2 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



worked for generations. The yellow sub'soil of the North 

 changed to a red sub'soil in the South, but the upper humus' 

 bearing layer could be worked by the usual methods of tillage. 

 Even though the changes in season were unexpectedly violent, 

 there was, on the whole, little of which to complain. 



First there was the Atlantic coastal plain, the plateaus back 

 of that, and finally the Appalachian range which was the first 

 dividing line between East and West. Here were a richness and 

 variety of soils, game and furs for the early settlers, deep, safe 

 harbors for the trading cities their grandchildren were to build. 

 Beyond lay the broad valleys of the Mississippi River system, 

 the land of great meadows and the great lowlands. The country 

 was bigger, wilder but not altogether unlike the farmlands of 

 Germany or England or France. 



The Spaniards who entered the Great Plains and the south' 

 west also found themselves in familiar country. These flat up' 

 lands with their gray mineral soil and bunchgrasses were not 

 unlike the Spanish countryside. To the northeast of their set' 

 tlements the prairies- were an endless sea of tall waving grasses. 

 North and westward lay the Rocky Mountains, huge shoulder' 

 ing masses of rock, up whose sides climbed great forests of 

 pines, junipers, and firs. The snowcapped peaks of the Cascade 

 Range and the Sierra Nevada presided over forests of gigantic 

 redwood, sequoia, Douglas fir, incense cedar, ponderosa pine 

 and Sitka spruce that ran down finally into the blue Pacific. 



Now, think of this great area in terms of man. Before the 

 white man came to what is now the United States, it was a 

 vast, self 'sufficient storehouse supporting a small Indian popu' 

 lation and millions of wild animals. The land had long since 

 reached a balance. The white man found in America a race 

 that lived harmoniously with the land. The Indians "seemed 

 to have none of the European's desire to 'master' nature, to 

 arrange and recreate. They spent their ingenuity in the other 

 direction; in accommodating themselves to the scene in which 

 they found themselves. This was not so much from indolence 



