As the White Sea, (48,500 square miles in area,) the Baltic, (167,000 square miles,) and the yet greater North Sea, have broken through the northern regions of Europe, so on a far more gigantic scale have the inroads of the ocean rifted and sundered North America. This we have learned in our recent frequent voyages to the Esquimaux regions. Baffin’s Bay, Lancaster Sound, Smith’s Sound, Jones’ Sound, Barrow Strait, Fox’s Channel with its uncounted islands, Hudson’s Bay with its 499,000 square miles of surface, Boothia Gulf, Victoria and Georgia Seas, Wellington’s Channel, Melville Sound, Prince of Wales Straits, and very many other water passages and basins divide those northern districts into a vast mesh of islands and peninsulas. The superficial area of all these tracts is on a colossal scale; even the Greenland group is estimated to include 766,500 square miles. Within the past few years this whole Arctic Sea has been the scene of numerous expeditions of discovery, some of them on a princely scale.
All this shows that North America is fashioned much more after the analogy of Europe than of South America. The analogy would be much more close, if North America were as favorably affected by climatic conditions as Europe. Both continents are washed at the south as well as at the north by great inland seas, and divided up by them in a manner peculiar to them among all the continents. Of this articulation, America, less favored by climate, has much the larger share. By its admirable harbors, and by the action of the Gulf Stream crossing the Atlantic in two directions, America has been specially fitted to receive the population and civilization of the Old World, and to stand in the closest relations with it. In this, united with the arrangement of its mountain chains and the happy characteristics of its river systems, America bears the palm completely away from Asia. In that continent the colossal rivers of the north have no connection at their sources with the head-waters of the great Chinese, Indian, and West Asiatic rivers. It is entirely different in North America, where the St. Lawrence, Mackenzie, Columbia, Colorado, Mississippi, and Missouri flow from the same region, as from a common center, not separated at their sources by an immense plateau, but forming a single river system, from the mouth of one to that of another, flowing in just the contrary direction. We find, therefore, that there, as in North Europe, civilization has followed the water-courses, and has planted colonies as far north as 70° on the coast of Greenland; while in Asia human habitations cease with 65° N. lat.
America seems to be appointed, by its physical conditions, to plant the banner of human progress at the most northern parts of the globe, and to do for the northern hemisphere what Great Britain, through her colonies in Tasmania and South Australia, with their admirable harbors, is doing for the southern.
Northern Asia seems to have no future indicated for her beyond the sources and upper courses of her great rivers; she seems to depend upon Central Asia and upon Russian Europe for all the scanty culture which she may possess. In its south and east it seems to have within its Chinese and Indian populations the seeds of an independent development, whose results, like those of Arabia, have been transferred to Europe to become improved there, and then to be given to the world. The form of the three great peninsulas, which were the home of Asiatic culture, has been repeated in Europe,—but with how great a difference! The three European peninsulas are not in the tropical zone and near the equator, but are 1400 miles farther north. The two groups—the eastern one in South Asia, the western one in South Europe—each consisting of three peninsulas, are the most valuable auxiliaries the world’s civilization ever had. Through their agency Asia in the torrid zone and Europe in the temperate have become what America and Australia are yet to be to the extreme north and the extreme south. The former were for the past, the latter for the present and the future. South America, and yet much more Africa and Australia, seem to be held in reserve for the need of a home where the civilization of centuries yet to come shall expand into perfection. They now are in their infancy; the day only begins to break in them. Furnished as they have been with the most liberal gifts of nature, they must receive a culture of which we as yet have little conception. In what way this can be done, the history of the past reveals. The art of navigation has, within the past three centuries, given to islands and to continents a new life, and developed relations unknown till then. The very touch of European civilization has already wakened the world to new life; and the oceans, which were once the most impassable of barriers, have become the closest of bonds to draw the earth together, and to further its progress toward the consummation of all history.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Prof. D. C. Gilman, of Yale College.
[2] Meteors, which are nightly visible, are different from the periodic phenomena, seen in August and November, in different localities over the earth, and called falling stars. These exist outside of our atmosphere, and belong not to the earth, but rather to the great solar system.
[3] The English does not convey adequately, certainly as idiomatic English, the fullness of the German classes, Berge, Vorberge, Hochgeberge, Alpen, and Riesenberge.
[4] Not inappropriately has geology been called the Anatomy of mountain ranges. The more mountains are studied geologically, the more safe become the conclusions that are drawn from them. The smaller and more scattered ridges of central Europe have become the chief quarries for geological discovery, because of the rich variety which they afford to the student, and also because of their accessibility.