It is worth while to notice the fact that the European domesticated animals have without exception prospered on American soil. The seven really domesticated mammals and the half-dozen birds of our barnyards have remained essentially unchanged in their proportions, longevity, and fitness for the uses of man. As there can be no moral influences bearing upon these creatures, they afford a strong proof of the essential identity of the physical conditions of the two continents. Evidence of the same sort, though less complete, is afforded by the history of European domesticated plants on our soil. Speaking generally, we may say that with trifling exceptions they all do as well or better here than on their own ground. With the same care, wheat, rye, oats, barley, etc., give the same returns as in their native countries.
Imperfect as this résumé is, it will make it clear that we are justified in believing that the climate and other physical conditions of central North America is as favorable to the development of men and animals of European races as their own country. Those who would see how important this point is to the history of our race should consider the fact that the empire of India has proved utterly unfit for the uses of Europeans, though other branches of the Aryan race have attained a high degree of development within its limits.
I next propose to consider the especial physical features of the continent with reference to several settlements that were made upon it, the extent to which the geography and the local conditions of soil, climate, etc. have affected the fate of the several colonies planted on the eastern shore of North America north of Mexico.
Chance rather than choice determined the position of the several colonies that were planted on the American soil. So little was known of the natural conditions of the continent, or even of its shore geography, and the little that had been discovered was so unknown to navigators in general, that it was not possible to exercise much discretion in the placing of the first settlers in the New World. It happened that in this lottery the central parts of the American continent fell to the English people; while the French, by one chance and another, came into possession of two parts of the coast separated by over two thousand miles of shore. It will be plain from the map that these two positions were essentially the keys to the continent. The access to the interior of the continent by natural water-ways is by two lines,—on the north by the St. Lawrence system of lakes and rivers; on the south by the Mississippi system of rivers, which practically connects with the St. Lawrence system. Fortune, in giving France the control of these two great avenues, offered her the mastery of the whole of its vast domain. We have only to consider the part that the pathway of the Rhine played in the history of mediæval trade in Europe, to understand how valuable these lines would have been until railways and canals had come to compete with water-ways-.
The only long-continued and systematic effort that France made to perpetuate her power in North America was made through the Valley of the St. Lawrence. Let us, therefore, consider the physical conditions of this valley, and their influence upon the colonies that were planted there. The St. Lawrence River system and the valley it drains is most peculiar. It is, indeed, without its like in all the world. At the mouth of the main river we have a set of rugged islands and peninsulas enclosing an estuarine sea, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which gradually narrows in the course of three hundred miles to the channel of the great river. Ascending this river, the early explorers found a wonderful set of rapids; then a lake larger than any sheet of fresh water that had been seen by Europeans; then the swift channel of the Niagara River with its great Falls; then, above, a series of four great lakes, giving a real Mediterranean of fresh water. On the north was a rude and unpromising country, rising upward into low but sterile and rugged mountains; but on the south the natural boundaries of the valley about the Great Lakes hardly exist: indeed, it was possible in the time of rains for small boats to pass directly from Lake Michigan to the waters of the Mississippi without a portage. It is this absence of the southern bounding wall which constitutes the most peculiar feature in this region of geographical surprises.
Viewed on the map, this system of waters seems to afford the natural avenue to the heart of the continent; and when its geography became known, we may well imagine that the French believed that they had here the way to secure their dominion over it. Not only did it afford a convenient water-way to the heart of the continent, but also, by way of Lake Champlain, an easy access to the rear of the New-England settlements and to the Hudson. Thus it not only flanked and turned the English settlements of the whole continent, but it made the New-England position appear almost untenable.
Experience, however, showed that there were certain grave disadvantages attending the navigation of these waters. The river itself is not readily accessible to large vessels beyond the tidal belt. Its rapids and the Falls of Niagara are very great obstacles to its use,—barriers which were never overcome during the French occupation of the country. The Great Lakes are stormy seas, with scarcely a natural harbor, requiring for their navigation even more seamanship than do the open waters of the Atlantic. Moreover, these channels are frozen for five months in the year, so that all movements made by them are limited to about half the year.
Despite these disadvantages, the St. Lawrence system doubtless gave the French a vast advantage in the race for empire on this continent. When we consider that for a long time they had the control of the Mississippi as well, it seems surprising that their power was ever broken. The facilities which this water system gave to military movements that took the whole of the English colonies in the rear was not the sole advantage it afforded its first European possessors; though, on the other hand, it must be remembered that the strategic movements of the English were on interior lines, if largely indeed without water-ways. It was the key to the best of the fur-trade country, and to the best fisheries in America. For the first hundred years after the settlement of this country, furs and fish were the only exports of value from the region north of Maryland. The French settlements gave them control of the best fishery grounds, as also the trade with the Indians, who occupied the best country for peltries in the world. As soon as the English came to possess it, this trade was greatly developed. Along with these advantages, the country had many evils that made the beginnings of colonies a matter of great labor and difficulty. The soil is made up of drift, and requires a great amount of labor to fit it for tillage. The greater part of it is north of the maize belt, so that this cheap and highly nutritious food was denied to the people. I have already said something concerning the singular advantages that this grain had for the pioneer in the American forests. I am inclined to believe that the want of this plant in the French colonies was one cause of their slow development. Another hindrance lay in the very long and severe winters. This limited the time which could be given to the tillage of land, and made the keeping of domesticated animals a matter of great difficulty. Something, too, must be attributed to the character of the colonists and to the nature of the land-tenure in this region. Their system of immigration gave a smaller proportion of natural leaders to the people, so that the colony always remained in a closer dependence on the mother country. There was always an absence of the initiative power which so marked the English colonies. The seigniorial systems of Europe have never prospered in America, and the early experiments in founding colonies by the mere exportation of men to this soil were failures even when the men were of English blood. The efforts to colonize the seaboard region of North Carolina without giving the fee of the land to the people, and without care in the selection of the colonists, resulted in a failure even more complete than that of the Canadian colonies. The Pamlico-Sound settlements showed so little military power that they were incapable of protecting themselves against the savages of the country, and without the help of Virginia they would have been annihilated. The French-Canadian colonists have always showed this incapacity to act for themselves, which cannot be attributed to physical conditions. As compared with the New-England colonists, with whom they came most in contact, they represented a colonizing scheme based on trading-posts; while their neighbors established and fought for homes in the English sense. The struggle for existence was in the English settler met with a vigor which grew out of political and religious convictions; in the Frenchman it was endured for lucrative trade. Anything higher was left to the missionary, who, while he led the pioneer life, failed in turn to develop it.
We may sum up what is to be said of the St. Lawrence Valley, that it is the best inlet to the continent north of the Mississippi River, affording an easy way to the heart of the continent for six months of the year. The valley is peculiar in the fact that it has no distinct southern boundary, and that a large part of its area is occupied by a system of fresh-water lakes. These sheets of water and this absence of a strong ridge separating this basin from the water-sheds which lie to the south of it would, if the French had been strong in a military sense, have given them an advantage in the struggle for the continent; but as long as this valley was held by a less powerful people than their neighbors on the south, these geographical features would no longer be advantageous to its occupiers.
The soil and climate of the St. Lawrence Valley are both rather against the rapid development of agriculture, requiring far more labor to make them arable, and giving a more limited return than do the more southern soils; so that, despite the very great advantage which came from the peculiarly open nature of this path into the interior of the continent, the French did not succeed in maintaining themselves there until its great military advantages could be turned to profit.