iNFLUENCE OP GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE. 218 
machinery, and thus manufactories spring up wher- 
ever, in their expressive phraseology, there is water- 
power; and steam supplies local deficiencies of mo- 
ving force. Ingenuity, conspiring with a general sys- 
tem of education, is excited under such culture to 
produce numerous inventions, and hosts of young 
men seek their fortunes successfully abroad as me- 
chanics, seamen, traders, instructors, and politi- 
cians, who thus act powerfully, and, we trust, bene- 
ficially on other communities. 
" The immense tracts of rich alluvium in the 
Southern States, the mildness of the climate, the 
coasts less abounding with safe inlets, and often 
modified by the action of the existing ocean, with a 
population not originally commercial, give a decided 
impulse to a vast agriculture, and a few great staples 
form the chief reliance of the landholders. It is 
^asy to see that this state of things grows out of 
the recent secondary, the tertiary, and the alluvial 
formations, which constitute the ocean barrier from 
Staten Island to Florida, and from Florida to Texas, 
extending inland towards the mountains. In the 
West, the boundless fertile prairies and other tracts 
of productive soil conspire, with remoteness from 
the ocean, to indicate agriculture and pasturage as 
the main employment of the inhabitants, while ex- 
haustless beds of coal, limestone, plaster of Paris, 
and rich deposites of lead and copper, and salt fount- 
ains both numerous and copious, furnish means for 
a manufacturing, as well as an agricultural popula- ^ 
tion. These pursuits occupy the greater number ' 
of the people, while many find a profitable employ- 
ment in navigating those immense inland seas, the 
great lakes, and the vast rivers, which run thou- 
sands of miles before they mingle with the ocean. 
" What geologist fails to perceive that this state 
of things is the result of the immense lower sec- 
ondary and transition formations which cover the 
Western States, sustaining portions of tertiary and. 
