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NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA

BY PROFESSOR N. S. SHALER

DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. The Dog, Beasts of
Burden, the Horse and Birds. Illustrated.

SEA AND LAND. Features of Coasts and Oceans with
especial reference to the Life of Man. Illustrated.

ASPECTS OF THE EARTH. A popular Account of
Some Familiar Geological Phenomena. With 100
illustrations.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NATURE AND MAN
IN AMERICA

N. S. SHALER

PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN HARVARD (7NIVERSITT

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1924

Printed in the United States of America

\ \ (ell ft

SOI
SS2

INTRODUCTION.

Modern science unhappily appears to be in con-
flict with the religious traditions of our race. The
development of our knowledge of Nature has led to
a loss of the old confidence in the conditions of
human life. Our fathers rejoiced in the conviction
that they came directly from the Creator's hands.
It is now evident to us that our being is due to what
we term more natural causes, — that man's body has
been slowly evolved from the earth, passing onward
through inconceivable stages, each leading upward
from the level of the lowest organic life.

Disguise it as we may, there can be no question
that Science has taken much from our heritage of
ancient ideals. What can it give in place of the con-
fidence which it has destroyed ? Though as yet the
scientific study of Nature has been in the main de-
structive as regards the ideal foundations of our life,
it is my belief that this branch of learning can and
will give a great deal to replace that which it has
overthrown. Half a century ago, Science appeared
as the destroyer of faith and trust in the universe.
It seems to me that we now are approaching the time

Vi INTRODUCTION.

when our knowledge will reaffirm the old belief which
our fathers had in the essential control of a beneficent
Providence. With each advance in our knowledge
concerning the conditions which have brought men
to their present estate, we come to a fuller sense as
to the order and system by which the processes of
Nature have made men what they are. There is rea-
son to hope that the faith of our children may be like
unto that of our fathers, — better, indeed, than the old
faith, for it will rest on the firm foundations of our
own knowledge, rather than on the trust in the opin-
ions of our elders.

It seems to me to be the duty of every naturalist,
particularly when he has adopted the tasks of the
teacher, to use each fit occasion to show wherein he
finds proof of a just confidence as to the relations
of man to the creative power which works in Nature.
By so doing, he may hope to help himself and his fel-
low-students to escape from the perplexity which has
been brought about through the revolution in the
opinions of men which modern science has induced.
With this end in view, I shall devote the first four
chapters of this book to a general statement concern-
ing the effect of critical conditions of the earth on the
development of organic life in general. It will be my
aim to show that geographic changes and the conse-
quent revolutions of the climate which our earth has
undergone, though rude and in a way destructive,
have nevertheless served the best uses of life, driving

INTRODUCTION. Vll

organic creatures by the whips of necessity upward
and onward toward the higher planes of being.

I shall give the latter half of this essay to the
discussion of geographic influences upon man, en-
deavoring to show, at least in a general way, how
the development of race peculiarities has been in
large part due to the conditions of the stage on
which the different peoples have played their parts.
I shall endeavor to trace in outline the effect of
the geographic conditions on the development of
peoples in the past, and to make a somewhat care-
ful study of these problems as they are exhibited
in North America.

Although we all feel an interest in mankind con-
sidered as a whole, we particularly desire to know,
with all the foresight which the study of natural laws
may afford, the fate of our own descendants on this
earth ; and because to each of us our land is the dear-
est, we wish above all to foresee the future of the
nation to which we give our best hopes. Therefore I
shall endeavor to trace the probable future of the
social and economic development of North America in
a somewhat detailed way, endeavoring in the sketch
to indicate the manner in which the geographic fea-
tures of the continent have controlled the settlement
and development of the populations up to the present
time, and the probable influence of those conditions
on the future of our race.

While this work is to be divided into two parts, —

Till INTRODUCTION.

one concerning the influence of environment on or-
ganic life, and the other concerning the conditions of
man in North America, — the subject matter is really a
unit. The life before man has afforded the conditions
of his being; and the lower kindred in animal and plant
are still the ministers of his days, mediators between
his own station and the mineral world below. When-
ever we seek to account for the state of any organic
phenomena, whether it be such as are exhibited by the
lowest animal or by our own species, it is necessary
to select some particular part of the creature's condi-
tions, and for the time to devote our attention solely
to the problems which it affords. The result of this
method of study is necessarily to give us a somewhat
one-sided view of the matter. In all divisions of the
natural field, the effects of many causes are inex-
tricably intermingled. The consideration of any one
of them can give us only a limited and one-sided as-
pect of its true nature. Therefore, in reading these
pages the student should bear in mind the fact that
we are considering only one of the many series of in-
fluences which have affected the life of man. He may
also advantageously bear in mind the fact that the
phenomena of inheritance which are ever contending
against the immediate influences of environment are
scantily considered in the following pages. They are
here and there mentioned; but to give them their true
weight it would be necessary greatly to increase the
size of the book, and with the result that the element

INTRODUCTION. ix

of unity, which comes with the consideration of a
single series of causes, would be lost.

Although this book is designed in part for the use
of the general reader who wishes to obtain some slight
idea as to the trend of that modern science which
takes account of the relation of organic life to its en-
vironment, it is particularly designed for the use of
beginners in the study of geology. So vast is the
body of fact in the records of our earth-science that it
is hard for the student to secure any general concep-
tions which may serve to guide his efforts in the ac-
quisition of detailed information. Although in general,
large views can best be attained by those who have
already acquired a great store of detailed knowledge,
it is well for the student at the outset to obtain some
general conception as to the direction of scientific
inquiry. With such suggestions, he can make good
use of the information which he secures from text-
books and other sources of knowledge which are open
to him.

It should be said that the greater part of the mat-
ter contained in this work was first prepared for a
course of lectures before the Lowell Institute in Bos-
ton. The last four chapters were printed in " Scrib-
ner's Magazine," in the year 1890. Considerable
additions to the text have been made during its
preparation for the present form of publication.

Cambridge;, Mass., Sept. ?£jl.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAOE

Ancient View as to the Relation of Man to the Earth. — Effect of
Study of Paleontology. — Work of Cuvier; of Agassiz. — Animals
and Plants of North America. — Relative Advance of Life on the
several Continents. — Comparison of Organic Life of Europe with
that of other great Lands. — Effect of Geographic Changes. —
Comparison of Asiatic and Australian Life. — Effect of Mountain
Barriers; of Migrations of Men. — Geographic Influences of Cape
Cod; of the Gulf Stream. — Probable Effect of opening depressed
Areas of the Sahara to the Sea. — Comparison of Mountains and
Plains. — Effects of difficult Conditions on Advance of Life. —
Comparison of Tropical and Polar Conditions 1

CHAPTER H.

Nature and Origin of Continents. — Effect of Continents on Seas. —
Interaction of Sea and Land. — Salinity of Ocean and Dead Seas.

— Transportation of Material from Land to Sea. — Effect of Vol-
canoes.— Possible Effect arising from Destruction of Continents.

— Effect of Sea and Land on Organic Life ; Conditions of Passage
of Life from Sea to Land. — Brief Statement as to Development of
Life. — Effect of Mountain Growth ; Absence of such Structures
on the Sea Floor. — Relations of Mountains to Continental Growth.

— Effect of Mountains on North America. — Movements of Sub-
terranean Materials in the Process of Mountain-Building .... 32

CHAPTER m.

Permanence of Continents ; Evidence that their Areas have been Sea
Floors. — Evidence of slow Growth of Mountains. — Proof that the
Continents are ancient. — Evidence from Organic Life ; from the
Physical Structure of Sediments. — Devonian Black Shale. — Con-
tinental Shelf ; Conditions of its Formation. — Progressive Ad-

Xll CONTENTS.

wum

vance in Development of the Continent from Cambrian Time to
the present Day. — Successive Positions of Shore-line. — Varia-
tions in the Form of Continent ; Subsidence during Glacial Period
in Northern Portion ; corresponding Uplift in Southern Portion.
— Evidence from the West Indies Islands ; from Florida Rocks. —
Summary 66

CHAPTER IV.

The Nature of Faunae and Florae. — Migration of these Organic
Armies. — Individualization of Continents. — Condition of Faunae
and Florae in Cambrian Time ; in Successive Periods. — Effect of
Growth of Mountains ; Effect of Elevation at Beginning of Coal-
measures. — Croll's Hypothesis of Climate Change. — Conditions
of Continental Growth in Europe. — Influence of Geographic Con-
ditions on the Development of Life. — Conditions of last Glacial
Period. — Relation of Continents to Marine Currents. — Uniform
Growth of the Earth's Features. — Uniformity in Condition of
Atmosphere. — Climatal Variations ; Delicacy of Adjustment
thereof; its Measure. — Effect of Variations of Gulf Stream on
Extension of Ice. — Review and Conclusion 108

CHAPTER V.

Dependence of Man on Environment; Increase of this Dependence
with the Advance of Civilization. — Relations of our modern
States to the Conditions of the Earth. — Advance in the Sympa-
thetic Motive. — Comparison of Europe and North America. —
Discussion of the separate Areas of Europe. — Isolation of Great
Britain ; its Causes. — Isolated Areas of Asia. — Cradle-land of
the Aryan People. — Permanence of Race Qualities. — Race Quali-
ties in Africa ; in Australia ; in America. — Geographic Conditions
of North America; Review of the several Fields of this Conti-
nent. — Effect of Physical Conditions of North America on native
Indians 147

CHAPTER VI.

Geographic Relations of North America; Variations of these Rela-
tions in former Geologic Periods. — Peculiar Fitness of North
America for the Nurture of Plant Life; Inferior Position of its
Animals. — Contributions of North America to the Domesticated
Animals and Plants of Civilization. — Relative Measure of Relation

CONTENTS. X1U

VA0X

of North America with Europe and with Asia. — Origin of North
American Indians. — Conditions of first Settlement by Man.—
Condition of American Indians when the Country was first settled
by the Whites. —Effect of the Buffalo on the Habits of Indians;
Region of Prairies. — Settlement of America by Europeans ; Con-
ditions which led thereto. — Scandinavian, Spanish, French, and
English Settlements. — Importance of Geographic Features in de-
termining Success of the various Colonies; Effect of the Appala-
chian Barrier. — Influence of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi
Rivers, _ Influence of the Tobacco Plant. — Settlement of the Mis-
sissippi Valley; Effect of the Geographic Conditions therein . . 174

CHAPTER VII

Effect of the Appalachian Mountain System on the Distribution of
Slavery. — Influence of the Prairies ; Rapidity and Ease with which
they are won to Tillage. — Effect of Invention of Agriculture. —
Original Division of North America. — Atlantic Coast ; its Agri-
cultural Capacity. — Mississippi Valley and Pacific Arable Land. —
Effect of Modern Economies in producing local Peculiarities of So-
ciety.— Lack of Geographic Variety in North America. — Three
Marine Regions of this Continent. — Details of the New England
District ; Surface Tillable Soils ; Variety of Occupations. — New
York District ; Comparison of its Resources with those of New
England. — Virginia District. — Absence of Glacial Erosion ; In-
fluence of Blue Ridge ; Character of Plain Country; Condition of
Population. — Effect of Diverse Climates on the Negroes. — Florida
Peninsula; its Soils; Shore-Line Fisheries; probable Future of the
District. — Mexican Gulf Group of States; Region of the Low-
lands; Climate; Mineral Resources; probable Increase of Negro
Population. — Ohio Group of States ; Climate ; Soil ; Contrasts in
Fertility; Effect of these Contrasts on the People; Influence on the
Civil War. — District of the Great Lakes ; Peculiarities of the Re-
gion ; Climate ; Variety of Mineral Resources 208

CHAPTER VIII.

XIV ' CONTENTS.

Hfl

Rainfall; Character of Soil; Variation in Climate. — Mining In-
dustry of Cordilleran District; Variety of Resources; Fitness of
Region for Aryan Race. — Pacific Coast District; Division into
Three Areas. — Section of southern California. — Relation of Min-
ing and Tillage Fields. — District of Oregon ; Mineral Resources ;
Soil ; Climate ; Fitness for Aryan Race. — Alaskan District. —
Effect of American Conditions on the Life of Europeans ; on Afri-
cans.— Evidence of Longevity of Europeans; from Surgery; from
Field Sports ; from Measurements. — Endurance of Soldiers in Civil
War. — Effect of American Climate on Negroes. — Conclusion . . 250

INDEX

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

CHAPTER I.

— Comparison of Organic Life of Europe with that of other great
Lands. — Effect of Geographic Changes. — Comparison of Asiatic and
Australian Life. — Effect of Mountain Barriers; of Migrations of Men.

— Geographic Influences of Cape Cod; of the Gulf Stream. — Probable
Effect of opening depressed Areas of the Sahara to the Sea. — Comparison
of Mountains and Plains. — Effects of difficult Conditions on Advance of
Life. — Comparison of Tropical and Polar Conditions.

Our forefathers looked upon the earth as an inert
mass, upon which life had been imposed by the will
of a superior being. To them the earth was essen-
tially lifeless ; here and there portions of its matter
sprang into a plane of higher existence, in animal or
plant, to fall back after a brief time into the inert
soil. Now and then a philosopher attained to a
deeper sense of the relations between the living and
the dead parts of the earth. Thus Pythagoras and his
school conceived that the fossils of the rocks repre-
sented a certain striving of the earthy matter to
become living. They thus recognized the essential
yitality of the earth; they supposed the particles of

2 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

matter to be spontaneously seeking a higher state of
organism. But the conception of the earth as inert
held in the minds of naturalists even down to our own
generation. Only in the divine Kepler do we find
a philosopher strong enough to conceive this sphere
as essentially organized. To him this world is so
endowed with activities that it is to be accounted
alive. In his reflections on the order of Nature, he
holds to the doctrine that the earth is animated in
the fashion of an animal; he finds in the tides an
evidence of its slow breathing.

Critics have found in this fancy of Kepler proof
of a disordered mind, of an imagination which outran
the limits of scientific inquiry; but though there is
an element of ideality or even of wild fancy in his
speculations as to the nature of the earth, it seems
likely that his divining imagination brought him
clearer to the truth than the hard-mindedness of
other naturalists.

In this and the following chapters I propose in
outline to trace, as far as the present state of our
knowledge will permit, the connection between the
functions of our planet and the development of or-
ganic life upon it. I hope to show that the appar-
ently rude and massive machinery of our earth has
so operated during great periods of geologic time as
to nurse and develop the organic life which inhabits
its surface. Under my subject, I propose to include
the evident natural forces which can have an influ-
ence on organic beings, the features in our earth's

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 3

history which determine the conditions of soil and
climate ; in a word, those complicated influences to
which we give the name of Environment.

In seeking to find our way to an understanding of
the relations between the earth and its living inhabi-
tants, we must first bear in mind the fact that we
are fighting against an ancient prejudice. Almost
instinctively we look upon the living being as some-
thing essentially foreign to the earth upon which it
is set; the ever present fact of death, the return of
the individual to the dust, accents this relation
which ancestral habits of thought have fixed in our
understanding. As the first step toward this larger
view of Nature, I propose to consider the stages of an
inquiry which led me many years ago to combat in
my lectures to students the prejudice which I seek
to do away with. Although the problem is one of
many details and required some years for its solu-
tion, it can be readily apprehended, for the reason
that it involves only simple considerations.

When naturalists began to study the fossils buried
in the rocks of the earth's crust, they soon learned
that while the newer deposits contained forms which
were closely akin to those now dwelling on the earth,
the more ancient strata held the remains of animals
and plants essentially different from those now liv-
ing. As long ago as the beginning of the eighteenth
century, Dr. Robert Hooke suggested that it might
be possible to determine the relative age of strata

4 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

in different regions by the consideration of these or-
ganic remains, or, as he expressed it, "we might
raise a chronology from the study of these medals of
creation." It was not, however, until the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, or one hundred years
after Hooke's prophetic conjecture, that this chrono-
logical study of the rocks through their fossils was
actually begun. The first steps in this great work of
unravelling the earth's past history were taken by
the illustrious Cuvier.

Cuvier and his immediate followers conceived that
the ancient sedimentary deposits each contained as-
semblages of fossils which were alike in all the rocks
of a given age. They supposed that the fossils of
the Trias or of the Miocene which were found in
England or in France would likewise be found in de-
posits of that age in every part of the world whatso-
ever. Gradually, however, as our knowledge of the
animals and plants now living became more complete,
it was perceived that the present life of the planet
is divided into limited realms, — faunae and floras,
as naturalists term them. Thus, to take the most
conspicuous instance, the living animals and plants
of Australia differ surprisingly from those of any
other continent, there being but few of the thousand
indigenous species of that island continent which are
represented by kindred forms in other lands. So it
came first to be conjectured, and afterward to be
proved, that the life of the past had a regional divi-
sion somewhat like that which we find to exist at the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 5

present time. Slowly geologists came to see that
they could not expect the Miocene of Europe or the
Trias of that country to contain just the same forms
which characterize those beds in the other continents.

The next step in the development of this idea was
taken by my master, Louis Agassiz. Although the
elder Agassiz is best known as a zoologist and geolo-
gist, he had a considerable acquaintance with botany,
which he mainly derived from his association as a
student with the distinguished Dr. Braun, after-
ward professor of botany at Berlin. Agassiz's wide-
ranging geological studies brought him at an early
age in contact with the deposits of the Miocene ter-
tiary in Switzerland. These beds contain an amaz-
ing number of fossil leaves, shed in the autumns of
former ages, and buried in ancient lake-beds of
Switzerland. The perfection of these fossils is sin-
gular. They are often so well preserved that we
miss nothing but the hue which characterized them
when they fell.

When Agassiz came to America in 1846, his ob-
servant eye noticed the fact that while our American
forests were singularly unlike those now existing in
Europe, they were very closely related to the woods
which had covered central parts of that continent in
the Miocene time. At present the forests of Europe
contain a small number of species of trees compared
with those of North America. Thus, while in North
America we have about thirty -five species of oaks, in
Europe there are not more than four indigenous

6 NATURE AND MaN IN AMERICA.

species of that group. Moreover, in North America
there are many forms, such as our sassafrases, sweet
gums, sour gums, tulip-trees, magnolias, bald cy-
presses, etc. , which are no longer found in European
woods. Agassiz noted the fact that the greater part
of these genera which are now peculiar to North
America were in Miocene day characteristic of
Europe. In other words, the forests of the European
field were once like those of North America ; but the
Old World has passed by that stage in its arboreal
development. Little survives of that period in its
history save the fossils in the rocks.

Agassiz went further with his inquiry. He found
that a good many animals now living in North
America, such as our opossums, many of our fishes,
and some of our reptilian group, also survived in
North America, though they had vanished from the
Old World. This series of facts remained a subject
of recurrent inquiry with Agassiz; and in 1860 he
called my attention to the matter, and bade me make
a further study as to their meaning.

Following the lead which my master gave me, I
proceeded to make tables, which would set forth these
peculiar differences in the rate of advance of North
America and Europe, and to extend the tabulation
to the other continents. From the data thus gath-
ered, it soon became evident that this peculiarity was
not limited to Europe and North America, but that
the stage of advance of life differed for each conti-
nent. Taking European life for our standard, and

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 7

inquiring into the conditions of organic develop-
ment on the other continents, it becomes evident that
Europe had gone farther forward in its organic his-
tory than any other land. Thus, in the case of Asia,
we find there now living many genera of plants and
animals the species of which had formerly existed
in Europe, but had disappeared from that land. Ele-
phants, tigers, and many other animals, abundant in
Europe in the later Tertiary, but no longer present,
still abound in Asia. Africa has yet more archaic
assemblages of animals and plants; that is to say,
on the African continent there are more forms the
kindred of which once existed in Europe, but have
passed away. Pursuing the results of our series, we
find that the organic life of South America is lower
in grade than that of the continents before men-
tioned ; while Australia is last of all in the measure
of elevation of its life. In a very general way, we
may say that the life of North America has lagged
behind that of Europe by something like the amount
of one geological period; Asia is behind by about
the same term ; Africa is yet farther behind in the
race; and finally, Australia has an assemblage of
animals which remind us more closely of Europe in
the Jurassic time than Europe of to-day. We cannot
take up the organic species of the continents in
detail, but we may note the fact that the native
mammals or suck-giving animals of Australia all be-
long to the group ol Marsupials or pouch-bearers, — -
forms which in Europe appear to have passed away,

8 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

or at least to have lost their importance at the be*
ginning of the Cretaceous period.

When we come to tabulate the facts, we find that
the other continents are characterized by a rate of
advance in their organic life which puts them in the
following series: Europe at the head of the great
procession; next following and in nearly equal ad-
vance the continents of Asia and North America;
farther in the rear comes Africa ; South America is
yet farther behind; and far behind the others, the
laggard among all the lands, the slow-going conti-
nent of Australia.

If the general facts indicated in these considera-
tions came to us through observations made upon
any single group of animals or plants, it would have
little interest, for it might be supposed to fall into
the field of the inexplicable or at least unexplained
things, the realm we term Chance ; but the statement
as to the relative advance of the life on the several
continents is true for a great many separate groups.
In a general way, it is true of plants, of mollusca
reptiles, of fishes, and of mammals. The coincidence
in the rate of development of these distinct groups
of beings was sufficient to make me hopeful of find-
ing some clew to the cause of the perplexing facts.

It is the habit of naturalists to avoid prolixity by
giving their readers only the results of their inqui
ries, leaving out of consideration the steps by which
they attained their successes or failures in the work
of research. It seems to me, however, worth while

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 9

to set forth the method which I found myself driven
to pursue in my effort to get some further account
as to the causes which led to these peculiar condi-
tions in the distribution of organic beings.

When a naturalist has attained the state of in-
quiry to which we have now come in the statement of
our problem, he needs to beat the brush of fact and
fancy in order to get a clew for further search. If
he has been well taught or has profited by individual
experience, his next step will be to search in the
realm of Nature for some series of facts which are in
any way coincident with those which he seeks to ex-
plain. It is evident at the outset of this particular
inquiry after new series of facts to be used in com-
parison with those in hand, that this difference in the
rate of development of life on different continents
may be in some way connected with the physical
history of the continental masses themselves. Now,
the only way to take up the physical history of con-
tinents, since we know that history as yet most im-
perfectly, is to make a study of their existing shapes.
The geologist already knows full well that the actual
shape of the continental form has been determined
by the experiences of that land-mass in the past.
The land is what it is because of the various shape-
giving influences which have worked upon it. With
this general thought in mind, we may proceed to
the next step of the inquiry.

It is impossible for any one to grasp the form of a
continent in its entirety. It is true that every hill

10 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

and valley, every outline of surface, however trifling,
indicates some part of the history of that land ; but
the mass of fact is so great that it is beyond the
compass of the mind to grasp it firmly. We must
therefore find, if possible, some simple index of the
continental form, sufficiently clear and general in its
nature to be taken into the understanding. This in-
dex, as we shall shortly see, lies ready for us in the
simple, readily recognizable feature, — the shore-line.
Long ago Ritter and afterward Guyot recognized
the fact that the amount of shore-line of the several
continents in proportion to their internal square -mile
area varies greatly, as is shown by the proportionate
area of the peninsulated appendages to the solid mass
of the lands with which they are united; this is
in Europe one to four, in Asia one to six, in North
America one to fourteen. The other continents have
so few peninsulas that no definite ratios can be es-
tablished. Europe has by far the largest amount
of shore in proportion to its square-mile area of
any of the continents ; Asia and North America have
much less shore-line for their square-mile surface;
Africa yet less ; while South America and Australia
come still lower in the scale. To establish these
ratios in the form in which I have presented them,
it is desirable to reduce the continents to the same
areas, and then to compare their shore- lines.

No sooner do we grade the continents by the pro-
portion of shore-line to square mile of surface, and
place this tabulation against that which shows the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 11

series in organic development, than we are startled
to find that in a general way at least the two sets of
facts correspond. Although the parallelism is by
no means perfect, it is sufficient to give the natural-
ist the clew which he seeks to obtain.

It requires little consideration to show us that
there can be no immediate connection between the
development of the organic life and the ratio of the
sea-coast to the square-mile area in the several
lands. We must expect to find the causation more
remote. We should look for some conditions which
will at once give the complicated shore-line and
the environment which advances life. Let us begin
our inquiry by determining what it is that makes
the variation in the shore-line.

Taking first the continent of Europe, let us see
what it is that produces this singularly large inter-
locking of sea and land. Almost as soon as we in-
spect a good map of that part of the world, it becomes
apparent that this complicated periphery is due to
the great development of mountains having diverse
directions of axial development on that continent.
Europe is an aggregation of peninsulas and islands,
each the product of a more or less distinct system of
mountain-building. The Scandinavian peninsulas,
Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Greece, as
well as many lesser peninsulas, are each the product
of a separate incidence of mountain-building forces,
applied at different periods in geological time. We
thus come at once upon a set of facts which leads us

12 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

carefully to inspect the operations of mountain-build-
ing forces on the several continents.

Although our information concerning the measure
of action of orogenic or mountain-building forces on
the several continents is yet imperfect, we know
enough to be able to grade the continents in a gen-
e±*al way in accordance with the relative number of
their mountain systems, and are quickly brought to
the conclusion that Europe has the most shore-line in
proportion to its area because it has been the seat of
more repeated and more varied mountain-building
than any other continent, and that the relative lack of
shore-line on the other lands is due to a proportionate
lessening in the variety of movements due to those
subterranean forces which fold the rocks. Thus, if
we compare Europe with North America, we find that
in the first named of these continents there are more
than a score of different mountain systems, the eleva-
tion of which occurred in most cases at different times
in the earth's history ; while in North America there
are not more than half-a-dozen different systems,
representing perhaps no more than that number of
diverse periods of disturbance which built such ele-
vations. We have now come in our inquiry to a
point where we may fairly conjecture that the rela-
tive advance of life on the different continents may
in some way have depended upon influences due
either to the processes of mountain-building or to
the long continued existence of such elevations on
the several lands. We shall therefore proceed to

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 13

consider the way in which mountains by their growth
or presence in any region may affect the advance of
organic life.

Before we set about this, — the most critical and,
as we shall hereafter see, the most profitable part of
our inquiry, — we must take a glance at the condi-
tions of animals and plants as they are affected by
geographic changes, such as are induced by mountain
growth. This inquiry was not possible in the time
of Louis Agassiz, or with students who held to the
belief as to the nature of organic changes which he
entertained. He believed that each species of animal
and plant was the product of direct creative action.
Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace have forced us to ad-
mit that the development of new species is, to a great
extent, due to circumstances, to the action of the in-
organic conditions upon them or the interaction of
species with species in the struggle for existence.
Geographic conditions may greatly affect the strug-
gle for existence in most important ways; as, for
instance, when the sea advances or retreats, the as-
semblages of marine and land creatures, the faunas
and floras of the neighboring waters and lands, move
to and fro, with the change of their domains. Such
migrations lead to the death of weak species, brought
about by a struggle for existence with forms with
which they have not previously come into contention.
Such times of migration are necessarily periods when
rapid selective changes occur.

A sufficient example of such a movement and its

14 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

consequences may be brought to our minds by an in-
stance taken from the shore of Massachusetts. The
peninsula of Cape Cod, a frail barrier of glacial
waste, parts on the north and south two very diverse
groups of marine animals. There are some scores
of species inhabiting Cape Cod Bay to the north of
the barrier which are not found in the waters about
Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket or in Buzzard's
Bay. When Cape Cod disappears, — as but for the
intervention of man it will, by marine erosion, in a
few thousand years disappear, — we foresee that a
great intermigration of these species will take place.
They will struggle with one another for the possession
of the new field of sea-shore and of the waters. The
weaker or less perfect forms will be destroyed, and
out of the struggle will come a measure of advance
in the character of the life in the given area. Or let
us take another instance from far away. Between
the low-grade life of Australia and the higher life
of southern Asia, there are but narrow barriers of
waters. A relatively trifling geographic change
might at any time convert the Malayan archipelago
into a great isthmus, binding the two continents to-
gether and affording a bridge over which by the pro-
cesses of migration, impelled by the ever present needs
of subsistence, the life of the lands might commingle.
There can be no doubt but that the effect of such a
union between Asia and Australia would be greatly
to advance the grade of organic development in the
southern continent. It would only be a question of

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 15

a short geological time before the Asiatic competi-
tors with the old Australian life would drive it from
the field. Some of the species would be destroyed
by the direct assault of their more vigorous enemies ;
others would be displaced by the lack of food, the
plants or animals which they originally depended up-
on and to which they had become adapted having been
driven out by the invasion. We see something of the
effects which would be produced by the creation of a
land -bridge between Australia and India, when we
study the action of certain species which have been
introduced into Australia by man. Many species of
European animals and plants have come to Australia
within a century. On the new ground they show a
curious power of overcoming and displacing the na-
tive species. Thus, the European rabbit, which in
its native land is kept in check by weasels and foxes
and other predaceous animals, runs riot in Australia,
and has become a menace to the interests ot the soil-
tiller and the shepherd.

Something of the effect of these isthmuses or land-
bridges may also be judged by the rapid spread of
species which by chance are introduced into new
countries. Ships are constantly bringing the seeds of
different countries to our land. Graining a foothold
on the shore, these forms frequently spread with
startling rapidity, and become usurpers of the places
of our native forms. A large part of our common
plants in New England — nearly all our most suc-
cessful weeds — are from other lands.

16 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Although the effect of geographic changes conse-
quent upon mountain-building in bridging the spaces
of the sea is the most manifest of the consequences
attendant on the development of these elevations, it
is not the most important. Whenever a region of
plain land is converted into a mountainous district,
a great change of climate ensues. The temperatures
and the rainfall of the district necessarily undergo a
great alteration when its surface is elevated by
mountain-folding. It is a well-known fact that
nearly all the organic forms are singularly limited
by conditions of temperature, and in general much
affected by the amount of rainfall. Thus, in the case
of our domesticated plants, we find that the limits
of their distribution are singularly adjusted either to
the average temperature of the year, that of the grow-
ing season, or that of winter. The northern limits
of our vines, olives, figs, and a host of other plants
follow the windings of the isotherms across the sur-
face of the continents. So close is this relation that
meteorologists are fairly justified in the assertion that
no change in the average annual temperatures of Eu-
rope to the amount of one degree Fahrenheit has taken
place in two thousand years. They base this opinion
on the limits of the plants above-mentioned, which
limits are accurately known for a considerable his-
toric period. Now, as the elevation of a surface to
the amount of two hundred and fifty feet produces a
chilling effect on the climate in general equivalent to
that which would come about by moving that region

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 17

somewhere near a degree to the northward, the ac»
tion of mountain-building on climate and conse-
quently on the distribution of animals and plants is
necessarily very great.

If a mountainous elevation having a height of
ten thousand feet could be created in the region
immediately north of Massachusetts, the effects upon
the climate of the uplifted field would be of vast
importance. Nearly if not quite all the species
inhabiting the territory would be displaced or have
their distribution changed. North of the ridge,
because of the barrier which it would create be-
tween the southern Atlantic Ocean and Canada,
the country would be reduced to a condition of ste-
rility. The heat would be diminished, and the water-
supply lowered. South of the barrier and beyond
the limits of the elevation, the effect would prob-
ably be to increase the temperature and the rain-
fall by shutting off the north winds and causing a
greater precipitation on the southward versant of our
imaginary mountains. The effect upon the climate
of the region we occupy would be further complicated
by the fact that such an elevated district would be
certain to become the seat of glaciers. The ice wrap
might be limited to the upland district alone ; but it
is possible that situated as New England is in rela-
tion to the waters of the Atlantic, the greater part of
the southern versant of this elevation would become
occupied by massive glaciers. Indeed, it is possible
that it would convert .the whole of Massachusetts into

18 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

an ice-wrapped country, such as is now found in
Greenland.

We thus see that the creation of any considera-
ble mountain mass necessarily changes the climatal
regimen of a district, and so enforces a change in
the limits of the field occupied by organic forms;
and, as before remarked, all such migratory move-
ments are in a high measure favorable to that strug-
gle for existence in which the higher forms survive
and the lower are destroyed. When we look upon
the map of Europe and observe the distribution of
its mountain masses, we must imagine that at each
stage in the growth of these elevations we have had
an attendant alteration in the temperature of the
land of that continent, and a consequent marching
to and fro of the great armies of life. Each of these
movements has meant an increase in the contention
between the struggling forms. As long as the land
remains in a stable position, the combat for exist-
ence takes place within the limits ot a given prov-
ince. Although even under these conditions of
stability, the battle is fierce, its intensity is vastly
increased when one organic assemblage — one bio-
logical army, as we may term it — is compelled to
invade the province of another. When such altera-
tions occur, all the old adjustments between species
are more or less broken up, and before the new order
is instituted many of the ancient forms will probably
be destroyed.

We may help ourselves to imagine these conditions

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 19

by taking the analogical phenomena which occur in
those great migrations which brought the people of
northern Asia and northern Europe upon the civilized
dist^cts about the Mediterranean. Although the
wars oetween the states of southern Europe had
proved in many cases disastrous to their civilization,
the effects of these struggles were small compared
with the ruin which the migratory invasions of the
northern peoples brought about. We may compare
the ordinary civil wars within States to the combat
which constantly goes on between contending species
that occupy the same biological province ; while the
invasional movements of the Hun and Goth afford
a certain analogy with the destruction which occurs
from the migratory movements of large assemblages
of life under the influence of climatal change.

In the sea the effects of mountain-building or of
continental growth, though less manifest in geologi-
cal history, are doubtless quite as important as those
which are exercised upon the lands. Marine animals
are singularly sensitive to peculiarities of tempera-
ture. Even our more vigorous fishes are narrowly
limited by the heat of the water which they occupy.
Thus the blue-fish (Temnodon saltator) of our New
England coast, one of the most aggressive forms of
its class, finds at present its northern limit deter-
mined by the peninsula of Cape Cod. South of that
boundary it is one of the dominant creatures of the
sea, and is extremely abundant. Although from time
to time, with variations in the temperature of the

20 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

sea-water at particular seasons, it finds its way north
of Cape Cod and establishes itself in Massachusetts
Bay, it never has succeeded in maintaining itself iu
that field. Two or three times within a century it
has won a place in those waters, only to be beaten
back by the cold of the next season. Occasional in-
vasions of cold water, characteristic of Massachusetts
Bay, destroy great quantities of fish in more southern
waters. A capital instance of this action was seen
in the case of the tile-fish, which was found by the
United States Fish Commission to be extremely
abundant in the region immediately south of Nan-
tucket shoals. For a while the field occupied by
this fish promised to be a valuable station for our
fishermen; but all at once the species disappeared
from the locality. Yast quantities of their bodies
were found floating on the surface of the sea; and the
most reasonable explanation of their death seems to
be a slight and temporary alteration in the run of the
currents about Cape Cod, which brought the arctic
waters a little farther south than usual.

The temperature of the North Atlantic depends in
very large measure upon the tide of warm waters
brought to that region by the Gulf Stream. Dr.
James Croll has shewn that the Gulf Stream brings
to the region within the Arctic Circle more heat
than comes to the earth in that region directly from
the sun. It is easy to see that the limits of that
stream are determined by the existence of geographic
barriers. If the region about the northern part of

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 21

South America and the isthmian district which con-
nects the twin American continents were lowered
beneath the sea, this great current would not enter
the northern Atlantic, but would stream forth into
the central parts of the Pacific Ocean. The result
of such a change would be that the temperatures oi
the sea -water throughout the North Atlantic would
be profoundly altered, and the life of all that wide
ocean would be compelled to undergo vast migrations.
Even slight geographic changes may produce most
important effects upon the rate of movement of the
Gulf Stream and the consequent temperature condi-
tions of the North Atlantic. Thus at a very recent
time in a geological sense, probably since the com-
ing of man on the earth's surface, the peninsula of
Florida was deeply depressed below its present level,
so that the part of the Gulf Stream which passes
through the straits of that name flowed freely over
the surface of the peninsula, the current having its
northern border considerably at the north of Tampa.
When flowing in this position, it is likely that the
waters of the Gulf Stream had a slower current than
at present, and were discharged on their path toward
northern Europe with less momentum than now
characterizes them. Ifc is mainly if not altogether
to this initial velocity that we owe the efficiency of
the Gulf Stream as a warmth-bringing current in
high latitudes. If its average velocity were dimin-
ished by as much as half a mile an hour where
it passes Cape Hatteras, the effect would probably be

22 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

to lower the temperature of the North Atlantic by
several degrees Fahrenheit, — a change sufficient not
only to affect the distribution of marine life, but also
in a secondary way profoundly to influence the tem-
perature and thus the vital status of northern Europe.

Whenever a considerable range of mountains is
elevated, we often find as a complement to the up-
thrust a system of depressions formed on either side
of the axis of elevation. If the mountains are of
great mass and occupy an extended area, this sys-
tem of troughs on either side may attain to some-
thing like a corresponding profundity and extent.
Thus the deep basin of the Mediterranean is proba-
bly to be explained by the downward movement of
the strata corresponding to the great mountain up-
lifts which have taken place on its northern and
southern shores. The basin may, in a word, be de-
fined as a geological depression between the Alpine
and Apennine systems on the north and the Atlas
system on the south of this trough.

The great valley of the Mississippi, which for
geological ages was a vast mediterranean of North
America, is in structure the downward flexing fold
between the Rocky Mountains or Cordilleras and the
Appalachian system of elevations. The Gulf of
Mexico is the small remnant of this great basin. A
lesser trough of the same sort lies between the west-
ern element of the Cordilleras, which constitute the
promontory of southern California and the eastern
element composing the mass of Mexico. All our

NATURE AMD MAN IN AMERICA. 23

continental shore-lines show to a greater or less
degree the effect of these mountain troughs in bring-
ing the ocean waters in the form of more or less
enclosed seas far into the land. Often these inclu-
sions of the sea serve greatly to diversify the land
climates. Thus the peculiar fertility of the Medi-
terranean shores is in part due to the presence of
that vast system of enclosed waters which has been
created by the process of mountain-building.

A few years ago it was proposed to introduce the
ocean waters into certain depressed areas of the
Sahara. Although the area which it would be pos-
sible to cover with the sea is less than one hundred
thousand square miles, it was objected to the pro-
ject that it would be likely to change the climates
on the northern shore of the Mediterranean, increas-
ing the humidity of that area and making the grape
and certain other crops less valuable than at present.
There can be no question that the objection was in a
measure valid ; and we may judge from it how potent
is the influence of these great arms of the sea in the
complicated equations which determine European
climates or those of other continents.

We have now to consider the peculiar effect due to
the presence of mountains in a country, — an effect
serving to intensify the phenomena of combat on
which advance of organic life so much depends.
Where the surface of the land is in the form of a
great plain, such as the prairies of the Mississippi
valley, the area occupied by any one species is very

24 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

extensive. We may make a journey from the junc-
tion of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers northward
to Wisconsin, without noting any very great differ-
ences in the species of the animals or plants which
we encounter. The fact is that in going this
distance we vary the temperature, that of the
growing season at least, by a very slight amount.
The effect of the difference of latitude is scarcely
perceptible, being qualified by many other slight
differences. The total number of native flowering
plants which may be gathered in this field probably
does not exceed fourteen hundred; so, too, the in-
sects, the birds, and the mammals, the various forms
which depend upon the plant life, are also relatively
few in number. Let us suppose this region now to
be converted into a mountainous country, having a
variety of surface and a relief which we find in the
Alps, and note the effect on the variety and distribu-
tion of organic forms. We can best guide our fancy
in this ideal experiment, by considering the con-
ditions of organic life in Switzerland, comparing
them with those now existing on the prairies of the
Mississippi valley. If the observer goes to the
southern face of the Alps, on the shores of the beau-
tiful lakes of northern Italy, he finds himself in a
subtropical climate. The fig, the pomegranate, and
other southern plants can in favored sites maintain
themselves in the open air at the lowest points of
the surface. The vegetation has not only the botan-
ical aspect but the luxuriance which belongs to

NATUKJS AND MAN IN AMEKICA. 25

southern climes. The same almost subtropical
character of the climate is shown also in the physi-
cal aspect and the general quality of the people as
well as in the lower forms of life.

Ascending the slopes of the Alps, the attentive ob-
server notes that for each thousand feet of ascent
great changes take place in the character of the
plants and in the higher forms of animal life which
are dependent upon them. With each gradation of
his ascent he enters on the field of new species ; and
so within the limits of a single day's climb he may
traverse all the zones of organic life which he could
encounter in passing along the sea-shore from the
parallel of Lake Como to the Arctic Circle. In
other words, we have within the narrow limits of
Switzerland almost as great a range of climate as we
find in passing up the low-lying plain of the conti-
nent from New Orleans to Great Slave Lake. With-
in the limits of the area of Switzerland, which does
not exceed one half the surface of Indiana, we may
find a greater variety of climate and a wider range
of organic forms than is afforded by an area of
plain-land having several times the surface of that
State. The range in the height of the land in
Indiana is less than five hundred feet, while in
Switzerland it exceeds fifteen thousand feet.

It is not difficult to see that momentous conse-
quences must arise from this packing within a nar-
row field of the many different kindred species,
olace*! \a zones one above another between the base

26 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

of the mountains and the uppermost zone occupied by
life. Each alteration of climate brought upon a
given mountain district by geographic change occur-
ring within its own limits or communicated by other
mountain movements will lead to a readjustment of
the barriers occupied by different species. This
readjustment will be brought about by combat ol one
form with another for the place in which they live
or the food on which they subsist. It is true that
such a struggle will also occur on the plain ; but on
the surface of this level ground there are no distinct,
clearly drawn boundaries of climate; while in a
mountain district each considerable isolated mass is
an independent, sharply denned theatre of combat.
Each peak is as it were a battlefield, and the amount
of contention is vastly enhanced by the narrow limits
of the area on which it takes place.

Moreover, in the mountain district manifold
chances serve to bring the creatures of the neigh-
boring provinces into contention with one another.
Every strong wind carries the seeds of plants or the
eggs of insects or indeed their living bodies from one
zone into another. Every avalanche that falls serves
to displace certain forms from their accustomed zones,
and to give them an opportunity of trying their
strength in the contention with the occupants of the
lower realms. Thus a mountainous district becomes
a sort of natural experiment station, where the rela-
tive powers of diverse species, their fitness for par-
ticular modes of life, are tried in a far more effective

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 27

manner than is possible in a region of plains. We
are thus forced to the opinion that the crowding of
species which necessarily takes place in a mountain-
built country, provided it is not exceptionally arid
in its character, cannot be without influence in favor*
ing the struggle for existence, thus helping the ad-
vance in the scale of being.

There is a yet larger view of the effect of moun-
tains in promoting the combat between species. In
a continent such as Europe, where a great diver-
sity in the mountain systems favors the localization
of life and the development of peculiar forms, the
tendency is to develop in separate mountain strong-
holds particular species, and evolve their militant
peculiarities until the forms are fitted to enter into a
larger contention with their kindred species in less
localized assemblages of life. Thus each mountain
district becomes as it were a cradle for the culture of
peculiar forms, which in time, when they have been
proven by contention on their own ground, may
enter upon a wider field of combat.

