14 PHYSICAL FFATUKES. 



inhabit it, and the tribes of the brute creation found in its 

 forests and waters, on its plains and mountains. 



As we go along, we will stop now and then to pick up 

 scraps of information about its geology, and the architectural 

 antiquities found on it; as the first will assist in giving us an 

 insight into the former conditions of extinct animals, and the 

 latter may teach us something of the past history of the 

 human tribes now wandering as savages in regions once 

 inhabited by civilized men. 



Still, the study of Natural History and the geographical 

 range of animals is the primary object we have in view. 



Though the best-known portions of the Polar Regions are 

 more nearly connected with North America than with Europe 

 or Asia, we propose to leave them to be fully described in an- 

 other work. It is impossible, in the present volume, to em- 

 brace more than the continental parts of the Western World. 



Looking down on the continent of North America, which 

 we will first visit, we observe its triangular shape : the apex, 

 the southern end of Mexico ; the base, the Arctic shore ; the 

 sides, especially the eastern, deeply indented, first by Hudson 

 Bay, which pierces through more than a third of the con- 

 tinent, then by the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and further south 

 by Chesapeake Bay and the Bay of Fundy. On the western 

 coast, the Gulf of California runs 800 miles up its side, with 

 the Rio Colorado falling into it ; and further north are the 

 Straits of Juan da Fuca, between Vancouver's Island and the 

 mainland, north of which are numerous archipelagoes and 

 inlets extending round the great peninsula of Yukon to 

 Kotzebue Sound. 



Parallel with either coast we shall see two great mountain 

 systems — that called the Appalachian, including the chain of 



