April 22, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



543 



outline the geographic environment of that 

 time. 



The total area of the original thirteen 

 States was 830,000 square miles, an area a 

 little larger than Alaska. The population 

 was about 4,000,000, or a "little more than 

 that of Greater New York to-day. Of the 

 whole area only about 30 per cent, con- 

 tained any population, and even within 

 this area the people were gathered for the 

 most part in a narrow fringe along the At- 

 lantic seaboard. The largest city was New 

 York, with a population of 33,000 — i. e., it 

 was about as large as the Yonkers or 

 Youngstown of to-day. Waterbury, Con- 

 necticut, with a population of 29,000, is a 

 little larger than was Philadelphia in 1790. 

 Boston contained a population of 18,000 ; 

 Charleston, South Carolina, 16,000; Balti- 

 more, 13,000, and Salem, Massachusetts, 

 8,000. After these only thirteen others, all 

 still smaller, find a place in the first census. 



Maine was a province of Massachusetts, 

 with a northeastern boundary undefined 

 and awaiting an international boundary 

 conference for its determination. Most of 

 its territory then was, as some still is, 

 barely explored. To the north, then as now, 

 was a British province ; to the west and 

 south, Spanish possessions. This phrase 

 * Spanish possessions ' must here be taken in 

 a Pickwickian sense, for these regions 

 owned by Spain were still almost exclu- 

 sively possessed by the aborigines. 



Traveling was chiefly done on horseback 

 and by stages. The days of railroads and 

 steamboats were in the future. Even the 

 system of canals and national highways, so 

 much exploited in the early decades of the 

 century, was not yet begun. 



Of maps of the region there were several, 

 fairly good for their time. None of them, 

 however, were based on surveys. The 

 maps of Thomas Jefferys, geographer to 

 King George during the Revolutionary 

 period, are as a whole the best, and fairly 



representative of the geographic knowledge 

 then existing. While these maps of Jefferys, 

 as well as others, recorded the best geo- 

 graphic information then extant, it does not 

 appear that the information they contained 

 was widely diffused. General ignorance as 

 to geography must have been great. Noah 

 Webster! the lexicographer, writing in 1840, 

 says of the teaching in the schools when he 

 was a boy : 



" When I was young, or before the Revo- 

 lution, the books used were chiefly or wholly 

 Dilworth's spelling books, the Psalter, 

 Testament and Bible. No geography was 

 studied before the publication of Dr. Morse's 

 small books on that subject, about the year 

 1786 or 1787. * * * Except the books 

 above mentioned, no book for reading was 

 used before the publication of the Third 

 Part of my Institutes, in 1785. In some of 

 the early editions of that book I introduced 

 short notices of the geography and history 

 of the United States, and this led to more 

 enlarged descriptions of the country." 



Thus we learn that geography teaching 

 began with a few geographic notes inserted 

 in a spelling book published just prior to 

 Washington's inauguration. 



Dr. Morse, to whom Webster here refers, 

 was the Rev. Jedediah Morse, minister of 

 the Congregational church in Charlestown, 

 Massachusetts. He published, in 1789, an 

 octavo volume of 534 pages, entitled ' The 

 American Geography.' This book was, 

 four years later, greatly enlarged and pub- 

 lished in two volumes with the title ' The 

 American Universal Geography.' A fourth . 

 edition, extensively revised, appeared in 

 1801 or 1802, a fifth in 1805, a sixth in 

 1812 and a seventh in 1819. The fifth edi- 

 tion of 1805, and presumably all later ones, 

 was accompanied by a little quarto atlas 

 containing about sixty maps and entitled 

 ' A New and Elegant General Atlas,' drawn 

 by Arrowsmith and Lewis. 



As a special writer on geography Morse 