It will be observed that we have not yet consid-
ered the relation of mankind to mountains, and this
for the reason that the circumstances which affect
the development of man, circumstances arising from
the high measure of intelligence with which he is en-
dowed, make it unsafe to rest general conclusions as
to the conduct of nature upon his peculiar history.
At a later stage in our inquiry we shall take up the
development of man, and observe the effect of the

28 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

earth's surface upon his qualities. For the moment
the reader may supply from his memory abundant
instances to show how far the localization of human
life in Europe which has been brought about by
mountain systems has served to make that country
the cradle of strong peoples, and to give them
strength for the contention which they had in time
to undergo.

Limiting ourselves for the time being to the life
below man, we see from the foregoing considerations
two reasons which lead us to understand why it is
that the rate of development of life on the different
continents has in a measure depended upon the phy-
sical accidents in the way of mountain-building to
which the country has been subjected. Every stage
in mountain-building means a variation in the cli-
mate, a change in the limits of those organic assem-
blages termed faunae and flora?, and a consequent
increase in the measure of that struggle for existence
on which the development of the higher forms so
clearly depends. Advance depends on the conten-
tion between differences, and mountains greatly favor
this combat.

The reader may help his conception of the effect of
stress of conditions on the advance of organic life by
the consideration of the organisms on the deeper sea-
floors. As soon as naturalists obtained a knowledge
of deep-sea life, they were struck by the fact that the
forms in the abyssal regions of the oceanic fiel4° — •
say below depths of fiVe thousand feet — were sin-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 29

gularly archaic in their aspect. We find there
many groups of species curiously like the forms
which dwelt in the shallow water along our sea-
shores in the early Tertiary and Cretaceous or even
in Jurassic periods. It is evident that while the life
of the shore, that which is termed littoral in its
character, has in modern times rapidly advanced,
the forms of the deeper sea-floor have been hindered
in their development much in the manner in which
the Australian land life has been retarded in its
ongoing during the geological ages. The only expla*
nation of this retardation in deep-sea life is that by
which we account for the similar slow ongoing of
the Australian life, — namely, that by the absence
of a sufficient variety of conditions, the general uni-
formity in circumstances of environment from age to
age has failed to supply the whip which has led in
other regions to a rapid advance.

Another striking instance which serves to show us
the effect of the conditions which environ organisms
is found in the state of advance of organic life within
the tropics and about either pole. In the tropical
conditions of the earth we observe that organic forms
attain on the whole less advance than in the middle
}atitudes. A host of forms which in the earlier geo-
logical days were enabled to meet the climatal condi-
tions of high latitudes have gradually been beaten
back by the stress of environment until they survive
only in regions near the equator. The elephants
which in preglacial days, or perhaps even to the close

30 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

of the last ice period, were plentifully found in the
northern parts of America and Europe, and were fitted
to meet the conditions of cold winters by their admi-
rable covering of hair, are no longer able to endure
those conditions. The same is true of the rhinoce-
roses and a number of our great mammals, as well
as of many other groups of animals.

When a group of organic forms — owing perhaps
to the loss of these powers of resistance with old age,
which comes upon species and genera as well as upon
individuals — is unfit to cope with the stern con-
ditions of high latitudes, it falls back into the great
almshouse of the tropics, where though the struggle
for subsistence and the combat with enemies may
be severe, the creatures are at least spared the con-
tention with climatal ills. By this fact we may
measure the energy with which the whips of neces-
sity are applied to the lower life as well as to that
of man in the intemperate climates of the earth.
Where the rigors of winter and summer alternate,
life finds itself in very trying conditions : each win-
ter a sentence of death is passed upon the unfit,
and the creatures which cannot withstand the stress
must perish or betake themselves to a tropical realm.

In the circumpolar regions, where the trials of
winter are extreme, we obtain another lesson which
serves our end. In those high latitudes organic
forms are borne down by cold ; only those which have
succeeded most perfectly in adapting themselves to
rigorous conditions survive : the greater part of the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 31

creatures have to retain life by accepting a deathlike
sleep during the period of cold. Those which can^
not meet the besetting dangers in this manner or
by other protections must perish or betake them-
selves to more temperate climes.

We have now considered some of the plainest in-
stances of the effect of physical conditions on organic
development. Although the facts which we have
noted are of a very general sort, lacking the particu-
larization which is desirable in all such considera-
tions, they are sufficiently clear to show us that
in the process of the ages the development of life
is singularly affected by the physical conditions of
the earth's surface.

CHAPTER n.

JCature and Origin of Continents. — Effect of Continents on Seas. — Ioterac«
tion of Sea and Land. — Salinity of Ocean and Dead Seas. — Transporta-
tion of Material from Land to Sea. — Effect of Volcanoes. — Possible
effect arising from Destruction of Continents. — Effect of Sea and Land
on Organic Life ; Conditions of Passage of Life from Sea to Land. —
Brief Statement as to Development of Life — Effect of Mountain Growth ,
Absence of such Structures on the Sea Floor. — Relations of Mountains
to Continental Growth. — Effect of Mountains on North America. —
Movements of Subterranean Materials in tbe Process of Mountain-
Building

The considerations presented in the preceding
chapter show us in a general way how intimate is
the connection between the irregularities of form of
the land and the circumstances — or environment, as
Darwinians call it — of organic life. Whether it be
on sea or land, the depth or height — or, in other
words, the relief — of the surface has a direct effect
upon climate, an effect on the measure of crowding
of the organic forms within the same field; while all
the changes in this element of altitude have a direct
and important influence on the phenomenon of mi-
gration. The logical order of discussion would have
required us to bring these facts into view at the end
of our considerations ; but at the outset of an exposi-
tion such as we have before us it is well to bring
such matters to mind, for they enlarge the under-
standing with which we consider less ample facts,

NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 33

which we now have to face. Heretofore we have
considered in a general way certain effects arising
from the form of the land reliefs which we term
mountains.

We will now turn our attention to the larger
groups of eminences on the earth's crust which re-
ceive the name of continents. The difference be-
tween continental elevations and those of mountains
is even at a glance conspicuous. Mountains are
sharp flexures in the rocks which compose the earth's
crust. In them we may find a single fold more or
less worn by atmospheric agents, or there may be a
number of parallel ridges crowded together into a
chain. In most cases the central axis or the group
of ridges of a mountain range constitutes a narrow
and very elongate field of disturbance; commonly
the length of the system of elevations is ten times or
more the width of the disturbed rocks. Continents,
on the other hand, are very wide, subtriangular
masses of land, their apices pointing toward the
south pole while the bases face the northern end of
the earth's axis. These continental folds, unlike
those of the mountain, are extremely wide in pro-
portion to their height. Thus the great elevation of
the earth's crust which constitutes the continent of
North America springs from the sea floor a thousand
miles to the east of the Atlantic coast, rises very
gradually to the summits of the continent, and thence
declines rather more rapidly from the Pacific coast
to the floor of the ocean on the west. The average

34 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

width of the North American continent exceeds four
thousand miles ; while the average height above the
sea floor on either side does not much exceed three
miles. Thus the continental ridge is about a thou-
sand times as wide as high; while the mountain
ridges are commonly not more than fifty times as
wide as their height.

Each continent consists of a broad irregular fold
of the earth's crust upon which rest the sharper
ridges of the mountains. In places, as for in-
stance in the isthmian district of Central America,
the continent consists almost altogether of mountain-
ous elevations; while in the northern parts of the
field the continental elevation is only composed in a
small measure of mountain folds.

The division of the earth into the fields of land
and water depends altogether upon the circumstances
which lead to the formation of continents. Were it
not for the growth of these singular elevations, the
sea would be entirely unbroken by land. It is true
that here and there volcanic peaks pierce the surface
of the wide oceans ; but, as we shall see hereafter,
the development of volcanic energy depends upon
conditions which would not exist if the lands were
not present amid the waters. It is easy to see that
certain important consequences to organic life follow
immediately upon this division of the earth's surface
into sea and land. All the higher life of our planet
finds its theatre upon the land surface, and finds that
surface fitted for occupation by reason of the fact

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 35

that the seas give it their constant tribute of rain.
All the life of the earth depends upon the constant
presence of water upon its surface in positions suited
for the needs of organic forms. Indeed, our bodies
are in a physical sense water-engines driven by solar
heat.

If the lands were submerged, all the greatest gains
from the development of organic life, all the su-
perior groups of animals and plants, would quickly
cease to be. The mammals, except the whales, the
dolphins, and their kindred, depend upon the land
for their development and maintenance. The birds,
the insects, and all the higher plants are likewise
limited to, or dependent on, the land areas. Im-
portant as are these facts, they are only a small part
of the consequences which come from the existence
of this twofold division of the earth's surface into
sea and land. Nearly all the geological processes
are intimately dependent on this method of partition
of the earth's surface. In order that we may have
before us the general importance of this system of
surface division, we must now consider the interac-
tive effect of land and sea in the economy of our
planet.

To grasp the particular functions of sea and land,
let us take the process of erosion which goes on in
any river valley, such as that of the Mississippi.
The heat of the sun evaporates the water of the sea.
The same solar heat sets the air in motion, and the
vapor rising from the oceans is borne in from the

36 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

marine areas upon the surface of the land, and there
falls as rain. In the valley of the Mississippi about
two and one-half feet of rain come upon the surface
each year. This water exercises two classes of
effects by the mechanical energy due to the height
above the sea to which it comes to the earth's sur-
face ; it flows down the slope of the land, and as it
flows wears away that surface. At the same time
the chemical properties of the water acting on the
rocks rot them, or produce what geologists term a
corrosive effect, breaking them into bits fine enough
to be taken into solution. The torrents of the up-
land districts bear them on, uniting their floods in
the main channel of the lower river, whence there
goes into the sea each year from one twentieth to on6
tenth part of a cubic mile of broken up materials
taken from the earth's crust. The larger part of
this material swept away from the surface of the
continent and discharged through the mouths of the
Mississippi is in the state of mechanical solution, as
mud in the water ; but probably rather more than one
tenth of the whole is completely dissolved as sugar is
dissolved in water, before the saturation point is at-
tained. The mud and sand which are in the first or
mechanical state of solution fall to the ocean floor,
and serve to make the ordinary sediments which ac-
cumulate about the margin of the continent. These
materials are swept to and fro by the tides and shore
currents, and built into that broad platform called
the continental shelf, which extends along the mar-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 37

gin of the seas, forming the shallow water-belt which
generally fringes the continents. In this way the
larger part of the sediments which compose the rocks
such as sandstones, clay-slates, and conglomerates,
are gathered about the flanks of the continents, and
built into the sea floor to be converted into land in
the subsequent uprisings of the continental area.

The material held in the state of complete solu-
tion is not taken to the bottom of the sea by gravity,
but may remain suspended in the water for an indefi-
nite time. Its history subsequent to its escape from
the land constitutes one of the most interesting chap-
ters in the earth's physiology.

We all know that the sea is salt. This evident
salinity is due to the fact that certain dissolved
substances brought out by the rivers, such as sodium
chloride, or common salt, exist in large enough
quantities to be evident to the taste ; but it is only
of late that the chemical study of sea waters has
shown us that they contain something of almost, if
not quite all, the substances which enter into the
composition of our rocks. Thus, for instance, many
of our metals, even the rarer kinds, are present in
sea water. Silver exists there in such quantities
that practical metallurgists at the smelting- works in
Swansea and elsewhere maintain that the copper
from ships' bottoms amalgamates with the silver
in the water through which the vessel passes on its
way through the sea, and thus in time this copper be-
comes so enriched that it is profitable to extract the

38 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

precious metal from old sheathing. Iron, gold, lead,
and various other substances which are of difficult
solution combine as chlorides or other chemical as-
sociations, and are also dissolved in the ocean waters.
There can be no doubt that these substances are pres-
ent in the sea, and that through the process above des-
cribed they are maintained in solution. We have in
our salt lakes — such as the Dead Sea of Judaea, the
Salt Lake of Utah, and thousands of other similar
basins — sufficient evidence that rain-water is con-
stantly bearing mineral matters from the land to the
oceans. Wherever a lake is formed in an area so
dry that the tributary waters are unable to fill the
basin, — where, in a word, the drainage of the lake is
through the air and not through a river, — we find
that the water becomes charged with dissolved sub-
stances in just the manner in which the sea is laden
with these materials.

It is to this richness of the sea in mineral sub*
stances of various kinds that we owe the extensive
development of organic life which takes place in
its waters. Marine plants find excellent nutrition
in these materials. To them the water affords the
substances required for their rapid growth. The
result is that the sea is occupied by a great variety
of water plants, while it would be destitute of such
organisms if it had the purity of a mountain stream.
Pure, however, as are these streams of the hills, they
are constantly dissolving substances from the land
in small quantities, and carrying them to the sea,

NATUKE AND MAN IN AMEEICA. 39

from whose waters there is no escape, except through
the machinery of organic life. Plants take the ma-
terials from the sea water, and marine animals ob-
tain them at second hand from the plants, or with one
further step through the bodies of other animals
which they may consume; and the dead bodies of
animals and plants alike are built into the sea floor
in the form of our limestones and other rocks com-
posed of organic sediments. In this way the depos-
its formed on the sea-floor are immediately dependent
for the materials which compose them on the wear
which takes place on the land, either in the basins
of the rivers or along the line of the sea-shores.

A portion of the substances which enter into the
deposits of the ocean floor are derived from volcanic
eruptions. It now appears that this contribution
from volcanoes may amount to a considerable frac-
tion, perhaps more than one half of all the sediments
which go to the bottom of the wider seas ; but even
this volcanic waste would probably not be ejected
save for the contribution of sediments which come to
the ocean floor from the lands. As this effect of
volcanic action is of much importance in the physi-
ography of the earth, we must give it some considera-
tion. It now seems tolerably certain that volcanoes
are to be explained in the following manner, — in a
way which shows them to be dependent on the laying
down of strata worn from the land upon the ocean
bottoms ; and this for the following reasons : —

All volcanic explosions of characteristic nature

40 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

are essentially outbreaks of steam at high tempera*
tures. The lava and the ashes are accidental ele-
ments in the outrush of steam, seeking to escape
under the tensions given to it by their great heat.
This steam is made from water imprisoned in the
rocks at the time when they are laid down on the
sea floor. The beds of sand, mud, and lime which
are now gathering on the bottom of the seas con-
tain from five to twenty per cent of water built into
their interstices when they were formed. In time,
when later accumulations of strata are imposed upon
them to the depth of many thousand feet as the
sea bottoms slowly sink down, a thick blanket of
rock is laid upon the lower layers of sediment,
which, from the conditions of their construction,
contain a large amount of water. This blanket of
sediments is a good non-conductor, serving to prevent
the escape of the internal heat, which is always creep-
ing out through the earth's crust and radiating away
into the stellar spaces. The result is that in time
the lower portions of the stratified outer parts of the
earth attain a verv high temperature. The water
energetically tends to pass into the state of steam,
and takes advantage of every chance to burst forth
into the open air, blowing before it the more or less
broken-up rock, or sending forth a tide of molten
stone in the form of lava. Where the energy of
eruption is great, this lava may be blown into bits
so fine that they will float for a long time in water,
or even drift about in the air before coming to the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 41

ocean surface ; and in this way the material is dis-
tributed over a wide surface of ocean floor, and so
contributed to sedimentary deposits.

We thus see that the process of sedimentation due
to the accumulation on the sea floor of sediments
from the lands gives rise to volcanoes. Although
the materials thrown out by volcanoes doubtless con-
tribute largely to the growth of sediments on the sea
floor, the volcano is itself the product of processes
which could not exist but for the presence of land
on the earth's surface.

Let us conceive that by some extraordinary, we
may say indeed unexampled, accident in the earth's
history the continents were all brought below the
level of the sea, so that the ocean were universal.
The immediate effect would be the destruction of all
land life and the arrest of deposition of all mechani-
cal sediments, those carried down in the form of mud
by rivers or removed from the shore by the waves.
For a while the marine plants and through them
the animals of the sea would be sustained by the
stored harvest of dissolved matter contained in the
ocean waters. Slowly the oceans would be exhausted
of the pabulum which maintains marine life, and
gradually the creatures of the sea would be starved
and disappear. A few forms might maintain them-
selves in the mud on the ocean bottom where the
waters would take up a certain amount of material by
the process of re-solution ; but the ocean floor would
be in a geologically short time even more barren to

42 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

life than are the wastes of the Sahara or the desert
fields which lie beneath our great lakes, where there
is but little organic life. As all the important phy-
sical history of our planet which is recorded in the
rocks has depended upon the process of sedimenta-
tion, the world would even in a physical sense be
quite other than it is, but for this division into sea
and land.

It is not only in the physical development of the
earth's surface that this division into land and sea is
of importance ; it is of even greater effect in the his-
tory of organic life. We have already noted in a
glance the fact that the land life is very much higher
than that of the sea. All organic forms doubtless
originated within the waters. The roots of all the
great genealogical trees, the foundations of the series
which lead up from the basement of life to the higher
organization exhibited in plants and animals, must
have found their first station within the waters of the
ocean. Thus we trace back the mammalian series,
to which we ourselves belong, to the fishes. The
insects we follow downward to the marine articu-
lated animals. Our higher land-plants are the de-
scendants of organisms which laid the foundations of
that life in the sea. The ocean is indeed the cradle
of all the groups of beings which have attained a
lofty structural or intellectual life.

Although the sea is the cradle of all our organic
series which find a place upon the land, none of these
series attain the highest degree of their development

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 43

within the oceanic waters. It is only on the land
that we find the conditions which permit the highest
development of life in any of the great chains of be-
ing. The causes for the limitation of the higher life
to the land are probably manifold ; but there is one
effect which in the present state of our knowledge is
quite patent to our understanding. All marine forms,
except certain small groups such as whales, which
have by a process of degradation descended to con-
ditions of oceanic life from land-inhabiting ances-
tors, are essentially limited in their breathing to the
air which the water may contain. Although the
ocean waters contain a good deal of air in solution,
the quantity per cubic foot is only a small portion of
that which is present in the atmosphere. In order
to obtain a given amount of respirable oxygen, the fish
has to pass over a given surface of gills many times
as much bulk of water as we pass of air over a like
area of lung surface. Now, it is a well-known fact
that the energy of the body depends upon the amount
of oxygen which can be appropriated to those decom-
positions or reactions which take place in the process
of breathing. We may fairly say that all animal
bodies are engines which depend on combustion for
the supply of force required to maintain their func-
tions. Therefore in breathing oxygen from the at-
mosphere, the land animal has a very great advantage
over the creature of the sea, due to the rapidity with
which he can make avail of this organic resource.
It is safe to say that the land animal has twen*v-fold

44 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

the advantage in breathing that any marine creature
such as our fishes can have, and thereby is enabled to
effect a much more swift alteration in the chemical
constituents of its body, and thus to secure the
energy requisite for the maintenance of its bodily
and intellectual activities.

To win a way from the lower field of the waters to
the higher level of the land life required time, vast
even in a geological sense, during which the ani-
mals and plants were undergoing a gradual transi-
tion which might enable them to meet the difficult
conditions which the land imposes. The animal or
plant in the sea is generally secured from all save
slight changes of temperature. With the exception
of the whales and a few other forms which have
descended from the land into the sea by a process of
retrograde change, all the marine species are, as we
express it, cold-blooded; that is, they depend upon
the element in which they live for their temperature.
In general the temperature of the sea, excepting the
more superficial layers of water, is singularly invari-
able. The facts already noted, such as the limita-
tion in the extension of the blue-fish, as well as
many experiments in marine aquaria, show us that
marine forms are very intolerant of changes in tem-
perature of the medium in which they live. In order
to meet the conditions of the land in a successful
manner, at least in regions which are subject to any
considerable changes of temperature, the higher
vertebrates had to invent the warm blood which we

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 45

find in birds and mammals. This invention was
attained slowly and with difficulty ; for not only had
the circulation to be contrived, a system of lungs in
place of gills, but a protecting covering to retain the
heat, such as hair or feathers, had to be arranged ; or
if the creatures were destitute of such protection as
are our serpents, habits had to be invented to enable
them to lie dormant during the winter season at
some depth beneath the surface where they would be
protected from frost.

We are aware how quickly all our marine forms
dry and become shrunken when exposed to the at-
mosphere. This is because their skins are unfitted
to resist the dryness of the air; the water of the
body pours through them and evaporates into the
atmosphere, thus quickly bringing about the death
of the creature. The invention of the air-proof
covering, the beautifully contrived skin, which re-
tains the moisture of our bodies, was also attained
with difficulty. The same is the case with eggs of
our marine animals. They, too, quickly desiccate
when exposed to the air. It is a familiar fact that
the eggs of our birds and insects are provided with
either a tough or solid envelope, which serves to re
tain the fluids until they have been absorbed by the
young creature. In the case of plants the process of
preparation for land life was almost equally difficult.
All the higher forms of aerial vegetation depend upon
the roots for water supply. In the marine form the
plant is completely enveloped in water, and may

46 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

take its supply of food through any part of its sur-
face. Upon the land the plant has invented the con-
trivances of the root, by which a portion of the body
is pushed down into the water-bearing portions of
the soil, and there obtains the solid or ashy parts of
its structure in substantially the same manner as it
did in the sea.

After life had found its way from the sea in the
lower forms of terrestrial beings to the surface of the
continents, a vast series of changes had to come about
in order to lead upward from the creatures which had
just risen above the marine functions to the higher
forms which now inhabit the land. Between the earli-
est land ancestors of man and his present state, there
have been very numerous stages in the process of de-
velopment, each requiring a long time for its incep-
tion and completion. A thousand years was but a day
in the vast series of experiments which have led to
our more perfect land animals. If at any stage in
this process the lands had been generally submerged
beneath the sea, all their inhabitants would have
been destroyed. The paleontological records, the
chronicles of the great stone-book where the stages
of the organic series are written in the unmistak-
able characters of fossils, show us clearly that no
such general interruption in the progress of the land
life has ever taken place. From the organic remains
of our rocks we are justified in the assertion that
since the time when life began to adapt itself to con-
tinental conditions, there has been no destruction of

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 47

these fields of its higher development. We there-
fore may assume that our continents are great per-
manences. They change their form, — now a portion
bending downward beneath the sea, while another
part emerges from the waters ; but all the changes
which they undergo are made in such a manner that
swaying to and fro, abandoning the sunken parts
and moving into the newly elevated areas, the land
life has always been provided with its appropriate
station.

We are thus brought to the point in our inquiries
concerning the nature of life where we must consider
the conditions of these continental movements in-
volved in the creation and development of the land
areas. We must see how the vast and apparently
rude machinery which has created the lands has
operated so as not to endanger this frail organic life.

So far the formation of continents has formed a
stumbling-block in the way of geological theory.
There has been a great variety of hypotheses framed
to account for their formation; but none of them
have proved very satisfactory. I propose now to set
forth an hypothesis of continental growth, which
seems to me to meet the principal difficulties which
we encounter in the endeavor to frame a theory for
their origin. I have attained this conception mainly
by a study of the distribution of mountains.

It seems to me evident that mountains are phe-
nomena which are limited to the surface of the con-
tinental folds, and this for the following reason;

48 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

namely, if we consider the distribution of the known
mountains over the surface of the earth, we find that
they exist on all the continents. No very large
field of land, however level its surface, appears to be
without these foldings of the underlying rocks. Even
where the dislocations do not manifest themselves in
the striking irregularities of the surface, we often
find that they exist in the structure of the rocks.
Thus, eastern Massachusetts is destitute of high
mountains. Wachusett, the loftiest peak, rises only
a little over two thousand feet above the level of the
sea. The greater part of the area of southeastern
New England is a rough plain- land, only slightly
broken by irregular prominences a few hundred feet
in altitude ; but the geological structure of the coun-
try shows clearly that great mountains once existed
in this district. It is likely that if we could go
back of the Jurassic period, we should find several
ranges in this section having a height of many thou-
sand feet, perhaps, indeed, with the relief of Alpine
elevations. There can, in a word, be no question
that mountain-building is the ordinary if not a neces-
sary condition in all continental growth, for the rea-
son that there are no continents without mountains.

A little further inquiry shows us that the height
of the continents is proportionate to the amount of
mountain growth which has taken place in different
parts of their fields. Thus, the central portion of
Asia, where mountain-building has been very active,
has its surface much above the level of any other

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 49

continent; and in general we may say that the ele-
vation of the continent is roughly proportionate to the
amount of mountain-building which has taken place
upon it.

Turning now to the height of mountains, we find
on the earth's surface numerous peaks which exceed
fifteen thousand feet in altitude. It is probable that
all the continental masses, except Australia, have
numerous elevations which exceed this altitude. In
Asia peaks of this height are to be numbered by the
hundred. Bearing this fact in mind, let us turn our
attention to the question of whether mountains exist
on the sea floor. The first point to notice is that the
deeper seas — that is, those parts more than a few
hundred miles from the continental border — have an
average depth of about fifteen thousand feet. If,
therefore, mountains develop on the sea floor as
freely as they do upon the land, we should expect to
find the deeper seas, which occupy more than two
thirds of the surface of the earth, scattered over with
these lofty elevations. There should be hundreds if
not thousands of islands formed by mountain peaks
which came to the surface of the waters. The fact
is that save just along the shore-lines, or, in other
words, within the limits of the submerged portion of
the continental folds, there are no mountains what-
soever. The occasional isles which break the sur-
face of the deeper oceans consist either of volcanic
cones or of coralline accumulations, which in most
Eases appear to have been constructed upon the

50 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

crusts of submerged volcanoes. Thus, from a simple
inspection of the distribution of mountains, we come
to the conclusion that they do not appear to grow on
the sea floor as they do upon the surface of the
lands.

This consideration concerning the growth of moun-
tains on the sea floor becomes the more striking when
we consider that while a mountain growing in the
air from the surface of the lands is subject to con-
stant down-wearing, and is continually losing height
by the action of atmospheric agents of erosion, no
such effect would take place on the submarine moun-
tain until it came to the level where it would be
open to the assaults of the waves. Our land moun-
tains have in almost all cases lost a large part of
their height by the action of erosive agents. Thus
Ramsay has computed that in the case of the moun-
tains of Wales at least forty thousand feet of rocks
have been taken from their summits as they slowly
grew upward. So, too, with the Alps, if we prolong
their curves so as to restore in our diagrams the
parts which have disappeared in the battle with the
rain and ice, we find the vast reliefs which have been
worn away. In places ten to twenty thousand feet
of strata have been thus removed from the summits
of these elevations.

It is not to be supposed that our mountains at any
one time had such prodigious heights as they would
exhibit if we restored to their summits all the mate-
rials which had been worn away from them. It is

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 51

probable that the greater elevations now existing on
the earth's surface extend upward as far as moun-
tains have ever done in any state of the earth's his-
tory. The fact is that these elevations have worn as
they have grown ; indeed, as we shall see hereafter,
the wearing is probably a condition of the growth.
It is evident, however, that if the mountains grew
upon the sea floor at anything like the rate that they
build their arches under the air, we should find
peaks on the submarine ridges at least quite as nu-
merous as they are upon the land; and, as before
remarked, they are conspicuous by their absence in
that portion of the earth which is occupied by the
wide oceans.

Submarine soundings show us that there are many
irregularities on the sea floor, which in their form
have appeared to some naturalists mountain-like.
Thus, in the central portion of the Atlantic, as well
as in other seas and oceans, the sounding lead has
detected a number of sharp ridges which do not ex-
tend to the surface of the water, and a hasty judg-
ment has led some observers to the conclusion that
such are submarine mountains; but in all cases it
appears more reasonable to suppose that these eleva-
tions are in their nature volcanic than to assume that
they are such arches of the crust as constitute true
mountains. In the case of the Atlantic ridge, we
have at its northern extremity unmistakable vol-
canoes in the region of Iceland, and the Azores
afford similar evidence in the south. We may fairly

52 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

presume that the intermediate elevations commonly
have the same volcanic character.

From considerations such as these, which might be
greatly extended, we come to the conclusion that
mountains are essentially limited to the continental
masses; while volcanoes, that other type of great
elevations on the earth's surface, are normally devel-
oped on the sea floors or in the narrow belt of land
about the margins of the greater ocean basins.
Having established the proposition that mountains
are land phenomena, that is, in some way connected
with continents, we are forced by logical con-
siderations to the hypothesis that they are in some
way causatively connected with land growth; either
mountains are the effect of continental growth, or
continents are produced by mountain-growing, or the
two are the effect of a common cause. In one or the
other of these modes of action we must seek the
cause of mountainous elevations. I propose now to
set forth a view concerning mountain-building which
Is founded on the foregoing considerations.

Geologists have already noticed the fact that each
important mountain elevation usually consists of two
parts, — first, the sharply flexed strata which compose
the mountain proper ; and next, a sort of pedestal or
foundation of uplifted strata which lies on either side
of the mountain ranges, and sometimes exists in the
form of mountain-walled table-lands in the midst of
the sharply flexed rocks. Thus, if we journey from
the Mississippi River toward the Rocky Mountains,

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 53

we find that our path rises steadily upward over the
surface of massively upborne rocks, not folded into the
mountainous form, until when we come within sight of
the mountain walls of the Cordilleras we have at-
tained a height of five or six thousand feet above the
level of the sea. This great eastward-sloping table-
land of the Cordilleran system extends along the
greater part of its eastern flank from the extreme
north to the far south of the American continent.
Only in the region of Central America, where the
elevations diminish in height, is it inconspicuous.
In the isthmus proper, where the mountain folds are
for a short distance wanting, it nearly or altogether
disappears.

In the Appalachian district of elevations we have,
both on the eastern and western slopes of the range,
more or less distinct evidence of similar uplifts of
the strata, which bear about the same proportion to
the total height of the mountains as do the greater
table-lands built on the east of the Cordilleras. The
continent of North America appears to be in the
main composed of these massive elevations, which
have grown proportionately with the growth of the
more dislocated strata which have folded into the
true mountain-built attitude. In other continental
areas mountains generally exhibit very much the
same type of structure. Thus in the Italian penin-
sula, where a range of low mountains projects far
southward into the Mediterranean, we find the prom-
ontory consisting in part of table-land elevation, —

54 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

that is, of rocks uplifted without flexure, — and in
part of flexed rocks or true mountains. Although our
knowledge of the reliefs of the earth is not sufficient to
enable us to assert that this is an invariable feature,
all that has been observed warrants the conclusion
that the process of mountain -building is usually a1>
tended by the formation of table-land elevation, and
that the continental masses, apart from the portion
of the areas which are involved in the mountain
folds, is in the main made up of these massive up-
lifts on the crest of which the mountains develop.
We are now prepared to consider the processes which
lead to mountain growth with the view of determin-
ing whether we may not find in these processes a
means whereby we may account for the growth of the
great land-masses.

Geologists have very generally considered that
mountain flexures as well as the larger foldings of
the continents on which they rest are due to the loss
of heat in the deeper parts of the earth. We know,
by actual experiment from mines and deep well-
borings as well as by observing hot springs and vol-
canoes, that the earth is hot in its greater depths,
far hotter than it is in the outer parts. We further-
more know that a body in cooling necessarily loses
most heat in the parts which are hottest, for the very
simple reason that in those regions there is the most
heat to lose. The outer portion of the earth, from
an early age bathed in the cold of the celestial
spaces, where the temperature is some hundreds of

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 55

degrees below zero Fahrenheit, long ago lost the
most of its original temperature. The heat of the
depths of the sphere has been hindered in its escape
by the non-conductive nature of the outer crust, and
has therefore slowly flowed away. Each day there
escapes from the deeper parts of the earth enough
heat to melt a number of cubic miles of ice ; prob-
ably somewhere between twenty and two hundred
cubic miles of ice would be converted into water
by the daily outflow of the temperature. We know
furthermore that the earth's interior must be com-
posed of materials which shrink in cooling; there-
fore we have to believe that the central parts of the
earth are always diminishing in bulk from the loss
of heat, while the outer parts contract but little.

The most of the loss of volume due to the escape
of heat is in the deeper parts of the earth, very
little of it occurring in the relatively cool outer
rocks. In consequence of this refrigeration the in-
ternal mass tends to withdraw from the outer shell
toward the centre; but as this outer shell is ex-
tremely heavy, being many miles in thickness and
composed of compact material, it necessarily follows
that the shrinkage of the deeper parts takes place
step by step, never allowing any interspaces between
the outer and the inner part to form. The result of
the contraction of this internal region, while the ex-
ternal does not contract, is necessarily a folding of
the crust or some other movement which will per-
mit the adjustment of the rocks, which is evidently

56 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

required. If the earth's outer part were of perfectly
amorphous rock, without any lines of weakness, — if
it were, in a word, throughout composed of crystal-
line material such as we find in a coherent mass
of granite, — the probable effect of this internal
contraction upon the outer part would be simply to
crush it into fine bits, which would then creep over
one another, and so effect the movement necessary to
relieve the strain caused by the contractions of the
deeper portions of the sphere. In this case we should
probably have no distinct mountain ridges, but only
at most irregular bulgings of the earth's surface;
but in fact all the rocks we know, certainly all for a
score or two of miles below the crust, have lines of
weakness which favor some particular form of moun-
tain-building under the strains which we are now
considering.

The greater part of the known rocks have more
or less stratification or bedding, — some remnant
of the division into horizontal planes which charac-
terizes all rocks when they are laid down upon
the sea floor. Even our apparently massive depos-
its, such as the granites, are divided by joint planes,
and in certain cases retain a part of their original
stratification in their structure. The result is that
under the pressure brought about by contraction,
these rocks flex somewhat in the manner of the
leaves of a book when they are urged together by
lateral pressure. The yielding where the rocks are
thin-bedded may be easy^ as in the case of these sheets

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 57

of paper, and give rise to innumerable slight folds,
which in turn are folded into larger folds ; the sec-
ondary folds accumulate into yet greater flexures,
and so slaty rocks often become snarled almost as a
tangled skein of thread by the tortuous pressures to
which they have been subjected. Massive thick-
bedded rocks, such as the sandstones, exhibit less
considerable though manifest flexing under these
strains ; and so we find that the extent to which fold-
ing is effected is in a way rudely proportionate to the
extent to which divisional planes favor the move-
ments by which the rocks are crumpled into moun-
tainous forms.

The continent of North America, especially in the
Appalachian system of dislocations, exhibits all
grades of the effect produced by mountain-building
forces on rocks of diverse resistance to strain. Thus
in the Narragansett basin of Rhode Island, where a
great part of the strata are of soft shales formed
during the Carboniferous period, the thin pliant beds
entangled in the old mountain arches, the projecting
ridges of which have been entirely worn away, ex-
hibit a surprising complication of folding; while in
the same area certain massive conglomerates, beds
of closely cemented pebbles having united layers
forty or fifty feet thick and almost without stratifica-
tion planes, are hardly thrown from their original
attitudes by the pressures which have so complicated
the more yielding strata. Studying the section from
central Tennessee, through the mountains of eastern

58 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Tennessee and western North Carolina, we find that
the millstone grit of central Tennessee, which has a
thickness of two or three thousand feet and is very
massive bedded, has hardly yielded at all to the
pressures which have violently disturbed the thin-
ner bedded rocks which lie in the valley of the
Holston River.

We may therefore regard our mountains as the re-
sult of the internal strains arising from contractions
acting upon the rocks provided with divisional
plains, and therefore fitted as are the leaves of a
book, or a series of pasteboard sheets, to fold under
the action of compressive forces.

When mountain-building forces operate upon a
section of the earth's crust which is favorably sit-
uated for folding, they tend to lift the rocks into
great billowy arches, the crests of which are in a
general way parallel to each other. We may observe
many familiar instances of similar movements in our
ordinary experiences. Wherever materials used in
the arts are in any way caused to swell or enlarge by
taking in moisture or by the increase of heat, we
find that they assume this form. Thus the asphalt
on our sidewalks when expanded by the summer
heat is cast into ridges. So, too, a thin sheet of
wood placed on the floor in the shape of veneering
will at times take in moisture and warp into small
ridges; even the ice in our ponds forming at
very low temperatures and afterward expanding in
warmer weather, often forms sharp, mountain-like

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 59

ridges around the shores, — elevations which are de-
veloped by the pressure which the enlarged ice exerts
against the shore. Ice is a substance of proverbial
brittleness, more brittle indeed than any of our
rocks ; and yet, as we perceive, when in thin sheets or
in many cases an aggregation of thin sheets produced
by successive freezing and thawing, it readily flexes
under the action of continuous, slowly operating, and
powerful pressure.

Let us now consider what takes place when a
mountain-fold is uplifted into the form of an elon-
gated dome such as we find exhibited in normal
mountain-built countries, as, for instance, in the
Alleghanies of Pennsylvania. We see that the ten-
dency must be to form a great cavity beneath the
ridge of the mountain, a hollow arch, which if left
open would have perhaps a height of a mile or more,
a width of four or five miles, and a length of a score
or two of miles, while the uplifted mass of rock
would have a thickness of several thousand feet.
We know by well-ascertained facts that no such cavity
can actually be created, for none of our rocks are strong
enough to support themselves in such attitudes as the
supposition implies. If we could by any contrivance
produce a hollow space of this nature, the weight of
the superincumbent material would inevitably crush
the rocks into powder, and the mass would disappear
in the cavity in the form of comminuted rock. We
therefore must believe that in all cases this space is
filled in with material which is forced into it as the

60 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

arch above is formed. This conclusion does not rest
upon theory alone. We have in our worn-down
mountains amply sufficient evidence to warrant the
conclusions that in all cases the domes of these ele-
vations are supported by rocky matter squeezed from
below or from the sides into the space.

Taking the natural sections of the mountain arches,
we commonly find that granites or similar rocks have
been packed in beneath the upcurve so as to support
the rising mountain at every stage of its upward
growth. It appears indeed, in all cases where we
can get a clear view of the facts, that this incoming
of matter which underpins a mountain is usually
greater in quantity than is required to support the
arch. It in a measure serves also to uplift the
unarched stratified beds on either side of the ridges
so that they lie at a higher level than they would have
were it not for this material which is forced in be-
neath the dome. There can be no question that the
elevation of the table -land or unfolded rocks on
either side of the mountain arch is a concomitant of
this movement of the deep-seated and softer rocks of
the crust, softened because of their heated condition,
toward mountain upcurves; for wherever we get a
section through the table-land, we find that this
elevation is also supported by a similar underpin-
ning of material, which we may fairly suppose to
have moved on beneath it concurrently with the
mountain-folding. Therefore we may advance a
step in our definition of mountain elevations. We

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 61

may now say that they usually consist of foldings in
the more flexible outer parts of the earth's crust,
which are supported by deeper-lying unstratified ma-
terial which has been softened by heat, and thereby,
though perhaps not exactly fluid, enabled to flow in
beneath the mountain curves. We may say, further,
that this underpinning material was not only forced
in beneath the mountain arches, but also accumu-
lated to a great extent beneath the beds on either
side which have not been flexed by the mountain-
building pressures.

If the continents are made up of an aggregation of
mountain pedestals, and if the development of these
pedestals is due to mountain growth, then we come
to the conclusion that continents are essentially ele-
vations of the crust formed as the concomitant of
mountain-building. All the facts now known con-
cerning the relation of continents and mountains
serve to affirm this hypothesis. We have seen that
there are no continents without mountains, and evi-
dently no mountains similar to those on the land
surface on the deep-sea floors. If any mountains
exist in those great hidden fields, they must be so
unlike he ridges we know on the earth's surface that
they do not deserve to be classed with them. Any
further analysis of the facts we have already given
would carry us too far from the substance of our in-
quiry. Although it is not in a scientific sense le-
gitimate to assume that all continental growth is
effected as a concomitant of mountain-building, the

62 NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

facts appear to me to be sufficient to warrant the
assertion that the portions of the continental masses
above the level of the sea are in the main, if not al-
together, the concomitant of mountain growth.

It may appear at first sight unreasonable to sup-
pose that the material beneath the mountain arches
is as free to move into the arches of the uplifts as
our supposition requires. The geologist, however,
knows many facts which go to show that at a little
depth beneath the crust, in the outer verge of those
high temperatures which exist in the earth's interior,
rocky matter in a state of more or less complete
fusion is able to move with exceeding ease for great
distances beneath the crust. The best evidence we
find of such ready subterranean movement of the
materials in the earth's depths is afforded by vol-
canic ejections. A volcano is essentially a steam-jet,
and the steam almost certainly is derived from water
buried in the rocks at the time of their formation.

The quantity of matter extruded by a volcano is
very great. We get an inadequate sense of its mass
from the cones which are accumulated about the
point of ejection. Thus in the case of ^Etna, — a vol-
cano, vast though it is, of the second order of magni-
tude in terrestrial cones, — we find in and around the
elevation a mass of ejected rocky material which
amounts in volume to somewhere near one thousand
cubic miles; yet this prodigious mass of matter is
only a small part of that which has been ejected
from the vent. The larger part of the ejections

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 63

from a volcano are probably in the shape of water and
other vapors which pass away into the air. Of the
solid or earthy matter thrown out, a very great,
probably in most cases by far the larger, part is in
the form of fine dust, which floats away for great
distances, often darkening the air over a wide field.
Thus in the case of Vesuvius, in two different erup-
tions the skies at Constantinople had at midday a
midnight darkness, owing to the large quantities of
dust drifted away from that cone, beclouding the air
for a thousand miles from the point of ejection.
The great eruption of Krakatoa so charged the earth's
atmosphere with dust that for two or three years our
sunsets and sunrises were made to glow by the reflec-
tion of the light from the suspended matter. It
seems likely from certain computations which rest
upon approximate data that in the case of ^Etna,
somewhere about four thousand cubic miles of mat-
ter must have been ejected during the brief geological
history of that cone, — a history which extends back
only to the early stages of the Tertiary period, or as
we may say to the geological yesterday.

As all the rocky materials blown out from the
crater of iEtna are surcharged with water, it is safe to
assume that it comes from no very great depth in
the earth's interior. It appears necessary to sup-
pose that it is from that part of the crust which has
been laid down on old sea floors, and buried for a
few miles in the depths of the earth by subsequently
formed accumulations of rocks. All the evidence ig

64 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

against the supposition that the ejected substances
come from the central portions of the earth. We
thus have the surprising fact that from a vent such
as we are considering, there may be discharged in
the course of a few geological periods an amount of
matter sufficient to cover the whole of Massachusetts
and Rhode Island to the depth of nearly half a mile.
It would appear a natural consequence of this vast
removal of matter from the crust that the roots of
the volcano would sink downward and come to oc-
cupy a great concavity. The fact is, however, that
notwithstanding this vast discharge of lava, ash, and
steam through the vent of iEtna, the surface on
which the volcano rests has been gradually uplifted
since the time when the crater began to cast forth
its materials. It has actually risen to the height of
a thousand feet or more above the original level
which it occupied. This elevation of the basement
of a volcano coincidently with the throwing out of a
vast amount of material which presumably is not
taken from great depths within the earth, but comes
from its more superficial parts, is not a peculiar feat-
ure of iEtna. It may be observed in many volcanic
districts, and there is reason to suspect that it is a
frequent concomitant of eruptions.

