There Is No Chain Between The Sources Of The Missouri And The Assineboine, Which Is A Branch Of The Red River And Of Hudson's Bay.

The surface of these plains, almost all savannah, between the polar sea and the gulf of Mexico, is more than 270,000 square sea leagues, nearly equal to the area of the whole of Europe.

On the north of the parallel of 42 degrees the general slope of the land runs eastward; on the south of that parallel it inclines southward. To form a precise idea how little abrupt are these slopes we must recollect that the level of Lake Superior is 100 toises; that of Lake Erie, 88 toises, and that of Lake Ontario, 36 toises above the level of the sea. The plains around Cincinnati (latitude 39 degrees 6 minutes) are scarcely, according to Mr. Drake, 80 toises of absolute height. Towards the west, between the Ozark mountains and the foot of the Andes of Upper Louisiana (Rocky Mountains, latitude 35 to 38 degrees), the basin of the Mississippi is considerably elevated in the vast desert described by Mr. Nuttal. It presents a series of small table-lands, gradually rising one above another, and of which the most westerly (that nearest the Rocky Mountains, between the Arkansas and the Padouca), is more than 450 toises high. Major Long measured a base to determine the position and height of James Peak. In the great basin of the Mississippi the line that separates the forests and the savannahs runs, not, as may be supposed, in the manner of a parallel, but like the Atlantic coast, and the Allegheny mountains themselves, from north-east to south-west, from Pittsburg towards Saint Louis, and the Red River of Nachitoches, so that the northern part only of the state of Illinois is covered with gramina. This line of demarcation is not only interesting for the geography of plants, but exerts, as we have said above, great influence in retarding culture and population north-west of the Lower Mississippi. In the United States the prairie countries are more slowly colonized; and even the tribes of independent Indians are forced by the rigour of the climate to pass the winter on the banks of rivers, where poplars and willows are found. The basins of the Mississippi, of the lakes of Canada and the St. Lawrence, are the largest in America; and though the total population does not rise at present beyond three millions, it may be considered as that in which, between latitude 29 and 45 degrees (longitude 74 to 94 degrees), civilization has made the greatest progress. It may even be said that in the other basins (of the Orinoco, the Amazon and Buenos Ayres) agricultural life scarcely exists; it begins, on a small number of points only, to supersede pastoral life, and that of fishing and hunting nations. The plains between the Alleghenies and the Andes of Upper Louisiana are of such vast extent that, like the Pampas of Choco and Buenos Ayres, bamboos (Ludolfia miega) and palm-trees grow at one extremity, while the other, during a great part of the year, is covered with ice and snow.

2. THE BASIN OF THE GULF OF MEXICO, AND OF THE CARIBBEAN SEA.

This is a continuation of the basin of the Mississippi, Louisiana and Hudson's Bay. It may be said that all the low lands on the coast of Venezuela situated north of the littoral chain and of the Sierra Nevada de Merida belong to the submerged part of this basin. If I treat here separately of the basin of the Caribbean Sea, it is to avoid confounding what, in the present state of the globe, is partly above and partly below the ocean. The recent coincidence of the periods of earthquakes observed at Caracas and on the banks of the Mississippi, the Arkansas and the Ohio, justifies the geologic theories which regard as one basin the plains bounded on the south, by the littoral Cordillera of Venezuela; on the east, by the Alleghenies and the series of the volcanoes of the West Indies; and on the west, by the Rocky Mountains (Mexican Andes) and by the series of the volcanoes of Guatimala. The basin of the West Indies forms, as we have already observed, a Mediterranean with several issues, the influence of which on the political destinies of the New Continent depends at once on its central position and the great fertility of its islands. The outlets of the basin, of which the four largest* are 75 miles broad, are all on the eastern side, open towards Europe, and agitated by the current of the tropics. (* Between Tobago and Grenada; Saint Martin and the Virgin Isles; Porto Rico and Saint Domingo; and between the Little Bank of Bahama and Cape Canaveral of Florida.) In the same manner as we recognize, in our Mediterranean, the vestiges of three ancient basins by the proximity of Rhodes, Scarpanto, Candia, and Cerigo, as well as by that of Cape Sorello of Sicily, the island of Pantelaria and Cape Bon, in Africa; so the basin of the West India Islands, which exceeds the Mediterranean in extent, seems to present the remains of ancient dykes which join* Cape Catoche of Yucatan to Cape San Atonio of the island of Cuba (* I do not pretend that this hypothesis of the rupture and the ancient continuity of lands can be extended to the eastern foot of the basin of the West Indies, that is, to the series of the volcanic islands in a line from Trinidad to Porto Rico.); and that island to Cape Tiburon of St. Domingo; Jamaica, the Bank of La Vibora and the rock of Serranilla to Cape Gracias a Dios on the Mosquito Shore. From this situation of the most prominent islands and capes of the continent, there results a division into three partial basins. The most northerly has long been distinguished by a particular denomination, that of the Gulf of Mexico; the intermediary or central basin may be called the Sea of Honduras, on account of the gulf of that name which makes a part of it; and the southern basin, comprehended between the Caribbean Islands and the coast of Venezuela, the isthmus of Panama, and the country of the Mosquito Indians, would form the Caribbean Sea.

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