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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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.
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