The only way in which we can account for the up-
rising of the basis of a volcanic cone or even for the
failure of the region to subside, is by the supposition
that the materials which are discharged from the
vent migrate horizontally beneath the crust of the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 65

earth for great distances toward the point of escape,
driven to their movement by the action of expanding
vapors, principally that of steam.

It is not in our way to inquire further into the
peculiar phenomena of volcanic action; but these
wonderful features in the physiography of the earth
serve to show us that such a hypothesis of the migra-
tion of rocky matter as is required in the supposition
concerning the growth of continents and mountains
is not irrelevant, but may be fairly assumed in the
development of our hypothesis.

Having thus laid the foundation of our theory as
to the formation of the continental elevations, we
may next proceed to consider the process of land
growth and its relation to the development of the life
which has thereby been provided with a theatre for
its evolution. We may thus hope to see something
of the order in the evolution of geographic features
which has controlled the development of organic life.

CHAPTER III.

Permanence of Continents ; Evidence that their Areas have been Sea Floors.

— Evidence of slow Growth of Mountains. — Proof that the Continents
are ancient. — Evidence from Organic Life ; from the Physical Structure
of Sediments. — Devonian Black Shale. —Continental Shelf ; Conditions
of its Formation. — Progressive Advance in Development of the Conti-
nent from Cambrian Time to the present Day. — Successive Positions of
Shore-line. — Variations in the Form of Continent; Subsidence during
Glacial Period in Northern Portion ; corresponding Uplift in Southern
Portion. — Evidence from the West Indies Islands ; from Florida Rocks

— Summary.

Our preliminary inquiry into the condition of con-
tinental growth appears to indicate that the great
lands we term continents are the result in good part
at least of mountain growth. The greater are sub-
stantially consequent on the development of the
lesser elevations. The principal difficulty we en-
counter in this hypothesis is that it does not provide
us with a beginning. It does not tell us why at
certain points on this earthy ball mountains grow,
and by the growth of their pedestals and foldings lift
a portion of the earth's surface above the plane of the
sea. It is something, however, if we esteem the in-
quiry sufficiently successful to show us in a general
way that the two types of irregularities of the earth's
surface, the continental masses and the mountains3
are due to one and the same mode of action.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. <57

The next problem before us concerns the measure
of permanence of these important reliefs which in
the form of the dry lands afford the principal theatre
of the higher realms of life. On this point the
opinions of students of the earth are still somewhat
divided.

When geologists found that near the summits of
many of the highest mountains in every part of the
world the rocks were composed of sediments worn
from yet older lands containing fossils which lived
on ancient sea floors, they naturally came to the
conclusion that the continents had undergone great
changes in their positions, at one time what is now
land being deep sea, and at another time what is
abysmal sea floor having been dry land. To certain
minds the notion that the earth has been the seat of
violent revolutionary changes appears to be singu-
larly agreeable. Revolutions of Nature, like great
battlefields, have a fascination to many folk, particu-
larly when they are considered as far-off disturb-
ances. The earlier geologists regarded the earth's
history as presenting alternate periods of brief vio-
lent action and of long enduring repose. In the
periods of disturbance the lands were elevated above
the sea or lowered below its level, the mountains
were swiftly built, and life was swept away by the
commotions in the course of time, to be recreated
by the Divine act. Gradually, however, with the
advance of science, it was seen that this theory of
catastrophic violence at certain stages in the earth's

68 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

history was unsupported by the facts. We can prove
in the case of many great mountain ranges that they
have been gradually uplifted to their present alti-
tudes ; that they have grown indeed so slowly that
there may never have been a stage in their develop-
ment when they moved upward with such violence
as to destroy the animals and plants which dwelt
upon them.

The evidence of the slow growth of mountains comes
to us in several diverse ways. In part the proof is of
a somewhat complicated nature; in part it may be
perceived by the ordinary observer. One of the simple
proofs of a gradual gain in height is afforded by the
many cases in which a considerable river passes
directly across the line of a great mountain fold or
fault, dislocations such as necessarily occur in moun-
tain-building. In either of these cases we may find
a stream passing transversely across the mountain,
cutting it through from top to bottom, under such
circumstances as to make it plain that the river was
on the ground before the elevation was formed. The
moving waters of the stream were le at every step
in the growth of the elevation to cut its bed down-
ward more rapidly than the mountain-building forces
elevated the rocks. If at any one time the current
had not been able to make headway against the
barrier which the upheaval of the surface tended to
raise to its course, it would havj been deflected, and
the ridge would have remained unriven. Now, the
cutting power of a stream is commonly limited with-

; NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 69

in narrow bounds. It can in most cases only cut
away rocks at the rate of a few feet in a century,
and consequently the upward movement of the strata
could never have much exceeded this rate.

Similarly, where a fault exists with a great up-
throw on one side and a corresponding downthrow on
the other, if the stream flows toward the side which
is upthrown and has cut its way through the rocks,
we must conceive the dislocation to have taken place
with such slowness that at no time was a dam formed
sufficiently high to prevent the passage of the waters.
If such a barrier had come to exist, through a sud-
den upward movement of the faulted rocks, we can
often prove that the river would have been deflected
into a channel which would have carried it around
the elevation. Evidence of this kind has been gath-
ered in the case of but few mountain arches in the
world; it is indeed not of a nature to be readily
discerned. We may yet assume that the phenomena
of mountain growth does not naturally lead to sudden
disturbances of great violence. As the earth's heat
in its internal parts is diminished, the strains accu-
mulate and the rocks yield in a way which even in a
geological sense is slow. We can no longer, as did
the geologists of the last century, conceive the Alps
or the Alleghanies or any of the great elevations of
the earth as thrown up at one stroke, but must re-
gard them as structures of gradual growth. They
are perhaps growing at present at about the same
rate as in all stages of the past.

70 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Inasmuch as mountains and continents clearly
develop together in something like the same rate of
movement, it is no surprise to find that continents
are not, as the earlier students of the earth conceived
them, the accidents of the geological ages; but they
are rather great, slowly evolved permanences in the
structure of the earth.

The proof that our continents are old, that they
are of vast antiquity, even in a geological sense,
comes to us in part through the history of organic
life, and in part from the character and distribution
of the sediments accumulated on the sea floor and
elevated in the land-masses. The facts which go to
support this proposition are so numerous that the
weight of the argument in favor of the permanence
of continents cannot be adequately given in a brief
way. The most that can be done with this part of
our exposition is to indicate the general nature of
the evidence on which these conclusions rest. These
are as follows : —

Each of the continental masses has, as we have al-
ready had occasion to note, an assemblage of life
more or less peculiar to itself. A naturalist with a
broad and accurate knowledge of organic forms
would have no difficulty in determining the conti-
nent whence came any considerable collection, either
of animals or plants. As long as we believed that
each organic species came into being as the result of
a direct and mysterious creative act on the part of a
supreme power, this peculiarity in the distribution

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 71

of life had no evident bearing on the theory of conti-
nental history. As soon, however, as we came to
accept the hypothesis that living forms attained to
their peculiar shapes and functions by a gradual
transition, each important step requiring a consider-
able period for its accomplishment, it became evi-
dent that the lands could not have had anything like
the instability in their position which was of old
attributed to them. Thus, in the case of the arma-
dillos of South America, a group of forms now pecu-
liar to that continent, we have to suppose that the
creature was gradually brought to its present form
by a series of transitions which required a great
number of species for its completion.

There is no doubt that the armadillo came from
an ordinary hairy mammal. The steps which led to
the development of the hard plates of the skin and
of the concomitant habit of rolling the body into
a ball in order to secure protection from its ene-
mies, must have required many geological periods
for their accomplishment. Such elaborations of pe-
culiar forms demand that the land area in which
they occur shall be permanent, in order that the
group in which the changes are taking place shall
survive. Furthermore, it is necessary that the con-
tinent which is the theatre of the evolution shall re-
main separate from other land areas. If the South
American field had been frequently connected with
other land masses, creatures of more vigorous habits
would have entered upon the area from other lands
and displaced these weak forms.

72 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA

We see such a process of extinguishing lowly
species taking place in Australia to-day. Most of
the common wild animals of Europe develop most
rapidly in Australia, displacing the ancient native
inhabitants. It is a well-known fact that rabbits
of Europe have multiplied to such an extent in this
southern continent that they are driving out the
less vigorous marsupials by occupying their ground
and appropriating their food. If wolves or our
larger cats, the leopards and tigers, were made resi-
dents of Australia, they would doubtless in a very
brief time altogether destroy the pouched animals of
that region. Thus from a study of the organic life
which occupies the region of the continents, we are
brought to the conclusion that these land masses
have remained from a very remote age above the
level of the sea, and that they have maintained a
tolerably complete isolation from each other, Now
and then the two great land-masses of the Old and
the New World which are grouped about the North
Pole may have united with each other ; but if such
connections ever existed, they were probably of a
temporary nature.

Similar evidence as to the relative permanence of
continents is afforded by the physical characters of
the sediments which make up the rocks lying upon
our continental areas. In most cases these rocks
contain large quantities of coarse detrital matter,
evidently worn from the neighboring lands. Only
here and there do we find depqsits which were mani-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 73

iestly formed on the floor of the deeper seas. Thus
in the one hundred thousand feet or so of rock sec-
tion formed since the dawn of life on the earth's sur-
face within the limits of what is now North America,
we find that at least nine tenths of the whole mass is
composed of detrital materials or of fossils which
show that the shores of the sea in which the deposi-
tion took place were not far away from the site now
occupied by the strata. Wherever we find conglo-
merates, coarse sandstones, or muds which have
rapidly accumulated, we may be sure that we are
near old shores; only the pure limestones and the
very fine shales or deposits of volcanic debris can
be accumulated at points far from the coast-line.
Thus all the mud and sand and small pebbles
which escape from the Mississippi River descend
upon the floor of the Gulf of Mexico within a short
distance of the mouth of the stream ; only the com-
pletely dissolved matter, that which does not discolor
the water, finds its way to a great distance from the
coast.

To conceive the nature of this evidence drawn
from the composition of the rocks, it would be well
to note certain peculiarities of the most characteris-
tic deep-sea deposit which has yet been found in
North America. This is the Devonian black shale,
so extensively developed in the valley of the Ohio
River, and the neighboring parts of the continent,
and which is characteristically an open or deep-sea
deposit. During the lower Devonian period the dis-

74 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

trict now occupied by the valley of the Mississippi
was in the main tolerably deep sea. On the west
arose the great islands of the archipelago formed by
the emerging ridges of the Cordilleran Mountains;
on the east the archipelago of the partially emerged
Appalachian system. Between the two apparently
flowed the waters of what is now the Gulf Stream.
At this time near the shores of this great gulf of the
Mississippi valley deposits worn from the islands
of the east and west were plentifully laid down.
Near these shores they contained coarse debris, indi-
cating the presence of lands but into the middle por-
tions of this great Mississippi gulf and much of the
eastern district there came but very small quantities
of land sediment. The consequence was that for
several geological periods deep-sea beds were laid
down in that field. They consist of extremely fine-
grained materials derived from the waste of land-
rocks, commingled with a great quantity of organic
debris. So great is the amount of organic matter
in the mass that when we distil it we obtain a con-
siderable part of its bulk of those complicated sub-
stances known under the common name of petroleum.
At several points in the Paleozoic rocks of North
America we have in ancient coral reefs excellent
evidence as to the former position of the shore-line,
and therefore of the alterations in the elevation of
the land which have taken place since these interest-
ing deposits were formed. Thus in the neighbor-
hood of Louisville, Kentucky, there is an extensive

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 75

coral reef formed in the Devonian period, the larger
parts of which lie at the height of three or four hun-
dred feet above the sea. It is evident, on the study
of this structure, that it was formed just below the
level of the ancient ocean which at the time of its
construction extended over this part of the country.
Again, in New York, at a yet greater height above
the sea, we have similar reefs which were formed at
various ages, partly in Silurian times, and partly in
successive epochs up to near the base of the Carbon-
iferous series. Taking all these coral reefs in this
country, we can throughout the Paleozoic age deter-
mine, at least for limited areas, the height at which
the waters lay against the face of the continent.

There are some other beds in the rocks of North
America which afford evidence showing that they
were formed in pelagic conditions or on the floor of
wide seas; but, as before remarked, at least nine
tenths of the whole section was evidently deposited
in rather shallow water, at no great distances from
shore-lines whence the debris composing the rocks
came.

The lowland section of the Atlantic and Gulf
States from the mouth of the Hudson to the Rio
Grande presents one of the most interesting geo-
graphic features of the continent. Except in Siberia
and the Paraguayan district of South America, there
is probably no such extensive plain-land in the world,
and it is in fact a more considerable unbroken level
surface than is elsewhere known save in Asia. All

76 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

plain-lands of this or similar nature are due to either
of two simple causes. They owe their level surface
to the debasement of the land under the action of
erosive agents which work within the atmosphere, or
they are the result of the constructive processes
which go on upon the sea floor along the borders of
previously existing lands. The plains which are
produced by the wearing away of the land rarely, if
ever, attain to a surface anywhere near as horizon-
tal as that exhibited in the great Carolinian plain.
There are generally some hard portions of the rock
which stand as monuments of the former great eleva-
tion of the country. The great plains of the world
are characteristically formed of sea-bottom deposits,
the beds of which have not yet been disturbed by
mountain-building.

If the student should journey from the eastern foot
of the Appalachian Mountains straight away to the
Atlantic, say across the border-land of Georgia or the
Carolinas, he would observe that the surface gently
inclined toward the sea at the rate of about five feet
in a mile. Here and there the more considerable
streams have cut their way across this gently in-
clined region, making sharp breaks in its otherwise
uniform surface; but these occasional interruptions
do not materially qualify the level character of the
country. Over a large part of the area the plain
has a billowy or rolling surface which indicates that
the river action has not been able to shape the to-
pography so as to alter its original sea-bottom form.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 77

As the observer proceeds toward the sea-shore he
may note at various points, especially as he ap-
proaches the present coast-line, the existence of more
or less sharply defined benches, which he, if expert,
recognizes to be old sea margins, — levels at which
the ocean lay for a time during the process of the up-
rising of the plain. At the present shore-line the last
and naturally the most distinct of these sea margins
is the bench against which the margin of the sea
now lies.

If, now, the student could take on the habits of an
aquatic animal and follow the slope which he has
been pursuing farther out beneath the ocean's sur-
face, he would observe that it declined to the east-
ward at the same rate at which he had observed it
to fall in his journey from the mountains to the
ocean border. Moreover, the general shape of the
emerged area, apart from that given by the channels
of the streams on the land, would be almost exactly
paralleled on the sea floor in the gentle undulations
of the bottom. Following the surface from fifty to
a hundred miles out from the present shore-line,
with the bottom declining to the eastward at the rate
of about five feet in a mile, the student would finally
come to a point where the plain began to pitch more
rapidly toward the depths of the sea, changing the
rate of its descent from about five feet to a slope of
one hundred or two hundred feet to the mile ; and
this steeper declivity would continue until the deeper
parts of the sea were attained.

78 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Our imaginary submarine geologist would readily
note the conditions of origin of this under-water
shelf. He would find that owing to the action of the
undertow produced by the surf, and of the tide in its
reflux from the shore, a quantity of debris won from
the land and delivered to the sea by the ocean waves
or by rivers, was constantly though slowly journey-
ing down the gentle inclination at its margin. In
other words, he would note that this shelf is in
effect like the delta of a river, — which is just such a
plain as we have been describing, only on a smaller
scale, — over the top of which debris is carried to the
steep front where it comes to rest. Thus a delta is
constantly pushing its margin in successive, somewhat
steeply inclined strata out into the sea. The conti-
nental shelf may be regarded as the continental
delta, vastly greater in area and mass, and much
more slowly formed than the delta of true rivers,
such as that of the Nile or the Mississippi.

From the facts noted above, we perceive that the
great southern plain is but the emerged portion of a
vast accumulation of debris which has been formed
along the Atlantic coast from the west of the land
accumulated on the sea bottom during the geologic
ages since the continent began to grow. Nearly all
the extended lands in the world have been formed in
this manner; but the greater portion of them have
been disrupted and given a varied outline by moun-
tain-building forces, while this great southern plain
has escaped such disturbance. With the further

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 79

shrinkage of this sphere it will undoubtedly obey the
forces which corrugate the rocks and take on a moun-
tainous shape, for its present plain surface is only
one stage in the course of continental growth.

If the student seeks the source of the materials
which have been built into this continental plain, he
may find them in the worn down uplands, — the
mountains of the Appalachian, the Cordilleran, and
the Laurentian districts, which have, as we may
readily see, lost a great portion of their mass, the
materials being borne away to the neighboring sea.
From the point of view of the physiographer, this
southern plain is a most interesting case of a great
land in the second stage of its organization, the first
step being the accumulation of debris on the sea
floor in a nearly horizontal position, the next the
state in which it rises above the sea floor and takes
on the aspect of an extended plain, the third being
that in which the plain is corrugated by the moun-
tain-building forces, the final step in the series being
that in which the surface is degraded once again into
the form of a rude plain, only the roots of the moun-
tains remaining to attest the later stages of its his-
tory. From Virginia, and thence to the northward
to Nova Scotia, these worn down mountains which
have returned almost to the aspect of the plain may
often be clearly discerned. The materials which
composed their worn away portions have been re-
moved by the action of streams of water or of ice ;
but from the highly tilted attitudes of the rocks be-

80 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

neath the surface we may readily infer the original
position and height of the mountains which once
stood upon the surface.

Only a portion, perhaps not the greater portion, of
these vast continental deltas consists of the waste
yielded in the form of sand, gravel, or mud to the
sea floors. In large part the debris is formed of
organic remains, — the bodies of animals and plants
which have died and given their debris to the sea
bottom. This element of the strata is of the utmost
importance to the organic life which is afterward to
dwell on the lands which are formed from these
marine accumulations. These animals which yield
the fossils obtain the substances which they build
into their bodies from the materials which are dis-
solved in the sea waters, and which being in the state
of complete solution are not visible to the eye.
These substances which are dissolved in sea water
and which give it its saline taste and its hard quality,
have come into the ocean mainly from the rivers,
and from the volcanoes which are scattered over the
sea floor and along the coasts of the continents. If
we take a cubic foot of sea-water, we may find in it
atoms or molecules of mineral matter which have
been derived from every river of every land. Thus
the limy matter and other organic waste which rocks
contain is not in most cases derived from the shores
of the continent nearest to the point where the beds
were laid down, but has its source in many different
lands and through the volcanoes from the strata be-
neath the existing seas.

NATUEE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 81

In the considerations as above set forth we per-
ceive that the coast shelf or continental delta which
borders the eastern side of North America has only
in part derived its materials from the waste of that
continent. In large part the materials have been
gathered upon it from the great store which the sea
contains. Thus if we could take away from the
southern plain the portion of its mass which animals
and plants have won from the waters of the sea, we
should doubtless find that nearly the whole of the
great area would by the consequent diminution of
bulk sink below the level of the sea. Further inquiry
would show us that a similar withdrawal of the or-
ganic waste from the rocks underlying the other por-
tions of the continent, would reduce its consolidated
area to the state of detached islands.

There is yet another proof as to the relative stabil-
ity of these continental masses derived from a very
interesting physiographic feature known as the con-
tinental shelf. Around the greater part of the shores
of all the continents which have been carefully stud-
ied by the sounding-lead, we mark the presence of a
wide fringe of shallow water extending from the
shore-line to the distance of some scores or hundreds
of miles from the edge of the continent, at its outer
or seaward margin descending suddenly into deep
water. The existence of this shelf has been well
established throughout the region of the north At-
lantic, — the only portion of the earth's surface where
soundings have been made with such completeness

82 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

as to show with tolerable accuracy the shape of the
sea bottom. Soundings made elsewhere indicate
that this feature is probably common along the
greater part of the continental shores.

Simple inspection of the facts concerning the con-
tinental shelf serves to indicate pretty clearly that
it is composed of the waste worn from the continent
by the sea or conveyed to the shores by rivers or
glaciers, and thence distributed over the portion of
the sea floor near the coast-line, partly by the action
of the waves, but mainly by tidal currents. This
supposition is fortified by several facts. Wherever
we can ascertain that the coast shelf is abundantly
developed, we find that the continental surface to the
inland of it bears the mark of long-continued abra-
sion by the sea. Thus along the eastern coast of the
United States, where the continental shelf is very
well developed, we find evidences of great cutting
action affected by the ocean waves.

Along the shore from New Brunswick to the Caro-
linas, the old mountains such as once occupied
eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and eastern
Virginia, have been worn down to their very roots
at times when the sea worked at levels a few hundred
feet higher than it does at present. This benching
back of the continent by marine action is most
clearly shown in Virginia. The Virginian district
shows us three distinct sets of mountains: on the
west of the Blue Ridge we have a set of well -de-
veloped mountains, the Virginia Alleghanies, which

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 8^

though somewhat eroded, retain their relief and
much of their original mountainous contours. In
the Blue Ridge we have a broad massive mountain
range relatively little worn on its western aspect,
but profoundly eroded on the eastern face of the
chain. Farther to the east, on the plain-land of Vir-
ginia, we have another set of mountain-built rocks,
which have been planed down to a nearly level sur-
face. Originally the newer mountains of eastern
Virginia, lying to the eastward of the Blue Ridge,
which were formed at about the same time as those
in the west of that axis, were as well developed as
the Alleghanies to the west of that barrier; but the
whole surface of this eastern section has been so
worn by the action of the sea, the material being
removed to form the continental shelf, that scarcely
a vestige of their original altitude now remains.
The sea bench of eastern Virginia, the materials of
which have been removed to the ocean floor or dis-
solved in its waters, probably represents a section
having a depth of at least half a mile and a width
of somewhere near a hundred miles.

The enormous erosion indicated by this continen-
tal bench which lies above the level of the sea and
the corresponding shelf of the detrital materials ex-
tending out for a hundred miles or more from the
coast requires us to suppose that for a great period
in the past, perhaps ever since the Triassic age, this
shore has been within a few hundred feet of its pres-
ent altitude in relation to the sea. If during that

84 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

time the continent had been depressed very far below
its present level, the waves could not have operated
on this section ; so, too, a great elevation would have
taken this coast section out of the field of marine
erosion. Thus all the evidences from erosive work
which we obtain along the shore of this continent
point to only moderate variations in the altitude of
the shore from a remote period in the geological
past. It amounts to substantial proof that for many
geological periods the waves have worked within a
range of one thousand feet above the present shore-
line.

We often obtain similar evidence whenever we
can analyze the history of a shore by a study of the
successive deposits which were formed at different
stages in the earth's history. Thus in the case of
eastern Massachusetts, we are now able to affirm that
at various stages in the past the shore-line has been
near its present position. The facts on which we
found this statement are readily apprehensible and
may be briefly stated. They are as follows :

Beginning with the lower Cambrian period, the
earliest stage in the earth's history in which we have
unmistakable evidence of organic life, we find that
in this region of southeastern Massachusetts, in the
neighborhood of Attleborough, there were deposited
thick beds of shales with associated sandstones and
conglomerates containing large pebbles such as could
not be transported to any considerable distance from
the sea-shore. The deposits of this age contain

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 85

twenty or thirty species of fossils, including a great
assemblage of crustaceans, the bodies of which were
apparently broken by wave or current action. The
beds of this series frequently contain large, some-
what water-worn boulders and great quantities of
pebbles which have evidently been stratified by strong
currents. The agents which transport pebbles in
great quantities operate only near shore-lines; so,
too, the strong currents which have tossed these
fragments of rock about, can only exist in shallow
water. Moreover, on carefully inspecting these peb-
bles in deposits, we find that in many cases we can
ascertain the beds of rock whence the fragments
came. They are all derived from the rocks imme-
diately on the west of their present site. In this
manner by the use of these old mineralogical mu-
seums of the conglomerates we are able not only to
affirm the neighborhood of the shore- line in this re-
gion in an early stage of the earth's history, but also
to show that the greater part of the crystalline rocks
now existing in this neighborhood were exposed to
the action of the sea just as they are at present.

One stage higher in the geological section brings us
to the middle Cambrian of eastern Massachusetts, the
beds of trilobite -bearing strata at Braintree. These
deposits, which are abundantly developed in Boston
and vicinity, contain also great quantities of pebbles
and sometimes considerable boulders arranged in
strata which bear the unmistakable impress of shal-
low water. In the case of the Cambrian beds about

86 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Boston, we can prove that the pebbles were derived
from rocks at the sea-level lying near the place in
which we now find the fragments. Thus we estab-
lish the fact that at two stages in the Cambrian
period the shore-line of New England in the neigh-
borhood of what is now Massachusetts Bay was not
far from its present position.

After the Cambrian period there comes a great in-
terval, representing many geological ages extending
down to the Carboniferous time, in which we have
no evidence as to the position of the sea in this part
of the shore, — it was probably more elevated than at
the present time; but in the Carboniferous period, in
the basin of those streams which flow into the Nar-
ragansett Bay, we have an extensive series of coal-
measures, — beds which show by their structure that
for a very great period the shore-line was once more
near its present position. Here again the evidence
is mainly derived from pebbly beds which have a
thickness of several hundred feet, with a range and
character which indicate shallow water; and the
fragments are those derived from rocks which are
known to be in places within a short distance of the
deposits themselves. They come from the northwest,
as do those of our recent glacial deposits.

For the next step in the history of the shore-line
of eastern New England we must go to the Connec-
ticut valley, where we have ample proof that during
the early stages of the Jurassic period, or perhaps
the later part of the Triassic age, the land was near

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 87

its present level. The so-called sandstones of the
Connecticut valley are largely conglomerates, the
rocks of which were worn from the hills which bor-
der that great valley and accumulated in great quan-
tities in its trough. The evidence of the sea-shore
action is not limited to the physical characteristics
alone. As is well known, the sandstone layers of
the Massachusetts Triassic rocks contain great num-
bers of fossil footprints, — the marks left upon the
tidal shores by certain large creatures allied to our"
frogs and toads, which appear to have resorted to the
tidal waters for food or for breeding purposes, and
stamped the exposed mud-flats with their footprints.
Although some observers have come to the conclu-
sion that these rocks containing the footprints of
the Connecticut sandstone may have been formed in
fresh-water lakes, the body of the evidence points
rather to the conclusion that they were accumulated
in a salt-water basin. It is only where the tide
comes and goes that we have the conditions which
permit the preservation of such impressions as were
made by the feet of these ancient animals on the
sands.

After the age of the Connecticut sandstone, we
have again a considerable lapse of time before we
have another record of the shore conditions in this
region. Ascending to the lower Cretaceous period,
we find in certain imperfectly revealed deposits on
the island of Martha's Vineyard a considerable body
of fossils which have a character proper to shallow

88 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

water, and which belong to the lower stage of that
great section. We have here an assemblage of life
which has a certain similarity to marine forms of
the present day. The relatively modern character is
especially indicated by the fact that there are several
species of oysters in the beds of this age. The species
are evidently those which inhabit shallow water; and
the sediments in which they are contained, abound-
ing in small pebbles and composed in the main of
coarse sand, affirm this supposition, and show us that
at this, the fifth fossiliferous level of the Massachu-
setts rocks, we have again a shore-line near by. One
stage higher in the rocks of Martha's Vineyard, we
have in the well-known deposits exhibited at Gay
Head, beds probably formed in the Eocene or Miocene
Tertiary, proof that the shore-line was near its pres-
ent position. Here the evidence as to the neighbor-
hood of the shore is mainly of a purely physical
nature, but affords satisfactory proof of shore -line
conditions.

The Gay Head series of deposits was formed at the
mouth or delta section of a great river which prob-
ably conveyed the waters now discharged to the sea
through the Hudson, the Connecticut, the Black
stone, and other streams of southern New England.
It is easy to prove that these delta deposits lie at the
present time not more than one hundred feet above
the altitude at which they were laid down along the
old coast-line. They contain large bodies of vege-
table matter, — lignites, as they are termed, — com-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 69

posed of driftwood, which gathers in shallows about
the point of discharge where a great river escapes
into the sea.

Thus we see that the evidence from the coast shelf,
or under-water fringe of detritus, and the coast
bench, or the scarf whence this detritus was in part
obtained, and the fossiliferous record all agree in
affirming the conclusion that the New England
coast-line has not been far removed from its present
vertical position during a great part of the earth's
history. There are really no stratified deposits in
eastern Massachusetts which appear to indicate that
the shore has ever been deeply submerged since it
first came above the waters. Every fragment of the
geological section which remains appears to indi-
cate the persistence of the coast-line in somewhere
near its present position.

Against this evidence which seems to show the
tolerable permanence of one portion of this continent
we must set the proof which indicates its more or
less considerable instability at certain stages in the
earth's history. This evidence, though of a frag-
mentary nature, makes it plain that at certain times
and for brief periods particular parts of the conti-
nents are uplifted so as to extend the shore margin
far out to seaward, while other portions are depressed
to a depth beneath the sea. It is in these periods of
local depression that beds of marine origin were
deposited which were afterward uplifted so as to
bring them high above the sea. I propose now to

90 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

inquire into the character of these movements which
have taken place in the continent of North America.
As yet our information concerning these changes is
so imperfect that we cannot set forth the history of
the continent in anything like a complete manner.
Enough fragments of information, however, are ob-
tainable to display at least in outline the general
character of the oscillations which this land-mass
has undergone.

It is a safe rule in geological inquiry to begin our
exploration of obscure phenomena in that portion of
the earth's history which lies nearest the present
day; for in the yesterday of our earth's record we
may hope to find the facts less confused than in the
remoter past. The last great accident which befell
North America was that singular disturbance of its
climatal and other conditions known as the glacial
period. I hope in a subsequent chapter to show the
reader that a glacial period, vast as are the changes
in conditions of land and sea which it brings about,
is not really as peculiar in its character as is com-
monly supposed. Leaving aside for the present the
physiographic aspects and general geological history
of glaciation, we will devote our attention to certain
changes of level which came about during the ice
time, and the cause of these changes, and their effect
upon the continent considered as the theatre of life.

The studies made by Louis Agassiz proved that a
large part of the continent of North America had in
very recent geological times been occupied by a

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 91

thick deposit of ice. Agassiz was of the opinion that
the whole of the surface of this continent had been
covered by a glacial sheet. Subsequent inquiry has
shown that the glaciated area occupies only about
one half of the continent. The southern margin of
the ice sheet passed as an irregular and somewhat
broken line from some point on the Pacific coast
near the southern point of Oregon across the conti-
nent to the sea somewhere between New York and
Washington. South of this great wall of ice, which
in the period of greatest glaciation occupied the po-
sition thus indicated, there were probably a few
points of great elevation occupied by ice streams.
It is possible that in the higher valleys of the moun-
tains southward to Arizona local glaciers developed
in this peculiar stage of the earth's history. It is
clear that this glacial sheet attained a remarkable
depth. We know that it overrode the Berkshire
Hills and such mountains as Monadnock, and even
the summit of Mount Washington. In Switzerland,
where there was contemporaneously a great exten-
sion of the ice, it seems clear that the sheet attained
a depth considerably exceeding a mile ; and in North
America it is difficult to resist the conclusion that
the upper level of the great ice plaiD lay in places
at a height of nearly two miles above the surface
of the earth.

The phenomena of general glaciation are so unex-
ampled in our ordinary experiences that it is diffi-
cult to determine in a satisfactory way the conditions

92 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

of the land during this ice time. Of late, however,
it has become evident that during the glacial period
the northern part of North America, and probably
the northern part of Europe as well, sank down to a
depth increasing from the least submergence in the
neighborhood of Chesapeake Bay, where the down-
sinking probably did not amount to more than a few
score feet, northward to Greenland, where it probably
lowered the shore two thousand feet below its pres-
ent level. The amount of this submergence along
the coast of New England has been the subject of
much inquiry. Although the task is incomplete, a
number of observations have been gathered which
make it pretty clear that in the neighborhood of
Boston the submergence amounted to at least two
hundred feet, the upper limit not yet being well as-
certained, but perhaps exceeding three hundred feet
of altitude. On the coast of Maine, the evidence of
deep submergence persisting for some time after the
ice sheet retreated from that district is of an unques-
tionable nature. The facts are best exhibited in
the southward faces of the Mount Desert mountains.
Along those declivities of the hills which slope to
the Atlantic, we find at various heights evidence
that the land in its re-elevation after the glacial sub-
sidence paused from time to time for considerable
periods, enabling the sea to cut the rocks in the fash-
ion in which it has scarfed the existing shore-line.
Up to the level of a thousand feet of altitude on
Mount Desert the proof of these ancient sea margins

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 93

appears quite indisputable. Indeed, an assemblage of
the observations on that part of the coast of Maine
leads me to the conclusion that the highest point on
the island of Mount Desert, which rises to an eleva-
tion of fifteen hundred and twenty -five feet above the
present mean-tide mark, was for a brief time sub-
merged beneath the sea after the ice disappeared
from its summit.

In Labrador, Packard and other observers have
found similar evidence of submergence to the depth
of more than one thousand feet ; and in Greenland,
as before remarked, the marine stratified deposits
clearly formed since the last extension of the ice
rise to yet greater altitudes. There are reasons to
suspect that the submergence of the North Atlantic
sea-shore of the continent may have been much
greater than is proven by the records of old sea-shore
work which have so far been observed. Thus, on the
southern and eastern flank of Mount Wachusett, at
the height of more than sixteen hundred feet above
the sea, there are apparent traces of marine action,
shown by the undercutting of the rocks. On the
southeastern face of the Catskills, at a height of about
twenty -two hundred feet above the sea, there are in-
dentations in the rocks in the fashion of sea caves,
extending in for a distance of more than twenty feet
from the face of the cliff ; and below the level of these
excavations, which cannot well be accounted for ex-
cept by the action of waves, there are benches of
shingle such as are normally to be found beneath the

94 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

level of the water along an ocean coast-line. It
may be argued that possibly in the case of the
Wachusett and Catskill section these cuttings may
have been accomplished by the action of the waves
in glacial lakes held at a height above the sea by a
barrier of ice ; but although this is a possible method
of accounting for them, it does not seem to me to
afford a probable explanation of these peculiar feat-
ures. The excavations are too extensive to be the
work of such waves as would originate in any sheet
of water impounded by the ice. Moreover, they in-
dicate a continuance of wave action which cannot
well be supposed in the case of a lake basin held
high above the level of the sea by an ice barrier.
As is well known, such glacial lakes are extremely
impermanent in their water-level, and almost neces-
sarily of small size.

Although the facts are not yet in shape to permit
us to frame a satisfactory hypothesis as to the precise
nature of continental movements during and at the
close of the glacial period, they warrant us in assert-
ing an extreme submergence of the eastern portion of
North America in this period of its history. More-
over, the observations made by Gilbert and others
on the terraces about the great lakes, particularly
those of Lake Ontario in New York, show in a beau-
tifully clear way that the continent was at the close
of the glacial period tilted down to the north in that
part of its surface, the descent to the north, though
locally somewhat variable, being at the rate of about

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 95

three feet to the mile as contrasted with its present
altitude. The benches formed when the lake was
at a higher level than at present now rise up to the
northward at this rate; this feature can only be
explained by supposing that the continent was tilted
downward to the north while these coast benches
were formed. The same feature is observable all
about the great lakes as far west as the head of
Lake Superior. It thus appears more than probable
that during the ice time the northern part of North
America was depressed so that its surface came
pretty generally below the level of the sea.

Another evidence of the down-tilting of the conti-
nent to the north is afforded by the streams which
flow from the south toward the north. In eastern
Massachusetts there are a number of small rivers —
the Sudbury, the Concord, the Nashua, and the Ne-
ponset — which flow northward; while the greater
part of the rivers of New England flow in a directly
opposite course, having their head-waters in the
north and their mouths to the south. Now, we ob-
serve that those streams which flow from north
southward always have steep channels. Every river
in New England having this direction of course lies
for a considerable part of its path in a rocky bed, and
descends rapidly toward the sea. These north-
flowing rivers, on the other hand, have marshes and
other encumbering deposits which lie between the
bottoms of the streams and their original founda-
tions. It is evident, from these facts that since the

96 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

channels of the rivers were excavated partly before
and partly since the glacial period, the land in which
they lie has risen, the northern part rising more
than the southern, in such a fashion that the natural
fall of the stream has been interfered with by the
diminution in their rate of descent. Similar evi-
dence of up-tilting in the northern part of the conti-
nent may be found in other streams than those just
mentioned which likewise flow toward the Arctic
regions.

We thus perceive that there is a large body of evi-
dence to indicate the elevation of the northern part
of the continent since the close of the glacial period ;
there is also sufficient proof to show that the shore-
lines were, immediately antecedent to the ice time,
near the same position that they now occupy ; we thus
have to believe that when the ice was imposed, the
field it covered sank down, recovering its position
after the glacial sheet had passed away.

As long as geologists held to the notion that the
continents were rigidly supported in their present
position, it was difficult to account for this peculiar
feature of glacial submergence ; but partly from the
study of the movements which take place in moun-
tain growth, but in larger measure from observa-
tion on other movements of the continental masses,
geologists have now pretty generally come to the
conclusion that continents are not rigidly upheld in
their existing attitudes, supported firmly from below,
but that they are what we may term elastic arches,

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 97

dependent for their position at any one time on a
balance between the pressures which urge them up-
ward and their own weight, which bears them down-
ward toward the centre of the earth. It is now the
opinion of those best acquainted with the facts that if
we could at any point, say, over the surface of an
area a hundred miles square, lay down on the earth
a bed of sand a thousand feet in thickness, almost
immediately we would find the district so covered by
the new deposit borne slowly downward until the
subsidence was almost equivalent to the thickness of
the supposed accumulation. There are very many
facts serving to affirm this view as to continental
movements which cannot be noted here. It may be
remarked in passing that in delta regions where
there is a constant accumulation of strata, we nor-
mally find evidences of such a down -sinking as the
theory supposes would take place.

We are therefore able to account for the subsi-
dence produced during a glacial time by the simple
conception that the continental surface was borne
downward by the weight of water in the form of ice
imposed upon it ; and as the ice sheet can fairly be
presumed to have had a thickness of something like
two miles, it is not difficult to believe that the con-
tinent was depressed over the area covered by the ice
sheet to the amount of several thousand feet, sink-
ing down in proportion to the thickness of the icy
covering in the various parts of the field it occupied.

It is easy on theoretical grounds to see that the

98 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

northern half of the continent of North America
could not well be depressed to the amount of some
thousands of feet without a coincident elevation of
other regions to the southward. If the continent be
an elastic arch the crown of which rises above the
surface of the sea, it appears almost a necessary con-
clusion that if we bear down part of it, another por-
tion would be uplifted. It does not do to trust our
conclusions to such a priori reasoning : we must un-
dertake to review the evidence to see what proof we
have of a recent emergence corresponding to the
down-sinking which took place in high latitudes
when the glacial sheet was imposed upon the land.
It is much easier to obtain evidence that a land re-
cently beneath the sea has been elevated above the
ocean than to find proof that a region which has a
short time ago been above the sea has sunk beneath
its depths. If we could explore the bottom in a sat-
isfactory way, we should doubtless find on the sur-
face which had recently subsided below the ocean a
system of partly obliterated river valleys and other
marks to indicate the exposure to atmospheric ero-
sion; but we know the bottom of the sea even in
shallow water only by the plummet, — that is, most
imperfectly. The form of even the best explored
portions of the sea floor is most inadequately known.
Despite the difficulties of inquiry, there are some
lines of evidence which appear to support the hy-
pothesis that the southern portion of North America
was uplifted during the time when its northern part

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 99

was deeply depressed. In part this evidence comes
from the distribution of animal and plant life, and
in part from physical characters exhibited by the
southern part of North America.

The evidence from organic life which seems to
bear on this question is obtained by a study of the
living creatures on the West India Islands. This
great archipelago is composed of many distinct land-
masses, and is separated from North America by a
rather deep arm of the sea. To unite Cuba with
the Florida district would require the elevation of
the sea bottom of about two thousand feet. In
a similar manner the great islands of the ocean
stretching from Cuba to the eastward are separated
from one another by deep passages generally trav-
ersed by strong marine currents. If now we com-
pare the living creatures of these several islands
with the life on the mainland of North and South
America, we are struck with the fact that very few
of the islands have any great peculiarity in the or-
ganic beings which occupy them. There are some
species of vertebrates which are in a measure pecu-
liar to these detached masses of land, the insects or
the land mollusca exhibit many localized peculiari-
ties ; but the organic life of each of the islands is
almost as nearly related the one to the other as we
would expect to find it in any connected area of land
of like extent. There is probably no more differ-
ence from point to point than we should find in an
equally extensive region of a similarly varied character

100 NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

on the surface of any continent. Alexander Agassiz
and others have noted the curious relation of this life
of the Great Antilles to Mexico and Central America.
If we compare the fauna and flora of the Antilles
with those of the East Indies, the great archipelago
extending from Sumatra to Australia, we perceive
at once a wide difference in the distribution of life.
The passages between the islands of the East Indian
archipelago are no wider or deeper than those which
separate the West India islands from one another
and the mainland. In fact, we may say that the
islands of the Antilles are more divided the one from
the other than are those of the Indian archipelago ;
yet in the last-named group of islands almost every
considerable isle has many peculiar forms of life;
while in the West Indies the vertebrates and the
greater part of the other animals are singularly akin
on the different isles. The only way in which we
can satisfactorily account for the wide difference in
the condition between these islands is to suppose
that in the case of the East Indies the several fields
have long remained unconnected with one another or
with the mainlands of Australia or Asia; while in
the West Indies the connection between the large
several islands and the adjacent continent of South
America has recently been completely established.
Thus the biological evidence is in favor of the suppo-
sition that in comparatively recent times, possibly
during the glacial period, a sufficiently extensive
elevation took place in this region to bring what are

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 101

now distant islands into a more or less complete
union with that continent, and over this long ridge
such a mixture of the living creatures took place as
would provide the several parts of the archipelago
with inhabitants not differing greatly in the several
islands. After discussing the evidence, I have been
forced to the conclusion that this supposition of a
land-bridge uniting the Antilles in a time not very
remote is of itself and quite without other related
facts a warrantable presumption, though we cannot
prove that this union existed during the glacial
period.

The physical evidence of a very recent greater ex-
tension of the land in the southern part of North
America is fragmentary and of a rather indecisive
nature, though it points strongly in the direction
of the hypothesis above set forth. The first point to
note is that all the larger streams which debouch
into the Gulf of Mexico north and east of the Rio
Grande appear to flow for a considerable distance in
their lower parts in valleys once deeply excavated,
which have been in large measure filled by the debris
which has been accumulated in them in very recent
times. Thus borings at New Orleans have shown
that the alluvial deposits of the Mississippi extend
for several hundred feet below the level of that
town. All the way up to the junction of the Ohio
and Mississippi the river flows in a broad low-walled
gorge which appears to have been excavated when
the surface of the country was at a much higher

102 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

level than at the present time. Following up the
valleys of the Mississippi proper, the Missouri, and
the Ohio, particularly the last-named stream, which
is best known in its details of structure, there is
evidence here and there that the present stream-bed
is above its old position.

