At the present time the existence of railways has greatly lessened the value of geography as a factor in military movements, and the St. Lawrence, closed as it is for nearly half a year by ice, has no longer any military importance. As it is, we may be surprised that it has not played a more important part in the military history of the continent than it has done. We cannot avoid the conclusion that if the conditions had been reversed, and the English settlements had occupied the Valley of the St. Lawrence, and the French colonies the country to the southward, the English colonists would have made use of its advantages in a more effective way.
The settlements at the mouth of the Mississippi did not come into the hands of the French until a late day; but the use they made of this, the easiest navigated of all the great American rivers, was considerable. These settlements were pushed up the valley of the main stream and its greater tributaries, until they practically controlled the larger part of the shores of the main waters. The swift current of the Mississippi and its tributaries made ascending navigation difficult and costly. It was, in fact, only with small cargoes in little boats propelled by poles, or with the aid of sails when the winds favored, that the stream could be mounted. The effective navigation was downward towards the mouth. By way of the Mississippi the French power worked into the centre of the continent far more rapidly than by the St. Lawrence route; indeed, the advance was so rapid that if these Gallic settlements had not been overwhelmed by the stronger tide of the English people getting across the Alleghanies, a few years would have given them a chance to fix their institutions and population in this valley.
Throughout their efforts in North America, the French showed a capacity for understanding the large questions of political geography, a genius for exploration, and a talent for making use of its results, or guiding their way to dominion, that is in singular contrast with the blundering processes of their English rivals. They seem to have understood the possibilities of the Mississippi Valley a century and a half before the English began to understand them. They planted a system of posts and laid out lines for commerce through this region; they strove to organize the natives into civilized communities; they did all that the conditions permitted to achieve success. Their failure must be attributed to the want of colonists, to the essential irreclaimableness of the American savage, and to the want of a basis for extended commerce in this country. There were no precious metals to tempt men into this wilderness, and none of the fancy for life or for lands among the home people, that wandering instinct which has been the basis of all the imperial power of the English race. Thus a most cleverly devised scheme of continental occupation, which was admirably well adapted to the physical conditions of the country, never came near to success. It fell beneath the clumsy power of another race that had the capacity for fixing itself firmly in new lands, and that grew without distinct plan until it came to possess it altogether.
The British settlements on the American coast were not very well placed for other than the immediate needs that led to their planting. They did not hold any one of the three water-ways which led from the coast into the interior of the continent, as we have seen the French obtained control of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and as is well known the Dutch possession of the Hudson, which constituted the third and least complete of the water-ways into the interior of the continent.
As regards their physical conditions, the original English colonies are divisible into three groups,—those of New England; those of the Chesapeake and Delaware district, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and the central part of North Carolina; and those on the coast region of the Carolinas. Each of these regions has its proper physical characters, which have had special effects upon their early history. In New England we have a shore-line that affords an excellent system of harbors for craft of all sizes, and a sea that abounds in fish. The land has a rugged surface made up of old mountain folds, which have been worn down to their roots by the sea and by the glaciers of many ice periods. There are no extended plains, and where small patches of level land occur, as along the sea, there they are mostly of a rather barren and sandy character. The remainder of the surface is very irregular, and nearly one half of it is either too steep for tillage or consists of exposed rocks. The soil is generally of clay, and was originally covered almost everywhere with closely sown boulders that had to be removed before the plough could do its work. The rivers are mostly small, and from their numerous rapids not navigable to any great distance from the sea, and none of their valleys afford natural ways to the interior of the continent. In general structure this region is an isolated mass separated from the body of the continent by the high ridges of the Green Mountains and the Berkshire Hills, as well as by the deep valley in which lie the Hudson and Lake Champlain. The climate is rigorous, only less so than that of Canada. There are not more than seven months for agricultural labor.
The New-England district, including therein what we may term the Acadian Peninsula of North America, or all east of Lake Champlain and the Hudson and south of the St. Lawrence, is more like Northern Europe than any other part of America.
Nature does not give with free hands in this region, yet it offered some advantages to the early settlers. The general stubbornness of the soil made the coast Indians few in number, while its isolation secured it from the more powerful tribes of the West. The swift rivers afforded abundant water-power, that was early turned to use, and in time became the most valuable possession that the land afforded. The climate, though strenuous, was not unwholesome, and its severity gave protection against the malarial fevers which have so hindered the growth of settlements in more southern regions. Maize and pumpkins could be raised over a large part of its surface, and afforded cheap and wholesome food with little labor. The rate of gain upon the primeval forest was at first very slow; none of the products of the soil, except in a few instances its timber, had at first any value for exportation. The only surplusage was found in the products of the sea. In time the demand for food from the West Indian Islands made it somewhat profitable to export grain. Practically, however, these colonies grew without important help from any foreign commerce awakened by the products of their soil. Their considerable foreign trade grew finally upon exchanges, or on the products of the sea-fisheries and whaling. Even the trade in furs, which was so important a feature in the French possessions, never amounted to an important commerce in New England. The aborigines were not so generally engaged in hunting, nor were the rivers of New England ever very rich in valuable fur-bearing species. The most we can say of New England is, that it offered a chance for a vigorous race to found in safety colonies that should get their power out of their own toil, with little help from fortune. It was very badly placed for the occupancy of a people who were to use it as a vantage-ground whence to secure control over the inner parts of the continent. But for the modern improvement in commercial ways, the isolation of this section from the other parts of the continent would have kept it from ever attaining the importance in American life which now belongs to it.
The settlements that were made along the Hudson were, as regards their position, much better placed than were those in New England. The valley of this stream is, as is well known to geologists, a part of the great mountain trough separating from the newer Alleghanian system on the west the old mountain system of the Appalachians, which, known by the separate names of the Green Mountains, Berkshire Hills, South Mountains, Blue Ridge, and Black Mountains, stretches from the St. Lawrence to the northern part of Georgia. In the Hudson district the Appalachian or eastern wall of the valley is known as the Berkshire Hills and the Green Mountains, while the western or Alleghanian wall is formed by the Catskill Mountains and their northern continuation in the Hilderberg Hills. On the south the Appalachian wall falls away, allowing the stream a wide passage to the sea; on the northwestern side the Catskills decline, opening the wide passage through which flows the Mohawk out of the broad fertile upland valley which it drains. It appears likely that the Mohawk Valley for a while in recent geological times afforded a passage of the waters of Lake Ontario to the channel of the Hudson. This will serve to show how easy the passage is between the Hudson Valley and the heart of the continent. Save that it is not a water-way, this valley affords, through the plain of the Mohawk, the most perfect passage through the long mountain line of the Alleghanies. Before this passage could have any importance to its first European owners, it fell into the hands of the English settlers. The fertility of this valley of the Hudson and Mohawk is far greater than that of New England. A larger portion of the land is arable, and it is generally more fertile than that of the region to the east. The underlying rock of the country is generally charged with lime, which assures a better soil for grain crops than those derived from the more argillaceous formations of New England. The Mohawk is for its size perhaps the most fertile valley in America. The climate of this district is on the whole more severe than that of New England, but the summer temperature admits the cultivation of all the crops of the Northern States.
Though from Holland, the original settlers of the Hudson Valley were by race and motives so closely akin to the English settlers to the north and south of them that a perfect fusion has taken place. The Dutch language is dead save in the mouths of a few aged people, and of their institutions nothing has remained.[8]