4 GENERAL VIEW OF THE GEOGRAPHY. 



the 23d parallel, under which the Gulf of California, separating the pen- 

 insula of California from the main, continent on the east, joins the ocean. 

 From the southern extremity of this peninsula, called Cape San Lucas, 

 situated near the entrance of the gulf, the American coast runs north- 

 westward to the foot of Mount St. Elias, a stupendous volcanic peak, 

 rising from the shore, under the 60th parallel ; beyond which the con- 

 tinent stretches far westward, between the Pacific on the south and the 

 Arctic Sea on the north, to its termination at Cape Prince of Wales, 

 near the 64th degree. 



Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost point of America, is the eastern 

 pillar of Bering's Strait, a passage only fifty miles in width, separating that 

 continent from Asia, and forming the only direct communication between 

 the Pacific and the Arctic Oceans. Beyond it, the shores of Asia and 

 Europe have been explored in their whole length on the Arctic Sea, 

 though no vessel has hitherto made a voyage through that sea from the 

 Atlantic to the Pacific, or vice versa. The north coast of America has 

 been traced from Cape Prince of Wales, north-eastward, to Point Barrow, 

 near the 71st degree of latitude, and thence, eastward, more than fifteen 

 hundred miles, though not continuously, to the Atlantic. The portion 

 north of Hudson's Bay is still imperfectly discovered; and the interesting 

 question whether the Arctic Sea there mingles its waters with those of the 

 Atlantic, or is separated from them by the extension of the continent to 

 the north pole, remains undetermined. Many circumstances, however, 

 combine to favor the belief that a communication will be found between 

 the two oceans, either through Fox's Channel, the northernmost part of 

 Hudson's Bay, or through Lancaster Sound, which joins Baffin's Bay, 

 under the 74th parallel ; though there is little reason to expect that any 

 facilities for commercial intercourse will be gained by the discovery. 



The Pacific coast, between the entrance of the Californian Gulf and the 

 Strait of Fuca, which joins the ocean under the 49th parallel, presents 

 few remarkable indentations, and the islands in its vicinity are neither 

 numerous nor large. North of the 49th parallel, on the contrary, the 

 mainland is every where penetrated by inlets and bays ; and many pen- 

 insulas protrude from it into the sea. In its vicinity, moreover, are 

 thousands of islands, some of them very large, lying singly or in groups, 

 separated from each other, and from the continent, by narrow, intricate 

 channels. The most extensive of these collections of islands is the North- 

 West Archipelago, nearly filling a great recess of the coast, between the 

 48th and the 58th parallels. Kodiak is the centre of another archipelago, 

 on the east side of the peninsula of Aliaska ; and a long line of islands, 

 forming the Aleutian Archipelago, stretches from the southern extremity 

 of Aliaska, westward, across the sea, in the course of the 54th parallel of 

 latitude, to the vicinity of the opposite Asiatic peninsula of Kamtchatka. 

 The part of the Pacific called the Sea of Kamtchatka, or Bering's Sea, 

 north of the Aleutian chain, likewise contains several islands, situated, 

 nearly all, close to the shores of one or the other continent. 



This coast, in its whole length, from the southern extremity of Cali- 

 fornia to Bering's Strait, is bordered by lofty mountains, which appear to 

 form a continuous chain, partially broken, in a few places, by the passage 

 across it of rivers from the interior. The mountains rise, for the most 

 part, immediately from the sea-shore, above which they may be seen 

 towering one, two, and even three, miles in perpendicular elevation : in 