Where rivers debouch into the Gulf of Mexico or
into the Atlantic in regions south of New York, we
observe that they terminate at the sea, except in the
case of the Mississippi, in broad re-entrant delta-
shaped indentations which are not at present the
seats of erosion, and where the erosion which formed
them could not well have taken place save when the
land was above its present attitude. The best exam-
ples of these re-entrants are found in the Delaware
and Chesapeake bays and in Pamlico and Albe-
marle sounds. These facts are best reconcilable with
the supposition that recently and for a considerable
time these valleys discharged their waters into the
ocean on a lower plane than that which their streams
now debouch into the ocean.

Last of all, we note the fact that throughout the
Gulf States borings made in the rocks penetrate for
the depth of several hundred feet into strata contain-
ing fresh water. In northern Florida it is a common
device to bore down a hundred or two feet below the
surface, or in certain places to a greater depth, and
thus obtain a copious supply of fresh water, slightly
charged with sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic
acid gas, which impels the fluid upward to the height

NATUEE AND MAN IN AMEEICA. 103

of sixty feet or so above the surface, provided the
pipes be led to that altitude. In the great well
recently bored at St. Augustine, Florida, which at-
tained the depth of thirteen hundred feet below the
level of the sea, this fresh- water zone continued down-
ward in the excavation to the depth of about nine
hundred feet. At this point salt water was sud-
denly encountered, and from that station downward
to the bottom of the well the water which entered
the well was clearly such as is built into rocks when
they are formed beneath the floor of the sea. In-
asmuch as these beds below the sea-level in the re-
gion about the Gulf of Mexico contain rain-water
and not the original waters of the ocean in which
they were deposited, it seems necessary to suppose
that since the time of their deposition they have
been for a considerable period elevated above the sea
in order to afford the original waters of deposition an
opportunity to drain away. It does not appear possi-
ble for the rain-waters to penetrate into the deeper
strata and displace the sea- water which recently
filled the cavities, against the pressure which pre-
vails there. Nothing short of elevation would ac-
complish the change. That this is the case is shown
by the fact that the very ancient Silurian rocks of
the Ohio valley contain everywhere below the level of
draining streams the original salt waters which were
buried in the strata at the time when they were
formed.

This and other evidence seems to point to the con-

104 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

elusion that the southern portion of North America
has recently been elevated above the sea-level, the
elevation most likely taking place at the time of
great submergence which the ice sheet brought upon
the northern part of the continent.

One of the most important evidences as to the re-
cent greater elevation of the southern portion of our
continent is found in the fact that along the coast of
Florida, both on its eastern or Atlantic and its west-
ern or Gulf faces, there rise from beneath the sea a
number of great submarine springs which discharge
vast tides of fresh water gathered upon the land
through openings upon the floor of the sea. Perhaps
the most noteworthy of these fresh-water oceanic
fountains is that which finds its way to the surface
of the sea off the eastern coast a few miles to the
south of St. Augustine and three or four miles from
the coast-line. At this point, if we may trust the
accounts of veracious observers, a considerable river
rises from the bottom, the fresh water on account of
its lightness rushing to the surface of the sea with
such speed and volume that it makes it difficult for
a boat to keep its place in the centre of the fountain.
From the accounts which I have received it seems
evident that the discharge must be at the rate of some
thousand cubic feet a minute. Similar springs, though
apparently of less volume, are said to break up to the
surface in the Gulf of Mexico at some distance from
the coast-line. As submarine springs would neces-
sarily have a considerable volume before they would

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 105

manifest themselves at the surface, it seems most
probable that these fresh-water streams which emerge
from the sea bottom along this coast are of frequent
occurrence.

The only way in which we can account for the
formation of these great sea springs is by the follow-
ing supposition. The greater part of the peninsula
of Florida is composed of limestone rocks which are
so massive and pure that they readily become exca-
vated into caverns. Wherever the surface of this
area rises even a few feet above the level of the shore,
we find that the streams immediately leave the sur-
face and flow in subterranean channels. At a great
number of points within the peninsula we may ob-
serve these underground rivers, where by one chance
and another they have been forced to break their way
to the light of day. They not unfrequently pour
forth a tide which without the addition of tributary
waters forms a considerable river. During the time
when the peninsula of Florida, as well as the neigh-
boring lands in this part of the continent, stood at a
much greater height than at present, these under-
ground streams doubtless excavated their channels to
levels very much beneath the existing plain of the
ocean. They probably discharged their waters at
the margin of the sea along the line which is now far
to the eastward of the shore. When the land sank
down in the last great movement of this part of the
continent, the exits of these cavern waters were
brought much below the ocean level. Where, how-

106 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

ever, the cavern walls were moderately tight, and the
land at a considerable height above the sea, the exit
might be kept open, and the submarine streams still
flow through their own channels. It seems quite
impossible to suppose that any such underground
water-ways as now produce these ocean springs could
have been formed in the present attitude of the land.
The foremost object of our inquiry is to ascertain
the conditions of the continents with reference to the
life for which they afford the theatre ; the conclusions
to which we have now attained are of great impor-
tance to our aim. They serve to show that the con-
tinent of North America, though subject to great
oscillations, probably preserves something like its
present area and isolation through all these changes
of form. When a portion sinks down, another por-
tion rises ; and so while the life is pushed about, com-
pelled to migrate from one field to another, and
forced to undergo the contentions which arise from
these geographic accidents, it is never destroyed
by the submersion of the whole land. A similar
method of inquiry would prove even more clearly
than we can show in the case of North America that
the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and South
America have never been altogether beneath the sea
since the time they first appeared above its waters.
The alterations in the land forms of those areas have
been far greater than on the American continent,
but they have followed the same law of successive
changes in the position and form of the land, those

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 107

changes at no time leading to the general destruction
of the theatre occupied by the higher air-breathing
life.

If I have rightly interpreted the facts of conti-
nental movement during the glacial period, they indi-
cate that however the continent of North America
may be deformed by temporary conditions, the land
tends to retain its broad expanse, so that it affords a
permanent field for the organic species which have
been bred upon it.

Our next step is to trace the successive changes
which lead to the formation of a continent, in order
that as far as our knowledge may admit, we may
perceive the conditions of land life at the successive
stages of the development which the greater lands
undergo.

CHAPTER IV.

The Nature of Faunae and Floras. — Migration of these Organic Armies. —
Individualization of Continents. — Condition of Faunas and Florae in
Cambrian Time; in Successive Periods. — Effect of Growth of Moun-
tains; Effect of Elevation at Beginning of Coal-measures. — Croll's Hy-
pothesis of Climate Change. — Conditions of Continental Growth in
Europe. — Influence of Geographic Conditions on the Development of
Life. — Conditions of last Glacial Period. — Relation of Continents to
Marine Currents. — Uniform Growth of the Earth's Features. — Uni-
formity in Condition of Atmosphere. — Climatal Variations; Delicacy of
Adjustment thereof ; its Measure. — Effect of Variations of Gulf Stream
on Extension of Ice. — Review and Conclusion.

The evolution of life from lower to higher planes
depends in part at least on the differentiation of or-
ganic species by the survival of the fittest, on the or-
ganization of these species into great communities,
which we term faunae and floras, and on the conten-
tion of these assemblages of ordered combatants with
one another. There are thus two modes of battle be-
tween organic forms : within the same ranks — that
is, within the limits of each fauna and flora — the
species are contending against each other to deter-
mine which is the fittest to survive. One of the most
surprising and as yet least considered effects of this
regional division of life is found in the perfect inter-
action of the species within a realm, — an interaction
which, though determined by the laws of combat, is yet
helpful to all the forms which win by it.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 109

Examining the life history of any species, we find
that it has a profit both from its enemies and its
friends, — from the foes which prey upon it and com-
pel it to remain strong and grow stronger as the price
of life, and from the friends which give it shelter or
provide it with food. The result is that each organic
assemblage becomes in time a great and well-selected
army, prepared to do battle as a host with the other
similarly perfected aggregations. The Darwinians
generally have neglected this combat between the
great armies of life. They have considered only the
contention between the individual species. The pa-
leontological record shows us, however, that in the
progress of life the winning is largely accomplished
by the massive migration of these vast cohorts which
constitute the faunal and floral assemblages from one
region to another. As they move in these marches,
to which they are compelled by geographic modifica-
tions and the climatal changes which attend such
alterations, they overwhelm the weaker assemblages.
In most cases when a strong fauna or flora invades
a new clime it adopts a portion of the indigines, —
those forms which have a peculiar strength and ex-
pel or destroy the weaker forms. In all the circum-
stances of their movement they much resemble those
migrations of human races which occurred in the
early centuries of our era.

These massive migrations of organic armies can
be effected only by the creation of a bridge of land or
channel of water which, according as it belongs in

110 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

the sea or on the land, serves to afford passage for
the host. The chance carriage of single species
floating across the sea on rafts of ice or the trees
torn out by rivers rarely affects any important im-
plantation of a form from one fauna within that of
another. A solitary individual or even a consider-
able assemblage of the same species coming into a
foreign region is likely to find that its habits of life,
its methods of growth, its ways of finding shelter from
the elements, the quality of its food, and its other
needs are not met in the new station, and so it is
tolerably sure to perish. To be successful, in a word,
migrations have to be massive. The species must
usually take their beneficent associates in the equa-
tion of life with them, to secure an effective foothold
in new countries. Thus it comes about that the
larger battles of life are not single combats, but con-
tests between consolidated armies.

We may perceive this point more clearly by recur-
ring to our imaginary but very possible instance of
the bridge between Australia and southern Asia.
The passage which divides the realms of life of
Australia and India is very narrow. It consists of
the straits of Lombok, a narrow opening, only fifteen
miles in width, between the islands of Bali and
Lombok. There can hardly be any doubt that the
manifold accidents of transportation have frequently
conveyed solitary forms from India into the realm of
the weaker Australian life. Thus the larger cats of
India, its herbivora, and other of its high-grade ani-

NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA. Ill

mals which can swim for long distances may have
been often carried across this narrow barrier. That
they have not found a foothold in the Australian
realm is doubtless due to the fact that they did not
secure when they arrived on the southern continent
the environment which suits their habitual needs.
Accustomed to pursue certain sorts of food, they
found that food wanting, and within the lifetime of
a single individual or even in that of a family there
may not be an opportunity to become habituated to
the new and strange surroundings, and thereby secure
a chance to maintain existence ; but if there were a
wide ridge of land formed between these two con-
tinents of Australia and Asia, the Asiatic life, vastly
more energetic or prepotent than that of the southern
realm, would move upon it as a conquering army.
Each species would give the needed and accustomed
support to the others, and in a very short time they
would occupy the Australian continent and drive out
the lowly organized because ancient forms. In a
single geological period, if these countries were left
without interference from man, we should probably
find a great revolution effected in the organic history
of Australia, thousands of species would disappear,
and only a relatively small number be adopted into
the new organic order.

The individualization of continents is therefore a
problem of the utmost interest to the physiographer.
By dividing the earth's surface into separate fields
of land and sea, giving to each its peculiarities of

112 NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

environment, and only occasionally permitting inter-
course with other areas, the land-masses serve to or-
ganize the separate armies of life in air or sea, each
within its distinct barriers, giving them an opportu-
nity to contend against each other in the sub-
sequent changes which the geographical develop-
ment of the earth's surface brings about. I propose,
therefore, rapidly to consider the processes of growth
of continents, and the concurrent effect of this growth
history on the evolution of organic forms. Unfortu-
nately in this inquiry we shall be dealing with very
incomplete information. We can obtain only a
glimpse of the principles which control these great
changes of life's theatre, and of the creatures which
play their part on the stage.

Going back to the earliest epochs of the earth's
history of which we have a comprehensible record,
to the time when life first appeared in the rocks, we
find that lands were already in existence. The con-
tinents were at that time foreshadowed by a series of
insular masses, — archipelagoes we may term them,
— which were probably, in this continent at least,
grouped in the northern part of the present land area,
and extended for some distance south along the lines
of the greater mountain axes. For convenience we
shall limit our inquiries to the continent of North
America, for the reason that in this land-mass we
have simpler and more interpretable conditions than
are exhibited in the other great lands.

At the beginning of the Cambrian time, the ear-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 113

liest age concerning which we have any clear account,
the continent of North America — so far as we have
interpreted its history, which is as yet imperfectly —
consisted of a considerable land-mass, and occupied
probably the greater part of the area of Labrador,
Canada proper, and a portion of the northwest part
of the existing land. This, the largest insular mass
of the ancient continental archipelago, was in the
form of a rudely Y-shaped body. On the west, in
the region of the Cordilleras of North America, lay
a series of great islands, or possibly masses of con-
nected land, extending probably from southern Mexico
to the Arctic Circle. On the east and south of the
extensive Laurentian land lay another strip of isl-
ands, possibly almost as great in area as Madagascar,
extending from southern Canada to Alabama, or per-
haps yet farther south. This Appalachian land was
probably riven at one or two points by passages of
considerable width, one of which remains still as a
great valley occupied by the Hudson River. There
were probably yet other detached patches of Cam-
brian land, one of which lay in the region of the
Ozark Mountains. There were possibly yet others
in the little known country north of the Laurentian
district. We know these regions were islands by
the fact that we find their sediments in the recog-
nizable form of pebbles accumulated along the Cam-
brian shore-lines which extend around their flanks.
Among these islands of the Cordilleran and Appa-
lachian districts there were extensive seas which

114 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

probably were of less depth than the outlying waters
of the greater ocean, for the growth of the mountain-
ous elevations which constitute these islands had
apparently been attended by a general uplift of the
broad basalar folds of the mountain ridges in the
manner which we have already described; and by
the formation and confluence of these folds the shape
of the continent was already dimly foreshadowed.
All these ancient islands of the North American
archipelago seem to have had a mountainous
structure.

This, the archipelagic state of the continent, con-
tinued for a number of geological periods ; it did not
definitely begin to disappear until the dawn of that
stage in the earth's history which we term the Car-
boniferous. We have no evidence as to the land life
of these archipelagoes during the Cambrian period;
but in the next succeeding important division of the
earth's history, in the Silurian time, we find some
proof that the land was already occupied by charac-
teristic aerial vegetation, forms related to our living
ferns, and that insects of tolerably high organization
closely akin to our living scorpions dwelt upon its
surface. The scanty fossils which afford this evi-
dence are doubtless the trifling remains of what was
an abundant aerial life of a lowly organization.

Before we consider the next stage in continental
development, that in which the archipelago begins
to merge into consolidated land-masses, it is worth
our while to turn aside for the moment to consider

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 115

something of the then existing conditions of land
life as compared with those which at a later stage
came about on the consolidation of the lands. Re-
viewing the existing lands of the earth's surface,
those which have developed in the oceanic waters at
points remote from the shore, in positions whereunto
land life would with difficulty find access, we are
struck with the fact that very few important species
have developed on these areas, although many of
them, as in the case of the Azores, have been for
some geological periods separated from the neigh-
boring mainland. The fact appears to be that on
islands the conditions which favor the rapid evolu-
tion of species do not occur. While they received
as tenants chance contributions from the land life of
the neighboring areas, the contention between these
forms does not seem calculated to lead to rapid ad-
vance ; and we are justified by the facts in the pre-
sumption that island life, from its very isolation,
from the lack of combat which prevails there, from
the insufficient reaction between form and form, due
to the paucity of species, is less favored in the con-
ditions which lead to its advance than life on the
continental masses.

Knowing very little of the land life during the
ages which preceded the Carboniferous, we turn to
the distribution of marine faunas for indications as to
the division in the earth's life into realms which the
gradual growth of the several continents was then
bringing about. Imperfect as was the original divi-

116 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

sion of the earth's surface in this early stage of its
history, the seas had already been sufficiently parted
into distinct fields of organic development to give us
a certain faunal division in the life which tenanted
them. Although there is an interesting likeness
among the fossils of the Cambrian in all parts of
the world, — in Australia, Asia, North America,
and Europe, — we already find that the species of
the different regions are generally distinct. The
genera are usually the same in all the faunal realms
of this age, — that is, we find the faunae in the first
stage of their differentiation; there is, perhaps, not
the one hundredth part of the difference between the
Australian, Cambrian, or Silurian and that of Eng-
land, which we find at the present time in the modern
inhabitants of the sea about the British Isles and of
the Australian coast. At present there are hundreds
of genera, scores of families, and many orders of
animals which exist in one region which are wanting
in the other ; in other words, the faunal differentia-
tion at this early stage of the earth's history is in
a measure proportionate to the geographic variety
which had been instituted at that period in the
differentiation of the earth's surface into land areas
and sea basins.

In the Silurian period, extending from the Pots-
dam sandstone up through to the base of the Devo-
nian, we find with the progressive growth of the land
barriers the marine forms becoming better delimited
into provinces and faunae ; but it is not until a much

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 117

later day that we approach the great isolation which
now characterizes the marine life of the different
parts of the shore-lines about the continents.

The processes of mountain growth which in the
beginning gave us the mountainous islands of the
Cambrian Sea led, through its continuance and the
development of the basalar elevations which appear
to be a general accompaniment of mountain growth,
to the emergence, at the beginning of the Carboni-
ferous period, of the widespread land areas occupying
the portion of North America east of the Cordilleras,
and also of large areas of Europe and Asia. The
upward growth of Europe and North America appears
to have been in a general way concurrent, and the
coincidence appears to be in some manner due to
their neighboring positions. The land areas which
came into being in the form of broad plains at the
beginning of the Carboniferous time on our conti-
nent were singularly widespread, and relatively little
broken by mountain ranges. On the eastern side of
the continent the Appalachian mountain axis made
a division of the newly elevated plain-land into a
number of separate fields, those of the Mississippi
valley and some level areas perhaps of less extent
along the Atlantic shore. As soon as the plain-lands
of the Carboniferous period were elevated above the
sea, they were occupied by vegetation of a lowly
order, — the ancestors or kindred of our ferns, horse-
tails, grasses, and rushes, which had been develop-
ing on the continental islands for a great period,

118 NATUEE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

indeed from the earliest days. We well know that
some of these forms in a high state of development
were in existence in the later stages of the Devonian
age. They had organized their habits and developed
their relations to one another in such fashion that
they were prepared to move swiftly on those lands
which were to be won from the sea, and occupy them
with a dense vegetation.

With the dawn of the Carboniferous period began
one of the most singular chapters in the history of
our continent or the neighboring land of Europe of
which we have any record in the great stone book.
This history shows us that for a long time, during
practically the whole of the Carboniferous age, the
surface of these lowlands was extremely unstable.
They were frequently and rather suddenly lowered
beneath the level of the sea and elevated above its
plain ; alternately possessed by great swamps which
the tangled and swift-growing vegetation constructed
upon the imperfectly drained land, and depressed be-
neath the sea, where they were covered with beds of
pebbles, sands, and clays, which accumulated with
singular rapidity. All the while the climate ap-
pears to have been in a measure equable and singu-
larly moist. It is to this combination of a moist
climate, favoring the growth of vegetation, the pres-
ence of a vegetation disseminated by microscopic seeds
or spores, which blew with the wind and caught upon
every surface of land, and to the frequent subsidences
and elevations of the land realm which brought it

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 119

alternately below and above the sea, that we owe the
marvellous coal-beds which now supply the dynamic
basis of our civilization.

If when the continent came above the sea in the
great elevation at the beginning of the coal-measures
time, the land had remained permanent with some-
thing like the steadfastness which characterizes it at
the present day, coal would not have been produced.
The plants would have grown and died, and their
vegetable matter, in time completely decomposed by
the influence of the air, would have returned to the
state of carbonic acid gas whence it came to the
plants. Thus closely is man knit to the past of the
realm he inhabits. The strength of England and of
the English race in North America, the dominance
in the world of that peculiar kind of man, depends
upon coal ; and this in an immediate way hinges upon
the peculiar conditions of geographic development
which caused the plain-lands of North America al-
ternately to sink into and rise from the sea in per-
haps a hundred oscillations in the course of one
geological period.

We cannot forbear to consider for a moment the
cause of these oscillations in the Carboniferous pe-
riod. The only explanation of the phenomena which
has been given has come to us from that able physi-
ographer, Dr. James Croll, who has interpreted the
history of the Carboniferous period in a very inter-
esting way. Dr. Croll, in his work on climate and
time in geology, has made a strong argument to

120 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

prove that the Carboniferous age was a period of
great and long-continued though recurrent glacia-
tion. The hypothesis which Dr. Croll advocates as
an explanation of the origin of glacial periods re-
quires us to suppose the cause to be found in a great
eccentricity of the earth's orbit, and a consequent
change in the character of the seasons which occur
when the orbit is thus eccentric. As this theory is
of a somewhat complicated sort, we shall not under-
take its explanation, but merely note the important
conclusion drawn by the author, that a glacial epoch
is divided into periods of twelve thousand five hun-
dred years each. These periods occurring alternately
in either hemisphere, for a time the ice sheet accu-
mulates in seasons of rigorous winters, followed by
other periods of equal length in which the climate
of winter and summer tends to be very much alike.
During these recurrent glacial periods Dr. Croll sup-
poses that the surface of the continent was covered
by an ice sheet which formed a large amount of
glacial debris, and at the same time bore the conti-
nent down beneath the level of the sea. Then in
the succeeding period of warmth, when the glacial
sheet was transferred to the other hemisphere, to the
region about the South Pole, the ice disappeared, the
land rose from the sea, the glacial waste was scat-
tered far and wide in the process of elevation ; and
when the emergence was accomplished, the coal-
making plants again possessed the surface, bringing
it to the state of widespread morasses, a^ain to

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 121

be suffused by the glacial waste of another ice
period.

Although Dr. Croll's hypothesis has been much
criticised, it has as a whole fairly well withstood the
objections which its opponents have brought against
it, and remains the most satisfactory single theory
to account for certain glacial periods in the earth's
history, though it may not account for all these pe-
culiar stages in the development of the planet. The
picture which Dr. Croll draws of the conditions of
Carboniferous times reminds us of those which ex-
isted in the last glacial period. In both we must
conceive advances and recessions of the ice. The
periods intervening between each recession and each
return of the glacial sheet were characterized by an
abundant vegetation. In both the surface of the
lands was extremely unstable, swinging down into
and up from the sea. Alike in each, we find enor-
mous quantities of detrital matter free to move about
under the impulse of the ocean waves, and thus accu-
mulated in thick beds of sand, gravel, and boulders.
In both these periods the bouldery element of the
deposits grows less conspicuous as we go south, and
finally fades away as we approach the tropics.

Shortly after the close of the time during which
the coal-measures of the eastern United States were
deposited, a very wide-reaching development of moun-
tains took place. The Alleghanies were elevated,
and the old Appalachian axis may also have under-
gone some further folding. Extensive mountain

122 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

growth also occurred in the Cordilleran range ; and
as the concomitant of this elevation, the table-lands
bordering the elevated districts probably underwent
a considerable elevation. It is to this elevation at-
tending the folding of mountains that we owe the
final consolidation of North America into a mass
which, though not as continuous as it is at the pres-
ent day, nevertheless assumed the continental form
in part. It was still composed of great islands, and
it seems likely that as a whole it was at this time not
more than half its present size. All the region of
the Gulf States, Florida, eastern North and South
Carolina, eastern Virginia, the greater part of Texas,
the whole of Louisiana and Mississippi, the western
portion of Kentucky and Tennessee, and possibly
the eastern portion of Missouri, appear to have
been still beneath the sea. The western versant of
the continent, the region contained in the Rocky
Mountain district, appears to have been less consoli-
dated by this elevation than the eastern portion of
the land-mass. The Cordilleran district probably
remained in the condition of an archipelago to a
somewhat later time in the earth's history.

The next great movement of the continent, also
concomitant with that of mountain-building, took
place after the close of the earlier stages of the Ju-
rassic period. There appears to have been in the
time of the Trias or earlier Jura in North America a
period of extensive glaciation, in which the sand-
stones and conglomerates of the Connecticut valley

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 123

and elsewhere were laid down on shallow sea floors.
We find some evidence of glacial work in the large
quantities of pebbles which have been gathered in
these deposits in a way in which they cannot well be
assembled by any other than ice action. We find
also at this time evidence of the instability of the
land such as appears necessarily to characterize gla-
cial epochs; and here, too, we observe submerged
forests converted into coal-beds, just as we find them
in other glacial epochs. Following this possible gla-
cial epoch of the lower Jura comes again a moun-
tain-building period, which probably occurred before
the close of the Jurassic period. This brought in its
train a further elevation of the general continental
area, and led to a still greater extension of the sur-
face of North America, particularly in the western
portion of the country. There can be no doubt that
the Rocky Mountain district achieved in this time
a considerable further growth toward continental
conditions. After the Jurassic period this land ap-
pears to have remained for a considerable period, dur-
ing the whole of the Cretaceous age indeed, without
feeling any great effect from the growth of moun-
tains or the concomitant elevation of the general
land-masses ; but in the earlier stages of the Terti-
ary, the mountain-building movement became again
active, at this time particularly vigorous in the west-
ern part of the country.

To the movements of the earlier Tertiary we owe
a good part of the relief of the Rocky Mountains, and

124 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

the final consolidation of that region with the body
of the continent. A slight amount of elevation ap-
pears to have occurred at the same time in the
eastern part of the United States. As yet we have
not determined in a clear way the development of
mountain growth in connection with this elevation
of the eastern part of the continent. There are a
number of facts, however, which seem to indicate
that the Rocky Mountains as well as the mountain
folds to the east of the Blue Ridge or old Appa-
lachian axis underwent a certain amount of orogenic
development.

It would carry us too far into the details of geo-
logical inquiry to trace this obscure proof of Tertiary
mountain growth in the eastern United States. We
may, however, note a bit of evidence derived from
the Tertiary beds of Massachusetts. These deposits
of the southern shore of Massachusetts, mainly ex-
hibited on the island of Martha's Vineyard, were
formed, as we have already noted, at the mouth of a
great river. They consist of very numerous alter-
nating beds of white sands, red, yellow, and greenish
clays, pebbly deposits, and frequent beds of lignite or
the vegetable matter such as accumulates as peat in
swamps. These deposits of the Vineyard Series
have clearly been subjected to mountain -building
action. They are folded so that the beds have steep
dips, the ridges trending in a northwestern and
southeastern direction. At certain points the crump-
ling of the deposits has been so considerable as to

NATURE AND MAN IN AMEKICA. 125

bring the strata into vertical attitudes, — that is, the
amount of dislocation to which these beds have been
subjected is about as great as that which is shown
in the mountain ridges of the Alleghanies ; although
the plications themselves have much less amplitude
than the folds of those great elevations, they un-
questionably show the existence of compressive
forces which give rise to mountains. This and other
evidence leads us to the conclusion that at a time
later than the Eocene Tertiary and perhaps very near
the present day, the forces which elevate mountains
and thereby construct continents were at work on the
Atlantic coast of North America.

In Europe the process of mountain growth and of
continental development has been essentially like
that which we have considered in the case of our own
continent, with the exception that the movements
both of uprising and of downsinking have been very
much more numerous than in North America. With
each stage of the folding of the rocks the lands have
become more consolidated, have taken on more of the
continental form. What information we have con-
cerning the development of the other continents bears
out the supposition that the normal course in the
growth of the greater land-masses is as follows : they
begin in the archipelagic state as scattered islands
in the sea, and proceed by successive accretions of
mass dependent on the development of mountains
until they assume their perfect or adult form.

Although the process of mountain growth leads to

126 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

the formation of elevations on the earth's surface not
only by the development of folds themselves, but by
the growth of the pedestals on which they stand, it
generally, if not always, happens that as the eleva-
tions grow into their anticlinal ridges or upfolds,
they produce by their counterthrust extensive de-
pressions, sometimes of considerable width, on either
side of the upfolds. These synclinal valleys or
downward bending folds developed during the moun-
tain growth often remain for a long time the seats of
deep bays or straits which admit the sea far into the
land. A familiar example of such troughs is found
in the valley of the Connecticut River, which long
continued to exist as a marine inlet, and has only in
the more recent stages of the continental development
been converted into dry land. Another instance a
little farther away is exhibited in the Hudson valley,
the trough between the northern part of the Alle-
ghanies and the older northern element of the Blue
Ridge of the Berkshire Hills. In Europe these in-
tervals between the great mountain elevations re-
mained for a greater time in the form of channels
of the sea ; and so the final, complete consolidation of
that continent was more delayed than in the case of
North America.

These downfoldings attendant on mountain eleva-
tions also in certain cases serve to bring portions of
the continent, previously elevated above the sea-level,
below the plain of the ocean ; and we must add this
cause to the others we have considered in the list of

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 127

those influences which lead to change in the outline
of the land.

Turning once again to the influences of geographic
conditions on the development of life, we perceive
that this process of continental growth, beginning
with the development of archipelagoes and proceed-
ing steadfastly to greater agglomerations of land,
serves to widen the theatre of possible migration of
organic forms, while at the same time it promotes
climatal stresses, which compel the migrations of
the assemblages of animals and plants. It is easy
to perceive that this increase in the area of the con-
tinents vastly favors the development of new forms
of life, while in the archipelagic state the land crea-
tures were necessarily limited to forms which were
able to migrate with ease. Plants such as ferns,
the spores of which are so light that they may be
borne to great distances over the sea by the winds, or
insects which by their wings or their small size may
drift through the air or be floated on chance frag-
ments of timber which afford them ferriage over the
waters, are about the only forms which can meet the
accidents which are likely to come to islands through
glaciation or through changes of level. In the ear-
lier state of the continent a depression such as that
of the last glacial period or those of the coal-meas-
ures, sinking an area like the great Laurentian or
Appalachian island beneath the level of the sea,
would necessarily lead to the destruction of the life
of the greater part of the creatures which dwelt upon

128 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

its surface ; when re-elevated it might be readily re
populated by the light-seeded plants and by insects,
and so regain its original vitalized conditions; but
such ready transportation is generally denied to
higher forms, during the archipelagic conditions of
the land areas. When, however, the continent as-
sumes its united form, migrations would meet the
needs of each climatal or geographic change, and the
organic assemblage would be free to move during
such accidents — as they did in the last glacial
period — to fields in which they could survive.

Thus, when the last glacial period came to North
America, our large -seeded plants, such as the oaks
and the walnuts, and our land animals were, by the
broad extension of the continent to the southward,
enabled to undergo a massive migration to regions
south of the glaciated belt, where they found an ample
refuge. By this migration they were not only pre-
served from utter destruction, but were brought into
conflict with the creatures which already possessed
this southern realm; and in the struggle the best
survived, and so advanced the process of evolution
which lifts the plane of organic life.

These considerations make it clear to us that the
wide extension of our continental lands and the con-
siderable range of climate which they afford within
readily intercommunicable districts are important
elements in the array of influences which promote
advance in the scale of being.

This advantage derived from the meridional or

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 129

north and south extension of the continents, and the
consequent opportunity given to animals and plants
to meet climatic changes such as those which a gla-
cial period brings about, is found in the distribution
of the seas as well as of the lands. The elongation
of the continents in a north and south direction
secures geographic conditions which are favorable for
the movement of marine forms in migratory paths,
which are easily traversed when changes in the tem-
perature or the depth of the sea make the march
necessary. If the land-masses were extended in an
east and west direction, if they were in the form of
bands encircling the earth on the parallels, there
could be no effective migrations, either on the land
or in the sea, to meet the accidents of climate
which would frequently imperil the life of the earth's
surface.

Another very important effect of the consolidation
of the lands has arisen from their relations to ma-
rine currents. It is a well-known fact that our
oceanic streams are, in the main at least, a conse-
quent of the movement which the air has in the
trade-winds of the tropical district. These trade-
winds of the northern and southern hemispheres
unite their forces in the tropics, and shove the sur-
face of the water in a general westerly direction. If
the equatorial belt were not occupied in part by lands,
or if these lands were in the form of islands, then this
current would move continuously around the earth.
Let us suppose such a girdling current to exist, and

130 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

note what would be its effect on terrestrial climates.
It is an unquestionable fact that the result of such a
girdling stream would be greatly to increase the tem-
perature of the equatorial belt. The mean annual
temperature of that region would, on account of the
retention of the heat which the ocean currents now
convey to high latitudes, probably be elevated by
the amount of from twenty to thirty degrees ; at the
same time the temperatures of high latitudes would
be very much reduced. The districts about the pole
enclosed by the parallels of forty degrees would, if
these conditions should prevail, doubtless undergo a
lowering of temperature which would make them ab-
solutely unfit for the occupancy of the higher forms
of life. Circumpolar deserts of cold and an equally
sterile overheated region near the equator would
necessarily exist if the equatorial currents were free
to girdle the earth. It is only because of the land
barriers which the westward-setting ocean streams
encounter in South America and on the coast of
Asia and Africa, that we have that wonderful system
of superficial oceanic circulation which diminishes
the heat of the tropical belt and elevates that of the
circumpolar districts. In this way the earth is made
habitable; for although life in certain forms would
doubtless have had a place on the surface of the
earth, even if this machinery of circulation in the
seas had not come into play, we cannot believe that
organisms could, under these atmospheric conditions,
have attained anything like their present advance-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 131

ment. The field of development would have been
narrowed down to a very small part of the earth's
area, and the struggle of life with the difficulties of
climate would have been vastly greater than it has
actually been.

The foregoing considerations enable us to see that
the process of land growth has been on the whole
singularly well fitted to secure the development of
organic forms, by providing them a theatre for their
life, and arranging the conditions of the stage to pro-
mote those interactions on which all advance de-
pends. We will now turn for a glance at the
atmospherical or climatic conditions which have pre-
vailed on the earth's surface since organic life began
its development on our planet.

When geologists began to unravel the earth's his-
tory, they were naturally led to suppose that the
present was a time of unusual repose, the earlier
ages having been periods when the forces which
affect the earth were in a state of often recurring
and violent activity. As long as the observer was
compelled to conceive the construction of the world
to have been accomplished in a few thousand years, it
was inevitable that he should assume a certain vio-
lence in the development of the earth's features.
Gradually the fancy for startling theories concerning
the past history of this sphere which led to these
views has, under the influence of better knowledge,
been put aside. Geologists now believe that the con*

132 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

tinents have grown slowly from the seas, and that the
mountains with all their exhibitions of titanic energy-
have likewise gradually come to their present state ;
in a word, that the crust of the earth behaves at the
present day substantially as it has acted at all stages
in its history, since life came upon it. The last
stronghold of the convulsionists, or those who hold
that the earth of to-day is essentially unlike the
earth of the past, is found in the realm of the
air, in the region of climatic changes. Many geolo-
gists still hold that the atmosphere at the present
day must be in many ways unlike that of the ear-
lier geological periods ; they also conceive the glacial
epochs to mark peculiar states of the earth's con-
ditions essentially unexampled in this last stage of
its development.

The task now before us is to consider the atmos-
pheric influences which environ organic life, in order
that we may note the manner in which they have
influenced the conditions of its progress. Our first
aim will be to show that the earth's climate, though
varying from one geological period to another, passing
at times into conditions of age-long winter, and again
into a state where a mild and uniform climate for
thousands of years prevailed throughout a hemisphere,
has as a whole maintained a tolerably uniform char-
acter. At the same time it will be desirable to show
that the body of the atmosphere is at the present time
chemically the same as it was in the ages when life
was at its dawn. The proof of the last-mentioned

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 133

point may be somewhat briefly stated. The tempera-
ture of the earth's surface in large part depends upon
the mass of the air. If that envelope were to be
doubled in volume, the average heat of the earth
would be increased in something like a proportional
manner. Now, the organic life of the earth's surface
can only exist within narrow ranges of temperature.
It is possible for animals and plants to live only be-
tween thirty -two and one hundred and fifty degrees
Fahrenheit. A few forms which manage to protect
their bodies in winter by their peculiar habits can
endure in extreme cold; none can maintain them-
selves at a greater temperature than one hundred and
sixty degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore we may assume
that organic life from the dawn of geological history
to the present day has found the atmosphere of about
the same volume as at present, and that the range of
temperature has been limited.

In certain shore deposits of the Cambrian period
we find, in the beds which were laid bare by the re-
flux of the tide and covered by its subsequent incom-
ing, the imprint of rain-drops, which tell us that the
ordinary machinery of the atmosphere was operating
in those days as it does at the present time. In the
rocks formed in the same early stages of the earth's
history, we find vast accumulations of conglomerates
which in their aspect are so like the deposits made
during the last glacial period along the shores of
New England that we can conclude them to be the
products of the glacial forces. Such considerations

134 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

show us that in this ancient Cambrian period the
climatal conditions were essentially like those pre-
vailing in and near our own day. Geographic al-
terations have, of course, produced wide alterations
of climate. They have dried up realms to deserts,
and have turned again to fertility countries which
were for a time unfitted for life. But all these
changes have been in their nature local ; they have
never destructively interfered with the majestic on-
going of the great organic armies.

The presence of vast amounts of carbon in the coal-
beds and in the limestones and other deposits of the
earth has led geologists to the conclusion that the
atmosphere must have at one time contained an
enormous body of that substance in the form of car-
bonic acid gas, whence it was taken by plants and by
the animals which feed on plants and built into the
rocks. This supposition demands a very peculiar at-
mosphere in the early stages of the earth's history
before the carbon was deposited in the rocks. It is
now, however, pretty clear that the carbon in our
coal-beds, limestones, and other deposits could not
have been at any one time present in the atmosphere,
for the reason that an air so constituted would be
unfit to maintain the animal life which has existed
on the crust of the earth from the earliest geological
ages to the present day. We are therefore driven to
suppose that this substance is in some way fed into
the atmosphere ; we are reasonably sure it does not
come from the earth's interior, there being only a rel-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 135

atively small amount of it thrown out by the volca-
noes and other terrestrial sources. On this account
geologists are now coming to the opinion that carbon
must be slowly brought into the air from the celestial
spaces at something like the same rate at which it is
taken from the air by plants and buried in the crust
of the earth. In a word, all the facts point to the
conclusion that in constitution and in mass the aerial
envelope of the earth, on which all life so intimately
depends, has not essentially varied from the begin-
ning of organic history to the present day. There
remains the question of climate. How can we ac-
count for such variations of temperature as are indi-
cated in the past history of the earth without recourse
to convulsions, without having to suppose that in
certain periods the earth was in many regards
another sphere than that we now find it to be ?

The climatal variations indicated in the record of
the rocks may be briefly set forth as follows: At
many times in the earth's history organic life — even
those forms which are quite sensitive to cold — has
ranged close up to the poles. Thus during the Car-
boniferous period plants allied to tree-ferns were
developed within the Arctic Circle. In the Miocene
Tertiary other species similar to those now living in
the southern part of the Mississippi valley flourished
within twelve degrees of the North Pole. At other
times, probably at many other periods, an ice sheet,
such as now covers Greenland, extended south on the
continent of North America to about the parallel of

136 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

forty degrees, or perhaps in detached ice-caps in ele-
vated regions to points somewhat farther south. At
certain other times and places in the earth's history-
there have been climates of peculiar dryness, which
have formed enormous deposits of salts, such as are
precipitated from sea-water by its complete evapora-
tion. In some ages deposits of this nature have accu-
mulated to a great depth. In endeavoring to account
for the climatal changes of the earth, we must bear
in mind such extremes of climate, — of heat, cold,
dryness, and wetness, — which indicate the gamut
of change the earth's temperature conditions have
undergone.

It is worth our while to note the evidence as to the
states of climate in the former geological periods in
this continent which may be derived from the salt
deposits which may be found at various points within
its area. The value of the evidence which may be
obtained from these accumulations of rock-salt has
generally been neglected by geologists. They are,
however, of a precious sort, for they enable us to
trace the times when the climate of particular regions
was remarkably dry ; for it is only under conditions
of extreme desiccation that such accumulations of
saline materials are made. Judging of the past by
the present conditions, we may say that only in those
fields where the rainfall is extremely limited in
amount and the heat of the sun very powerful can we
have such accumulations formed.

The most recently accumulated salt-beds of North

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 127

America, except those about the dead seas of the Cor-
dilleras, are found in southern Louisiana, near the
margin of the Gulf of Mexico. In that field we have
very extensive deposits of rock-salt which apparently
were formed in Tertiary or Cretaceous times. This
is now one of the rainiest districts in North America ;
but from the large quantities in which the salt was
accumulated it was evidently at one time a field of
peculiar dryness. To account for the dry climate
indicated by these Louisiana rock-salts, we have to
suppose a totally different arrangement of the Gulf
Stream from that which exists at present.

In the earlier stages of our continent's history,
particularly in the Silurian age, rock-salts of vast
thickness and extent were formed in the region
which lies between central Michigan and eastern
New York. This field was at that time the northern
border of the now shrunken continental sea which we
term the Gulf of Mexico, and which was then visited
by a tide of warm water. This warm ocean current
must have been the equivalent of the Gulf Stream.
The evidence shows us that from time to time that
stream was denied access to the Mexican Gulf, — a
field which it now possesses.

Although these phenomena concerning the distri-
bution of salt are of exceeding interest, we can only
note them here to show how great may have been the
climatal variation due to the change in that marine
current which is the dominating element in the
climate of North America and of Europe.

138 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Next we should note the fact that the temperature
of the earth's surface is determined by a singularly
delicate adjustment of conditions. In the sun there
is a heat probably to be measured by hundreds of
thousands of degrees Fahrenheit ; in the centre of the
earth, a temperature which perhaps surpasses ten
thousand degrees Fahrenheit ; and in the starry space
between — save for a mere skim of atmosphere on the
earth's surface, a few miles of the millions which
separate the earth and sun — we have a cold far below
the zero of Fahrenheit. On a summer day the fleecy
clouds which float in the upper air at the height
of six miles above the surface are composed of parti-
cles of ice. An equal distance below the surface, we
probably have a temperature much exceeding that of
boiling water. With these facts clearly in mind, we
perceive the marvel is not how climatal changes have
come upon the earth, but rather how they have been
kept within such a range as to have permitted the
organic series to go forward steadfastly in their
development, essentially unharmed by atmospheric
catastrophes.

The conditions which bring about glaciation appear
to require no widespread alteration in the circum-
stances of the earth's climate. Most geologists are
now disposed to reject the first and crude hypothesis
that glaciation was caused by extreme cold. We
now know with approximate certainty that a decrease
in the temperature of high latitudes would reduce
rather than extend the existing glaciers, for the rea-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 139

son that a greater measure of cold would be attended
by a further reduction in the quantity of rainfall, and
therefore by lessened glaciers. If by any set of cir-
cumstances the snowfall of northern Europe and North
America should be doubled, without a very great in-
crease in the annual heat, glaciers would probably re-
turn to the lands they occupied in the last ice time.
At present the summit of Mount Washington is al-
most high enough to bear glaciers, the snow enduring
there sometimes until the month of August. If the
snowfall of that region should be doubled, there can
be little doubt that glaciers would begin to gather at
the uppermost parts of the mountain. As soon as
they were formed, they would tend to gather fogs
above, and even to fend off the rays of the summer
sun which would melt the snows. Breeding a cli-
mate favorable to its preservation, the ice sheet
would rapidly extend ; and under the supposition of
a doubled snowfall over New England, it seems quite
likely that the glacial sheet would soon occupy the
whole of its surface, the ice beginning to gather in
the mountains and growing thence, taking its climate
with it as it invaded the lower lands. The last gla-
cial period which affected North America seems to
have been mainly limited, at least as far as the de-
velopment of massive glaciers was concerned, to the
region about the North Atlantic, Europe, and western
Asia, and the eastern parts of North America. Such
an ice time might perhaps be brought about by a
considerable increase in the volume of the Gulf

140 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Stream, which would increase the temperature of the
North Atlantic waters, and cause them to give more
moisture to the air, and thus increase the rainfall of
the contiguous lands.

