Geographical and statistical

THE configuration of North America is even more diversified, by inlets of the sea, by islands, and by lakes, than Europe; while there is a remarkable similarity in the outlines of South America and of Africa.

North America is usually considered to include the countries, islands, inlets, and lakes, extending from New Granada in 9 deg. north latitude to the Arctic Sea, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

The territories, comprised within this great area, include Greenland, and the frozen regions; Labrador, and the vast country west of Hudson Bay, including Russian America; the Canadas, and the country called Columbia, claimed by Great Britain, west of the Rocky Mountains; the islands of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Prince Edward, Anticosti, and Cuba; several minor islands lying off the coast of North America; Porto Rico, Hayti, and all the British and other West India islands, with the exception of Trinidad and the Dutch and other islands which lie off the coast of South America; Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; the extensive territories comprised within, and appertaining to, the republics of the United States; Texas, and the states of the republic of Mexico, including California; and Central America or Guatemala, which includes Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, and the Mosquito country.

The Andes extend through Mexico, where their summits are far higher than those of the Alps, and through the territories of the United States, and of Great

Britain, under the name of the Rocky Mountains; and divide the waters falling into the Pacific from those which fall into the Bay of Hudson, the St. Lawrence, the Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico. The Ozark range stretches parallel with, and nearly midway between, the Mississippi and Rocky Mountains. The Alleghaneys, which Jefferson in his time designated the spine of the United States, divide the waters flowing into the Atlantic from those flowing north into the river St. Lawrence, and west into the Ohio and Mississippi, from the waters flowing south of Cape Gaspé into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and from Nova Scotia to Carolina, into the Atlantic. These, with the ranges north of the St. Lawrence, form the great mountain regions of North America. With the moderate interruption of some highlands in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, and the rocky cliffs and heights of Newfoundland, the foregoing mountains form the exceptions to the generally level, and undulating character of all America, north and east of Mexico.

The other great general features of North America are: the inlets of Hudson, Baffin, and other bays and inlets of the frozen regions; the gulf and estuaries of St. Lawrence; the bays of Chaleur, Fundy, Chesapeake, and the Mexican and Californian gulfs; the islands of Newfoundland, Anticosti, Cape Breton, Prince Edward, Long Island, and the West Indies; and those lying along the shores of the northern promontories, and peninsulas, of Greenland, Labrador, Nova Scotia, Florida, California, and the north-west coast of America; the five great lakes of Canada and the United States; the Great and Lesser Lakes of the northern territory; the St. Lawrence, Hudson, the Mississippi, and the numerous other great, and small rivers, which discharge their waters, not carried off by evaporation, into the Atlantic, Hudson Bay, the Arctic, or Pacific seas; the geological formation of the mountains, hills, great and lesser valleys, prairies, and alluvions; and the forest zones or regions extending from within nine degrees north of the equator, to the northern limit of utter barrenness.

CHAPTER II.

CONFIGURATION AND ASPECT OF BRITISH AMERICA.

THE physical aspect of British America presents along the Atlantic coasts, with but few exceptions, a broken, rugged configuration, in some parts thickly wooded to the water's edge, or to the utmost verge of the most perpendicular cliffs; in others, as along the greater part of Newfoundland, the south-eastern shores of Nova Scotia, and the whole of Labrador, rocks, with dwarfish trees

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