Vol. XIV, No. 5 



WASHINGTON 



May, 1903 



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"THE UNITED STATES-LAND AND 



WATERS"* 



By Cyrus C. Adams, 

 Author of ".Commercial Geography," etc., etc. 



MANY foreigners who cross our 

 country are impressed by two 

 facts : its vast extent and its 

 very apparent sparsity of population 

 away from a few great centers. We 

 are among the most populous nations 

 in the world but our domain south of 

 Canada is so great that with all our 

 77,000,000 people we have an average 

 density of population of only about 

 twenty-eight to the square mile, in 

 which respect we are comparable with 

 Norway, one of the most thinly peopled 

 countries of Europe. That part of 

 Great Britain occupied by England is 

 one of the most densely peopled regions 

 in the world ; but if England had only 

 our density of population its inhabit- 

 ants would number less than one-fourth 

 the number in Greater London. 



GREAT DENSITY OF POPULATION 



We have really no conception derived 

 from our experience at home of what 



great density of population means. Per- 

 haps the following facts may give a vivid 

 idea of it. If we were to crowd our 

 77,000,000 people into Texas and add 

 to them 40,000,000 more we should have 

 a density of population in that state 

 comparable with that of the lower 

 Yangtse valley and the great eastern 

 plain of China between the Yangtse 

 and the Hoang rivers. But human ex- 

 perience has recently recorded a still 

 greater density of population than this, 

 and the following is deduced from the 

 census taken last year by the Chinese 

 government and already accepted by 

 statisticians as a fair approximation of 

 the number of persons in China. If 

 we were to place in Texas double the 

 population of the United States, or, 

 say, 150,000,000 persons, we should 

 have in that state approximately the 

 density of population that is to be found 

 in the Shantung province. Our nation 

 may never be called upon to confront 



* An address before the National Geographic Society, February 10, 1903. This is the first 

 of a series of articles on the United States which are to be published in the succeeding numbers 

 of this Magazine. 