Until recently geologists have sought the cause
which produced the wide extension of the ice during
the last glacial period in Europe and North America
in some general changes which have affected the
whole climate of the earth. With the advance in
field observations it has gradually become clear that
this particular glacial period at least was due to
some action which took effect mainly in the region
about the North Atlantic. The researches of Ameri-
can geologists made within two or three years have
shown that while the ice lay in great thickness
over the region from southern New England, central
Pennsylvania, and southern Ohio northward to Hud-
son's Bay, and possibly beyond to the Greenland dis-
trict, the western margin of the sheet did not quite
attain the foot of the Rocky Mountains in the re-
gion adjacent to the line between the United States
and Canada. It is true that in the Cordilleran
mountains there were here and there extensive local
glaciers, but it is now unquestionable that the condi-
tions which maintained the ice diminished in their
effect as we approach the Pacific Ocean on the west-
ern border of the continent.

It appears also clear that when the glacial envelope
was thickest in Europe, the deposit thinned out
toward central and northern Asia, only certain por-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 141

tions of the greater continent then having extensive
fields of ice. In a word, it is evident that when the
North Atlantic region was thus icebound, the regions
about the shores of the North Pacific were not in
any considerable measure enveloped by glaciers. It
appears to the present writer that this aspect of the
fact naturally leads us to seek a cause of North At-
lantic glaciation in the variations in effect which the
Gulf Stream has exercised upon its basin. That
ocean current is at present the principal factor in
determining the North Atlantic climate. Even as
far north as the Arctic Circle, where the influence of
its tide of warm waters is much diminished, it still
brings to the field of the sea more warmth than at-
tains to it from the direct rays of the sun.

It is not yet possible to trace the variations which
have taken place in the course of the Gulf Stream in
relatively modern geologic times, say during the
period at which the ice attained its greatest exten-
sion about the North Atlantic. It is, however, ap-
parent that alterations in the form and position of
Cape St. Roque, in the elevation of the Antilles or
of Florida, or in the conditions of the isthmian dis-
trict, the land which connects North and South
America, might profoundly influence the volume and
swiftness of movement of this ocean current. It
seems likely that until the recent changes of the
Gulf Stream have been carefully studied we cannot
expect to attain sound views as to the nature of the
causes which brought about the Atlantic glacial epoch.

142 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Such an increase in the volume of the Gulf Stream
which penetrates the North Atlantic might be brought
about in one of several ways. A change in the posi-
tion of Cape St. Roque, the eastern promontory of
South America, which now divides the waters of the
equatorial current, might serve to turn the whole of
that great stream into the North Atlantic, or to
divert it altogether toward the South Pole; or a
lowering of the lands about Behring's Strait might
permit a larger share of the Japanese Gulf Stream to
penetrate into the Arctic waters, somewhat elevating
the temperature and increasing the rainfall of all the
northern parts of North America. Thus simple geo-
graphical changes such as are within the range of
reasonable conjecture appear sufficient to bring about
the relatively small amount of climatal modification
necessary to produce a glacial period, if all the other
conditions were such as to favor its creation.

It is not likely that the institution of glaciation
depends entirely upon any one cause. It seems very
probable that the interesting hypothesis of Dr. Croll
presents us with a condition which under certain cir-
cumstances could bring about the imposition of an
ice sheet upon the continent. There may be a variety
of other accidents, some of which we have noted,
which would lead to a large precipitation of water in
the form of snow on certain lands, and thus to the
creation of a glacial period, the extent of which
would be measured by the diffusion of the conditions.
Considerations such as these serve to show us that

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 143

our glacial periods do not demand any singular de-
parture from the conditions which now operate in
determining the earth's climate. That climate, both
in its general aspects and in the shape which it as-
sumes in any field, is determined by the equation of
a wide range of causes.

The great northward extension of relatively warm
climates which has occurred at certain stages of the
earth's history is perhaps explicable in an equally
simple manner. We have already noticed the fact
that the Gulf Stream now bears to the region within
the Arctic Circle more heat derived from equatorial
sunshine than falls upon that area directly from the
sun itself. It is to this great body of warmth we owe
the habitability to civilized man of northern Europe.
The whole process of our civilization, indeed, depends
upon this continuous tide of tropical water. In the
present conditions of oceanic circulation, the warm
water coming from the tropics to the North Pole is
not sufficient to lift the temperature of that region
into the limits favorable to delicate forms of life;
but if the passage of Behring's Strait were as readily
open to the Kuro Sivo, or Japan Current, as the North
Atlantic is open to the entrance of the Gulf Stream,
the temperature of the region about the North Pole
would probably be lifted by at least thirty degrees
above its present mean annual. This alteration, as
before noted, if but partly accomplished, might
vastly extend the glaciers which exist about the
pole, by increasing the snowfall ; but if completely

144 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

effected, it would bring the mean temperature of the
region within the Arctic Circle, which is now about
thirty degrees Fahrenheit, to about sixty degrees
Fahrenheit on the mean annual. We should probably
then have in all the country about the poles a condi-
tion of temperature not greatly different from that of
southern England or the southern parts of the Mis-
sissippi Valley. This climatal state would endure
until geographic changes had modified the run of the
oceanic currents. Thus on the form of the land and
sea, rather than upon remote conditions, we may
hope to found a sound theory concerning the ancient
climates, with their varying heat and cold.

We must now note the fact that the process of de-
velopment of continents has not only provided an
ample theatre for the migration of life under the in-
fluences of climatal and geographic change, but that
it also brings a set of influences, through the varying
ocean currents and changes in the height of the land
surface, which impel the faunae and floras to those in-
teractive and continual migrations on which so large
a part of organic advance clearly depends. We see
the importance of these climatal trials, and their
effect in promoting the destruction of the old and
weak and the prosperity of the new and strong species,
by comparing the organic conditions which exist in
the tropics and in high latitudes.

It is clear that organic life tends to its most rapid
advancement in those parts of the earth's surface
where beings are subject to a considerable stress from

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 145

climatal conditions, — where from geological period
to geological period they are driven about by the
changes of temperature, and kept as it were in inces
sant motion, We find in the tropical districts an
assemblage of animals in which there are many
archaic forms. The elephants, once inhabitants of
all the greater continents, once endowed with power
to meet the cold of the Arctic Circle as well as the
warmth of the tropics, have shrunken away from the
lands in high latitudes, and find their refuge near
the equator. So, too, the tigers, the rhinoceroses,
and a host of other forms once strong enough to meet
the trials of rigorous climates, have in their decline
betaken themselves to the great almshouse of the
tropics, where if the conditions of advance are less
perfect than those afforded by regions of variable
climate, the abundance of food and the absence of
climatal stress permit the forms to survive.

To the naturalist who has come to appreciate the
sensitiveness of organic forms to their surrounding
conditions, who has also seen how organic advance
depends upon the completion of each step in the great
series of living beings, the most surprising facts of
the world are found in the coincidence between the
laws of the earth's development and the needs of
organic life. Where his predecessors in the study of
the earth found in the conditions which lead to the
formation of mountains a cause of widespread destruc-
tion, he sees only beneficent influences, cruel it may

146 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA/

be to individuals, but blessing-giving to the large
assemblages of life. Gradually to such a student the
world seems more and more purposeful. Slowly the
sense of order and relation between the apparently
rude machinery of the earth's crust and the delicate
beings which are bred upon it becomes clear; and
finally he finds himself inevitably led to the convic-
tion that there is an essential unity in all the life of
this sphere, — the physical and organic being but
parts of one great plan.

CHAPTER Y.

Dependence of Man on Environment; Increase of this Dependence with the
Advance of Civilization. — Relations of our modern States to the Condi-
tions of the Earth. — Advance in the Sympathetic Motive. — Comparison
of Europe and North America. — Discussion of the separate Areas of
Europe. — Isolation of Great BritaiD ; its Causes. — Isolated Areas of
Asia. — Cradle-land of the Aryan People. — Permanence of Eace Quali-
ties. — Race Qualities in Africa ; in Australia ; in America. — Geographic
Conditions of North America; Review of the several Fields of this Con-
tinent.— Effect of Physical Conditions of North America on native
Indians.

The advance which has been made in natural sci-
ence during the last century has led to a great change
in our conception as to the relations of mankind to
the earth. Of old, men looked upon themselves as
accidents upon this sphere. In the light of modern
science, we regard our species as the product of
terrestrial conditions. We conceive man as the
summit and crown of the long-continued progressive
changes which have led his bodily structure and his
mental powers up from the dust to their present ele-
vated estate.

In the progress of organic advance which has led
through inconceivably numerous stages of existence
from the primal base of life to the estate of man, the
dependence of beings on the conditions which sur-
rounded them has always, been very close. The low-

148 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

liest organism is influenced by the temperature in air
or water, by the conditions of the soil or sea-bottom,
or the circumstances which serve to bring it the
needful food. With each advance of intellectual
power the dependence on environment becomes more
and more intimate, for with that intelligence the
creature seeks beyond itself for opportunities to
gratify its desires. It chases its prey, flees from
pursuers, herds with its kind, and is thereby edu-
cated to a sympathetic life.

When the human state is attained, when the pro-
gressive desires of man are aroused, the relations of
life to the geography and other conditions of environ-
ment increase in a wonderfully rapid way. When
the tool-making stage is won, the savage must be-
come in a certain way a geologist. He learns per-
force to seek for particular kinds of stone with which
he may point his arrows and spears, to make the
mortars and pestles with which to grind his corn
or the clay of his pottery. The next stage — that of
agriculture — yet further increases the measure of
dependence on the character of the earth. As soon
as the rude combats of the earlier man develop into
the military art, the work of attack and defence
leads to a close relation of the developing savage to
the topographic conditions which he encounters.
When commerce arises, the dependence of man on
the shape of the earth becomes yet more intimate.
With the growth of each of these elements of civili-
zation, the arts of the household, of war, and of

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 149

trade, the chains which bind men to the earth about
them become stronger.

It is impossible to depict in an adequate way the
measure of dependence of our modern civilized man
upon the world about him. The functions of his
body and mind depend curiously on objects from the
ends of the earth. Thus our meals commonly mean
many thousand miles of transit to bring the food to
the table ; the clothing of our bodies brings the wool
of Australia, the cotton of the Carolinas, the silk of
Italy or China, the gold of California, the leather of
Paraguay, the arts of hands and brains in a dozen
different peoples together. Our daily thoughts take
hold on the ends of the earth.

The dependence of our modern States upon the con-
ditions of the earth is inconceivably greater than that
of the ancient tribe whence they came. In the won-
derful State of Britain the national life-functions
vary with reference to the topography of high Asia,
the climate and surface of Africa, and certain por-
tions of other countries ; and almost every storm and
every drought which affects the remotest lands and
seas reacts upon that State. Ministers, and with
them the purposes of the State, are changed by the
chance of some battlefield at the antipodes. A bad
harvest in the plains of the Upper Mississippi means
dear bread in England, fewer marriages, and shorter
lives; in other words, it produces an effect on the
whole social status of that country. A disturbance
such as our Civil War, which arrests the cotton ex-

150 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

port of the United States, starves Manchester, and
sets the rulers of Britain against the cause of freedom
in America.

It is, indeed, difficult to present an adequate pic-
ture of the physiographical reactions which civilized
man experiences through the geographic condition of
the earth's surface ; for such a picture would have to
disclose the infinitely complicated machinery of our
society. I must beg my readers to aid me by ima-
gining their own position in relation to the earth's
features.

There is, however, one aspect of the increasing
dependence of man on Nature which comes about
through advancing civilization, — a feature so new
and so important that we should notice it at least in
a passing way. The largest element of this growth is
found in the gain in the sympathetic motives which
have arisen from a wider understanding of the world
and a closer application of the human mind to its
phenomena. It is a curious feature in the culture of
Greece that it never seems to have been sympatheti-
cally concerned with the people beyond the limits of
the native State. The Greek thought of most things
which we think about; but this matter, which now
much occupies our mind, did not concern him.

It appears to me that the modern sympathy of man
with the world about him which manifests itself in
the love of the unseen savage, in the love of the
beautiful, in the love of scientific inquiry for the
sake of knowledge alone, is the last product of those

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 151

vast interactions which have come from the extension
of the contacts of man with Nature, — first through
commerce, and afterward through less economic mo-
tives. This interaction is to a great extent depen-
dent on peculiarities of the earth's surface, on the
diversities of the lands and seas, and the consequent
almost infinite variety in the subjects for curious and
profitable inquiry which the world affords.

Although on each land-mass the physiographic in-
fluences are of the utmost importance with reference
to the development of man, we can only glance at
certain interesting features dependent on the struc-
ture of the lands of Europe and North America, giving
most of our attention to the conditions of our own
continent. North America is most interesting to us,
not only because it is the seat of our own life, but
also because it is a region characterized by large, sim-
ple, and easily comprehensible geographic features.
Europe concerns us almost as much, because it is the
cradle of our people, the place of nurture where our
race came by its motives and learned how to act its
parts in the new theatre of the western world.

The continent of Europe differs from the other
great land-masses in the fact that it is a singular
aggregation of peninsulas and islands, originating in
separate centres of mountain growth, and of enclosed
valleys walled about from the outer world by ele-
vated summits. Other continents are somewhat
peninsulated ; Asia approaches Europe in that re-
spect; North America has a few great dependencies

152 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

in its larger islands and considerable promontories ;
but Africa, South America, and Australia are singu-
larly united lands.

The highly divided state of Europe has greatly
favored the development within its area of isolated
fields, each fitted for the growth of a separate state,
adapted even in this day for local life, although com-
merce in our time binds lands ' together in a way
which it did not of old. These separated areas were
marvellously suited to be the cradles of peoples ; and
if we look over the map of Europe we readily note
the geographic insulations which that remarkably
varied land affords.

Beginning with the eastern Mediterranean, we have
the peninsula on which Constantinople stands, — a
region only partly protected from assault by its geo-
graphic peculiarities ; and yet it owes to its partial
separation from the mainlands on either side a large
measure of local historic development. Next we have
Greece and its associated islands, which — a safe
stronghold for centuries — permitted the nurture of
the most marvellous life the world has ever known.
Farther to the west the Italian peninsula, where
during three thousand years the protecting envelope
of the sea and the walls of Alps and Apennines have
enabled a score of States to attain a development;
where the Roman nation, absorbing, with its singu-
lar power of taking in other life, a number of
primitive centres of civilization, grew to power
which made it dominant in the ancient world. Sicily,

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 153

Sardinia, Corsica, have each profited by their isola-
tion, and have bred diverse qualities in man, and
contributed motives which have interacted in the
earth's history. Again, in Spain we have a region
well fitted to be the cradle of a great people ; to its
geographic position it owed the fact that it became
the seat of the most cultivated Mahometanism the
world has ever known. To the Pyrenees, the moun-
tain wall of the north, we owe in good part the limi-
tation of that Mussulman invasion and the protection
of central Europe from its forward movement, until
luxury and half -faith had sapped its energies. Going
northward, we find in the region of Normandy the
place of growth of that fierce but strong folk, the
ancient Scandinavians, who, transplanted there, held
their ground, and grew until they were strong enough
to conquer Britain and give it a large share of the
quality which belongs to our own state.

To a trifling geographic accident we owe the isola-
tion of Great Britain from the European continent ;
and all the marvellous history of the English folk, as
we all know, hangs upon the existence of that narrow
strip of sea between the Devon coast and the kindred
lowlands of northern France.

The isolation of Great Britain depends upon such
peculiar and interesting circumstances that we may
turn aside a moment from the thread of our narra-
tive to see how this strip of silver sea came to be a
fortress ditch between the continent and the island.
The British Channel is due, in the first place, to the

154 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

peculiar strength of the tides in the North Atlantic.
The energy of these tides is explained by the fact
that the North Atlantic is a somewhat wedge-shaped
basin pointing up between the continents of Europe
and North America. The tidal wave heaps up in
this great re-entrant, as it heaps up in the narrowing
channels of the Bay of Fundy, Port Royal Sound,
Boston Harbor, or any other constricted passage lead-
ing in to the land. Next we note the fact that in the
British Channel the tides have a rise of about
twenty-five feet, as they sweep through its open
waters from the Atlantic toward the North Sea;
while in the neighboring bay of Bristol, or the
Severn Channel, as it is sometimes called, where the
bay is closed at its head, the tides rise to about fifty
feet in height.

Going back to the last geological period, we are
able by divers facts to ascertain that there was a
broad isthmus connecting Great Britain with the
French coast, perhaps extending seaward as far as
the limits of Belgium ; there was a bay on the east
and a bay on the west of this isthmus. In this state
we may make sure that the tides running directly
into the Norman Bay, as we may call it, on the
west, and the Belgian Bay on the east, were consid-
erably higher than they are at present. Now, the
cutting energy of the tide depends upon the speed of
the streams of water which its movement brings
about, and the swiftness of these streams is propor-
tionate in a high degree to the altitude the tidal

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 155

waters attain in their quick successive rise and fall.
No sooner was the geographic condition we have
described in existence than the tides began their
work of driving their way through the rocks by cut-
ting out and scouring off into the deeper sea the
materials composing the shores. In a short time, in
a geological sense, this work was accomplished. The
Norman Bay broke through into the Belgian Bay,
and the waters had a free run through the channel,
which we may presume at first to have been narrow.
Although the tides then, when the land was severed,
lost a considerable part of their height, they were
still, as they are at the present time, powerful
agents in scouring the shores, operating to work
back the coasts at a rate which in a geological sense
is very rapid.

East of Britain lie two peninsulas which have been
the cradle of very important peoples. That of Swe-
den and Norway is the result of mountain develop-
ment ; that of Denmark appears to be in the main the
product of glacial and marine erosion, differing in
its non-mountainous origin from all the other penin-
sulas and islands of the European border. Thus on
the periphery of Europe we have at least a dozen
geographical isolated areas, sufficiently large and
well separated from the rest of the world to make
them the seats of independent social life. The in-
terior of the country has several similarly, though
less perfectly, detached areas. Of these the most
important lie fenced within the highlands of the

156 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Alps. In that extensive system of mountain dis-
turbances we have the geographical conditions which
most favor the development of peculiar divisions of
men, and which guard such cradled peoples from the
destruction which so often awaits them on the plains.
Thus, while the folk of the European lowlands have
been overrun by the successive tides of invasion,
their qualities confused, and their succession of
social life interrupted, Switzerland has to a great
extent, by its mountain walls, protected its people
from the troubles to which their lowland neighbors
have been subjected. The result is that within an
area not twice as large as Massachusetts we find a
marvellous diversity of folk, as is shown by the
variety in physical aspect, moral quality, language,
and creed in the several important valleys and other
divisions of that complicated topography.

The fact that Switzerland has maintained its local
life comparatively undisturbed by the powerful States
about it for more than a thousand years, is due
mainly to the peculiar geographic conditions which
environ its folk.

The result of the much-divided geography of Europe
has been that the continent has become a natural
cradle of strong peoples. Almost everywhere the
sea is near by ; save in Switzerland, all the important
centres of population have had contact with the deep,
and the peculiar enlargement which it alone can
afford to man. This nearness to the sea insures also
a tolerably large amount of rainfall, which affords

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 157

the basis of a varied industry, and gives the lands a
measure of fertility which makes it possible to have
a considerable population on a small area. Compar-
ing the conditions of Europe with those of Asia, we
find that in that greater continent the isolation of
areas is less complete, and the detached masses of
land, such as Arabia, Hindustan, Malacca, Kam-
schatka, etc. , are not well placed to be the cradle of
several great races. They are either in or near the
tropics, as are the three first-named peninsulas ; in
high latitudes, as Kamschatka ; or made deserts by
their circumstances, as in the case of Arabia. The
highland valleys of central Asia are sterilized either
by cold or drought. The industries of these up-
lands are so far limited that varied culture is impos-
sible to the men who occupy them. Only in the
peninsula of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, do we find the
conditions for the culture of primitive peoples ap-
proaching the perfection of those afforded by Europe ;
and it is only in that section of Asia that we find the
natural cradles of peoples such as abound on the
European continent.

In order to appreciate the effect of diverse degrees
of geographic isolation on the development of the
peoples who inhabit islands or peninsulas, the reader
will find it useful to consider several instances in
which the measure of separation of the given area
from the neighboring continents varies on a progres-
sive scale. For this purpose he may take three
groups of islands which have played a more or less

158 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

prominent part in the history of civilized man)
namely, Great Britain, the Japan archipelago, and
Iceland. The British archipelago is separated from
the continent of Europe by only a narrow strait,
which is most important as a barrier because of the
strong tides and waves which range through it. So
moderate is the measure of separation that the shores
are intervisible ; and even in the earlier days of navi-
gation it was not difficult in good weather for the
most primitive craft to cross the water. So slight
and recent is this barrier of sea that almost every
species of animal and plant in Great Britain has its
equivalent form on the mainland. Nevertheless we
note the fact that the consequences of its isolation
have in the history of man been most momentous.
Even in prehistoric times it served to give the popu-
lation of each of this group of islands a somewhat
distinct character.

Considering only the strictly historic part of human
development in the British Isles, we note in the first
place that the barrier of sea delayed the Roman
occupation of the district, and limited that occupation
to the principal island. We perceive furthermore
that the Irish Channel has kept the great western
island singularly separated in its development from
the eastern portion of the archipelago; and it can
hardly be doubted that if Ireland had been as closely
linked with England as Scotland is, the present
political and social isolation of the Hibernian popula-
tion would not exist. The perfect mergence of the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 159

Scottish people with the southern British is doubt-
less in good part to be explained by the geographic
unity of the two countries. In the one case there is
a strong physiographic barrier, and in the other the
two countries are indistinctly separated.

The independent development of the British State
in the times following the Norman Conquest is
clearly in large part due to the measure of protection
afforded by the British Channel. While every other
country on the continent except Scandinavia — which
is itself practically as much insulated as Great Brit-
ain — has felt again and again the tread of conquering
armies, this group of islands has been exempt from
successive incursions. Repeatedly military combina-
tions have been made which had for their purpose
the subjugation of these islands. Some of these
schemes doubtless would have been successful but for
the resistance to invasion which this strip of sea
interposes.

Few students of Great Britain will doubt that the
insulated character of the land has proved of the
utmost importance in shaping the fortunes of the Eng-
lish people. By retaining this folk in close but safe
connection with the European continent, the geo-
graphic conditions have made it possible for the
English race to mature its qualities and to extend its
dominion in the world in a more perfect manner than
would otherwise have been possible. If the connec-
tion between Great Britain and the continent which
existed during the Tertiary period had been main-

160 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

tained to the present day, the history of the civilized
world would have been greatly altered.

Turning now to the Japanese archipelago, we find
in that part of the world a group of islands which are
more separated from the adjacent continent than are
the British Isles. The measure of the isolation is
such that while the civilization of Japan in a general
way resembles that of China, the independence of its
development, as compared with that of the British
Isles, is relatively great. There has been no such
immigration into the islands from the mainland as
has occurred in the British group of detached lands.
Thus, though the Japanese are by race and primal
education closely related to the Chinese, they have
acquired a rather distinct civilization. In their mo-
tives they have departed far more from those of the
neighboring continent than have the British.

For our third instance we may select the island
of Iceland, where colonists of the Scandinavian folk
became socially and commercially to a great degree
separated from the parent country a thousand years
ago, and have remained ever since without danger of
invasion, free to work out their development without
intermixture of the blood of other peoples. While
these wonderful islanders have remained in rather
close intellectual relations with the mainland of
Europe, we clearly perceive that they have developed
and maintained an independent civilization of a re-
markable character.

Other instances to show a yet greater independence,

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 161

secured by a more complete separation of islands from
the mainland, can readily be found in such cases
as are afforded by the Sandwich Islands, by New
Zealand, or other lonely lands scattered in the midst
of the great oceans. In each of these fields we may
note that the life of the people is peculiar in propor-
tion to the measure of their isolation and the length
of time for which it has endured.

To see the importance of these conditions to the
early races and states, we must conceive the state of
primitive human life ; we must picture to ourselves
conditions very different from those prevailing in the
present day. In order to make a people, — to elevate a
primitive folk to the state where it possesses national
motives and distinct moral character, and a culture
which develops and fits that character, — we must give
it a seat where varied industries are possible, a
station which may be held against the destructive
effect of foreign conquest for centuries, if not thou-
sands of years, while the qualities of the inhab-
itants are undergoing development. These qualities
— which for the want of a better word we term
national — being developed in a people, the move-
ment of migration derived from the growth of popu-
lation brings the separate communities into conten-
tion with one another.

The curious diversities of European and Asiatic-
folk in the centuries immediately before and after
the birth of Christ were the result of that prepara-
tion which had come about through the long isolation

162 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

of the diverse groups of men in their several cradles.
Culture in the arts of war and peace, and increase of
numbers had brought these separate aggregations of
men into a state of unstable equilibrium. They
were ready to move ; one movement of conquest led
to another, until in time these peoples were all in
motion, after the fashion in which the organic as-
semblages of animals and plants move when the
topography and the climate of a continent are dis-
turbed. This process of movement led to the vast
contention which brought about the overthrow of the
Roman power, and made an end of the dominancy
which the Mediterranean States had previously
maintained.

In order to perceive the close relation which
exists between the migrations of primitive men and
those of the lower animals, it is perhaps worth while
to give the reader a brief account of the migratory
movements of the lemming of Lapland, a little crea-
ture closely related to the rat. This animal inhabits
the district of the Kolen, in the northern portion of
the Scandinavian peninsula. Ordinarily it is limited
to a rather narrow field, where it occupies a very
inconspicuous place because of its underground habit
of life. Occasionally, however, the lemmings are
affected by the migratory spirit, and at such times
they gather in large hordes and move forth from
their mountain upland toward the west, through
Northland and Finmark. In their march they
proceed in continuous columns, the leaders of

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 163

which seek to make a way directly toward the
west. When encountering an obstacle, they will
with great determination seek to overcome it, and
only turn aside when they find it impossible to climb
over or gnaw through the barrier. With brief pauses
for food, they proceed on their way until they arrive
at the shore. There they leap into the water and
swim toward the west until they are drowned.

Many other instances illustrative of a similar mi-
gratory impulse operating in mammals, in fishes, in
birds, and in insects could be given. They all point
to the conclusion that whenever a species occupying
a rather limited field increases to such numbers that
the supply of food suited to their needs is no longer
adequate, they become endowed with this singular
mob-like desire to win their way to other lands. In
all the circumstances of their migrations they remind
us of the forced marches which the Huns and various
tribes of the Aryan folk made in the centuries about
the beginning of the Christian era.

It is now the opinion of those best versed in this
complicated question, that the Aryan people, long
supposed to have been cradled in central Asia, are
really the children of Europe ; that they were devel-
oped in the Scandinavian peninsulas, — a field which
seems to have been the seat of the strongest men of
the world for thousands of years. This view is more
satisfactory to the naturalist than the older opinion,
which placed the cradle of the Aryans in northern
or central Asia. It seemed an anomaly that the

164 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

most vigorous and at the same time the most plastic
of the world-peoples should have developed amid the
limited opportunities afforded by high Asia, where
the chance of education in arts and in commerce is
very small compared to what it is in Scandinavia, or
indeed in any of the European peninsulas. If on
a priori considerations the naturalist were compelled
to designate the natural seat in which our race ob-
tained its qualities, there is no other site which
would so satisfactorily meet his view as to the needs
as the peninsulated district about the Baltic ; there,
better than anywhere else, men may find a hardy,
though not so strenuous climate as to diminish the
vitality or send all the energies to the care for im-
mediate needs. There the variation in the seasons,
the variety of soil, the contacts with the sea are all
admirably suited for the training of a folk. From
that great nursery of vigor we can well conceive the
Aryan people, protected in their infancy by the iso-
lation of their birthplace, in time going forth in
their strength to dominate the world from eastern
India to the Atlantic. Thence again, in the Danish
Northmen days, went forth a second tide of strength.
We look indeed with satisfaction, from the natural-
ist's point of view, on the fact that in the peninsu-
las of Scandinavia and in the islands of the British
archipelago we find the source of origin of the dom-
inant people in the world ; for there more perfectly
than anywhere else is the environment adapted to
making strong races.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 165

After a race has been formed and bred to cer-
tain qualities within a limited field, after it has
come to possess a certain body of characteristics
which gives it its particular stamp, the importance
of the original cradle passes away. There is some-
thing very curious in the permanence of race condi-
tions after they have been fixed for a thousand years
or so in a people. When the assemblage of physical
and mental motives are combined in a body of coun-
try folk, they may endure under circumstances in
which they could not have originated ; thus, even in
our domesticated animals and plants, we find that
varieties created under favorable conditions, obtain-
ing their inheritances in suitable conditions, may
then flourish in many conditions of environment in
which they could not by any chance have originated.
The barnyard creatures of Europe, with their estab-
lished qualities, may be taken to Australia, and
there retain their nature for many generations ; even
where the form falls away from the parent stock, the
decline is generally slow, and may not for a great
time become apparent.

This fixity of race characteristics has enabled the
several national varieties of men to go forth from
their nurseries, carrying the qualities bred in their
earlier conditions through centuries of life in other
climes. The Gothic blood of Italy and of Spain still
keeps much of its parent strength; the Aryan's of
India, though a world apart in its conditions from
those which gave it character in its cradle, is still,

166 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

in many of its qualities, distinctly akin to that of the
home people. Moor, Hun, and Turk, — all the numer-
ous folk we find in the present condition of the world
so far from their cradle -lands, are still to a great
extent what their primitive nurture made them. On
this rigidity which comes to mature races in the
lower life as well as in man, depends the vigor with
which they do their appointed work.

These considerations will be of the utmost impor-
tance to us in our study of the effect of physiographic
conditions found in North America upon the folk
derived from other lands, which are to work out
their history upon its surface. The Americas,
Africa, and Australia have shown by their human
products that they are unfitted to be the cradle-places
of great peoples. Yast as has been the development
of human life upon them, these continents have
never from their own blood built a race that has
risen above barbarism.

Northern Africa early became the seat of Asiatic
and European folk, who remained separated from the
body of that continent by a region of deserts. The
southern shore of the Mediterranean afforded fair
opportunities for the independent differentiation of
States, the result of which is expressed in its history ;
but the national motives of Egypt, of Carthage, and
of Moorish civilization which grew up in northern
Africa are all exotic. These States all represent the
development of peoples who were cradled elsewhere.
So, too, the semi-civilized condition of Abyssinia

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 167

is due to the implanting there of peoples not of
African origin.

Although the primitive races of Africa have never
attained anything like civilization, there is rea-
son to believe that they rose above the lowest
savagery in a very ancient time, attaining at a re-
mote period to about their present condition of cul-
ture. This fact is indicated not only by the very great
differences in the languages spoken by the various
tribes, but also by the condition of their agricultural
and other arts. While languages may under favor-
able circumstances rapidly become differentiated,
the arts, particularly those which pertain to agricul-
ture, seem generally to be of much slower growth.
Among the African peoples we find a great variety
of cultivated vegetables belonging to a few primitive
wild stocks. These simple groups of plants have
become remarkably diversified among the various
peoples, so that varieties in the kinds appear on the
whole to be much greater than those which have been
secured by the agricultural skill of the Aryan,
Semitic, or Tartar peoples. The same is the case
with the household arts. When we compare the
state of this traditional constructive work with that
of our North American Indians, we are struck by the
fact that in Africa the occupations of the people have
become extremely differentiated, while in North
America the variety in this regard is relatively slight.
In Australia there has never been an elevation of
the people above the grade of savagery. In the

168 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Americas the only movement which elevated the
folk above the lowest grades of barbarism is that
which took place at certain points in the Cordilleran
chain, where mountain districts afforded a measure
of isolation and protection such as is necessary for
the dawn of any culture whatsoever. All the rest of
these continents, so far as we can interpret their hu-
man history, have been characterized by the endless
disturbed wanderings of savages, tribe set against tribe,
making life so precarious that culture was impossible.
A glance at the geographic conditions of North
America will show the observer, especially if he will
compare the conditions with those of Europe, how
unfitted is this continent to be the cradle-place of
peoples. This continent is in the main a geographic
unit. The detached masses which border it are, by
the circumstances of climate or of surface, unfitted
to give the isolation necessary for the nurture of
people. This will be evident on a brief review of
the geography of this continent.

Beginning with the southern extremity of North
America, we find in that region a limited measure of
Isolation brought about by mountain barriers. Cen-
tral America and Mexico are to a certain extent pro-
tected by such natural defences, but in this region
the climate is not suited to the best conditions of
man. Although our species came from tropical
creatures akin to the anthropoid apes, men need
the stress of high latitudes, the moral and physi-
cal tonic effect of cold, to drive them into those in-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 169

teractions of activity which constitute civilization.
Going up the eastward face of North America, we
find in the Antilles an assemblage of lands which
but for their tropical climate might have favored the
growth of civilization. Next we come to Florida, a
geographic unit of considerable importance. This
area has, however, a subtropical climate, and a sur-
face by no means favorable to primitive agriculture.
It demands the resources of the modern farmer to
win crops from the soil. Moreover, there are no
barriers save those of swamps and forests to this
field. Every part of the surface could easily be
ranged over by nomads.

From Florida to eastern Nova Scotia and New-
foundland there are no well-isolated fields on the
coast-line of North America. Cape Breton and
Newfoundland, the island of Anticosti and that of
Prince Edward, have something of the geographic
unity which belongs to the cradle-lands of Europe
and Asia; but in the aboriginal days of North
America these regions were too far north for agricul-
tural industries. Maize, the principal agricultural
plant with the Indians, would hardly develop there.
The barbarous folk were therefore retained in the
state of hunters or fishermen, — conditions which do
not permit peoples to emerge from the grade of
savagery. Needs cannot advance in those lowly
states of existence ; there is no basis for commerce,
no foundation for the progress of the desires on
which all high culture depends. The man is what

170 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

he seeks, what he desires and must obtain. All
civilization is the outgrowth of strivings which go
beyond momentary physical needs; and therefore
until agriculture affords a firm foundation for sub-
sistence, until life is by the soil made something
more than a struggle for momentary support, the
foundations of culture cannot be obtained. North of
Newfoundland and through all the part of the con-
tinent which faces the ice-bound seas, the conditions
are too rigorous to permit the development of agri-
culture, and therefore the geographic environment
could not secure the cradling of well-developed races.
The same is true of the region of Alaska. Maize
culture is impossible until we advance southward on
the Pacific coast, to the region which is beyond the
peninsulated district of eastern America. This
coast is rather uniform in its physical and climatic
character until we come to the vast promontory of
southern California. This latter district is in form
not unlike that of the Scandinavian peninsula ; but it
is an arid country, affording no basis for agriculture,
remaining to this day essentially an unknown desert.
From Lower California to the isthmus, the shore is
again without isolated areas of land.

The interior of North America is even more undi-
vided than its shore-line. Along the eastern coast
extends the great mountain system of the Appala-
chians, the highest points of which rise to about
sixty-five hundred feet above the sea; but the struc-
ture of the ranges is such as to make no enclosures of

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 171

well-defined mountain-walled basins. Every part of
the Appalachians is open to the free movements of
savage men; the best protected valleys would offer
no immunity to a nascent civilization in its strug-
gle with more barbarous folk. We see something of
the unfitness of this shore-line of our continent for
the cradling of great races in the history of Euro-
pean settlements on this shore. Every colony which
was planted in North America had to enter into com-
bat with a host of savages. There were no natural
strongholds, such as abound on the coast of Europe,
and such as afforded the foundation of the Greek
colonies all along the coast of the Mediterranean, or
to the Northmen all the way from their own land
around to the shores of Sicily. So the European
colonists, until they came to gain strength by num-
bers, were, despite their superior arts and arms, their
stronger morale and training in the art of statecraft
and war, in jeopardy for generations after their com-
ing to the massive continent. The valley of the
Mississippi, the great central trough of the continent,
is unbroken by barriers from the Arctic Circle to the
Gulf of Mexico.

The Rocky Mountains, by their greater height and
certain peculiarities in their construction, afford a
good many enclosed valleys which under more favor-
able circumstances might have become the seat of a
vigorous life. Unfortunately this region is exces-
sively arid. There can practically be no tillage
within its limits except by devices of an engineering
sort, by which water is led from scanty streams upon

172 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

the land; and even with this resource the population
cannot readily attain the numbers which are neces-
sary for the development of culture.

It seems to me that it is rather to the physical
conditions of North America than to any primal in-
capacity on the part of its indigenous peoples to take
on civilization, that we must attribute the failure of
indigenous man within its limits to advance beyond
the lowest grades of barbarism. The Indian shows
us in many ways that he is an able person. We may
judge any folk by their greater men, and there can
be no doubt that the ablest of our American savages
rank high in the intellectual scale. It is, it seems
to me, to the ceaseless disturbances of nascent civili-
zation that we owe the failure of this folk to attain
to a higher grade. Each tribe which retained its
primitive savage impulse of migration became, as
did the Shawnees, a kind of Hun, to sweep away in
their foragings the beginnings of the higher state to
which other folk might have attained. As long as a
race is purely savage, dwelling in isolated communi-
ties, it does not seem endowed with any considerable
mobility. When by the arts which constitute the
next advance, and bring the people to the state of
barbarism, they become dangerous to their neigh-
bors, their motives are stronger, and they are com-
monly numerous enough to make war successfully.
Not tied by systematic agriculture or by architecture
to any particular piece of ground, they prey upon
their better provided neighbor, and so break up their
incipient states. Little as we know of the tribal

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 173

movements in America, we have yet learned enough
concerning them to see how certain bands of barba-
rians swept to and fro, sometimes in the course of a
century, making marches comparable to those of
Goths and Huns of the Old World, and bringing equal
destruction in their path. The Goths and Huns
were perhaps abler people than our American
Indians in their best estate ; moreover, they devas-
tated States which were so strong as not to be utterly
destroyed by their movements. The first effect of
their coming was in good part to overwhelm society ;
but there was enough left, as we all know, to subdue
the savages by the arts of peace. But if southern Eu-
rope had been struck by the northern invasion a thou-
sand years before the tide broke upon them, the Goths
would have had to invent their own civilization in
place of appropriating and being appropriated by the
earlier culture.

If the problem before our race on this continent
were that of cradling civilizations, we should have
no right to draw a bright picture as to the future of
American life. Fortunately, however, the question
is that of disseminating and maintaining race char-
acteristics bred elsewhere, of bringing those charac-
teristics into interaction on a field favorable for their
best development. For this purpose the surface of
North America affords peculiar advantages. The
nature and limitations of these conditions we shall
now have to consider.

CHAPTER VI.

Geographic Relations of North America; Variations of these Relations ra
former Geologic Periods. — Peculiar Fitness of North America for the
Nurture of Plant Life; Inferior Position of its Animals. — Contributions
of North America to the Domesticated Animals and Plants of Civiliza-
tion. — Relative Measure of Relation of North America with Europe and
with Asia. — Origin of North American Indians. — Conditions of first
Settlement by Man. — Condition of American Indians when the Country
was first settled by the Whites. — Effect of the Buffalo on the Habits of
Indians; Region of Prairies. — Settlement of America by Europeans;
Conditions which led thereto. — Scandinavian, Spanish, French, and
English Settlements. — Importance of Geographic Features in determining
Success of the various Colonies ; Effect of the Appalachian Barrier. —
Influence of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi Rivers. — Influence of the
Tobacco Plant. — Settlement of the Mississippi Valley ; Effect of the
Geographic Conditions therein.

In considering the physiographic conditions of any
area, with reference to the development of organic
life upon it, the life of man as well as of lower
beings, we have to note not only the circumstances
of the given field, its soils, climate, and shape of the
surface, but also the relations of the area to the
neighboring districts, which in the process of geo-
graphical change, brought about by the development
of mountains and continents, may send contributions
to its inhabitants. We must therefore now turn our
attention to the relations of contact between the con-
tinent of North America and the other land-masses
of the world, particularly those of the northern
hemisphere.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 175

A glance at the map shows us that North America
is geographically related to the Old World, both on
the east and west. Geological history tells us that
from time to time the measure of this relation of our
country to the lands of Europe and Asia has varied
greatly, the present condition being only one state
of those connections. In the preceding geological
ages, although we cannot as yet construct the ancient
geography with any accuracy, we can still discern
that the relations of the continent, as regards the
freedom of its organic intercourse with Europe and
Asia and South America, have varied much.

The American continents seem, from the record of
the rocks, to have been better constituted for the
nurture of plant than of animal life. A good meas-
ure of this difference may be had from the contribu-
tion which America has made to the animals and
plants which are domesticated by man. It needs no
argument to show that in order to meet the require-
ments of man's uses, animals and plants must be
highly specialized, having peculiarities of strength
as in our horses and elephants, a tamable nature as
in almost all our domesticated animals, highly organ-
ized fruits, seeds, or fibres as in the most of our cul-
tivated plants ; in other words, it is in general from
the highest members of each organic series that man
selects the forms which he is to domesticate in his
barnyard or his tilled fields. With this point in
mind, it is interesting to note that North and South
America and Australia, though they have about as

176 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

many species of vertebrates as the Old World, have
contributed but one animal to the domestic uses of
civilized man, — the wild turkey ; while the Old
World has given more than a score to such service.
On the other hand, the contribution of plants to do-
mestication from the Americas has been most impor-
tant. Indeed, we may say that the plants which the
New World has afforded have been sufficient to make
something like a revolution in the economic condi-
tions of our civilization. The potato and Indian
corn have profoundly altered the agriculture of
Europe. Tobacco has changed the habits of men
throughout a large part of the world. The species
of cinchona whence comes quinine have been of inval-
uable advantage to human life ; and a score of other
American species, such as the tomato, have come
to play a more or less important part in the field or
garden. All these species of plants are highly
elaborated forms; and the number of them which
have been contributed to man's needs from the New
World shows the relatively high differentiation of
plant life in the American continents.

The geographic conditions which determine the
relations of America to the centres of human devel-
opment in the Old World are fixed by the position of
the lands and the currents of the sea. By both these
sets of circumstances, North America is more clearly
related to Asia than it is to Europe.

