Geographie Character of North America. 9 
scale. It is rugged and rocky, fringed by thousands of mountainous islands 
with numerous fjords constituting excellent harbors. 
North America, as a continent, is best considered in four divisions. The most 
southern consists of Mexico and Central America. East of this lies the second 
division comprising the Greater Antilles and the Bahama islands. The central 
division consists of the United States (3,022,980 square miles = 7,829,518 qkm). 
The northern division consists of the Dominion of Canada, Alaska and the 
island of Newfoundland (4,170,973 square miles = 10,802,820 qkm). 
2. Northern Division. 
The Northern Plains. The Barren Grounds is a region west of Hudson 
Bay. It is a treeless wilderness low and marshy interspersed with lakes, streams 
and mossy plains, the socalled arctic tundra. The soil is permanently frozen 
to a great depth and in summer it thaws out a foot, or two, to ‚permit the 
grasses, sedges and other plants of the region to make a rapid vegetative growth. 
If a line be drawn from the western shore of Hudson Bay north of Fort Chur- 
chill, along the 60th parallel of latitude and curve to the north-west to cut off 
the eastern arm of Great Slave Lake, and, thence, northward through Great 
Bear Lake and down Lockart and Anderson rivers to the Polar Sea, such a 
line will approximately inclose the Barren Grounds on the north. In ass 
it includes the river valleys east of the Mackenzie River, which discharge direct y 
into the Arctic Ocean and those north of the Churchill River, which discharge 
into Hudson Bay. This region drains mostly to the north by the Rz 
and the Great Fish (Back’s) rivers, consisting of strings of lakes ge x 
violent rapids, and flowing for the most part in rocky channels. e Bar 
Grounds for the most part occupy the area of Laurentian rocks. nn 
The arctic coast always protected by masses of ice is uniformly 2 = 
is bordered by low cliffs of frozen clay and sand, or eastwards, as IF 
Coronation Gulf by limestone. North of the continent is the immense er 
archipelago. All the islands consist geologically of late m Cie 
Silurian to Carboniferous. Along the coasts of Melville Sound en i | = 
Strait are abundant deposits of bituminous coal close to the er e a 
Of ice, The coasts of them are high and often precipitous. Fo BER 
an impenetrable ice pack surrounded the islands to the north 2 Reg 
The ice of the polar sea north of America is more ‚formidable us 
the Spitzbergen. It is probably entangled in an archipelago FR f Kr 
the north. From accounts, it does not consist of bergs, ee. ® a u 
but of immense fields of hard, blue ice, sometimes four miles re u 
hummocks twenty to forty feet high and united by the action ot the 
Packs of immense extent. 
The coast of Alaska west of Demarcation Poin 
a and clay. Point Barrow is low and = E. 
Or the greater ear. Not far inland, i ; ö 
the FR of a ee Bay is one hundred and sixty miles (257 km) 
