NORTH AMERICA 



12.VJ 



NORTH AMERICA 



tensive bodies of fresh water on the globe. 

 Journeying up the valleys of some of the rivers 

 which lead from these Great Lakes, they found 

 their way to the "Father of Waters," the might y 

 Mississippi, whose lower course, near the Gulf 

 of Mexico, had been visited by the Spaniard 

 De Soto in 1541. With its numerous tributaries 

 this stream drains a million and a quarter 

 square miles, furnishes 14,000 miles of inland 

 navigation and discharges more water than all 

 the rivers of Europe. The Missouri-Mississippi 

 is the longest stream in the world. East of the 

 Appalachians the streams all flow directly to 

 the Atlantic (see map of them in the article 

 FALL LIXE). 



In other parts of the continent neither early 

 explorers nor present-day merchants have found 

 waterways so valuable as those by which the 

 East is served. Along a straight line from the 

 Great Lakes to the northwest corner of Canada 

 is a series of large lakes, in and out of which 

 flow a number of long, north-bound rivers, the 

 Saskatchewan-Nelson, Mackenzie and others, 

 but the system is of little commercial impor- 

 tance because of the desolate nature of the 

 greater part of the territory which it drains. 

 On the west coast only two rivers are valuable 

 to navigation, the Yukon, which opens the 

 heart of Alaska, and the Columbia. One other, 

 the Colorado, drains a large area, but its great- 

 est gift to man is the majestic scenery of its 

 mighty canyon. Between the headwaters of 

 this river and those of the Columbia lies the 

 Great Basin, a region whose streams never find 

 the sea, but disappear in the desert or end in 

 salty lakes. Within the tropics North America 

 has not one great river, but just north of them 

 the Rio Grande, or Great River, reaches the 

 Gulf of Mexico, bringing water from the east- 

 ern slope of the Rockies. 



The historian Thwaites has remarked that 

 "North America could not, in a primitive stage 

 of the mechanic arts, have been developed by 

 colonization on a considerable scale from the 

 west, except in the face of difficulties almost 

 insuperable." If there were only two natural 

 harbors between Gibraltar and Norway, and 

 mountains rose almost directly from the sea, 

 the situation in Western Europe would be about 

 the same as it is between the Canadian border 

 and the tip of Lower California. The coast of 

 British Columbia and Alaska, like that of Nor- 

 way, has innumerable twists and turns, but is 

 mountainous, and Western Mexico has but few 

 harbors. On the east coast of the continent, 

 o* the other hand, there are good harbors all 



the way from Labrador to Panama. Many of 

 them are small, and some are nearly blocked 

 by sand or coral reefs, but others are among 

 the finest in the world. 



A Continent of Wonders. For the lover of 

 the beautiful in nature, no other part of (In- 

 earth can equal North America. Whether the 

 search is for the awe-inspiring or for simple 

 beauty, nowhere else can such a wide variety 

 of scenes be found. The fascinating constancy 

 of the mighty flood at Niagara and the thought- 

 compelling profoundness of the Grand Canyon 

 are not equaled elsewhere, nor has nature else- 

 where exceeded the ever-varying charm of the 

 Yosemite and the Yellowstone, the stern solem- 

 nity of the Canadian Rockies, or the pictur- 

 esque ruggedness of the labyrinth of Alaskan 

 fiords. A landscape painter could find in North 

 America almost any variety of scene in the 

 eastern section wooded hills and mountains; 

 farther west the rolling, treeless prairie; then 

 the great plains, the snow-crowned mountains 

 and the rainless land of sagebrush and cactus; 

 the sunny valleys of California and the giant 

 forests running northward to British Columbia 

 and Alaska; in the far North the frozen, track- 

 less wastes and the region where trees are 

 stunted by the cold; in the south the countries 

 where frost is never known, where forests be- 

 come jungles and man must restrain instead of 

 encourage nature. 



Climate. Most of North America has a cli- 

 mate that is temperate but characterized by 

 very cold winters and very hot summers. The 

 great central plain of the United States and 

 Canada is exposed to extremes of temperatures 

 and to sudden changes because the position of 

 the mountains is such as to allow both the cold 

 winds from the north and the warm winds 

 from the south to sweep across it. The Pacific 

 coast is remarkable for its uniform temperature, 

 which averages little above 60 Fahrenheit on 

 the coast of Southern California and little be- 

 low it on the south coast of Alaska. In the 

 latter region the thermometer seldom registers 

 zero Fahrenheit, though its latitude is that of 

 Labrador on the Atlantic coast, which is af- 

 fected by a cold current from the north, and 

 has such severe winters that it is scarcely in- 

 habitable. Labrador is only 10 Fahrenheit 

 cooler than Northern Germany in July, but it 

 is about 40 Fahrenheit colder in January. 

 The table-lands of Mexico have a tropical hut 

 healthful climate, while in the northern part 

 of the continent Arctic temperatures prevail. 

 Central America, at the extreme south, lies 



