GENERAL VIEW OF THE GEOGRAPHY. V 



without any considerable increase of its depth, which is every where too 

 small for the passage of the lightest boats. Nature has, however, pro- 

 vided a road along its banks, over which heavy wagons now annually roll 

 between Missouri and Oregon ; and, with a little assistance from art in 

 some places, this road may be rendered one of the best in the world. 



The territory farther north, extending from the Rocky Mountains to 

 Hudson's Bay and the Arctic Sea, is traversed by innumerable rivers 

 falling into those parts of the ocean. Of these, the principal are the Red 

 River, of the north, the Assinaboin, and the Saskatchawine, emptying into ' 

 Lake Winnipeg, which communicates by several channels with Hudson's 

 Bay, and the Missinippi or Churchill's River, falling directly into that 

 bay ; while the Arctic Sea receives, nearly under the 69th parallel of 

 latitude, Back's or the Great Fish River, the Coppermine, and the 

 Mackenzie, the latter draining a territory scarcely less extensive than 

 that of the Columbia. The regions crossed by these rivers are, in gen- 

 eral, so nearly level, that it is, in many places, difficult to trace the limits 

 of the tracts from which the waters flow into their respective channels or 

 basins. They contain numerous lakes, some very large, and nearly all 

 connected with each other, and with the Arctic Sea on the north, and 

 Hudson's Bay on the east; and the head-waters of the rivers supplying 

 these reservoirs are situated in the vicinity of the sources of the Missis- 

 sippi, or of the Missouri, or of the Columbia, or of the streams falling 

 into Lake Superior. The rivers above named are all navigable for great 

 distances by boats, and they thus afford considerable advantages for com- 

 mercial intercourse ; goods being now transported across the continent, 

 from the mouth of the Columbia to Hudson's Bay or to Montreal, and 

 vice versa, almost entirely by water. 



Under circumstances of climate, soil, and conformation of surface, so 

 different, it may be supposed that considerable differences should exist 

 between the productions of the great divisions of America here men- 

 tioned. It has been, accordingly, found that few species of plants or of 

 animals are common to them all, and that many which abound in one are 

 rare, if not entirely wanting, in the others. Some plants, especially the 

 pines and cedars, acquire a greater development in the regions near the 

 Pacific than in any other country; but a large portion of those territories 

 is, from reasons already shown, entirely and irretrievably barren. In 

 recompense for this sterility of the soil, the rivers of the Pacific section 

 abound in fish, particularly in salmon, which ascend them to great dis- 

 tances from the sea, and form the principal support of the inhabitants. 



With respect to the aborigines of these countries, the Arctic coasts 

 of America are occupied by a race called Esquimaux, distinguished by 

 peculiar marks from all others, who are likewise found on the northern- 

 most shores of the Pacific, and particularly in the islands between the 

 two continents, intermingled with the Tchukski, the aborigines of north- 

 ernmost Asia. The remainder of the Pacific section, and, indeed, of the 

 whole American continent, except, perhaps, Patagonia, appears to have 

 been inhabited, before the entrance of the Europeans, by one and the 

 same race ; the natives of the different portions differing but slightly, con- 

 sidering the varieties of climate, soil, and situation, and the consequent 

 varieties in modes of life. That some admixture with the races of South- 

 eastern Asia may have taken place, is not improbable, from the fact that 

 Japanese vessels have more than once been thrown on the north-west 



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