1 



78 Absence of Deserts in the United States. 



wide spread arms, (the Chippewayan and Alleghany ranges) as 

 far as it is necessary to counteract the heats of a southern sun, 

 and impart fertility to the great valley of the Mississippi, which 

 seems especially consigned to their fostering care. But when 

 elevations become no longer essential to the certainty of moisture 

 and vegetation, they sink into the great plains of Canada, and 

 disappear. How wise is this arrangement ! For if these moun- 

 tains had carried their characteristic elevation far north, they 

 would have chilled with their eternal snows, all the northern por^ 

 tion of our country, and rendered it barren, not from drought and 

 deserts, but what is equally to be deprecated, the blights of in- 

 tolerable cold. These friendly ranges of mountains, are thus the 

 everlasting guarantees of our country's fertility. The Alleghany 

 range derives its moisture from the Atlantic, and waters not only 

 all the States that intervene between it and that ocean, but the 

 States and districts that rest upon its western base, and con- 

 tributes its full part to the great plains of Mississippi and Missouri. 

 The Rocky, or Chippewayan range, draws heavily from the Pa- 

 cific ocean, and abundantly waters not only that slope, but the 

 extended plains which meet its eastern base. The narrow slopes 

 of the two ranges of mountains which border the two oceans, are 

 easily and very naturally irrigated from those oceans ; and their 

 slopes pointing inwards from the oceans, and the plains imme- 

 diately in contact with them, draw moisture from the numerous 

 founts and reservoirs of the mountains themselves. The great 

 valley of the Mississippi, however, is too extensive, and too im- 

 portant to the rising population of this country, to be left to any 

 uncertain supply of moisture. The sources of the mountains 

 with which it is enfiladed, might prove to be inadequate, and 

 certainly would, if all depended on them. Other guarantees are 

 found ; and powerful aids provided in the case. That great val- 

 ley opens itself without barrier, on the southern end, to the trade 

 winds, which become deflected by the Mexican coast, enter it, 

 fraught with all the moisture of the gulf, and deposit on this re- 

 gion, a supply, literally inexhaustible, because those winds them- 

 selves are perpetual. Lest the mountain supply and trades both, 

 might not reach the northern end of this great plain, nature has 

 thrown there the largest reservoirs, or accumulations of fresh 

 water in the world. The great and numerous lakes of Canada, 

 over which the winds pass, and from which clouds charge them- 



