HYDROGRAPHY. Ill 



HYDROGRAPHY. 



PREFATORY to the chapter on the waters of the mountain, 

 it may not be irrelevant to take a cursory view of the gene- 

 ral system of water-distributions, of which it forms a frac- 

 tion. By consulting the maps and charts of physical geo- 

 graphers, this will be found the most extraordinary feature 

 of the Western Hemisphere. It will soon be discovered 

 that the hydrography of the New World has been projected 

 upon a scale of unparalleled magnitude, and in dimensions 

 truly colossal. In its rivers, unequaled for length and vo- 

 lume of waters on any other division of the earth, draining 

 the richest and largest basins in the world, terminating in 

 "bays and gulfs which are. more like wide arms of the ocean" 

 than rivers ; in her broad, inland seas or lakes, chained to- 

 gether, many of them, by equally remarkable streams and 

 straits, the whole embosomed in a soil exhaustlessly produc- 

 tive, and washing a geological and mineralogical crust of in- 

 compatible wealth, there is presented a chart of distribution 

 of bodies of water or system of mundane hydraulics, which 

 exhibits a base line for the maritime and commercial de- 

 partment of a social structure or pyramid, of which the ima- 

 gination of man has as yet no dream. 



The large lake-chain itself presents features of great in- 

 terest in every aspect of contemplation. Many of their beds 

 extend hundreds of feet below the level of the sea, while 

 their surfaces are several hundred feet above ; the whole 

 containing an aggregated mass of " more than one-half 1 of 

 all the fresh water on the surface of the globe."* As ob- 

 jects of admiration, they are unparalleled in beauty and 

 grandeur. In the chapter of utilities, this system of waters 

 exhibits illimitable resources and expansions in the whole 



* Johnston's Physical Atlas. 