Since the coming of man upon the earth the geo-
graphic relations of this continent have most likely

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 177

been more intimate with the Asiatic land-mass than
with that of Europe. It is possible that during the
glacial period the region about Behring's Strait was
lowered beneath the sea, but the subsidence was
probably of a temporary nature. We may reckon
that the continents have generally, at least since the
beginning of the Tertiary period, been nearer to-
gether in the northern Pacific than in the northern
Atlantic. The great depth of the ocean basin be-
tween the coasts of America and those of Europe
points to the conclusion that the great lands in that
part of the world have long been widely separated.
Moreover, the ocean currents of the northern Pacific
favor the movement of man as well as the migration
of animals which may float on chance rafts from the
region of China and Japan to western North America,
while they oppose the westward movement of peo-
ples from Europe to the American shore ; the set of
the atmospheric currents operates to the same end.
It is a well-known fact that the sailing voyage, even
to our modern ships, requires very much longer time
irom western Europe to eastern America than in the
direct passage from this country. In the earlier
states of the navigator's art, before the invention of
the keel, it was well-nigh impossible for the primi-
tive craft to find their way across the northern At-
lantic to the European coast, while the chance of
currents in ocean and air tended to bring vessels
from the eastern shores of Asia to the western coasts
of North America. Hence it came about that the

178 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

first men planted on the American continent were
probably Asiatic in their origin ; and these peoples
remained for many centuries unaffected by the higher
races bred in the more favorable conditions of
Europe. It should be noted that this point is dis-
puted by some recent writers, but the position still
seems tenable.

It is barely possible that some chance drifting of
ships containing people blown away from about the
mouth of the Mediterranean may have found a lodg-
ment on the coast of South America, to which they
were brought by the equatorial stream. The distance
is, however, so great, and the time of the journey so
long, that it is improbable that a ship scantily pro-
visioned as were the vessels of old, should have
borne living voyagers across this wide field of wa-
ters. The Peruvian traditions appear to point to
the coming of their royal house from the East. It
has been conjectured, by fanciful interpreters of those
myths, that this race was of European origin. It
appears on inquiry that there is nothing which may
be called evidence to support this opinion.

It is easily seen that in the case of the lower ani-
mals chance wanderers to any land would have great
difficulty in establishing themselves on the new-
found shore. Difficulties arising from the lack of
reconciliation with the environment, the unaccus-
tomedness of the food, the unfitness of organization
and habit to withstand the attacks of native enemies,
would, in most cases, lead to their destruction. The

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 179

history of North America shows very clearly how
this principle holds in the case of human settlement
as well as that of the lower animals. The first
European colonies to be planted in North America,
though reasonably well provided with the resources
necessary for the colonist, had a hard battle to fight
with their new conditions. Disease and native ene-
mies brought many of these settlements to destruc-
tion. Chance voyagers in drifting ships, cast upon
the shore without provision for their immediate
needs, would have a yet more arduous battle before
them. Therefore, though we may have had acciden-
tal immigration of European men to our American
shores, we need not be surprised that none of these
accidents led to the establishment of the higher races
of the Old World on this continent, until in modern
times its colonization was determinedly undertaken
by civilized people.

As long as North America was unoccupied by
man, its settlement from Asia would have been rela-
tively easy. As soon as it had been filled with the
descendants of Asiatic peoples to the point where the
population was as dense as savagery permits, any
further settlement would have been difficult, for the
same reason that it was hard for the Europeans to
make good their lodgement on the Atlantic shore.
History makes us familiar with the fact that the
colonies which came to the Atlantic coast from the
Old World, except certain settlements in Pennsyl-
vania and some of the early French establishments,

180 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

found themselves in immediate hostile contact with
the aborigines. The struggle for existence between
the two kinds of men would in all cases have led to
the extinction of the new-comers, had it not been
that their ranks were fed by continuous reinforce-
ments from the Old World. Thus, as soon as the
continent was peopled from Asia, it stood out against
further settlements, whether they came by chance or
by design. In this way we may account for the
failure of Asiatic colonies representing the higher
life of Japan and China to establish themselves on
the Pacific coast. It is almost certain that America
was peopled before those civilizations were developed,
and so there were tribes of savages ready to oppose
the occupation of the country by the higher life
which in time grew up in the eastern part of the
Indo-European continent.

We now come to the effect of the geography of
North America on its savage tribes.

The effect of the physiographic conditions of North
America upon the development of the aboriginal
peoples is so obscure as not to warrant much more
discussion than we have given to it. There are,
however, certain points which demand further in-
quiry. We have already noticed the fact that the
massive geographic form of North America did not
favor the creation of those divisions between people
which are such a striking feature in Europe and
Asia. The several tribes, developing evidently from
the family relation, could only attain a limited meas-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 181

ure of separate growth. If any of these ancient
peoples could have found shelter such as a Swiss
valley or a Scandinavian peninsula affords, the
original differentiation dependent on the family tie
would have readily extended into the larger bond of
the state, but from the lack of geographic isolation,
war, and various other accidents naturally arising in
this massive and undivided continent, led quickly to
a limitation in the measure of tribal development.
In Mexico and in certain other sequestered parts
of the Cordilleran region, where the people were in
part protected by natural defences, the folk advanced
to a somewhat higher grade of civilization than that
which generally characterized our American savages ;
but even in these regions the protection was incom-
plete, and the folk were at all times liable to destruc-
tive incursions from neighboring less civilized
tribes.

It appears from certain fragments of evidence, that
some of our American Indians, a few centuries be-
fore the coming of the whites to the shores of the
continent, were in a rather higher state of advance
than that in which they were found by the first Euro-
peans. Thus in the Mississippi valley the people
were evidently more sedentary, some time about a
thousand years ago, than they were when their con-
ditions first became a matter of historic record.
This is shown by the fact that the tribes had attained
a point where they constructed extensive earthworks
both for the purpose of defence and to indulge them-

182 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

selves in the expression of certain religious ideas.
The Ohio and the Upper Mississippi valleys abound
in the tumuli and fortifications which apparently
indicate that the people had been more numerous
than they were when our race first knew them ; that
they depended more upon agriculture and less upon
the chase than their successors who met the white
man when he first came to this country.

For a long time these aboriginal monuments were
esteemed sufficient evidence to prove that the country
had been inhabited by a peculiar race, to which the
name of " Mound-Builders " was given. We now
know that these works were constructed by the im-
mediate ancestors of our American Indians, and
that, indeed, in the more southern parts of the Mis-
sissippi valley, as for instance in northern Missis-
sippi, the people had not quite abandoned the
mound-building habit when they came in contact
with the whites. The cause of this decadence is in-
teresting. The explanation seems to be as follows :
In the state of savagery men depend altogether upon
the products of the chase, or upon the untilled re-
sources of the vegetation about them. As the popu-
lation increases, the game becomes less abundant, and
the folk are gradually driven to tillage. They be-
come sedentary ; they exercise the forethought which
agriculture requires, and so advance to the next
higher stage in development, where they depend in
the main upon the resources which the soil affords.
Each further increase in the population diminishes

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 183

the relative value of the hunter's art, and tends to
separate the people from the vagarious and brutal-
izing habits of their ancestors, who lived by the
chase.

In the higher state of development, such great
constructions as Fort Ancient or the Picture Mounds
of the Upper Mississippi and the Ohio valleys become
possible ; and to this state the peoples of the Ohio
and neighboring valleys appear to have arrived some
centuries before the advent of Europeans. Then
came a peculiar biological accident which shows us
how dependent man is upon the other living tenants
of the earth he inhabits. In the pre-European state
of the country, probably down to some time after the
year 1000, the American bison or buffalo appears to
have been absent from all the region east of the
Mississippi. It is doubtful if the creature existed
for any distance east of the Rocky Mountains. There
had been an earlier and less plentiful species of
bison in this country ; but he appears to have disap-
peared many thousands of years ago, perhaps before
the coming of man to this continent. Our well-
known species probably was developed in some region
far to the west of the Mississippi, whence it grad-
ually spread to the eastward. The Mound-Builders
apparently did not know the creature. We deter-
mine this point by the fact that we do not find bison
bones about the old kitchen fires, and we fail to
find any picture of the beast in the abundant delinea-
tions of animals made by these ancient people.

184 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

They figured all the other important forms of land
animals, including birds, snakes, and also many of
those from the far-off waters of the Atlantic and the
Gulf of Mexico; but they have given us no represen-
tation of this, which would have been to them the
king of beasts. We therefore justly conclude that it
was unknown to them.

When in his westward movement the buffalo came
to the semi-civilized inhabitants of the Mississippi
system of valleys, he brought a great plenty of ani-
mal food to the people, who had long been in a meas-
ure destitute of such resources, for they had no other
domesticated animals save the dog. Not yet firmly
fixed in the agricultural art, these tribes appear,
after the coming of the buffalo, to have lapsed into
the pure savagery which hunting entails. To favor
the pasturage of these wild herds, the Indians adopted
the habit of burning the prairies. These fires spread
to the forests on the east, killing the young trees
which afforded the succession of wood, gradually
extending the pasturage area of the wild herds until
the larger portions of the western plains eastward to
central Ohio and Kentucky, probably even into the
Carolinas, and southward to the Tennessee River,
had been stripped of their original forests, making
way for the vast throngs of these creatures which
ranged the country at the time when we first knew it.
With the rehabilitation of the hunter's habit, and
with the nomadic conditions which this habit neces-
sarily brings about, came more frequent contests

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 185

between tribes, and the gradual decadence of the
slight civilization which the people had acquired.

The relatively recent advent of the buffalo into the
Mississippi valley is well indicated by the facts dis-
closed in a section of the remarkable deposits which
have been accumulated around the salt-springs at
Big Bone Lick in Boone County, Kentucky. At this
locality a number of springs whose waters are saline
and therefore tempting to the larger herbivora emerge
on the earth in the level bottom of a small valley.
In the olden days these waters were evidently poured
forth into a swampy field of some acres in extent. A
section through the deposit shows us the following
order of events in the later geologic days of this
district. During and perhaps before the coming of
the last glacial sheet upon the northern parts of this
continent, these springs were greatly resorted to by
the elephants which inhabited this district. When
in 1868 the present writer made extensive excava-
tions around these springs, he found at a depth of ten
feet below the surface and thence downward for an
unknown depth many remains of these gigantic
pachyderms, the skeletons being broken to pieces by
the pressure of the feet of the successive generations
of these animals. Above that level, in the section
which probably represents the time when the margin
of the great glacier lay only a few miles to the north
of the site, lay the remains of a musk ox allied to
the living form of the Arctic regions and of the cari-
bou or American reindeer. These remains were

186 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

mingled with those of the elephant and mastodon.
At about the same level occur the bones of a bison
belonging to the same genus as our so-called Ameri-
can buffalo, but specifically quite distinct from that
form. After all the above-named creatures had
passed away, near the very top of the section, in
positions which seem to indicate an exceedingly re-
cent arrival in the district, we find the bones of our
ordinary bison. The conditions in which their
skeletons are found are such as show that they could
not well have been for more than a few centuries in
this part of the continent at the time when it was
first visited by Europeans.

Thus the deforested condition of our prairies, which
gives a very peculiar physiographic condition to the
central basin of the continent, is probably to be ac-
counted for by the interference of man. It is an
effect, though unintended, of the savage's action in
relation to an important wild beast. If the advent
of European folk in the Mississippi valley had been
delayed for another five centuries, the prairie country
would doubtless have been made very much more
extensive. Thus in western Kentucky a territory of
about five thousand square miles in area had recently
been brought to the state of open land by the burning
of the forests. All around the margin of this area
there were only old trees scarred by the successive
fires, there being no young of their species to take
the place as they fell. It is probable that with
another five hundred years of such conditions the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 187

prairie region would have extended up to the base of
our Alleghanies, and in time all the great Appala-
chian woods, at least as far as the plain-land was con-
cerned, would probably have vanished in the same
process.

In the district south of the Tennessee the Indians
long maintained agricultural habits in a measure not
common with their northern kindred. Indeed, when
the settlements of the Creeks and the allied tribes
about the Gulf were destroyed by the advancing
tide of European life, the sedentary condition of the
population had not been destroyed by the invasion
of the buffalo.

In general, north of the great lakes and the St.
Lawrence the climate is such as to make the devel-
opment of people beyond the stage of savagery quite
impossible, for the reason that agriculture, at least
such as a primitive people could invent, is not possi-
ble in that country. We therefore find in the con-
siderable Indian and Eskimo population of the high
north of our continent much less trace of advance
than in the southern section. We may say, indeed,
that the possibilities of culture are in a descending
scale from the subtropical districts of Mexico to the
northern fields of the continent; the measure of
advance depending on the ratio between the propor-
tion of food-supply derived or derivable from hunting
and from tillage. Still further we note on this con-
tinent a feature better shown in the Old World, — that
the stronger and more militant people develop in tol-

188 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

erably northern stations, between the tropic heat and
circumpolar cold. The conquering tribes among the
Indians were those which were nurtured south of the
great lakes and north of the Ohio River. In that
district some agriculture was possible — indeed, it
was imperatively demanded in any considerable ag-
gregations of people — in order to meet the trials of
the winter. The rigor of climate tends to breed
vigorous, somewhat forethoughtful men ; such races
as the Iroquois, or Six Nations, appear to have
acquired their soldierly qualities in these northern
climates, as the militant folk of Europe were bred
in moderately cold lands.

In a general way it is true that the North Ameri-
can aborigines, through the lack of geographical
isolation, never attained the state when the physiog-
raphy of the region they inhabited would do the most
to develop the original tribal groups into states.
The natural divisions of the continent did not come
to have much importance in relation to man until
North America became the seat of European settle-
ments. We shall therefore, without further consid-
eration of the aboriginal peoples, give our attention
to the history of European immigrants on this
continent.

The history of the earlier settlements of Europeans
in North America is one of the most interesting
chapters in the records of man. The discovery and
the Europeanization of America depended in the first

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 189

place upon the ancient commerce of Europe with the
far East. This trade, which began in very ancient
days, had attained considerable importance before
the growth of the Mahometan religion. The devel-
opment of this faith in the eighth century, and the
consequent combats between the Christians and
the followers of Mahomet, made the intercourse of
Europe with the Orient soon more difficult and costly
than it had been in earlier times. The commercial
men of Europe as well as the statesmen were anxious
to find a new way to the great, though somewhat
fabulous wealth of southern and western Asia.
Then came the important scientific conclusion famil-
iar to the ancients, but new to modern people, that
the earth was a sphere ; and from it naturally arose
the project of attaining to the Orient by sailing
around by the west, so escaping the barrier which
Mahometanism interposed to the path of commerce.
Neither of these conditions would have been suffi-
cient to push the explorers across the Atlantic, but
for the great advance in the art of navigation which
the Normans had brought to southern Europe. The
classic ships of the Mediterranean, or their imita-
tions in other parts of Europe save Scandinavia, were
probably all flat-bottomed : they had to go with the
wind. The Northmen had invented the keel, which
alone makes navigation something better than wait-
ing for the chances afforded by variable winds.
Taking advantage of the trade -winds, even a Roman
ship could have sailed to America; but it is doubtful

190 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

if any vessel without a keel could have compassed
the return voyage save by the rare opportunity of
continued westerly winds, which blow only in the
North Atlantic. Moreover, in Roman times water
was conveyed with difficulty. The vessels used for
this purpose were the skins of animals, or earthen
jars, necessarily frail and generally of small size.
The invention of the cask, one of the most consider-
able elements in the establishment of the economic
conditions on which civilization rests, came in rela-
tively modern times. The cask as well as the keel
was, it seems to me, a device of northern Europe;
and the two together did more to make long-dis-
tance navigation possible than any other inventions.

After the Middle Ages there was a rapid increase
of population in Europe, due to the consolidation of
States and a consequent steadfaster condition of
society. With this increase in numbers the com
mercial spirit became stronger. The conflicts with
Mahometanism developed a measure of missionary
ardor which, combined with the commercial motive,
supplied the strong incentive which pushed European
peoples on the ways of western discovery.

It is not surprising that the first of these move-
ments, save the accidental voyages of the Scandina-
vians to the northern coasts, came from the Spanish
peoples. The reconquest of Spain to Christianity
had served to develop the military motives of that
people. A part of the conquering population of
Spain was of Gothic blood, and still retained some-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 191

thing of the seafaring impulse of the Northmen;
furthermore, Spain is near the parallels of the trade-
winds. As soon as a vessel is a little way from its
shores, it feels that great western-setting breath
which will carry a ship straight forward to the An-
tilles. If Columbus had sailed from the British
Channel, the conditions of the " roaring forties "
would probably have insured the failure of his adven-
turous voyage. The trade-winds determined, in a
way that was most fortunate for our race, the fact
that the Spaniards came to the tropical districts of
America. These regions they possessed before the
more northern peoples of Europe began to have an
interest in the western empire. When the French and
the English entered into the scramble for the new
lands of the west, Spain had already laid its strong
hand upon about all the countries south of the straits
of Florida and north of the Equator. The English
and French were fended from the tropical parts of
America by the pre-emption of those lands by Spain,
whose claim was fortified by the decisions of the
Pope, and even more effectively excluded from them
by the currents of the air and sea. The Gulf Stream
makes a strong opposition to the mariner seeking to
find his way to the Gulf of Mexico by cruising down
the coast of the continent. To the slow-sailing
ships of the colonial days, vessels which under the
most favorable conditions did not generally make
more than five or six miles an hour, this stream was
a considerable barrier to the southward movement

192 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

along the shore of North America. The only easy
way to the lands about the Caribbean and the Gulf
of Mexico was one pretty thoroughly guarded by the
Spaniards ; hence the French and the English were
practically limited to the country north of Cape
Florida. Thus we see the fact that the trade-winds
and their current, which led Columbus to America,
helped to bar the French and the English from the
tropical portions of that country.

We must now note that the French, owing to their
geographic position, shared with the Spanish in the
missionary motive which was so large an element in
continental Europe at the time of American discov-
ery. The French at first and mainly sought America,
not as a territory in which to plant their race, but
as the Spaniards sought it, as a place of commercial
enterprise and of spiritual domain. It is sometimes
the fashion of Protestants to contemn the spiritual
element of the Latin colonists in America, and to
consider that the missionary portion of the enterprise
was hypocritical, and that the commercial and
national supremacy was the only end sought. His-
tory as well as a fair respect for human motives
opposes this interpretation. We must regard the
missionary element of these expeditions as of great
value in directing the westward movement of the
Spanish and French empires. In England, owing to
circumstances which we cannot discuss, the Crusade
motive was never as strong as on the Continent; the
divisions in the Church, already rife, had led to a

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 193

loss of such proselyting spirit as may once have
existed. In this period England, though much less
peopled than at the present time, already felt the
stress of over-population; moreover, the much re-
gretted loss of her continental possessions had given
the people a desire to secure new lands. The com-
mercial and colonizing impulses, unaffected by the
spirit of religious proselytism, were also stronger
than on the Continent. The result was that the Eng-
lish colonies in the New World were planted with a
very different motive from those of France and Spain.
They consisted of people who came to stay, to breed
upon the ground, and to found New Englands on the
foreign shore. Though in part led by religious con-
victions, seeking a haven for peculiar creeds, they
were on the whole commercially minded, — true
colonists in their intent, as were the Greeks in their
time, or their ruder imitators, the Northmen, in a
later age.

The conditions which determined the first seats of
French and English settlements on the coast of North
America may be termed accidental; or, in other
words, we cannot perceive that physiographic condi-
tions in any distinct way affected the location of the
colonies. It came to pass, however, that the French
obtained control of the region about the mouth of the
St. Lawrence, and thence they extended their settle-
ments up that wonderful valley, the great eastern
gateway of the continent. At the same time the
region about the mouth of the Mississippi was held

194 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

by the other Latin people, the Spaniards, through the
fact that they possessed the straits which led to the
Caribbean, and the strength to maintain that empire
of waters against intruders. The English and their
kindred folk, the Dutch, found their way to the
shore, and founded settlements from the Bay of Maine
southward to and beyond Cape Hatter as.

It is difficult, in the present state of our control
over this continent, to conceive the importance
which lies in the facts concerning the original sites
of the French and English settlements on the Ameri-
can shore. We now traverse this land in every
direction with perfect ease; as for the mountain
barriers of the Appalachians, with their great forests
and unnavi gable streams, they now demand but a ton
or two of coal to carry in one railway train a greater
population than was ever at one time before the be-
ginning of the eighteenth century imported to our
coast. In those old days the Appalachian system of
mountains constituted a really impassable zone ex-
tending from Georgia to the far north, broken only
at one point by a navigable water-way and the great
valley it occupies, the St. Lawrence basin and river.
It is true that the Hudson in its principal tributary,
the Mohawk, in a fashion divides the Appalachian
axis, but it opens no pathway into the Mississippi
Valley. The Mohawk is unnavigable, and the region
about its head-waters contained perhaps the densest
part of the Indian population north of the Ohio,
composed of very vigorous and combative tribes.

KATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 195

Although the Appalachians have peaks of no great
height, their ranges are singularly continuous, and
the passes formed by the streams in the numerous
wall-like ridges afforded in early days no natural
ways whatever. From Maine to Alabama the woods
were unbroken and impassable. This great Appa-
lachian forest was in primitive days an exceedingly
dense tangle. At a few points the aborigines had
worn narrow footways through it; but these trails
were not adapted to pack-animals, the original means
of transportation brought by the Europeans, but for
the use of men who journeyed on foot, and could
thus climb steeps inaccessible to a burdened beast.
To add to the difficulties of the country, a large part
of the district from central Pennsylvania northward
was boulder-strewn, affording no footing for horses.
Even in the present state of New England, where the
superficial layer of glacial erratics has been to a
great extent cleared away, it is easy to conceive how
impassable the surface must have been in early times.
It required a century of enterprising, unrecorded labor
to open the paths across the stony and swampy fields
of New England to the valley of the Hudson. The
undergrowth of this forest country is far more dense
than that which is commonly found in European
lands. The shrubby plants, and the species of smilax
or green briar and other creeping vines, make the
most of our Appalachian forests very nearly impas-
sable, even at the present day. Only once during the
Civil War — in the retreat of George H. Morgan's

196 NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

army in 1862, from Cumberland Gap to the Ohio —
did any considerable body of troops make an extended
march through our trackless forests; and this re-
doubtable enterprise was accomplished in a portion
of the Alleghany district where the woods are far
more open than they are in the more eastern part of
the country. Although this march extended for
only two hundred miles, and was partly over roads,
it wore out the well-trained army which had part
in it.

The Appalachian barrier of forest and mountain
was to civilized men almost as impassable as the
Alps. It had a width of about three hundred miles ;
it was long before its geography was known, ancj
therefore we need not be surprised that nearly a cen-
tury and a half of growth had to take place in the
English settlements before their people fairly broke
their way through it and obtained access to the Mis-
sissippi valley; and that another fifty years passed
before the central settlements were closely united
with the seaport by ways which trade could traverse.

It fell to the lot of the French to secure in the
St. Lawrence Eiver possession of the only practical
access from the Atlantic coast to the fruitful interior
of North America. Although there are some diffi-
culties of navigation in the St. Lawrence system of
waters, as in its rapids and in Niagara Falls, that
channel affords, for more than half the year, by far
the most natural way into the heart of the continent.
Along this path the French extended their settle-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 197

ments and their influence over the aborigines into
the Mississippi valley, before the English colonists
or those of the Hollanders had penetrated beyond the
lowlands of the Atlantic shore; and in a military
sense they took the English settlements in the flank
and rear.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the
historian, in making a survey of the conditions ex-
isting in North America, would have most likely
declared that the Latin folk had vastly the advantage
over the English in their control over the continent.
On the south the Spanish possessed all that portion
of the continent which was blessed with what is
commonly esteemed a fortunate climate. On the
north and west the French, by their control of the
St. Lawrence and Mississippi valleys, over which
they claimed and in a fashion exercised dominion up
to the western base of the Appalachians, had appar-
ently secured a hold upon all the fairest fields of the
country. The British and the Hollanders, on the
other hand, occupied a narrow strip of shore-lands
which were only moderately fertile. Back of them
lay an almost impassable barrier, separating them
from the heart of the continent. On the north and
west they were wrapped around by the French; on
the south they were hemmed in by the Spanish
possessions.

A closer view would have shown the investigator
that there were certain conditions affecting these
diverse peoples which were destined in the end to

198 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

give dominance to the English folk. In the first
place the British settlements of the Atlantic coast
were tolerably ready of access at all times of the
year to the Old World. It was only about five weeks'
voyage from Great Britain to any part of the coast,
while it was a six months' journey from France to
the outposts of the French settlements along the
upper great lakes or in the Mississippi valley.
Moreover, the northern way, that by the St. Law-
rence, was closed for nearly half of the year, while
the Mississippi, even after its channel was well
known, was a very difficult path for ascending navi-
gation until the invention of steamboats. The
French settlements in the valley of the St. Lawrence
were ill placed for successful agriculture; their
crops were scanty, and won with much labor. As
before remarked, the continental peoples never
seriously intended to transfer a large body of their
population to the New World, making there the ho-
mogeneous equivalent of the European State. Their
scheme was rather of a missionary nature ; they pro-
posed to incorporate the native people into the State
after the fashion of the Roman colonists. This idea
of obtaining control over the native population ap-
pears to have had some small share in the plans of
the earlier English settlers. The scheme was, how-
ever, quickly abandoned. The settlers soon came to
the plan of exterminating rather than domesticating
the savages. The results were that the Latin settle-
ments became in general the seats of a mongrel race3

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 199

neither savage nor civilized, while the English and
Dutch settlements were developed as true offshoots
of the parent folk.

There was a certain advantage arising from the
hemming in of the British colonies in North America
by the Appalachian boundary. In place of the de-
tached settlements which characterized the Spanish,
and more particularly the French plantations, the
British colonial establishments were by their ge-
ographical conditions compelled to develop in a more
connected way. It was possible in 1700 to ride
from Portland, Maine, to southern Virginia, sleeping
each night in some considerable village. If our an-
cestors on the continent had secured a ready access to
the interior, it is likely that a hundred years would
have gone by before the colonies became sufficiently
dense in population to permit the interactive life
which prepared the way for the American Revolution.

A very important effect arising from the limitation
of the British colonies near the coast region of the
Atlantic is found in the rapid development of mari-
time life during the two centuries before these colo-
nies obtained access to the interior of the continent.
The best lands of these narrow fields were rapidly
possessed by the people. After this first stage in the
agricultural development of the district had passed,
the fields of the country afforded but scanty room for
the enterprise of its population, For the same reason
that the Scandinavians and the British became sea-
farers, the portion of the British colonies where the

200 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

shore afforded good harbors turned toward maritime
life, and for a hundred years or more enterprising
men ploughed all the oceans with their keels.

In the present century we see the effect arising
from the opening of the Mississippi valley to our
Atlantic coast peoples, in the gradual decadence of
our shipping interests. The vigorous youth who in
the last century would have resorted to the sea now
betakes himself to the prairies, and finds there the
opportunity of winning his way to fortune which his
ancestors were compelled to seek along foreign
shores. Although there have been many influences
at work in the diversion of our people from maritime
life, it seems on the whole that the most important
cause is to be found in the way opened to enterpris-
ing people through the ready access which this cen-
tury has given to the central fields of the continent.
After that great domain is possessed, we may fairly
expect that the Atlantic coast population will again
turn to maritime life.

Although the Atlantic coast presents no very great
diversity in its physical conditions, its range in
climate is sufficient to afford a considerable variety
in agricultural products, and the geographic divi-
sions serve in a measure to intensify certain regional
differences of character in such a measure that the
inhabitants of the several British colonies on this
coast became tolerably distinct in their character.
This process was aided by the fact that most of the
earlier settlements were composed of somewhat di~

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 201

verse peoples, each of the colonies coming to the
possession of individual motives either through pe-
culiarities of religious faith, peculiar social habits,
or other original varieties in the parent stock. The
long-continued absence of any political association
between the separate colonies kept them in a good
measure apart, and thus served to foster the develop-
ment of diverse character in different sections; so
that upon this shore there came about a state of
society in which the New Englander, the Hollander
of New York, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the
Catholics of Maryland, and the churchmen of Vir-
ginia were somewhat different from one another.

These characteristic differences between the several
peoples of the Atlantic coast were due in part to phy-
siographic circumstances of their environment. The
development of the American colonies, their rapid
growth in the century preceding the American Revo-
lution, depended in a large measure on a botanical
accident, — on the introduction of tobacco into the
commerce of the world. No contribution from newly
discovered lands has ever been so welcomed as this
so-called noxious weed. No new faith has ever trav-
elled so fast and far among men as the habit of
smoking. In scarce a century from the first intro-
duction of the plant in Europe, its use had spread to
nearly half the peoples of the Old World. The east-
ern coast of America from the Hudson southward to
South Carolina, is peculiarly well suited for the
growth of the tobacco plant : and the rapid extension

202 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

of the British colonies in America, which brought
their population at the time of the Revolution to a
point where they numbered about one-sixth part of
the English people, was largely due to the commerce
which rested upon the use of this plant. It was a
source of a vast income in the tobacco-growing
States, and in a secondary way it served greatly to
promote the growth of New England and New York.
It is true it in good part laid the foundations of the
American slave-trade, on which the culture of cotton
built a vast structure ; but at the same time it served
to promote the growth of our race on this continent
in a very important way, for it provided the means
for an extended trade with the Old World, and thus
gave a degree of wealth to the New.

There is one aspect of the African slave-trade
which has been generally neglected by persons who
have written on that important feature in the history
of this country. This is the way in which it operated
upon the early development of our American colonies.
The first settlement on the shore of North America
naturally consisted in the main of vigorous, enter-
prising, and intelligent people from the several
states of the Old World. Although the present state
of the immigration movement brings to our shores
mainly the peasant class of the Old World, these
laboring people were relatively wanting among the
early colonists. The result was that the early socie-
ties of our shores lacked the substratum of popula-
tion on which the development of a State so intimately

NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 203

depends. The colonies had more than a fair propor-
tion of intellectual capacity, but less than their share
of rude human strength. It was at first supposed
possible for these new States to acquire a laboring
class by enslaving the Indians ; but all these efforts
at subjugating the American savage have been as
unsuccessful as the similar efforts to domesticate
the buffalo. Both of these American creatures have
a fair measure of physical vigor, but they are alike
untamable.

The Spanish, who owing to their control of the
tropical portion of the Atlantic, alone had access in
the early colonial period to the coast of Africa, were
the first to begin the importation of negroes into this
continent ; but the trade soon extended, so that they
were brought into all the European colonies. Unlike
the Indian, the negro proved to be a singularly use-
ful laborer. No other savage in the world has ever
proved so readily domesticable in a civilized coun-
try. Patient, laborious, and enduring, endowed
with a rare capacity for imitating the ways of his
master, he became in the hands of the colonists a
most invaluable servant. It is a peculiarity of this
singular man, that, though given in his own land to
very brutal ways, he readily adapts a large part of
the motives of civilization. In the course of two or
three generations the descendants of these wild men
became in the most essential features of their nature
substantially akin to the peasant class of our own
peoples. The most singular and exceptional of all

204 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

the characteristics of the negro which fitted him for
the use of the American colonists consisted in the
remarkable readiness with which he became acclima-
tized in relatively high latitudes. While all other
tropical peoples appear to suffer greatly from a
change of climate, the negro endures the relatively
great cold in the winter season of North America, at
least as far north as the Potomac, about as well as
the white man, who is by origin and nurture a crea-
ture of the high north.

The effect arising from the introduction of negro
slaves into the Atlantic coast colonies of North
America was clearly very great and for a time ad-
vantageous. It gave to the enterprising people of
this country a means whereby they could, at a rela-
tively small cost, secure all the labor which they
cared to control. This labor was particularly ser-
viceable in the extension first of tobacco culture, and
subsequently in that of cotton. As the commercial
success of the English colonies in the first two cen-
turies of their history depended mainly on the crop
won from these plants, we must regard the geographic
conditions which led to the introduction of negro
slaves as of very great importance in the history of
this land. But for the existence of a body of sav-
ages in Africa, folk uniquely fitted for the needs of
this country ; but for the fact that the African shores
were only separated from those of eastern North
America by easily navigated seas, — the commercial
advance of the American colonies would have been
relatively very slow.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 205

Although the American people in the end paid
dearly for the good which they won through the in-
stitution of slavery on this continent, the immediate
effect of the institution was undoubtedly very bene-
ficial. It made it more possible to have in this new
and rude land a cultivated class. It led to the rapid
accumulation of wealth, and in this way brought the
people the sooner into a condition in which they
could control their own destiny.

The effect of the Appalachian axis on the develop-
ment of the English people might also be traced in
the protection which it afforded against the more
powerful bodies of the aborigines. The tribes which
originally dwelt between the sea and the mountains
were relatively weak ; although they held some inter-
course with their western kinsmen, they were so far
separated from them that at no time did the eastern
peoples, save in the valley of the Mohawk, have to
meet any considerable body of warriors who were
bred in the inland parts of the continent. Hence
the struggles of the earlier settlers on the Atlantic
coast with the savages was a relatively unimportant
matter ; though it more than once brought the feeble
colonies into great jeopardy. But for the Appala-
chian barrier, the English, owing to their rude ways
of contact with the savages, would necessarily have
met the hostility of a vastly greater body of warriors.
A Pontiac or a Prophet would have effected what the
feebler King Philip vainly essayed. It may well be
doubted whether the Puritans of New England or any

206 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

other of the settlements, except perhaps the Quakers,
could have held their own against the aboriginal folk
of this country but for the protection this barrier
afforded.

It is in good part to the commercial growth of the
British colonies in America that we owe the speedy
overthrow of the French empire, which at the be-
ginning of the eighteenth century seemed likely to
control North America. The New England settle-
ments developed rapidly, and were pushed up to
ward the north; and from them as a base it was
easy to capture the strongholds of the St. Lawrence
valley, and thus make the great scheme of France
impossible.

The settlement of the Mississippi valley by the Eng-
lish people was first effectively accomplished through
Virginia and its western extension beyond the moun-
tains in the then district of Kentucky. It is at this
part of the Appalachian system that we find the most
practicable path for a wagon-road from the coast to
the navigable waters of the Ohio. Following up the
great valley of Virginia, that known as the Shenan-
doah, thence to the broad open basin of the uppei
Tennessee, thence over the low gap in the Cumber-
land Mountain to the westernmost of the Alleghanies,
it was easy to take pack animals, and with a moder-
ate amount of labor to make a wagon-road from
the Virginia settlements to the most fertile portion
of the Mississippi district. The process was easy,
because this country is south of the glacial belt, and

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 207

thereby not encumbered with boulders, and also be-
cause a succession of breaks in the mountains makes
a natural way, the sole moderately easy passage from
the Virginia district to the centre of the continent.
Thus it came about that the first settlement in the
Mississippi valley, the settlement which gave char-
acter to a large part of that basin, came from Vir-
ginia, and took with it the institution of slavery into
the Mississippi valley, establishing the black line
on the banks of the Ohio. If the conditions had
been slightly different ; if the way from the Hudson
or from Pennsylvania to the west had been as easy to
traverse as that from Virginia to the Ohio valley,
— - the fertile fields of Kentucky and Tennessee might
well have been occupied by people from New Eng-
land and New York ; in which case the boundaries
of the slave-holding States would probably have been
drawn much farther south, if indeed the institution
had ever obtained a firm foothold in the central por-
tion of the Mississippi valley.

CHAPTER VII.

Effect of the Appalachian Mountain System on the Distribution of Slavery.
— Influence of the Prairies ; Rapidity and Ease with which they are won
to Tillage. — Effect of Invention of Agriculture. — Original Division of
North America. — Atlantic Coast ; its Agricultural Capacity. — Missis-
sippi Valley and Pacific Arable Land. — Effect of Modern Economies in
producing local Peculiarities of Society. — Lack of Geographic Variety in
North America. — Three Marine Regions of this Continent. — Details
of the New England District ; Surface Tillable Soils ; Variety of Occupa-
tions. — New York District ; Comparison of its Resources with those of
New England. — Virginia District. — Absence of Glacial Erosion ; Influ-
ence of Blue Ridge ; Character of Plain Country; Condition of Popula-
tion. — Effect of Diverse Climates on the Negroes. — Florida Peninsula;
its Soils; Shore-Line Fisheries; probable Future of the District. — Mexi-
can Gulf Group of States; Region of the Lowlands; Climate; Mineral
Resources ; probable Increase of Negro Population. — Ohio Group of
States; Climate; Soil; Contrasts in Fertility; Effect of these Contrasts
on the People; Influence on the Civil War. — District of the Great
Lakes ; Peculiarities of the Region ; Climate ; Variety of Mineral
Resources.

The effect of the Appalachian Mountain system
upon the distribution of slavery, and consequently on
the political and social history of this country, was
of great importance. Slavery, as is well known, de-
pended for its extension on two important crops, both
of which demanded a large amount of cheap labor,
and afforded articles which commerce greatly de-
mands. The institution rested on the industries of
tobacco and cotton growing. Only where one of
these crops could be profitably tilled did the institu-
tion ever firmly establish itself. A glance at the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 209

map will show that the Appalachian system of moun-
tains widens as we go southward from Pennsylvania,
until it occupies nearly one fifth of the Southern
States, extending southward so as to include half of
Virginia and North Carolina, a considerable part of
western South Carolina, much of Georgia, Tennessee,
and Kentucky, and a part of Alabama. In this sec-
tion the character of the soil and form of the surface,
and the nature of the climate, make the land unsuited
for the extended culture of either tobacco or cotton.
The result was that slavery never firmly established
itself as an economic institution in any part of this
vast territory. Here and there in the more fertile
valleys a few slaves were employed; but there are
counties in this area where a slave was never held,
and where to this day a negro is so great a curiosity
that people will journey miles to behold him. The
natural result of this distribution in the negro popu-
lation was that the mountain districts of the South
were separated in their political motives from the
plain country. When the rebellion occurred the
Appalachian country was a region where disaffection
toward the Confederacy prevailed ; to a great extent
the men cast in their lot with the North, or at least
gave their sympathies to the Federal cause. The
peoples of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee and west-
ern Virginia — and generally those of western North
Carolina as well — recruited the ranks of the Federal
army. Some of the counties of eastern Kentucky
sent more troops to the Union forces than the

210 NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

voters who ever appeared at an election in those
districts.

Owing to these conditions, the Appalachian upland
region divided the South in a political and geographi-
cal way, and served greatly to enfeeble the resistance
which it opposed to the Federal arms. About one
fourth of the population of the slave-holding States
lay in this upland country. Not only did this dis-
trict afford over a hundred thousand soldiers to the
Federal army, but the prevailing sympathies of the
population were with our troops in every stage of
their work. It is to this non-slave-holding element
of the Appalachian districts that we owe the adhesion
of Kentucky to the Federal cause, and the partial
co-operation of half of the Old Dominion, now known
as West Virginia. But for the existence of this ex-
tensive territory inaccessible to slavery, and the con-
sequent weakening of the South, it is doubtful if the
Federal arms would have been able to prevail in
that momentous contest.

It would be possible to extend these considerations
concerning the influence of geographic features on
the development of European settlements and the
history of our peoples on this continent. Analysis
would show that almost every feature, every river
and plain, had its effect in controlling the distribu-
tion of the population in its westward march. It
would also be easy to show that the climatal charac-
teristics have vastly affected the political conditions
through the character of the crops which are tilled.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 211

Thus, for instance, the Western prairies, which ap-
parently owe their origin, as before remarked, to the
Indian's habit of burning the plains to favor the
spread of the buffalo, greatly affected the distribution
and the prosperity of our population. The forests
being removed from the prairie countries, they were
ready for the plough, without the arduous labor re-
quired in the districts previously occupied by our
race to clear away the timber. Possibly owing to
their long deforested condition, the soil greatly
abounded in the elements fitted for the production
of corn crops. The climate excluded the profitable
culture of cotton and tobacco, — the staples on which
negro slavery rested. The result was the rapid eco-
nomic development of that region through the export
of grain, and the consecration of the country to the
interests of free labor. History shows us that it was
only narrowly that the States of Illinois and Indiana
escaped the institution of slave-owning within their
territories. If the isothermals had been drawn one
or two hundred miles farther north, so that the
southern crops could have prospered in these States,
the evil of slavery might well have been fastened so
firmly that it could not have been uprooted from our
country.

Manifold and interesting as are these considera-
tions, we must turn from them for a glance at cer-
tain other features dependent on the structure of the
continent which have had a profound influence on
the development of our American population, and are

212 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

to have yet other important effects in the time to
come, — those which arise from the distribution of
the soil and the deeper-lying mineral resources of
the national area.

In his savage state man's dependence on the under
earth, or even upon the soil, is very slight. It is
true that in a fertile country the game is commonly
somewhat more abundant than in a region of scanty
soil, but differences in this regard do not greatly or
immediately affect the people. With the invention
of agriculture dependence on the soil begins; with
the need of tools a slight relation with the metallic
resources of the under earth is instituted. With
each step in the further development of the arts,
man's interest in the crust of the earth increases.
At first the non-precious metals — iron, copper, lead,
and zinc — are sufficient for his needs ; but in ever-
increasing ratio with the development of civilization
this dependence on the under earth is augmented.
The greater portion of these geologic materials are
either prepared for the use of man, or brought nearer
to the earth's surface by the process involved in
mountain-building. The development of the Appala-
chian axis, as well as the similar processes which led
to the formation of the Cordilleras, has shaped and
revealed in this continent an ample store of mineral
materials suited to the needs of man, and has placed
these stores in remarkably advantageous positions
in relation to the regions suited for the purposes of
agriculture.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 213

In general the continent of North America is
divided into three regions of arable land and three
great mineral districts. Along the Atlantic coast
and east of the Appalachians there is the tolerably
fertile country of the Atlantic slope, extending from
Florida to the St. Lawrence. The agricultural capac-
ity of this district compares favorably with any equal
section in the world. In the Mississippi valley we
have, considering the circumstances of the soil and
climate, the largest and most fertile area — the area
best suited to maintain a great body of our English
race — which the world affords. On the Pacific slope
we find a third arable field, containing less area than
the Atlantic territory, but with great agricultural pos-
sibilities. Dividing these three fields, or facing them
on the north, we have the mineral districts ; on the
east the Appalachian country, abounding in coal and
iron and considerable quantities of other important
metalliferous or mineral deposits. In the Cordil-
leran districts we have, so far as known, the most
plentiful deposit of the more important metals, ex-
cept of tin, which the world affords within equal
area. On the north, in the Laurentian field lies a
third mineral area extraordinarily rich in iron, phos-
phates, copper, and other valuable earth materials.
In the great valley between the Cordilleras and the
Appalachians, and to a certain extent on either
shore-land, there are extensive beds of coal and
important deposits of the fluid fuel petroleum, as
well as of natural gas. This distribution of agricul-

214 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

tural and mineral resources of this country is singu-
larly favorable for the conjoint development of tillage
and of mining, and for a vast interstate and foreign
commerce, of which we, in our day, see but the
beginning.

Before we proceed to consider the details of this
natural order in the distribution of the earth re-
sources of North America, we must turn aside for a
moment to note the effect of modern economies in
producing local peculiarities in human life.

