•North-West Continent of America. 291 



any thing of surface that can be called earth ; yet, this in- 

 hospitable region is inhabited by a people who are accus- 

 tomed to the life it requires. Nor has bountiful Na- 

 ture withheld the means of subsistence ; the rein-deer, 

 which supply both food and clothing, are satisfied with the 

 produce of the hills, though they bear nothing but a short 

 curling moss, on a species of which, that grows on the 

 rocks, the people themselves subsits when famine invades 

 them. Their small lakes are not furnished with a great 

 variety of fish, but such as they produce are excellent, 

 which, with hares and partridges, form a proportion of 

 their food. 



The climate must necessarily be severe in such a country 

 ^as we have described, and which displays so large a sur- 

 face of fresh water. Its severity is extreme on the coast 

 of Hudson's Bay, and proceeds from its immediate ex- 

 posure to the North- West winds that blow off the Frozen 

 Ocean* 



These winds, in crossing directly from the bay over Ca- 

 nada and the British dominions on the Atlantic, as well as 

 over the Eastern States of North America to that ocean, 

 (where they give to those countries a length of winter 

 astonishing to the inhabitants of the same latitudes in Eu- 

 rope) continue to retain a great degree of force and cold 

 in their passage, even over the Atlantic, particularly at 

 the time when the sun is in its Southern declination* The 

 same winds which come from the Frozen Ocean, over 

 the barren grounds,* and across frozen lakes and snowy 

 plains, bounded by the rocky mountains, lose their frigid 

 influence , as they travel in a Southern direction, till they 

 get to the Atlantic Ocean, where they close their progress. 



Is not this a sufficient cause for the difference between 

 the climate in America, and that of the same latitude in 

 Europe ? 



It has been frequently advanced, that the clearing away 

 the wood has had an astonishing influence in meliorating 

 the climate in the former ; but I am not disposed to assent 

 to that opinion in the extent which it proposes to esta- 

 blish, when I consider the very trifling proportion of the 

 country cleared, compared with the whole. The employ- 

 ment of the axe may have had some inconsiderable effect; 

 but I look to other causes. I myself observed in a coun- 

 try, which was in an absolute state of nature, that the cli- 

 mate is improving j and this circumstance was confirmed 



