Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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An Able Geologist, Mr. Edwin James, Has Recently Shown That This Basin
Is Comprehended Between The Andes Of New Mexico, Or Upper Louisiana,
And The Chains Of The Alleghenies Which Stretch Northward In Crossing
The Rapids Of Quebec.
It being quite as open northward as southward,
it may be designated by the collective name of the basin of the
Mississippi, the Missouri, the river St. Lawrence, the great lakes of
Canada, the Mackenzie river, the Saskatchewan and the coast of
Hudson's Bay.
The tributary streams of the lakes and those of the
Mississippi are not separated by a chain of mountains running from
east to west, as traced on several maps; the line of partition of the
waters is marked by a slight ridge, a rising of two counter-slopes in
the plain. 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.
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