Atlantic streams, there is an area of over one hundred thousand square miles of this shale, which is on the average over one hundred and fifty feet thick, and yields about ten per cent of oil. In other words, it is equal to a lake of oil as large as New York. and Pennsylvania, and fifteen feet deep, a practically unlimited source of this material.

It is important to note that the sources of supply of phosphate and alkaline marls are very large. As these substances are subject to a constant waste in agriculture, and are the most important of all materials to the growth of the standard crops, the soil of America promises on the whole to be as enduring as is that of Europe, though, owing to the larger rainfall, it tends to waste away more rapidly.

The building stones of a country are of importance, inasmuch as they affect the constructions of a people; in such materials, suited for the purposes of simple strength and durability, the country is very well supplied, being quite as well off as Europe. On the other hand, the stones that lend themselves to the more decorative uses, the pure white or variegated marbles, are not nearly as rich as the countries about the Mediterranean, which is of all known regions the richest in decorative stones.

It is not possible within the limits of this chapter to support by sufficient details the foregoing statements concerning the physical conditions of America. The necessary brevity of the work has made it difficult to find place for all the points that should be presented; it may be fairly said, however, that the statements as made are to a very great extent matters of general information, which lie beyond the scope of debate, being well known to all students of American physiography.

Accepting the foregoing statements as true, it may be fairly owned that the general physical conditions of the American continent closely resemble those of Europe, and that in all the more important matters our race gained rather than lost by its transfer from the Old World to the New.

Part EE.

EFFECT OF THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NORTH AMERICA ON MEN OF EUROPEAN ORIGIN.

In their organic life the continents of America have always stood somewhat apart from those of the Old World. This isolation is marked in every stage of their geological history. In each geological period they have many forms that never found their way to the other lands, and we fail to find there many species that are abundant in the continents of the Old World.

The same causes that kept the animal and vegetable life of the Americas distinct from Europe and Asia have served to keep those continents apart from the human history of the Old World. Something more than the relations that are patent on a map are necessary to a proper understanding of the long continued isolation of these continents.

In the first place, we may notice the fact that from the Old World the most approachable side of these continents lies on the west. Not only are the lands of the New and Old World there brought into close relations to each other, but the ocean streams of the North Pacific flow toward America. Moreover the North Pacific is a sea of a calmer temper than the North Atlantic, and the chance farers over its surface would be more likely to survive its perils. In the North Atlantic, over which alone the Aryan peoples could well have found their way to America, we have a wide sea,

which is not only the stormiest in the world, but its currents set strongly against western-going ships, and the prevailing winds blow from the west. If it had been intended that America should long remain unknown to the seafaring peoples of Semitic or Aryan race, it would not have been easy, within the compass of earthly conditions, to accomplish it in a more effective manner than it has been done by the present geography.

The result is that man, who doubtless originated in the Old World, early found his way to America by the Pacific; and all the so-called indigenous races known to us in the Americas seem to have closer relations to the peoples living in northern Asia than to those of any other country. It is pretty clear that none of the aboriginal American peoples have found their way to these continents by way of the Atlantic.

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. In the west, the Cordilleras are a formidable bar to those who seek to enter the continent from the Pacific. None but a modern civilization would ever have forced its barriers of mountains and of deserts. An ancient civilization, if it had penetrated America from the west, would have recoiled from the labor of traversing this mountain system, that combines the difficulties of the Alps and the Sahara. If European emigration had found such a mountain system on the eastern face of the continent, the history of America would have been very different. Scarcely any other continent offers such easy ingress as does this continent to those who come to it from the Atlantic side. The valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Mississippi, in a fashion also of the Susquehanna and the James, break through or pass around the low-coast mountains, and afford free ways into the whole of the interior that is attractive to European peoples. No part of the Alleghanian system presents any insuperable obstacles to those who seek to penetrate the inner lands. The whole of its surface is fit for human uses; there are neither deserts of sand nor of The axe alone would open ways readily passable to men and horses. So that when the early settlers had passed the sea, all their formidable geographical difficulties were at an end, — with but little further toil the wide land lay open to them. I propose in the subsequent pages to give a sketch of the physical conditions of this continent, with reference to the transplanted civilization that has developed upon its soil. It will be impossible, within the limits of this essay, to do more than indicate these conditions in a very general way, for the details of the subject would constitute a work in itself. It will be most profitable for us first to glance at the general relations of climate and soil that are found in North America, so far as these features bear upon the history of the immigration it has received from Europe.

snow.

1 It is likely that some part of the Aryan folk found their way to the Pacific shore in Corea and elsewhere; but the Aryan migrations set

ting to the East must have been uncommon, and the chance of Caucasian blood reaching America by this route small.