In the earlier states of man the nurture places of
the races depended for their effects on the presence
of strong geographic barriers — seas or mountains —
which might fend the people from the interference of
their neighbors, and thereby enable them to undergo
the nurturing process which led to racial or national
peculiarities. It is easy to see that the effect of
commerce is to destroy these boundaries. The Alps,
once a formidable barrier, are now pierced by tun-
nels, and are as easy of passage as the plain-lands to
the north and south. A season's earnings will now
carry a man to the farthest civilized countries. But
while commerce and the industries on which it de-
pends have served to break down the natural barriers
between peoples, they have served also, in a singular
way, to create other limitations of habit and action
which are likely to have even greater influence in the
cradling of people than the old geographic bounds. It
is evident to any one who has studied the varying
effects of occupations, that the herdsman, the soil-

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 215

tiller, the manufacturer, the miner, pursue employ-
ments so different one from another, that men who
follow them become in hand and mind specialized
and unlike those of other occupations.

A German phrase has it that a man is what he
eats. We may better say that a man is what he
does ; and that persistent doing in one line of deeds
for a few generations will serve to give character to
a population in much the same manner as a thousand
years of isolation in a peninsula or an Alpine valley.
Within the limits of either of the great classes of
occupations noted above, as well as many others to
which we cannot conveniently refer, we find a wide
range of diversities dependent on the peculiarities
of the employment. Thus the population engaged
in the iron furnaces or rolling-mills differs widely in
character from the folk employed in weaving and
spinning fibres. The watchmaker and the shoe-
maker are both, in a sense, manufacturers; but the
mental training which the two receive, and the con-
sequent habits of life, both moral and physical, differ
in a very wide way. The orange-gardener of Florida
and the wheat-farmer of Nebraska pursue employ-
ments which differ entirely in their nature : the one
labors throughout the year with his tasks, the other
is subjected to the peculiar influences which come
from seasonal activities. The wheat-field of the Far
West calls for action in but four months of the year ;
for the rest the workman is but a drone, unless he
turns his attention to other tasks than his crops

216 NATUEE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

afford. Indeed, the variety of character which civil-
ized occupations give to a population is much greater
than that which in the same time could be instituted
by any purely natural circumstances.

Although North America is almost destitute of
the geographic divisions which in the earlier condi-
tions of man served to diversify the character of
peoples, the diversities of occupation are easily and
necessarily instituted in the great American mix*
ture of folk. Varieties of men as characteristic and
as important in the history of our people as those
which Nature has produced in the folk of the Old
World, divisions resting upon modes of activity bred
in men by occupations and by habits which occupa-
tions engender, will at once unite and diversify the
people of this country, linking particular districts in
one interest and way of thought and action, and
separating those districts on the basis of industry
from the folk who pursue diverse methods of life.

I now propose to make a general review of that
part of this continent which is occupied by English-
speaking folk, with the hope that we may thus obtain
a basis on which to foretell, in a general way, the
divisions of character in our people which are likely
to arise from the varieties of their tasks.

We have already noted the fact that the continent
of North America is divided into three great min-
eral and three great agricultural districts. We may
profitably add to the consideration the fact that there

NATUEE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 217

are three regions of a maritime sort where the people
have experienced the important effects of close con-
tact with the sea. These maritime districts consist
of the North Atlantic shore, from Cape Hatteras to
Labrador ; the Pacific coast, from Alaska to the Gulf
of California, both regions abounding in good har-
bors; and the third, the southern coast, from Hat-
teras around Florida to Mexico, which is not well
provided with ports, and where the maritime condi-
tions are less important than along the other shores.
Despite the imperfection of the harbors from Hat-
teras southward, the coast of North America is, on
the whole, the most completely maritime of any con-
tinent except Europe. Its landlocked waters, in-
cluding the great lakes, are of vast extent ; the total
number of excellent ports possibly exceeds that of
the Old World. It is clear, therefore, that we are
to have in North America two great maritime dis-
tricts, and a third in the south, of less importance, to
add to our list of national labor-fields.

In this general survey we have to consider the
natural-employment divisions of this country, and
endeavor to forecast their economic history and the
quality of the population which their condition is
likely to induce. This task may advantageously
begin with the New England section, — a region
which, by its geographic as well as its economic con-
ditions, is one of the most specialized parts of North
America. In our considerations it is not desirable
to take an account of the line, in the main of a very

218 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

arbitrary nature, which now separates Canada from
the United States. Whatever be the political future
of these countries, there can be no doubt of their des-
tined economic and social unity. The several ques-
tions which now separate them are of such a nature
that we may be sure they will in the end lead to a
closer union.

The matter of the relations between the United
States and Canada is now so much under debate that
it may be worth while to turn for the moment aside
from the path of our considerations to note the geo-
graphic aspects of this international problem. We
may in the first place observe that the lines of separa-
tion between the northeastern and southeastern por-
tions of North America which lie to the eastward of
the head of Lake Superior are in a geographic way
tolerably accented. Although the narrows between
the several basins of the great lakes are tolerably
constricted, these inland seas afford a strong line of
parting between the two English-speaking peoples of
North America for the distance of nearly a thousand
miles between the outlet of Lake Ontario and the
westernmost portion of Lake Superior. From Lake
Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrence the river of that
name, for the greater portion of its length an arm of
the sea, is also a very distinct line of demarcation.
If this stream and its tributary lakes constituted the
frontier between the countries, we should have a line
about as strong as that which separates Germany
from any of the States which border upon it. The

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 219

fact is, however, that a large portion of Canada lies
to the south of the St. Lawrence system of waters ;
and throughout that greater portion of the boundary
which lies between the Lake of the Woods and the
Pacific Ocean, the parting is drawn along a line
which has no more physiographic reality than the
parallels of latitude.

The mineral and soil resources of Canada and the
United States are of such a nature that in a com-
mercial sense the products of each are necessary to
supplement those of the other. Although Canada
abounds in stores of metallic wealth, its supply of coal
is scanty, being limited to certain small fields along
the St. Lawrence, to areas of lignite in the central
portion of the continent, and to some poor coals of
Mesozoic age on the Pacific coast. It is evident that
this region, which from its climate as well as on ac-
count of its mineral resources needs a vast supply of
good fuel, must look to the United States for such
materials. On the other hand, within the limits of
Canada there are doubtless extensive deposits of iron
and other ores which could be advantageously used
at the furnaces of the United States. The high-
grade mineral phosphates known as apatite, which
have a large place in certain important arts, abound
in Canada, and have not been found in workable
quantities south of the boundary-line of the Domin-
ion. A careful inspection of the relative mineral
resources contained in the two States would show a
similar relation to that which we note with refer-

220 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

ence to the great staples of coal and iron. The Ca-
nadian district contains great quantities of copper
ores, extensive deposits of iron pyrite, manganese,
and a variety of other rough products which should
enter with perfect freedom into the commerce of the
continent.

A glance at the soil resources of the two regions
shows us also that a complete and uninterrupted in-
teraction of the laws of supply and demand should
prevail between the two countries. The greater por-
tion of the Dominion, even those parts which have a
decided agricultural value, is too far north for the
farmers to rear Indian corn. A great number of
other agricultural products of the United States are
also excluded from the Canadian fields by the brevity
of the summer season. On the other hand, the Cana-
dian district is very well suited for the cultivation
of edible roots such as the potato, the average yield
and quality of the crop being much greater than in
the United States. Any commercial barriers which
tend to prevent the free exchange of these products
of the soil or of the under earth are contrary to the
order of Nature. In so far as they exist, they serve
to deprive each region of the opportunities for sub-
sistence which the other part of the country affords.

Looking at the matter from the point of view of
science alone, we note the fact that the continent of
North America, being a curiously united land,
affords a field in which the people can, more than
in any other country in the world, profit by a free

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 221

exchange of supplies. In fact, the slight amount of
localization in the characteristics of the country
clearly points to the conclusion that a perfectly free
intercourse between its several parts is a general
principle which should prevail in its commerce.
Thus, even granting that there may be portions of
the world in which it is well to limit the course of
trade, it seems to me clear that on this broad land
at least we should have a perfectly unembarrassed
exchange of resources.

There is yet another reason why it seems to me
desirable that there should be a complete commercial
union between the northern and the southern portions
of this country. North of the United States there is
a great area which is very well fitted for summer use ;
but the winters are very long, and of such severity as
to hamper all forms of economic activity. If the
conditions were such as to permit and favor the ready
exchange of resources and of population, it seems to
me likely that in time to come we might look for a
considerable annual migration of population along
the meridional paths. Transportation is now so
sheap that many laborers in the fields might advan-
tageously begin their season's work with certain
crops of the southern States of this Union, and with
the advancing summer continue their labors in the
more northern realm. Something of such a move-
ment may already be noticed in the portion of the
United States west of the Mississippi River, where
the harvesters of grain follow the crop from Texas

222 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

northward into Dakota, and so extend the period
during which they earn high wages over a term of
some months' duration.

It may further be urged in favor of an intimate
relation between the Canadian Dominion and the
United States that the social status of the people of
both countries would thereby be advanced. There
is now no question that the Canadians of the Lauren -
tian district, at least those of British origin, consti-
tute a most valuable element in the population of the
continent. They are a vigorous and hardy people,
less mingled with the blood of immigrants from
Europe or Africa than the folk of the United States.
A perfectly free economic intercourse between these
sections of the continent would doubtless be advanta-
geous to the condition of its people.

It does not seem desirable to confound the ques-
tions as to the commercial boundaries between these
two countries with any debates concerning their
political status. In the present state of the govern-
ment of these two portions of North America, the
United States and Canada, it is a matter of very
little moment to which of them a citizen owes alle-
giance. His general status is practically the same
in both countries. Even the social or caste differ-
ences which are to be observed in Great Britain have
practically no place in Canada. Therefore from the
point of view of the physiographer, as distinguished
from that of the politician, it seems a matter of no
moment whether Canada and the United States are

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 223

members of a common political system ; while it is
of the greatest importance whether their peoples are
alike to be made free to share in the advantages
which the continent as a whole affords.

As regards the division line between Mexico and
the United States, the situation differs a good deal
from that which we have just considered with refer-
ence to the Federal union of the Dominion, and this
for the reason that Mexico has a relatively low-grade
population, — the greater part of its people being of
a hybrid race, arising from the commingling of
Spanish and Indian blood. So far as the United
States is concerned, it is clearly desirable to avoid a
commingling of our population with that of the coun-
tries on our southern border.

The New England section of North America, in-
cluding as such all the varied district from New-
foundland to the Hudson, is well named. On the
whole it more closely resembles, in its conditions of
shores, the surface and soil, the islands and penin-
sulas of northern Europe, in which our Northmen
folk developed, than does any other part of this con-
tinent. The geological history of the two regions is
very similar. Both are mainly composed of ancient
rocks, and both these ancient rocks have been much
crumbled by the mountain-building forces. Both
have been subjected to a vast amount of glacial wear-
ing ; their soils have certain common qualities given
by ice action. In both we have a close combination
of agricultural and mineral resources.

224 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

The New England section of North America, in-
cluding the St. Lawrence district in that field, is
essentially the maritime portion of North America.
Within its limits we find the largest amount of shore-
line for a given distance along the main coast of the
continent. There are more deep bays and fjords, and
larger islands, than along any other portion of the
Atlantic border of the United States. The depth
and intricacy of these indentations of the shore
steadily diminish from the region about the St.
Lawrence to the district about the Hudson River,
where the coast altogether loses its fjord-like char-
acter. Thus on Cape Breton the wonderful inlet
known as the Bras d'Or, which divides the island al-
most in twain, has, it is said, an aggregate shore-line
of about fifteen hundred miles, counting in this total
the shores of the numerous islands which it contains
as well as those which bound the water. These sin-
gular recesses are abundant along the coast of Nova
Scotia as well as that of Maine. They are rarer in
Massachusetts, and are scarcely distinguishable in
the part of Connecticut to the west of New London.
The origin of this interesting topography, which has
so great an influence on the sea-faring conditions of
the northeastern part of the continent, is found partly
in the action of glacial ice, which has served to
deepen and complicate the river valleys of this part
of the country, and partly in the fact that after the
valleys had been formed the region was lowered to
such a depth beneath the sea that its water flooded

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 225

all the low ground, leaving the divides between the
streams in the form of elongated promontories or
islands. We see in this instance as in many others,
when we come to examine into the condition of the
earth's surface in regard to the uses of man, how the
geological actions of a remote and at first sight
apparently unrelated past have had a vast influence
upon the status of man.

The surface of the New England and Laurentian
district throughout its whole extent may be de-
scribed as mountainous. Save in the southeastern
portion of the country, every part of the field con-
tains decided mountain ridges worn to their roots by
the work of the rivers and the recurrent action of
glaciers and sea, but still giving the surface a truly
mountainous character. The result is here, as else-
where, that in a large part of the mountainous dis-
tricts not far from one half of the whole field is
sterile from the lack of sufficient soil, or fit only for
the growth of forest-trees. This feature insures to the
district the permanence of the timber industry.

The tillable soils of the New England and Lauren-
tian field lie mostly in the valleys between the
important mountain-ranges; they are glacial soils,
formed of the materials brought to their place by the
ancient glaciers ; they have certain peculiar charac-
teristics. When first won to the plough they are of
only moderate fertility. Largely composed of peb-
bles and boulders, the amount of plant food they
contain does not compare with that which is held in

226 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

the prairie soils, where for ages the conditions have
favored the preparation of the materials required by
vegetation. They have, however, the peculiarity that
they gain in fertility by skilful tillage, even without
artificial fertilizing, while the prairie ground stead-
ily diminishes in its productiveness under cultiva-
tion. All the pebbles in our stony fields, except
those composed of quartz, are constantly yielding
some part of their materials to refresh the soil. A
pebble of granite or of the kindred crystalline rocks
commonly contains considerable quantities of potash,
soda, lime, and phosphorus, — substances which are
most rapidly brought into the state where they may
be appropriated by plants when the soil is used by
man.

At present the tide of immigration sets from New
England to the West, where cheap lands with their
great though unenduring store of fertile materials
await the settler. This stage in our history, where
cheap but unpermanently fertile lands are to be had
almost for the asking, is now nearly passed by. In
another generation these opportunities will no longer
exist, and it is thus likely that with the relative in-
crease in the value of soil products the agricultural
position of New England will be improved. From a
somewhat careful study of the New England States,
as well as a portion of the Laurentian district, I have
become convinced that this northeastern field has far
greater agricultural possibilities than is commonly
supposed. A very large part of the neglect to which

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 227

these fields have been subjected is due to the with-
drawal of the population from them to manufacturing
life, to occupations which for a time afforded a larger
remuneration than the tillage of a stubborn but not
unfruitful soil.

When the Western country is fully occupied
through immigration, and the natural increase of our
native people, there is every reason to believe that
agriculture in the northeastern part of our country
will attain something of the relative importance
which it had in those districts a century ago. This
seems the more probable when we note the fact that
a large portion of the richest soils of New England

— the swamp-lands — was never won to the plough.
In the Laurentian and New England district we have
not far from ten thousand square miles of morasses,

— areas which demand a considerable expenditure of
capital before they can be brought to the tiller's use,
but which, when so won, afford fields of surpassing
fertility. Up to the time when the great West was
opened to settlement, the population of New England
had not become dense enough to drive the people to
this class of soils ; but with the inevitable crowding
of our American population which the next century
is to bring about, these swamps will be drained, and
by their drainage a vast area of excellent land will
be won to tillage.

This northeast section of the continent has a fair
share of subterranean resources, including a wide
range of metals and a very plentiful and varied store

228 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

of building materials. Last of all, it is peculiarly
the seat of the greater water-powers of this country.
This abundance of streams suited for mechanical pur-
poses is due to the relatively considerable height of
the district and the frequent great thickness of the
glacial deposits in which the rain-waters are retained
and slowly yielded to the streams.

It is easy from the facts stated above to foresee
that in the future the New England district — in-
cluding as we have done, the region about the St.
Lawrence — is to be the seat of the most varied oc-
cupations. No other part of the United States so
well combines the conditions for maritime, agricultu-
ral, mining, and manufacturing labor as this terri-
tory. Further variety in the life to come is insured
by the remarkable mixture of races in this territory.
In Nova Scotia we have perhaps the largest body of
Highland Scotch outside of the mother country; and
in this region, where this blood is so little mingled
with that of other lands, the Gaelic language is the
common form of speech. In Lower Canada there are
several large settlements where the people are almost
entirely derived from northern France. New Eng-
land proper has many areas where Irish Celts and
their descendants outnumber the original New Eng-
land stock. Here and there are considerable colonies
of other peoples, — Scandinavians, Germans, and
Azorian Portuguese. At present it seems likely
that the peoples presumably of Celtic stock — the
Irish, Canadian-French, and Highland Scots — will

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 229

in another fifty years greatly outnumber the original
New Englanders. So far, however, the immigrants
from continental Europe have in the main betaken
themselves to the cities of New England, and have
shown little disposition to obtain control of the soil.
The rural neighborhoods are still characteristically
English, and for all that we can see at present bid
fair to remain so for a hundred years to come. Al-
though much of the strength of New England has
gone West to found new States, enough remains to
insure the perpetuation of the original stock, so that
we may look forward to another element in the diver-
sification of New England conditions wherein the
towns will be largely composed of descendants of
foreigners of alien race, and the country districts of
folk of English blood.

South and west of New England we have another
characteristic group of States in New York, Penn-
sylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, — a region
tolerably well marked by its conditions of surface
and climate so far as those affect the development of
man. In this district, which is about as extensive
as the New England and Laurentian district above
described, we have an area in which the maritime
conditions are less pronounced, the agricultural re-
sources — as determined by the soil and climate — ■
proportionately more considerable, and the mineral
resources very much larger than in the more northern
realm. While in the New England section, practi-
cally, the whole of the surface is mountain-built, and

230 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

not more than one third of the area is suited to agri-
culture, in the New York district, as we may term
it, the mountainous sections occupy not over one
third of the total area, and the soil is, on the whole,
much more tillable. The mineral resources of this
field, particularly those which are applied to the pro-
duction of power, — coal, petroleum, and natural gas,
— are the staples of its geological wealth. Includ-
ing a small portion of Ohio, we have in this section
the largest store of these materials that is afforded
by any equal portion of the earth. On the other
hand, while the power derived from ancient sunshine
and stored in the form of carbon in the rocks is more
plentiful in this district than in New England, the
immediate energy of water-power, due to the heat of
the present day, is less available than in New Eng-
land. Except at Niagara Falls, where there is a
vast but as yet unusable store of solar energy, this
district, owing to the relative thinness of its glacial
accumulations and the consequent impermanence of
the rivers, presents no such advantages to the manu-
facturer as are afforded by the New England streams.

In general, the physiographic conditions of this
group of States afford the basis of an exceedingly
varied life. The different forms of activity are
likely to be only less closely associated than in New
England. The natural manufacturing centres are
widely distributed, and the mineral resources lie
well in the body of the tillable land.

South of New Jersey and Pennsylvania we have a

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 231

somewhat characteristic group of Commonwealths,
including Virginia and the Carolinas. This, which
we may call the Virginia group of States, differs in
many ways from the two northern associations which
we have just considered. The first and most impor-
tant peculiarity consists in the character of the soils.
The whole of New York and a large part of Pennsyl-
vania and New Jersey have had the character of
their soils determined by the peculiar grinding of
the surface and distribution of the waste which was
brought about by the glacial period. Although a
trace of this ice action is observable in Virginia, the
region as a whole was substantially unaffected by the.
tread of the marching ice. This difference leads
to a great modification in the character of the soils.
In place of being the product of that distinct carriage
which has brought the soils of the glaciated coun-
tries to their places, the upland portion of these
States is covered by an earthy coating derived from
the immediate decay of the rocks beneath the
surface.

The Appalachian Mountain system, in its two ele-
ments of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, widens
as we go southward from the Potomac. The result
is that an even greater share of these States consists
of mountainous elevations than we find in the New
York group. The western portion of each State is
occupied by heights which rise so far above the level
of the sea that the climate is greatly affected by
the uplift. These mountains are, however, far less

232 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

sterile than those of the New York and New England
districts; not having been swept over by the ice,
they retain their original soils, and thus afford larger
areas for tillage than are found in the more northern
highlands. In each of these States, by way of con-
trast with their upland districts, we have along the
shore a broad belt of lowlands, — territories which
were until very recent times beneath the level of
the sea. This great southern plain, which extends
from New Jersey southward, widening as we go
toward the equator, affords, compared with the
mountain districts, one of the sharpest contrasts of
conditions which are found in any part of this
country.

Owing to the slight elevation of the plain region,
its nearness to the Gulf Stream, and the protection
which the mountains afford on the northwest, the
climate becomes very much warmer on this plain as
we proceed southward. Between dawn and dark of
a winter's day we can journey from the frigid condi-
tions of New York to the semi-tropical climate of
Charleston, — from the realm of frost to one of
flowers. With a shorter journey from the moun-
tainous heights of the western Carolinas, which have
a winter temperature about as low as that of New
York, we may pass toward the sea through the same
range in temperature conditions. This contrast in
climate is equalled by that between the under-earth
resources of these two sections. In the mountainous
portion of the States of the Virginia group we have

NATUEE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 233

an abundance of mineral wealth, the search for
which has but begun. Gold, iron, copper, zinc,
and various other substances of economic importance
exist in the upland portion of this area, while the
lowland parts have as yet afforded but small supplies
of such materials, phosphates being the only geologic
element of great importance. It is evident, therefore,
that the plain-land region of this district is to de-
velop purely agricultural industries, while the upland
section, by its admirable combination of soil, no-
ble forests, and mineral resources, is to have more
varied industries, and therefore a more diversified
life.

Although within the above-mentioned States the
resources of fossil fuel are limited, we find imme-
diately on the west of the district and everywhere
convenient to it, the vast coal-measures of Tennes-
see, Kentucky, and West Virginia fields, which
afford bituminous coals quite equal to those which
have been the foundations of the commercial indus-
tries of Great Britain. Thus, this region of south-
ern uplands has in its soil, its forests, and its
mineral resources, a combination of advantages per-
haps greater than those of any other equal area in
the world. In addition to these favoring conditions,
the region possesses an admirable climate. In
winter the temperature falls low enough to insure
the preservation of bodily vigor ; in summer the heat
is less ardent than in the lower-lying regions of the
New England and New York group of States. In the

234 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Virginia section we find a climate resembling in its
range of temperatures those which characterize the
most favored regions of the Old World; and it is
there perhaps we may look for the preservation of
our race's best characteristics.

The lowland country, on the other hand, appears
to be too warm to afford the most satisfactory condi-
tions for our people. Although the whites appear to
be able to work in the fields during the summer
season, the malarious influence common to a large
part of the territory, as well as the lack of a really
tonic winter, does not promise a brilliant future for
European peoples in the seaboard portion of the
district.

The population of this group of States is as diversi-
fied as their physical conditions. In the lower-lying
lands the negro folk constitute a large, and appear
to be physically the most successful, portion of the
population. In the plains between northern Florida
and Chesapeake Bay the negro finds apparently the
most satisfactory environment which this continent
affords him. His contact with the whites is suffi-
ciently close to stimulate his languid industrial mo-
tives, and the climate fits his needs in a very
tolerable way. It is doubtful if the tribes of Africa,
from which our blacks came, are in any better phys-
ical condition than their descendants on the Atlan-
tic coast.

Although the negroes constitute the largest ele-
ment in the population along the shore-lands of the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 235

Carolinas and Georgia, the upland section is almost
devoid of Africans. This peculiar feature in the dis-
tribution of the blacks was brought about, as before
remarked, by the unfitness of the upland country for
the crops on which the plantations of the South de-
pended ; it has been maintained by the disinclination
of the negro to dwell in cold countries, and the indis-
position of the white population to tolerate their
presence. There is good reason to believe that the
negro population will not become more extensive in
the upland section of the South than it is at the
present time. On the contrary, it is most likely
that they will spontaneously gather to the warm low-
lands, leaving the cooler grounds to the white race.
If this be the case, — if the Southern mountains are
left to the whites, we may reasonably expect this
region will become one of the most important seats
of an unmixed American population. It is not in
the pathway of immigration, and as yet it is occu-
pied almost altogether by the descendants of British
immigrants.

South of Georgia we find ourselves at the base of
the most singular peninsula of this country, if indeed
it be not the most remarkable mass of land on the
borders of any continent. The peninsula of Florida
affords the most distinct field, in a physiographic
sense, of any part of North America. Including the
northern portion of the State, it has a length of about
six hundred miles, an average width of near one hun-
dred miles, and a total area greater than that of New

236 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

York, and nearly as great as that of New England.
In all this great realm the maximum height above
the level of the sea does not exceed about four hun-
dred feet. The whole of the soil is composed of
materials recently brought together on the sea floor.
About one fourth of the soil area is limy, due to the
coral rock which underlies it. The remainder is
nearly pure sand of a rather infertile nature. All
the soil owes its value in the main to the admirable
climate which the region enjoys.

The mineral resources of the Florida peninsula are
of the most limited nature. Certain deposits of
phosphatic rocks exist, apparently of sufficient rich-
ness to give them a great economic importance.
From the point of view of geological values, save for
these mineral resources, it is perhaps the most abso-
lutely sterile section of North America.

Owing to its peninsulated form, Florida has a shore-
line of more than two thousand miles in length;
owing also to the extended system of harbors which
the coral reefs have created, this region has a mari-
time character and fitness of contact with the sea
which is not enjoyed by any other portion of the
coast south of Chesapeake Bay. The harbors,
though shallow, afford tolerable protection to small
vessels ; and the extraordinary wealth of fish in the
waters makes it certain that in the future this region
is to have an industry resting upon the harvest of
marine life such as is afforded by no other section of
the Atlantic coast. Not only do the food fishes

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 237

abound, but the waters afford vast quantities of
sponge ; and the species of marine turtles find a better
station along this shore than in any other section of
the continent.

The physical conditions of Florida favor the devel-
opment on this shore of several industries which
have not as yet any place in its economies. Thus
we may instance the culture of the sponge-making
communities of animals, many species of which find
a very favorable station in the shallower parts of the
sea near the coast-line. The area of sea-bottom
which seems to be fit for this form of culture is
very great, probably in all exceeding three thousand
square miles.

At present the propagation of sponges is left alto-
gether to accident, while the search for them is un-
tiring, and carried on by processes which bid fair to
lead to the extermination of the creatures. Euro-
pean experiments, made it seems in less favorable
situations, have shown that it is possible to plant
sponges in a methodical way and at no great cost on
the bottoms of the shallow seas, and after a few
years of growth to harvest an abundant crop. So,
too, the green turtle of commerce, which once
abounded along these shores, has been greatly dimin-
ished in numbers by persistent and unreasonable
pursuit. Not only have the adult creatures been
recklessly captured, but it is the habit of the people
as well as of several wild animals to seek out and
destroy their nests. The eggs of this interesting

238 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

reptile can doubtless be artificially hatched, and
their young kept in captivity for a sufficient time to
protect them from the dangers incident to their im-
mature state. It seems, indeed, not improbable that
it may be possible to breed it in captivity by some
system of enclosures at the mouths of the many small
embayment8 which abound along the coral reefs.
Retained within such basins, the creatures could be
supplied with appropriate food during the process
of their growth.

The physical conditions of Florida make it plain
that this peninsula is to develop its life on the lines
of agriculture and of marine industries. The agri-
culture is destined to be of a peculiar sort, — garden-
ing, in fact, rather than the ordinary field tillage.
The tropical and subtropical fruits — the orange, the
lemon, the lime, and tenderer sorts of vegetables —
may be easily reared, and assure the agricultural
possibilities of this district. It can never be a corn-
bearing country, and an extensive grazing industry is
practically excluded by the imperfect growth of the
grasses. Owing to the fact that this land is wrapped
around by the sea, the summer temperature as well
as the winter is insular in its character ; although at
present the region is a prey to fevers, they seem due,
not to an essential unhealthfulness of the climate,
but to the bad sanitation. Even in the extreme
south, on the Keys and the shores of the beautiful
Bay of Biscayne, the people appear to be very
healthy ; the children are vigorous, extreme old age

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 239

is frequently attained, and there appears to be an
exemption from deadly malarial fever. We may
best judge as to the climatal effect on man by the
condition of the Indians, which is excellent. No
portion of our aborigines appears to be in a better
physical or moral state than the Seminoles of
Florida.

It is an advantage enjoyed by this section, which
it shares with the highlands of the South, that the
negro population is very small. Although the
climate is one which suits the negro, the present in-
dustries, and those which we may foresee for the
future, make it likely that this race will be slow to
take possession of the country.

On the west of Florida and Georgia lie a group of
States which face the Gulf of Mexico. Between
western Florida and western Louisiana, and back to
near the northern border of Alabama and Mississippi,
we have a region of lowlands which derive their
quality from their relations to the Mexican Gulf.
The low-lying portion of these States is, in its geo-
logical history, like the equivalent section of the
Atlantic coast. It is an old sea-bottom which has
recently been elevated above the ocean. The soil,
save along the banks of the rivers, is of only moder-
ate fertility; but it bears luxuriant forests, and is
excellently suited to the great staple, cotton, on
which the commercial development of the section
has rested. Owing to the fact that these States lie
at the southern end of the Mississippi valley, and are

240 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

unprotected by mountains from the winter blasts,
they are subject to great variations in temperature.
The summer heats are great, and to the white popu-
lation enervating. The winter cold, on the other
hand, is considerable, sufficient indeed to bring
something of the tonic effect upon which our race is
so accustomed to depend.

The northern part of Alabama, as is well known,
abounds in stores of coal and iron. In topography it
is sharply contrasted with the southern portion of the
State, and its wealth of mineral resources insures in
that section a large manufacturing industry depend-
ent on the materials from below the soil.

The population of the States between western
Florida and eastern Texas is, on the whole, a less
satisfactory part of our American people, for the
reason that the negro element holds at present, and
is likely for all the foreseeable future to hold, a
greater place in this territory than in any other part
of the United States. It is true that at present
South Carolina abounds in blacks in an equal meas-
ure with Alabama and Mississippi; but with the
growth in population of the highland district of the
former State, we may fairly expect that this prepon-
derance of the African element will disappear. On
the other hand, in southern Alabama, in Mississippi
and Louisiana, the conditions of the soil and of the
climate clearly point to a vast increase in the num-
ber of blacks, without a proportionate gain in the
European population. There is more danger of

NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 241

Africanization in this section than in any other part
of the United States.

North of the Gulf States, and thence to the great
lakes, and westward to the Mississippi, we have the
valley of the noblest tributary of the Mississippi, —
the Ohio, containing within its basin the northern-
most portions of Mississippi and Alabama and a por-
tion of western Georgia, of North and South Carolina,
a part of Virginia and West Virginia, the whole of
Tennessee and Kentucky, and the greater part of
Indiana and Illinois. Although the geographic limi-
tations of this great basin are not sharp, they are
sufficiently accented to make it one of the most
characteristic divisions of the continent. This in-
dividuality is further affirmed, as we shall see, by
its qualities of soil, climate, and its subterranean
resources.

The basin of the Ohio, with the exception of some
parts of its headwaters, the Upper Kanawha and the
tributaries of the Tennessee, lies well within the
broad trough of the Mississippi valley. It is thus
in the path of the great air movements from the
Gulf of Mexico northward, and from the Arctic Sea
southward. Atmospherically considered, it is like
the other parts of the Mississippi valley, — a region
of combat between torrid and frigid conditions. In
the winter season the dominance of polar winds
brings low temperature upon all parts of the area.
In the summer half of the year the superior power of
the tropical northward-setting winds brings it into

242 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

almost torrid heat. The range of climatal variation,
measured by the periods of seasonal length, is per-
haps greater in this valley than in any other part of
the continent. The surface of this region is essen-
tially without mountains. Though the western
tributaries of the Ohio rise in the highest land on
the Atlantic side of the continent, the portion of the
valley which can be termed mountain-built does not
include more than one tenth of its area. The result
is that nearly the whole of the surface is tillable.
Probably not more than one fiftieth of the total area
is permanently unfitted for the uses of the husband-
man.

The soil of the Ohio district has been but little
affected by glacial action. It is true that the ice in
the most developed state of the old continental gla-
ciers overlaid the greater part of the Ohio, touching
the surface of Kentucky immediately south of Cincin-
nati, and occupying by far the greater part of Indiana
and Illinois, as well as those parts of the headwaters
of the Ohio which lie in Pennsylvania and New York ;
but over the most of this district the ice was thin,
and the amount of glacially transported material less
considerable than in the normally glaciated districts
of the north and east. As a whole, the soils may
be classed as those of immediate derivation, those
originating with the decay of the subjacent rocks.
As the geological strata of the Ohio valley vary
greatly in their mineral constitution, the soils de-
rived from them are naturally divided into a good

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 243

many classes. Thus we have in Kentucky and Ten-
nessee a wide range of Silurian limestones, which by
their decay afford soils of extraordinary fertility,
those which give character to the well-known blue-
grass district. It is worth while to note in passing
that this singular richness of the earth is due to the
fact that in these limestones there are certain thin
layers composed almost wholly of the remains of
minute creatures which had the peculiarity of taking
lime phosphate from the sea and building it at their
death in the deposits formed on the old sea-floors.
When elevated into land and subjected to the pro-
cess of decay, these rocks afford, under the action
of the atmosphere, soils of great fertility. So we
see that the fruitfulness of our fields may depend
upon the nature of organic beings in the remotest
past.

Throughout the Ohio valley, except along the
margins of the streams where the soil has been
brought to its resting-place by flood-waters, we find
everywhere sharp contrasts in the fertility of the
soil. Already, although the history of the country
extends back for but a century, we perceive very
clearly that these natural variations have been of
great importance in differentiating the people. There
is no greater contrast in any country between neigh-
boring people of the same blood than that which ex-
ists between the so-called mountaineers of eastern
Kentucky, who occupy the soil of sandy carbonifer-
ous beds, and those who dwell in the rich grass

244 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

country of the central district of the Commonwealth.
The fertile soil of the limestone region has given
abundant wealth to the inhabitants of that region;
wealth has brought culture and all the circumstances
of a high civilization. The sandy soil giving little
to tillage, the people have remained poor ; their con-
tacts with the world have been slight, and they yet
abide by their customs and intellectual development
in the conditions of the eighteenth century.

It is worth our while to go one step farther, and to
note the effect of these diversities induced by differ-
ences of soil. When, in 1861, it was to be deter-
mined whether Kentucky should go with the South
or North, the question turned in the main on the
occupations of the population. Where the soils were
rich, the plantation system was possible, the slave
element was large, and in general the voice of the
people was for union with the South. Where the
soils were thin, the people had no interest in slavery,
for they owned no negroes. Old frictions with the
slave-holding portions of the State existed, and con-
sequently the people of this sterile land were gener-
ally devoted to the Union. A soil-map of Kentucky
would in a rude way serve as a chart of the politics
of the people in this crisis in the nation's history.
If Kentucky possessed a soil altogether derived from
limestone, there is no question but that it would
have cast in its lot with the South.

The mineral resources of the Ohio valley have
a somewhat singular distribution. From western

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 245

Alabama around to the headwaters of the Ohio in
Pennsylvania, we have a continuous belt of country
abounding in coal and iron. Nowhere in the world,
so far as it has been explored, is there any region of
equal extent where these two substances, both of the
first interest to man, each requiring the other for its
most important uses, are geographically so united.
In the western part of the Ohio valley, and sepa-
rated from this eastern and southern section by a
wide interval of fertile lands, lies the western coal-
field, extending from central Kentucky to central
Indiana and Illinois. Taken as a whole, the area of
the Ohio valley has a more perfect association of fuel
and iron resources along with those which are afforded
by a fertile soil than any other part of the world.

In addition to the supply of energy contained in
the coal-beds tributary to this district, there are two
other sources of power accessible to the inhabitants
of this valley, — petroleum and natural gas. The
deposits of petroleum appear to be in the main
limited to a field occupying a portion of western
Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and eastern Ohio,
and to another smaller and less important district on
the waters of the Cumberland River near the point
where it crosses the division between Kentucky and
Tennessee. Although the quantity of petroleum ac-
cessible at any one point in this valley appears to be
rather less than that which can be obtained in the
famous Caspian or Baiku field, the district is prob-
ably, all things considered, the most extensive source

246 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

of supply of this substance which the world is likely
to afford. The natural gas of the Ohio valley ap-
pears to be far more considerable in quantity than
that contained within any other equal area. Thus
in this district we have three known sources of valu-
able subterranean energy, — coal, petroleum, and
natural gas, — in more advantageous conditions, as
regards quantity and nearness to fertile agricultural
areas, than in any other region of the world.

We thus see that the Ohio group of States has,
from the point of view of its resources, singular ad-
vantages over any other part of the continent for the
maintenance of a vast population engaged in indus-
tries, both those of the soil and those of the shop.
Within a century the area occupied by these States
is likely to contain a larger population than that
which now exists in all English-speaking countries.
Although this population is destined to be to a great
extent engaged in mining and manufacturing, there
is room in this region for an agricultural people ex-
ceeding in numbers the present population of the
United States; for, as before remarked, there is
hardly any untillable land in its area, and except for
the limitations which the necessary preservation of
the forests put upon the extension of the tilled fields,
ninety-nine hundredths of its area can be won to
husbandry.

There remains, in the part of the continent east of
the Mississippi, another interesting district, which
constitutes a singular physiographic unit. It is the

NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 247

basin of the Laurentian lakes, commonly known as
the great lakes of North America. In this great
district of inland waters we have an area situated so
far north that the rigors of the climate limit the
operations of agriculture to less than half of the
year. The soils are throughout glacial in their
character, of moderate fertility, but more enduring
to tillage than those which lie to the south of the
glaciated country. This district includes the whole
of the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario,
the northern part of Ohio, the western portion of
New York, the whole of Michigan, a small part of
the northern sections of Indiana and Illinois, and a
portion of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Although the
northerly site of this area gives it a short season for
the growth of plants, the region near the lakes has
the climate somewhat modified by these great sur-
faces of water during the time when they are not
locked in frost. The northern portion of this area
— nearly the whole of the region north of the great
lakes, and a considerable part of the Michigan pe-
ninsula— is mountain-built, having been subjected
to the disturbances attendant on the formation and
growth of the Laurentian system. The elevations
have, however, a small relief. In the Canadian sec-
tion nearly if not quite one half the surface is barren
or too infertile for tillage in the present state of our
agriculture; while perhaps nearly the whole of the
district south of the great lakes is covered by tilled
fields or luxuriant forests. The soils and the cli-

248 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

mate afford, on the whole, as favorable conditions
for farming as are found in the Scandinavian penin-
sula and the other regions about the Baltic which
have been the birthplace of great peoples.

The mineral productions of this area are extremely
varied. Coal of valuable quality does not exist
within its limits. There is a considerable area of
carboniferous rocks in Michigan, but they have as
yet given little promise of important contributions of
fuel. Iron, copper, silver, and the phosphates of
lime and salt are the geological staples of this region.
All these substances, both as regards the mass of the
deposits and their purity, appear to have in this
region a pre-eminence among all the fields of this
continent. The distribution of these resources of
the under earth and the variations of climate in this
continental Mediterranean district, provide an ample
basis for a great differentiation in the population.
Thus western New York and the northern border
of the Ohio States which face the great lakes are
destined to be agricultural communities, with a cer-
tain share of manufacturing industry. These parts
of this field are not to be the seats of mining. The
same is true of southern Michigan and southern
Wisconsin. The region about Lake Superior, owing
to the sterility of its soils and the rigor of its cli-
mate, is not likely to be the seat of a considerable
agriculture or of much manufacturing. It is evi-
dently destined to be a region engaged in mining and
in timber culture.

NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 249

The foregoing inadequate glance at the conditions
of North America, east of the Mississippi and south
of the region which is sterilized by cold, shows us
that despite the generally consolidated character of
its geography, the variations of the soil, of climate,
and of the under-earth resources are such as to in-
sure the profound diversifying influences which come
to man from his occupations. This measure of diver-
sity will increase with each step in the advance of
civilization.

CHAPTER VIII.

Section of North America west of the Mississippi. — Division into Sections
as determined by Rainfall. — Aridity of the District ; probable Future. —
Central District of Canada. — Region of the Red River; Condition of
Climate; Fitness for the Use of European Settlers. — Rocky Moun-
tain District; Effect of Cordilleran Barrier. — Condition of Cordilleran
District in northern Mexico; within the United States; Form of the
Mountains ; Recent Change in the Rainfall ; Character of Soil ; Variation
in Climate. — Mining Industry of Cordilleran District; Variety of Re-
sources ; Fitness of Region for Aryan Race. — Pacific Coast District ;
Division into Three Areas. — Section of southern California. — Relation
of Mining and Tillage Fields. — District of Oregon ; Mineral Resources ;
Soil; Climate; Fitness for Aryan Race. — Alaskan District. — Effect of
American Conditions on the life of Europeans ; on Africans. — Evidence
of Longevity of Europeans; from Surgery; from Field Sports; from
Measurements. — Endurance of Soldiers in Civil War. — Effect of Amer-
ican Climate on Negroes. — Conclusion.

We have now to consider the section of English
North America which lies to the west of the Mis-
sissippi River, ■ — a region where the under- structure,
the topography, and to a great extent the physio-
graphic conditions which affect the advance of
man are determined by the Cordilleran system of
mountains.

First, let us note the fact that this western section
of the continent, at least the part of it which is south
of the Canadian region, is generally characterized by
a scanty rainfall. Only on the Pacific coast north
of California do we find anything like the annual
share of moisture which comes to the earth in the

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 251

regions east of the Mississippi. East of the Missis-
sippi the annual supply of rain amounts on the aver-
age to about fifty inches, — a share of precipitation
probably unsurpassed in any equally extensive area
in the same latitude, unless it be in China. More-
over, the seasonal distribution of rain in the part of
North America east of the Mississippi is, on the
whole, favorable to the interests of agriculture. The
greater part of the annual fall, it is true, takes place
in the winter half of the year, when it is of the least
value to vegetation ; still, almost all the territory is
entitled, by the regimen of the air, to receive abun-
dant showers during the growing season.

West of the Mississippi the average rainfall, though
not yet well determined, probably does not exceed
twenty inches, and may in the end prove even less
in quantity. Moreover, in this section the rain is ill
distributed; the greater part falls in the time be-
tween the first of January and the first of May, the
summer and autumn being, in a large part of the area,
times of continued drought. From the Mississippi
River westward this diminution of the rainfall goes
on rapidly as we approach the Rocky Mountains.
The most arid section lies within the mountainous
belt ; on the western borders of that district we have
a narrow strip of country extending from southern
California, widening to the north, wherein the rain-
fall is sufficient for the needs of a vigorous vegeta-
tion. In the mountain districts local circumstances
cause the rainfall to vary greatly in amount. There

252 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

are considerable territories tolerably well provided
with rain, but as a whole the region is arid.

