36 OUR HERITAGE THE SEA 



of less favourably situated lands. But from the point 

 of view of health, these islands are as nearly perfect as 

 can be, and such diseases as the inhabitants suffer from 

 are of a nature easily preventable, and due almost 

 entirely to ignorance and natural sloth. When, how- 

 ever, we turn to the mainland, we see quite a different 

 order of things prevailing. The Pacific seaboard of 

 North America, when once the frigid zone has been 

 passed, is exceptionally favoured by Nature to be the 

 home of a multitudinous population. It is humid, as 

 might be expected, since, as everywhere else on the 

 eastern seaboard of an ocean without the tropics, the 

 prevailing winds blow right on shore, bringing with 

 them not only health, but that vivifying moisture so 

 necessary to vegetable growth. 



But here at once we are met by the great pecu- 

 liarity of America, both North and South the mighty 

 chain of mountains which rear their giant heads sky- 

 wards, and arrest the rain-laden clouds as they pass 

 inland, making them discharge their contents and 

 assume a totally different character to what they 

 bore when they first struck the land. As, for in- 

 stance, in the northern lands of Manitoba and Assi- 

 niboia, where, by some wonderful alchemy of Nature, 

 the bitter winds from the almost Arctic Seas are, 

 during their passage over the mountains, bereft of 

 their harsh character, and descend upon the immense 

 plains, even in winter, with a mildness that is almost 

 marvellous ; especially by contrast with the plains of 

 Dakota and Montana, far to the southward of them, 

 whose weather is very much more severe. It is this 

 beneficence of climate which has led of late years to 

 the enormous influx of United States citizens into 



