NORTH AMERICA 



4250 



NORTH AMERICA 



that they had seen a new world, a continent 

 of which the poet Bryant could later sing: 



Oh mother of a mighty race, 

 Yet lovely in thy youthful grace ! 



On thy cheeks the glow is spread 

 That tints thy morning hills with red ; 

 Thy step the wild deer's rustling feet 

 Within thy woods are not more fleet ; 



Thy hopeful eye 

 Is bright as thine own sunny sky. 



"A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey." 

 Only four centuries have passed since Colum- 

 bus' search for India revealed a far larger and 

 richer land, but in that time North America has 

 become the cradle of two great liberty-loving 

 Anglo-Saxon nations and of nearly a dozen 

 Latin commonwealths which, whatever their 

 shortcomings, have been bulwarks in the world- 

 wide struggle for freedom. Because of the 

 freedom which these countries have possessed, 

 they have been able to set new standards of 

 progress for the Old World and to develop 

 without hindrance their natural riches. Though 

 they contain less than one-tenth of the world's 

 people, these North American nations have 

 amassed half the world's wealth and have made 

 their continent its greatest supply house. They 

 give the world nearly half its breadstuffs and 

 more than that proportion of the cotton for its 

 clothes; almost half its coal and two-thirds of 

 its newer fuel, petroleum; nearly all its silver 

 and a large part of its gold; over half the cop- 

 per which makes modern electrical industry 

 possible, and nearly as large a share of its iron, 

 the chief of all minerals. 



To this wonderful continent, the greater part 

 of which lies in the north temperate zone and 

 has a climate suited to bring out the best 

 qualities of the white man, have come people 

 of all nations to mingle their blood in the 

 formation of a new race: 



In her form and features still 

 The unblenching Puritan will, 

 Cavalier honor, Huguenot grace, 

 The Quaker truth and sweetness, 

 And the strength of the danger-girdled race 

 Of Holland, blend in a proud completeness. 



So Bayard Taylor saw the spirit of America, 

 and since his time it has been enriched with 

 the virtues of many nations. 



Shape, Location and Area. Not until Magel- 

 lan's ships sailed across the Pacific in 1521 did 

 men know that the New World had on its west- 

 ern side an ocean even broader than the At- 

 lantic, over which the explorers had come from 

 Europe. Eight years earlier Balboa, in search 



of a land of gold, had crossed the Isthmus of 

 Panama, but as this neck of land only thirty 

 miles wide which joins the two Americas runs 

 from east to west, he thought he had found a 

 southern ocean. That the frozen Arctic Ocean 

 forms America's northern boundary, no one 

 really knew until the nineteenth century. 



Had Columbus voyaged north instead of 

 west he could nevertheless have found America, 

 for the easternmost point of the island of 

 Greenland is in the longitude of the west coast 

 of Ireland. But he would not have been the 

 discoverer of a New World, for Greenland was 

 already colonized by the Scandinavians. The 

 land which he found was near the other end of 

 a line drawn along the American coast. So far 

 toward the southwest does this line slant that 

 the first shores which Columbus saw were far- 

 ther west than all but a small corner of South 

 America. From the end of the line, in tropical 

 Panama, another line drawn in a northwesterly 

 direction to the Arctic Circle, where Asia is 

 only thirty-six miles away, across Bering Strait, 

 marks the Pacific coast. A third line connect- 

 ing the first two can be drawn along the north 

 coast, for like all the earth's great land masses 

 North America is a south-pointed triangle. 



The north and east sides of this triangle are 

 broken and twisted by numbers of gulfs and 

 bays, islands and peninsulas, but the west side 

 is remarkably straight. Its chief irregularity, 

 the long and narrow Gulf of California, runs 

 parallel with it, and the necklace of islands* 

 flung westward from Alaska to a point half 

 way round the world from Eastern Greenland 

 is too delicate to break the impression of sym- 

 metry. On the east, as though some mighty 

 giant had taken a bite of the continent, is the 

 half-circle of the Gulf of Mexico, nearly en- 

 closed by the peninsulas of Florida and Yuca- 

 tan and the eastward-stretching West Indies. 

 Farther north a gap between Labrador and 

 Greenland is formed by Davis Strait, and the 

 whole northeastern corner of the triangle is 

 broken up into islands, large and small, inside 

 of which lies Hudson Bay. 



The greatest breadth of the continent, from 

 east to west, is a little more than 3,000 miles, 

 and its length from north to south is about 

 4,500 miles. The area is approximately 8,300,- 

 000 square miles, a little over half of the area 

 of Asia. 



The Mainland, Its Mountains and Plains. 

 North America is built on a gigantic scale. It 

 contains some of the highest mountains, the 

 most extensive plains, the largest lakes and 