The trans-Mississippian portion of North America
is, from the point of view of economic interests,
divided into several distinct sections. On the east
we have a strip of country including eastern Nebraska,
Iowa, Missouri, eastern Kansas, Arkansas, and east-
ern Texas. In this section the annual rainfall is
sufficient to promote the development of grain and
the other staples appropriate to the soil and tempera-
ture. Throughout this belt the surface is, except in
the Ozark district of Arkansas and Missouri, substan-
tially unaffected by mountain-building forces. The
whole of the area affords excellent soils. This sec-
tion is in the main fitted for agriculture. There are,
however, at several points, as in the lead district of
Iowa, the lead and zinc country of Missouri, the iron
district of the Ozark, considerable sources of mineral
wealth. Throughout this section of States bordering
upon the Mississippi, but west of its line, the cli-
matal conditions are apparently favorable to the
development of our race; for though the summers
are, in the southern section of this district, extremely
hot, the winter is sharp enough to maintain the phys-
ical energy of the people.

West of the country just considered, and thence to
the eastern boundary of the Cordilleras, we have a
section where the diminished rainfall renders ordi-
nary agriculture unprofitable. Now and then a sea-
son favors the tillage of grain over the most of this

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 253

vast expanse ; but the annual supply of water varies
too much to make agriculture trustworthy. Along
the streams irrigation is possible, and a small por-
tion of the land may be made fertile by this expedi-
ent. Still, after all such engineering works are
constructed, at least nine tenths of the surface will
remain unsuited to ordinary husbandry. Its only use
will be for the pasturage of herds.

A great portion of this Cordilleran Piedmont dis-
trict is destitute of mountain ranges. The Black
Hills form a curious outlier on the north, and one
or two slight disturbances have affected other parts of
the field. The result is that no important mineral
resources are as yet known in this country, except in
the detached mountain mass of the Black Hills.

The facts above stated make it plain that this great
section of the continent has a limited future, save by
a change of climate which it is unreasonable to ex-
pect ; and we fail to see how it can ever be made to
afford a dwelling-place for large bodies of people.
The absence of fuel, of timber, and water powers
excludes manufactures. The dryness renders exten-
sive agriculture impossible, and there remains only
the chance of the scanty industry which comes with
a pastoral life.

North of the above-described section, within the
limits of Canada, and in the drainage area where
the waters flow toward the North Pole, we have a
large territory in the Saskatchewan, the Red River,
and the other valleys, including an area of about one

254 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

hundred and fifty thousand square miles, where the
rainfall is considerably greater than it is in the Pied-
mont district of the southern Cordilleras of North
America. In this section the surface of the country
is more diversified ; it contains a great many lakes ;
the larger rainfall is marked by the greater number
and size of the rivers, and there is a brief season of
growth in which the smaller grains and root-crops
prosper exceedingly. Although the surface of the
country is generally level, the rocks are sufficiently
disturbed to reveal a variety of mineral resources,
the value of which is not as yet even approximately
known. There is no question that this Hudson Bay
area, as we may term it because its waters drain into
that basin, is in many ways of agricultural impor-
tance. As before remarked, it is exceedingly well
fitted for the growth of certain staples, — the smaller
grains. Unfortunately, the region is too far north
for the extensive growth of Indian corn. Moreover,
the length and severity of the winters make it too
cold to profit by the rearing of horned cattle or of
sheep. At present the cultivation of small grains
secures this section a fair measure of prosperity. It
is to be feared, however, that this is but a temporary
success, for the reason that all the wheat-fields in the
central part of the continent are prone to rapid ex-
haustion from the rude tillage to which they are sub*
jected. When the primary fertility of the ground is
exhausted, it is necessary to have recourse to mixed
farming, to artificial fertilizers, and other expedients

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 255

which are not likely to prove profitable in this high
northern realm, where the population must mainly
depend on one class of crops.

So far as the matter of climate is concerned, this
region appears suitable to the people derived from
the more northern countries in Europe. Scots,
English, North Germans, and Scandinavians appear
to be well accommodated by their bodily habits to
the rigors of the climate. There remains, however,
the fact, that for nearly one half the year work in the
fields of this district is impossible, and this in a
purely agricultural country is a grave economic dis-
advantage. Therefore, despite the present success of
this high northern settlement, it seems likely that it
is in the end to become a country of the second order,
in which, though the population may maintain itself
and attain a certain diversity, the fullest develop-
ment of life will not be secured because of the unva-
ried nature of the industries.

We turn next to the territories contained within
the vast area of the Rocky Mountains, extending
from the Western pastoral lands to the border dis-
trict, which lies upon the Pacific Ocean. For nearly
two and a half centuries after the advent of the
English settlers upon our shores the Cordilleran
region remained a practically impassable barrier
between the settlements of the Atlantic coast and
Mississippi valley and the western sea. For two
hundred years of this period the idea that this great
natural barrier to commerce would ever be broken

256 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

down does not seem to have entered into the minds
of our people. Even after California was settled and
the prospective importance of the group of States on
the Pacific coast became evident, few dared to hope
that the great American desert and the mysterious
mountains which lay beyond it would ever be made
as readily passable as the Alleghanies. Nothing
shows so well the swift advance of man's control
over terrestrial conditions within the lifetime of our
generation as the speed with which these barriers
have been overcome. The journey from New York
or Boston to San Francisco is to us a much less
serious undertaking than it was to our fathers to go
from the sea-coast to the Ohio valley.

In northern Mexico, and thence northward to the
farthest point where the Cordilleras have been ex-
plored, the Cordilleran mountain district has an
average width of about one thousand miles. The
topography of this region differs considerably from
that of most other important mountain ranges. In the
first place, the mountains proper rest upon a very ele-
vated pedestal, so that the greater valleys and enclosed
table-lands often have a height of six or eight thou-
sand feet above the level of the sea. This feature
causes the climate of the region to be generally
more rigorous than its latitude alone would cause it
to be. The form of the mountains gives a curious
type to the topography. The predominant ranges
extend in a general north and south direction, as do
those of the Appalachian system ; but in the Rocky

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 257

Mountains we have a feature unobserved in the
Appalachian elevations, in that there are some
subordinate ridges having a general east and west
course. The consequence is that the Cordilleran
district contains many extensive elevated valleys,
great surfaces sometimes of tolerably level floors of
many thousand square miles in extent. Striking
examples of these enclosed areas are found in the
well-known parks of Colorado.

In the last glacial period, when the rainfall of this
country was far greater than at present, this system of
mountains was by its condition calculated to afford
a great number of isolated areas having a high
order of fertility, as is shown by the fact that it
had great lakes in many of its basins, water areas
rivalling the Laurentian fresh-water seas in extent.
The Rocky Mountains were probably at that time
a verdant country, and would have been wonder-
fully well suited to the uses of man. At present,
however, no considerable portion of this region is
fitted for agriculture, save where it is artificially
irrigated.

Although a large part of the Rocky Mountain
section consists of mountainous peaks, probably
nearly one third the total area is well covered by
soil which, owing to the fact that its resources have
not been drained by vegetation, is of exceeding fer-
tility. The researches of the United States Geolog-
ical Survey have made it probable that over a hundred
thousand square miles of this Cordilleran area can

258 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

be won to tillage by storing the winter rains in con-
venient reservoirs and using the husbanded waters
for irrigation. The Mormons have proved in a
remarkable way the success which attends the appli-
cation of water to this soil, and there is every reason
to believe that in all the important valleys of this
country there will be extensive areas of land in this
way won to agriculture. The irrigated lands of the
Rocky Mountains have very great fertility, and are
singularly enduring to tillage. We may fairly as-
sume the arable value of these redeemable soils to
be at least three times as great as that afforded by
the State of Illinois.

Owing to the great north and south extent of this
Cordilleran system, we have within it a vast range
of climate, so that the products of the artificially
watered fields may have a great diversity. Thus in
Montana and Idaho the natural products are grains,
grass, and the other ordinary tillage crops of this
country ; while in New Mexico and Arizona the finer
fruits may be advantageously cultivated. There' can
be no question that the development of the irrigation
system in the Rocky Mountains is sure to give rise
to a great many definitely limited agricultural popu-
lations, each separated from the other by broad fields
of arid mountains, which here and there will afford
employment to miners. When this condition of cul-
ture is instituted, we shall thus have a singular local-
ization of life and industry, the like of which cannot
exist in the other parts of the continent, where there

NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 259

are no barriers of a distinct sort between the several
fertile districts.

The principal economic basis of the Cordilleran life
must for many centuries rest upon the mining indus-
try. The geological development of this section from
the time the rocks were laid down on the old sea
floors, through the periods when they were deeply
buried and finally uplifted by the mountain-foldings,
has served to prepare a vast range of mineral wealth
by nature and position well suited to the needs of
man. So far the mining industry of this region is
in the main turned to the precious metals, and we
have come to associate the idea of mining in this
district with the winning of gold and silver. Al-
though we as yet know comparatively little concern-
ing the under-earth resources of this district, it is
evident that it contains a wide range of mineral
products, perhaps a greater variety than is known
to exist in any other country, all which will, with
the progress of exploration and the cheapening of
mining costs, become the bases of industries. Coal,
iron, and various alkaline salts, the varieties of bitu-
men, quicksilver, lead, zinc, and a host of other sub-
stances which have a place in our industries, exist in
profitable quantities in this part of the continent.
The fact that a large part of the country can be made
fertile by irrigation, will afford a basis for food-
supply to the mining population without the distant
carriage now required to bring it to this field.

Great as is the measure of man's dependence on the

260 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

resources of the under-earth in the present condition
of his development, there is every reason to believe
that this dependence will be manifolded within a
century from our day. We are evidently nowhere
near the end of the growth in our mineral industries.
The underground workers are evidently to be, in the
century to come, about as numerous as the soil-tillers.
Therefore, in our forecast, we must reckon on the
development of a body of population in the regions
of the Cordilleras which cannot readily be imagined
by the traveller who hastens through their apparently
sterile wastes.

The general climatal conditions of this section give
promise that it will afford an admirable field for the
nurture of northern Europeans. Although new-
comers in the highlands generally suffer from cer-
tain maladies attendant on the change of station, the
children born in the region seem very vigorous, and
the acclimatized man finds little in his surroundings
to contend with. The generation of success which
our race has secured in the Cordilleras is a matter of
no small interest to the philosophical student of our
country. Until the settlement of this district our
Anglo-Saxon folk had never come to occupy a region
of highlands. They were characteristically low-
landers in their origin and history, and it was an
open question whether the blood would prosper in
such countries. It might have been feared that it
would have proved unfit for mountain life, as it has
proved unfit for the conditions of the tropics. The

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 261

sight of vigorous children, and young men and women
of admirable physique, who have been bred in the
Cordilleran highlands, is most satisfactory to those
who have a keen interest in the future of our race.

On the Pacific slope we have three areas which are
open to our race, — the Californian, Oregonian, and
Alaskan.

The Californian section, extending from the penin-
sula of southern California to the northern borders of
California proper, is a region of mountain valleys,
lying in the foot-hill district of the Cordilleran prov-
ince. In this section the rainfall is sufficient to
make an extensive and varied agriculture possible;
the climate is in general of an admirable quality,
and the soil, which occupies perhaps one half the
total area, of great fertility. Although such a long
shore, the coast is poorly provided with harbors.
The fishing-grounds so far as known are not very
good, and the maritime life is likely to be less con-
siderable than along any equally extended part of the
American coast. On the other hand, the mining dis-
tricts are blended with the tillage grounds in such a
manner that they complement each other. So far the
under-earth resources which have been won have been
mainly those of the precious metals; there is every
reason to believe, however, that in the future the
grosser earth products are to play a very large part in
the economic success of the district and in the diver-
sification of its industries. A high grade of agricul-
ture, exceedingly varied mining, under a climate

262 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

which is on the whole favorable in its effects on the
human frame, give promise of admirable conditions
for the development of a powerful people.

The district of Oregon, including the western por-
tion of that State and the neighboring sections of the
State of Washington, as well as a considerable part
of the Frazer River district on the north, differs
from California in its more humid climate, the pro-
portionately wider extent of its tillage grounds, but
most markedly in the great extent of its inland mari-
time waters, the abundance of its harbors and straits,
the nurseries of seamen. Here, too, the fisheries
attain a considerable value, so that there is a great
foundation for ocean industries.

The mining opportunities of the Oregonian district,
though perhaps less considerable than those of the
central Cordilleras or of California, are still great.
In this section, from the Frazer Biver to the Colum-
bia, extending back two or three hundred miles from
the sea, we have the most varied opportunities for
industries which are afforded by any portion of the
American continent. Coal is possibly abundant;
there are numerous excellent water-powers, and the
soil within the limits of the humid area is very fer-
tile. The forests are of good quality and of great
extent, and the maritime resources appear to have a
value unequalled on any portion of the American
continent. The region has been blessed by the char-
acter of its settlers, for they have been derived from
the most vigorous portion of the race. Taking it lor

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 263

all and all, the physiographer is more disposed to
foretell greatness for this section than for any other
equally extensive area on the western border of the
continent.

North of the Frazer River, and thence to the
Yukon, we have a district which by its physiography
is peculiarly suited for a maritime life. In general
the character of the surface, soil, and climate of this
region more clearly resembles the Scandinavian
peninsula than any other part of the American con-
tinent; save that the area open to tillage is less
considerable than in Sweden and Norway, the gen-
eral conditions very closely reproduce those of our
race's cradle-land. In this field, which is destined
to have a peculiar place in the development of our
race, agriculture can have but a small part in the
activities of the people. Indeed, with the develop-
ment of any considerable population, they must
depend upon the Oregonian and Californian dis-
tricts for their grain-supply. Mining and fishing
are the natural occupations for the populations which
are to be developed in this interesting region.

We have now completed our rapid survey of the
physiographic conditions which determine, in a gen-
eral way, the development of our race on the conti-
nent of North America. It will be observed that we
have excluded from consideration the whole of Mex-
ico and Central America, the archipelago of the
Antilles, as well as all the wide expanse of lands

264 NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

neighboring to the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic re-
gion does not greatly interest us, because in the
present condition of its climate these territories are
sterilized by cold, and are therefore without the
province of our people. The southern parts of the
continent, though they afford regions of delightful
climate and great fertility, are also unsuited to our
race.

Much has been said concerning the change which
the European population has undergone in the course
of generations from life upon this continent. Many
persons have maintained that the British portion of
our population has been greatly altered by its experi-
ence on the continent of North America. There has
been a good deal of talk about the American type of
man. He is supposed to be a thinner and more
angular creature than his cousins of the parent isle.
It has been held that though quicker-witted, readier
to fit himself to circumstances, he has less solidity,
less endurance than his ancestors from beyond the
seas. There can be no question that our climate,
as a whole, differs considerably from the conditions
of northern Europe, whence our race came. It is
generally drier, the alternating seasons cooler and
hotter; it has, because of its relatively unclouded
sky, more sunlight. There is a natural presumption
that such variations would lead to considerable alter-
ation of the race ; and it may be that a certain meas-
ure of physical change has taken place.

I propose at once to set forth the reasons which

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 2b'5

lead me to the opinion that the change, if it has
occurred, has been small in amount, and that it has
not injuriously affected the qualities of the people.
It is worth while, at the outset of our inquiry, to note
the evidence which serves to show that racial quali-
ties are not always the playthings of climate. For-
tunately for our argument we have in this country
some striking bits of evidence on this point. A large
part of our population is of African descent, mostly
derived from the Guinea coast, from conditions of
climate very different from those which prevail in
the Southern States of North America, from a social
as well as a physical environment differing vastly
from what exists in this country. The African race
has by its transplanting undergone a great change in
its conditions. The negroes have been, so to speak,
on the average, upon this soil for nigh two hundred
years, — that is, they are as Americans about as
ancient as the white population. So far as we can
determine, the several generations of this race's life
in a totally foreign climate have not affected any of
their original peculiarities. The form, color of the
skin, character of the hair, and the mental qualities
still remain, so far as we can determine, essentially
unchanged, except so far as the blood has become
mingled with that of the whites. This stubbornness
of race characters is all too little appreciated. We
commonly neglect it in our political considerations,
but the naturalist cannot omit to consider it in his
reckonings.

266 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

Although the history of British settlements in
torrid regions shows that the population of northern
Europe is not suited to equatorial conditions, there is
nothing in the experience of the race which would
lead us to suppose that the measure of change under-
gone in passing from the parent country to the por-
tion of the United States north of the region about
the Mexican Gulf should produce any marked altera-
tion in the racial qualities. It is a difficult matter
to compare the condition of two bodies of people on
opposite sides of the sea, We cannot trust to the
impressions of travel, for no man can retain suffi-
ciently accurate memories for such judgments. Here
and there, however, we find certain data which serve
as indices, and perhaps afford a sufficient basis for an
opinion on this point. The most important of these
facts are those pertaining to longevity, as determined
by the experience of life-insurance companies, those
obtained by the measurements of soldiers and sailors,
and the endurance which such men exhibit in their
callings. The results of surgical operations serve
also to indicate the vitality of the patient ; and the
success attained in games of a sort which demand a
higher measure of mental and bodily vigor shows
something concerning the essential qualities of the
men. It would be desirable to add to this list the
measurement derived from the intellectual accom-
plishment of the two countries, the success in vari-
ous walks of a learned and imaginative work.
Unfortunately, this last measurement cannot be

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 267

justly applied, for the reason that intellectual ac-
complishment depends not so much on native ability
as on peculiar circumstances of scholarly environ-
ment, on education, and on the competence of the
social conditions to stimulate the mind to creative
activities. Shakspeares or Bacons possibly may re-
main with their genius unknown even to themselves,
unless there is the stimulating air to quicken the
native spark into a flame.

Taking the conditions which I have mentioned in
the order in which they are presented, we note in the
first place the conviction on the part of our actuaries,
— the computers who determine the measure of insur-
ance risk on human life, — that the longevity of peo-
ple in America is at least as great as in Europe ; and
this despite the fact that men's lives in this country
are more seriously taxed than in the Old World. We
are supposed to be dying of overwork; but the fact
is that, witnessed by the duration of life in the case
of men who have appeared on the records of insur-
ance companies, there is no indication that the term
allowed to man is growing less in this country than
it is across the seas. On the contrary, the evidence
seems to point to the conclusion that the American
man lives longer than those of the same race in the
Old World.

We have next to consider the endurance of Ameri-
can bodies to grave surgical operations. It is a well-
known fact that in this country, during our Civil War,
there was a surprising percentage of recoveries from

268 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

gunshot and other lesions incurred in battle. I be-
lieve it is a fact that in no European campaigns has
the percentage of recoveries ever been as great as it
was during our Civil War. Although our surgeons
were devoted, and the noble auxiliary corps of nurses
untiring in their efforts to assuage the ills of battle,
we cannot, it seems to me, attribute this remarkable
proportion of survivals to remedial measures alone.
Our surgeons and physicians employed in the Civil
War were not in general so well instructed as those
of Europe, and the means of succor on our battle-
fields were probably no better than they are in mod-
ern days in the Old World. It seems to me that this
fact of ready recovery from wounds cannot be ex-
plained save by the supposition that, on the whole,
the American's body has more recuperative power
than that of the European. It may possibly be that
this advantage is due to better food, less average con-
sumption of alcohol, and in part to the mental activity
and courage in adversity which is bred in our men by
their varied activities. Be this as it may, the rude
experience of war seems to indicate that our men are
as enduring as any from other countries. The proba-
bility that the survival from wounds is due in part to
the innate condition of our people finds some support
in the observations of Dr. Brown-Se*quard, which were
communicated to me personally some years ago. This
gentleman, as is well known, is a distinguished phy-
sician, as well as a physiologist of the foremost rank,
having a place among the famous experts in this

NATUKE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 269

branch of science who are now the glory of France.
Dr. Brown-Se*quard had observed that American ani-
mals generally — not only men, but the lower mam-
mals down to the level of the rabbit — are much more
enduring to wounds than the kindred forms of the
Old World. He regarded this peculiar resistance to
lesions as the result of a difference in the nervous
system, which made the creatures of this country feel
the effect of shock much less considerably than
those of Europe. He stated that in order to produce
a given amount of destructive effect in experimenting
on a rabbit, he had to make the wounds of the nervous
system much more severe than in the case of Euro-
pean animals upon which he was performing the
same experiment. In his opinion, the American man
had something of the same element of resistance to
injuries.

The next point of evidence is that which is afforded
by the record of field sports in this country and of
Europe. While the conditions of higher intellectual
accomplishment differ so in the two countries as to
make comparison impossible, such amusements, espe-
cially those which require at once, as most of them
do, the effective co-operation of mind and body, afford
an excellent test as to the general condition of our
folk in comparison with our English kindred, — a
comparison which includes not only the human kind,
but extends also to the companions of man. It is
now pretty well established that the American horse
is as good as any of his kindred in the world, as is

270 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

proved not only by the race-course, but by the won-
derful cavalry marches made during the Civil War, —
marches in which the sorest part of the contest came
upon the mounts of the soldiery. Our ordinary field-
sports have, except lacrosse, been derived from Eng-
land ; even base-ball, which appears as a distinc-
tively American game, is but a modification of an
English form of sport, which is really of great
antiquity. The sports which we may compare in
England and America are the games of ball, — in
which base-ball, because of our customs, must take
the place of cricket, and foot-ball, which is identical
in the two countries, — rifle-shooting, rowing, and
the ordinary group of athletic sports in which single
contestants take part. We may add to this the
amusement of sailing, wherein, however, the quality
of the structure as well as the nerve and skill in
management play an important part.

It is not worth while in this writing to make an
accurate comparison between the success attained in
the two countries in these several out- door amuse-
ments. It is now clear, however, that in all of them
the American is not a bit behind his transatlantic
cousins. Most of the people have the same spontane-
ous interest in sports as their forefathers, and they
pursue them with equal success. It is unnecessary
to do so, but we might fairly rest the conclusion as to
the undecayed physical vigor of our population on
that spontaneous activity of mind without which
games are impossible.

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 271

There are, however, two divisions of the proof to
which we have yet to attend. Among its many
oeneficent deeds the United States Sanitary Com-
mission, which did so much to relieve the miseries
of our Civil War, did a remarkable service to anthro-
pology by measuring, in as careful a manner as the
condition of our knowledge at the time permitted,
about two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers of the
Federal army.

The records of these measurements are contained
in the admirable work of Dr. B. A. Gould, a distin-
guished astronomer, who collated the observations
and presented them in a great volume. Similar
measurements exist which present us with the physi-
cal status of something like an equally large number
of European soldiers, particularly those of the British
army. From Dr. Gould's careful discussion of these
statistics, it appears that the American man is on
the whole quite as well developed as those who fill
the ranks of European armies. As but a small edi-
tion of Dr. Gould's book was printed, and as it is not
ordinarily accessible to most readers, I venture to
give some of the important conclusions which I derive
from it.

From these records it appears that there is a con-
siderable difference in the men born in different parts
of the United States. Unfortunately the results in-
clude only a small part of the Southern troops, and
for various reasons these measurements are less
trustworthy in the case of troops from those fields.

272 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

The measurements appear to show that the size of
man increased, in a general way, as we go from the
seaboard into the Mississippi valley. About fifty
thousand men who were subjected to these measure-
ments were from the States of West Virginia, Ken-
tucky, and Tennessee. It is a fact well known to
those who are acquainted with the history of these
Commonwealths during the Civil War, that the Fed-
eral army did not receive an even share of the most
vigorous element of their population; those grown
upon the richest soils of these Commonwealths, men
from the blue -grass district regions of Kentucky and
Tennessee, went in the main to the Confederate
army, for the reason that these fertile lands were
slave-holding districts. Despite this cause, which
doubtless serves somewhat to lower the average meas-
urements of the troops, these two States furnished
about the best developed native soldiers who appeared
in the Federal army. This last point is of much im-
portance, for the reason that the white population of
this district derived almost all its blood from Britain,
in perhaps nearly equal measure from the Scots and
from the dwellers in the southern portion of that
island. Moreover, it has been longer upon the soil
than perhaps any other part of the American English.
New England has been so far affected by the immigra-
tion of Irish and other Europeans, that it would be
difficult to recruit fifty thousand men in that region
with so small an admixture of other than British blood
as was secured in the troops of Kentucky, Tennessee,

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 273

and the neighboring States. The admirable develop-
ment of these soldiers has completely proved that
two centuries of Americanizing has not debilitated
the race.

Last of all, we have the test afforded by the trials
of the struggle between the North and the South. War
has ever been the rudest and most effective gauge of
certain important qualities. The actual advance to
which living beings have attained has been in large
part determined by the measure of resistance which
creatures have been enabled to make against adverse
circumstances, — not the passive inertia of inanimate
things, but the active and long- continued contest in
which all the latent powers are applied in determined
action. The military struggles of men are but an
advanced and complicated form of the immemorial
rivalry of lower creatures, out of which, through infi-
nite pain, infinite good has been won. There is no
more searching test of the moral and physical devel-
opment of a people than that which is afforded by a
great and long- continued civil war. That such a
strife affords a measure of the physical endurance,
the power which is in the people of maintaining
determinations, is manifest. The contact of armies
in the field gives, moreover, an excellent measure as
to the moral state of the people. Nothing so tests the
firmness with which the motives of sympathy, of jus-
tice, are rooted in men as the temptations to which
campaigns expose them.

It is hard, in our ordinary well-regulated societies,
18

274 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

to ascertain how far men are held to right- doing by
the machinery of the law, how far their relations to
their fellows are fixed by their own motives. The
ratio of compulsion to spontaneous motives becomes
evident when the men of the State are marshalled into
armies. This test was made thoroughgoing by the
circumstances of our Civil War. In the first place,
the combatants fought for more ideal issues- than men
commonly do. It was not for the love of chieftains
or for conquest, but for theories of institutions, of
plans for States, that they contended. No war was
ever so humanely conducted as this. There were
grievous things about it, — all war is a succession of
griefs ; but the conduct of the armies in the field was
more humane than in any other similar campaigns
which the world has known. The interests of women
and children were almost invariably considered. The
soldiers born upon the soil generally carried the civic
sense, the order of peaceful society, with them in
march and battle. Good-nature and sympathy were
written on their banners. We have but to compare
the struggles between the French and Spaniards in
Florida, or the wars between the American colonies
of the British and French, to see how humanized our
armies were under circumstances which in other
lands and times have awakened the devil in men.
The issue of the combat, the perfect accord and
loving humor which now marks those who met on
battlefields, shows this in the clearest possible man-
ner. I take it to be plain that the Rebellion proves

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 275

our people to have lost nothing in the moral gains
which the race won in the Old World. If we com-
pare the results of the contest with the chronic condi-
tions of dispute between Great Britain and Ireland,
I think we may claim that we have gained in the
moral qualities which appear in the conduct of public
affairs.

The behavior of our armies in the field shows
clearly that the combination of physical vigor and
moral earnestness which make a good soldier exist
in unsurpassed measure in the men whose ancestors
dwelt long upon the American soil.

Some years ago I sought carefully to find a body of
troops whose ancestors had been for many genera-
tions upon our soil, and whose ranks were essentially
unmixed with foreigners, or those whose forefathers
had been but a short time upon this continent. It
proved difficult to find in the Northern armies any
commands which served the needs of the inquiry
which I desired to make. It seemed necessary to
consider a force of at least five thousand men in order
to avoid the risks which would come from insufficient
data. In our Federal army it was the custom to put
in the same brigade regiments from different dis-
tricts, thus commingling commands of pure Ameri-
can blood with those which held a considerable
percentage of foreigners, or men of foreign parents.
I found in my limited inquiry but one command
which satisfied the needs of the investigation, and
this was the First Brigade of Kentucky troops in the

276 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

rebel army. In the beginning of the war this brigade
was recruited mostly in the slave-holding district of
Kentucky, its ranks being filled mainly with farmers'
sons. It is possible to trace the origin of the men in
this command with sufficient exactitude by the inspec-
tion of the muster-rolls. Almost every name upon
them belongs to well-known families of English
stock, mainly derived from Virginia. It is possible,
in a similar way, to prove that with few and unim-
portant exceptions, these soldiers were of ancient
American lineage. Speaking generally, we may say
that their blood had been upon the soil for a century
and a half ; that is, they were about five generations
removed from the parent country.

When first recruited, this brigade contained about
five thousand men. From the beginning it proved as
trustworthy a body of infantry as ever marched or
stood in the line of battle. Its military record is
too long and too varied to be even summarized here.
I will only note one hundred days of its history in the
closing stages of its service. May 7, 1864, this bri-
gade, then in the army of General Joseph Johnston,
marched out of Dalton eleven hundred and forty
strong, at the beginning of the great retreat upon
Atlanta before the army of Sherman. In the subse-
quent hundred days, or until September 1, the bri-
gade was almost continuously in action or on the
march. In this period the men of the command
received eighteen hundred and sixty death or hospi-
tal wounds, the dead counted as wounds, and but one

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 277

wound being counted for each visitation of the hospi-
tal. At the end of this time there were less than fifty
men who had not been wounded during the hundred
days. There were two hundred and forty men left
for duty, and less than ten men deserted.

A search into the history of warlike exploits has
failed to show me any endurance to the worst trials
of war surpassing this. We must remember that the
men of this command were at each stage of their
retreat going farther from their firesides. It is easy
for men to bear great trials under circumstances of
victory. Soldiers of ordinary goodness will stand
several defeats ; but to endure the despair which such
adverse conditions bring for a hundred days demands
a moral and physical patience which, so far as I have
learned, has never been excelled in any other army.
I doubt not that as satisfactory evidence can be ob-
tained from the records of our Northern troops;
indeed, my inquiries have clearly indicated that if
our men from the districts settled with purely Eng-
lish blood could be made the subject of careful study,
we should find that the best Federal soldiers were
generally as good as these Confederates.

The foregoing considerations, as well as many
other points which cannot be traced in this brief
study concerning the effects of climatal and social
conditions on the American man, have satisfied me
— as I think they will satisfy any other unprejudiced
inquirer — that our race is safe upon this continent ;

278 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

that we need have no apprehensions concerning the
effect of the existing conditions upon its development.

We may safely presume that the climate and other
features of our continent, with perhaps the exception
of the district about the Gulf of Mexico and the
Arctic country, are on the whole as well fitted for
the uses of nerthern Europeans as any part of the
mother-country. We may reasonably conclude that
it suits the whole Teutonic branch of the Aryan race.

As to the Latin peoples, the case is not so clear.
The Canadian French are doubtless in the main de-
scended from the people of northern France. It is
likely that a large part of their blood is derived from
the Northmen. There can be no question that, with
certain limitations, this population has been thor-
oughly successful on American soil. The fact that
they speak a foreign language and have been deprived
of education, may account for their general failure to
advance in the intellectual field. They are, however,
people of vigorous minds and enduring bodies. They
have developed a fecundity now unparalleled in
France. They take naturally to laborious occupa-
tions, which is a proof of physical vigor. We may
therefore consider the northern Frenchman as well
fitted to the conditions of northern America. The
Latin peoples about the Gulf of Mexico have not
been equally successful. The upper class has main-
tained something of its pristine quality, but the
peasant has not taken hold on the soil in a successful
way. How much of this failure of the Spanish and

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 279

French to attain a high development in the region
about the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean is due
to climate, and how much to the institution of
slavery, or to their intermixture with the indigenous
people, it is impossible to say.

There remains one important inquiry as to the
effect of geographic conditions on the development
of races from beyond the sea on the surface within
the limits of North America, — a question of the
utmost importance to our political and social future.
We have in this country a very large African popula-
tion. Within the limits of the United States, the
number of people of this blood probably exceeds that
of any other stock, save that from the British Isles.
As we have previously remarked, this race on the
whole appears to have remained substantially un-
changed by the conditions of the new field. Intel-
lectual contact with the white has doubtless led to a
certain development in the general status of the
African, but except so far as his blood has been
mingled with that of Aryan or Indian people, the
bodily form, and in general the moral and mental
characteristics, have remained substantially what
they were on the parent continent of this people.
There are two questions concerning this race which
are of the utmost importance to the future of our
nation, — indeed, to that of all our own people in
North America. The first concerns the natural
fecundity of the population, their rate of increase

280 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

from decade to decade; and the second, the limita.
tions which climate may put upon the extension of
the folk.

The rate of increase of the negro has not yet been
ascertained. During the conditions of slavery a sat-
isfactory census was impossible. The slaves were
subject to taxation, and the owners had a sinister
interest in reducing the numbers which were given to
the accounting officers. The census of 1870, the first
taken after the overthrow of slavery, partly inten-
tionally or by neglect, served to underestimate the
total number of negroes. The next accounting, that
of 1880, was careful, and doubtless gave us the first
accurate knowledge as to the ratio of this element of
our population to those of European blood. It will
not be until we obtain returns of the census which
has just been taken, that we shall know whether the
negro is more or less prolific than the white. In
case it should appear that in the extreme Southern
States the negro increases in a greater ratio than the
whites, the regions in which this increase is marked
have a doubtful future before them; for unless the
black population can be quickly lifted to a higher
intellectual and moral plane than now characterizes
it, those parts of the South will be apt to relapse
into barbarism. The advance of the negro to a sat-
isfactory grade in development still depends upon his
remaining in close contact with the superior race.
If he increases in numbers more rapidly than the
whites, he is sure to create massive communities of

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 281

his own stock, in which there can be no certainty as
to the maintenance of our race motives.

As to the distribution of the African population in
his country, though the evidence is not clear, it
seems that the negro is not likely, in the immediate
future at least, to extend for any considerable dis-
tance beyond the limits in which his race at present
is fixed. There is now no distinct movement of the
blacks toward the North. The scanty African popu-
lation in the old non-slave-holding States has mainly
accumulated in the cities, and would probably die out
were it not for the occasional accessions it receives
from the South. Unless the rate of increase of the
negroes should be so great as to crowd them from
the extreme Southern States, we may be pretty sure
that this population will remain in good part limited
to a small portion of our country, — to a region which
though not unfitted for the occupation of our race,
is the most undesirable part of the country for its
development.

Our review of the physiographic conditions which
environ our race on this continent makes it tolerably
plain that North America is well suited for the devel-
opment of northern Europeans. We may dismiss the
fear that our race is to deteriorate in this country.
We may further put aside the notion that we are to
be a massive, unvaried people, destitute of those
differences which by their reaction bring about the
advance of man. It is true that the continent is not

282 NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA.

divided into the separate areas which have consti-
tuted the cradle-lands of the Old World; but it is
evident that the wide diversities in occupation will
institute and maintain variations in the character of
the people probably in time to be as great as those
which in the more natural state of man depended on
purely geographic conditions. At present, while the
open structure of our social and economic life permits
a rapid change in the occupations of men, the effect
of industries dependent on physiographic conditions
is not much felt ; but with the increase and consoli-
dation of our population, we may be sure that voca-
tions will become more hereditary. Men will follow
the occupations of the plough, the mine, or the mill
from generation to generation, and so the commu-
nities will receive the individualized stamp which
comes only through ancestral habit.

In the beginning mankind was dependent for
culture and diffusion mainly upon geographic con-
ditions. Each tribe was environed by rigid customs
which fended off its neighbors. The movements
were necessarily massive, for they were to result in
displacements of pre-existing peoples. Therefore
the first stages of man's development resemble, as
regards the conditions of increase and diffusion,
those of his lower kindred in the ranks of life ; the
progress of intellectual capacity has given to certain
races a larger measure of control over their circum-
stances. Still, even in our own centuries, the im-
plantation of our race in new lands already possessed

NATURE AND MAN IN AMERICA. 283

by men has proved a task of exceeding difficulty.
The would-be colonists of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, on the eastern coast of America,
found something of the difficulty in gaining their
foothold which stray plants or animals from one flora
or fauna find when they are cast within a foreign
field. Even in the present state of their development
the most advanced races of men are limited by the
climate, and can only dwell where the larger nature
permits.

For all that we can foresee of the future, this
dependence of man upon the conditions of his envi-
ronment is of an insuperable nature. The good he
wins he secures by obedience to the commands of his
mother-earth. Looking back over the history of life
upon the earth's surface, the physiographer is forced
to the conclusion that its highest estate embodied in
the moral and intellectual qualities of man has been,
in the main, secured by the geographic variations
which have slowly developed through the geological
ages. Thus our continents and seas cannot be con-
sidered as physical accidents, in which and on which
organic beings have found an ever-perilous resting-
place, but as great engines operating in a determined
way to secure the advance of life.

INDEX.

Africa, civilization in 166

primitive races of . 167

Africans, effect of American climate on 265

Agassiz, A., on relation of life in Antilles and Central America . . . 100

Agassiz, L., on relation of North American and European life ... 5

view of fossils 5

Agriculture, progressive dependence of man upon 212

Air, changes in constitution 132

Alaskan section 263

Alps, condition of life in 25

American continents, contributions of domesticated animals and plants

from 175

population, changes in 264

evidence from Civil War 268, 273

longevity, etc 266

physical condition 271

Appalachian Mountains, effect on Civil War 210

colonies 195

distribution of slavery 209

protection they afforded against Indians . . 205

Aryans, origin of 163

Atlantic coast shelf * . 77

Atmosphere, changes in constitution of « . . 132

Australia, conditions of life 14

extinction of native species in 72

measure of isolation 110

Big Bone Lick, geological evidence from 185

Buffalo, effect on Indians 184

California* section 261

Cambrian shore line in New England 85

Canada, natural union with United States 220

relation of products to those of United States 218

286 INDEX.

tJLQM

Cape Cod, effect on marine life 14

Carboniferous period, theory of its climate 119

shore line in New England 86

Carolinian plain, a recently elevated sea bottom 75

Civilization, dependence on environment 147

Civil War, effect of Appalachian mountains on 210

Climatal changes, how induced 18

range of 135

Climate of Carboniferous Period, theory of 119

effect of Japan Current on 143

Colonies, British, local differences in 200

condition at beginning of eighteenth century 197

European in North America 188, 193

effect of Appalachian barrier on 195

commercial growth of British 206

conditions 199

relative conditions in North America 194

Comparison of form of North America and Europe 9

Continental bench 82

form, effects of erosion on 35

growth, relations of mountains to 47, 60

shelf, origin of materials 79

Continents, condition in earlier geological times 112

effect of disappearance 41

individualization Ill

on marine currents 129

elastic condition of 96

evidence of permanence from character of rocks .... 72

physical history 33

j*oof of antiquity from organic life . 70

stability 81

subsidence during Glacial times 97

theory of formation 47

Coral reefs, evidence of ancient shore lines 74

Cordilleran district 252

Croll, Dr. James, theory of Glacial periods 119

Cuvier, view of fossils 4

Dead Seas, origin of saline material 38

Deep seas, conditions of life in 28

Devonian black shale, relation to Gulf Stream 73

English colonies in North America 188, 193

Environment, effects on man 147

Erosion, effects on continental form 35

European population in America, modifications of condition .... 264

INDEX. 287

nun

Europe, compared with Asia . • . . . 157

cradle of nations 158

general description 151

Evolution of life, conditions of the process 108

Florida, former extensive elevation 101

general character 235

French colonies in North America 192

Gay Head, Mass., series of rocks, evidence from 88

Geographical barriers, absence in North America 214

changes, effect on life 16

rapidity of 131

Glacial Period, conditions of 90

migration of plants after 128

possible cause 143

range of ice 140

subsidence of continents during 97

periods, theory of Dr. Croll 119

Great Britain, isolation 153

effects of 159

Gulf District 239

of Mexico, recent depression of northern shore 101

remnant of continental sea 22

Stream, agency in formation of Devonian black shales .... 73

effect on north Atlantic 20

recent changes in 141

Hooke, view of fossils 3

Iceland, effects of isolation 160

Indians, age of mound builders 181

effect of buffalo on 184

habit of burning prairies 184, 186

of North America, social condition of 172

Isthmuses, effect on life 15

Japan Current, possible effect on American climate 143

effects of isolation 160

Kuro Sivo, or Japan Current, possible effect on American climate . . 143

Lake district 246

Lemming, migrations 162

Life, conditions of advance on land 46

288 INDEX.

PASS

Life, conditions of, in Alps , . . 25

Australia 14

deep seas 28

of evolution 108

in Mississippi valley 24

of passage from sea to land of 42

in Polar regions 30

effect of continental development on 127

geological changes on . . 16

isthmuses on .... 15

migrations on 18

mountains on 23

evidence indicating antiquity of continents from 70

marine, effect of Cape Cod on . . 14

of West India Islands, comparison with that of East Indies . . 100

relation in Antilles and Central America, Agassiz, A., on . . . 100

to form of continent 13

of that of North America and Europe 5

tropical conditions to 145

Massachusetts, ancient shore lines in 84

Mexico, relations to United States 223

Migrations of animals 162

faunae and florae 109

effect on life 18

Mineral wealth, position in North America 212

progressive dependence of man upon 212

Mississippi valley, condition of life in 24

effect of access to, on shipping interests .... 200

first settlement 206

Mountains, absent on sea floor 49

cause 54

effect on life 23

evidence of slow growth 68

pedestals 52

process of growth in Europe 125

relation to continental growth 47, 60

of Tertiary Era 123

Negro, effect of American climate on 265

population, distribution of 281

rate of increase 279

New England section of North America 223

New York district 229

North America, comparative relations to Europe and Asia .... 176

comparison of form with that of Europe 9

INDEX. 289

FAOB

North America, conditions of discovery and settlement 188

description of districts 168

effect of geography on savage tribes 180

general description . . . . 216

geographical relations to Old World 174

origin of ancient peoples 178

relation of geography to human culture 168

social conditiqn of Indians 173

Occupations, effect on society 215

Ocean currents, effect of continents on 129

substances held in solution by 37

Ohio district 241

Oregon district 262

Plants, migrations after Glacial Period 128

Plateau district 251

Polar regions, conditions of life in 30

Population, American, changes in 264

evidence from Civil War 268, 273

longevity, etc 266

physical condition 271

European in America, modifications of condition .... 264

Negro, distribution of 281

rate of increase 279

Prairies, effect on commercial development 211

origin 184, 186

Proportion of shore line in the several continents "10

Pythagoras, view of fossils 1

Races of men, permanences 165

Relation of life to form of continent 13

North American and European life 5

Rivers of North America, evidence as to continental movement ... 95

St. Lawrence district, general character of 224

valley, value to French 196

Salt deposits, evidence concerning climate from 136

Slavery, effect of Appalachian Mountains on distribution 209

Slave trade, effect on American history 204

Spaniards, their share of North America 190

Sympathy, modern development of 150

Temperature of the earth's surface, determining conditions .... 138

Tertiary Era, life of 123

290 INDEX.

wjum

Tertiary shore line of New England 88

Trias shore line of New England 86

Tropics, relation of conditions to life .145

Virginia district 230

Volcanoes, effect on ocean sediments 39

evidence concerning movements of subterranean rocks . . 62

West India islands, comparison of life with that of East Indies . . . 100
evidence of recent elevation 99

Date Due

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GF501.S52

CLAPP

Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate
Nature and man in America /

3 5002 00007 3663

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