A JOURNEY TO THE ROCKY 
MOUNTAINS IN 1839 
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CHAPTER> ONE 
A GEOGRAPHICAL AND 
HISTORICAL 
SURVEY 
Er HE whole territory of the United States 
of North America from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific ocean is divisible into two 
great sections, the eastern and the west- 
ern. The eastern, which we may also 
a call the cultivated part of the United 
States, is bounded on the east by the Atlantic ocean, 
on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, on the north by 
the British Possessions in North America, and on the 
west by a line coinciding with civilization’s ceaseless 
westward progress, stretching out from year to year, 
a line which I would call the boundary of civilization 
of the United States. This line now about corre- 
