Absence of Deserts in the United States. 77 



What are those physical phenomena that have insured us 

 against all the ills of deserts ? Geography tells us, that when- 

 ever a continent or country is expanded, more than a few- 

 hundred miles, in the equatorial regions, with a surface compara- 

 tively low and flat, it will become a desert. This is the result 

 of the natural inabiUty to be supphed with moisture. Most of 

 Africa ; the middle and southern regions of Asia ; and even Hin- 

 dostan, where mountains do not prevail, have become sterile and 

 desert. The face of nature in those countries, is deformed ; and 

 vast chasms are created in those regions, where the vegetable 

 and animal kingdoms are unable to flourish. 



New Holland owes its moisture to its insular situation : the 

 peninsular form preserves fertility in Spain, Italy, Greece, and 

 Asia-minor : back-bone mountains save Hindostan from entire 

 barrenness ; and the vicinage of some sea, or mountain elevation 

 renders those parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe, which the great 

 deserts do not reach, the fit abodes of man. In Central Africa, 

 and Asia, and the coasts of the Red sea and Indian ocean, no 

 mountains exist, to collect from the atmosphere stores of moisture, 

 and spread them over those thirsty plains, to fertilize and clothe 

 them with verdure. No com.manding Cordilleras overlooking 

 their plains, catch upon their long slopes the vapours of heaven, 

 and preserve, upon their cloud-capped summits, reservoirs of 

 eternal snow, with which to irrigate the plains that meet their 

 base. It requires, then, a mountain range ; the vicinage of some 

 sea, or ocean, or a high, temperate latitude, to insure freshness 

 to extended plains, and impart to them a fertility, proper for the 

 comforts and wants of man. 



Let us examine our own continent, and learn the causes that 

 have guaranteed to us, this exemption from deserts. Within the 

 tropics and their neighbourhood, N. America is narrowed into a 

 strip : it has all the advantages of an insular position, and drinks 

 the moisture of two oceans. This is not all : the Cordilleras tra- 

 verse the whole space, rising upon the Mexican table, to an ele- 

 vation of 11 ,000 feet, and commanding the neighbouring seas. 

 All winds, but more especially the heavily laden trades, pour 

 forth their vapours upon this happy region, and clothe its long 

 slopes and rich plains, with all the luxuriance of vegetation. 

 These friendly mountains, after upheaving the tropical parts of 

 our continent to the regions of eternal verdure, bear aloft their 



