Since the beginning of the sixteenth century America has been the general name for the two continents and adjacent islands, forming the main body of land found in the western hemisphere.
Position and Extent.—North America forms the northern section of the “New World” discovered by Columbus. It is separated from Europe by a sea nine hundred and thirty miles broad, from Asia by Bering Strait sixty miles across, and extends from the Arctic Ocean nearly to the equator.
The main mass is triangular in shape, and its outline varied by large peninsulas, broad gulfs and numerous inlets. Development of coast-line, twenty-eight thousand one hundred and thirty miles. Length, four thousand five hundred miles; breadth, three thousand one hundred miles. The area of the continental mainland is estimated at seven million one hundred and forty-six thousand six hundred and forty-one square miles; the entire area, including Greenland, the Arctic Archipelago, the West Indies, Newfoundland, and other islands, at over nine million square miles.
Islands.—It is customary to regard Greenland as a part of America, while the adjacent island of Iceland, though partially in the western hemisphere, is usually associated with Europe. The other principal American islands in the Atlantic are Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Anticosti, Prince Edward Island, Long Island, the Bermudas, the Antilles or West Indies, Joannes, Staten Island and South Georgia.
In the Pacific are the Aleutian Islands, Kadiak, the Alexander and Queen Charlotte groups, Vancouver and other British-Columbian Islands, the Santa Barbara group, Bevilla-Gigedo, the Pearl Islands, and others in the Gulf of Panama, the Galápagos, Juan Fernandez and the associated islets, Chiloe and the Chonos Archipelago. In the Arctic Ocean there are many large but unimportant islands. (See [Map of Comparative Size of Islands] and [Table of Areas].)
Coast-line.—The coast-line of North America on the west is almost everywhere high and rocky. To the south of Puget Sound good harbors are rare, but British Columbia and Alaska have great numbers of good seaports, the coast-line being, in many places, deeply cut with high-walled fjords, or “canals,” and elsewhere sheltered by ranges of high and well-wooded islands. The Atlantic coast, north of New York Bay, is generally rocky and well sheltered with islands, and has abundance of good natural harbors; but south of the parallel of New York the coast of the mainland is almost everywhere low and sandy. Many of the best ports are formed by river-mouths, and have sandbars across their entrances. Nowhere else in the world is there any such extent of low and sandy coast as on the Atlantic and Gulf seaboards of the United States.
Surface.—The western mountain-system of North America comprises a very great number of minor ranges, mostly having a north and south direction. The main chain (Sierra Madre) cannot be said to preserve an unmistakable identity throughout. The Coast Range, the Sierra Nevada, and the Cascade Mountains are the most noted of the western parallel ranges; they all lie on the Pacific slope, and contain some of the highest of North American peaks. The elevated plateau called the Great Basin (chiefly in Utah and Nevada), contains the Great Salt Lake and several smaller bodies of strongly saline water, evidently the remains of a much larger lake which once sent its waters to the sea. The eastern or great Appalachian mountain-system has a general direction nearly parallel with the Atlantic coast-line.
North of the St. Lawrence River is seen the vast and complicated Laurentian mountain-system, which extends from the Atlantic westward to near Lake Superior.
The highest summits are Mt. McKinley, in the north; Mt. Harvard, in the Rocky mountains; Mt. Whitney, in the Sierra Nevadas; and Mt. Popocatepetl or Peak of Orizaba, in Mexico. (See [Tables of Mountain Peaks].)
Rivers and Lakes.—In the Rocky Mountain region of Canada, the great rivers, Yukon, Fraser, Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Mackenzie, take their rise. Between these mountains and Hudson Bay, a girdle of vast lakes, or inland seas (Great Bear, Great Slave, Athabasca, Deer Lake, Winnipeg, and others), form a regular succession running from the Arctic Circle to Lake Superior, the first of a wonderful chain of great sea-like expansions of the Upper St. Lawrence (the others being Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario). North of the St. Lawrence system almost the whole country is thickly studded with lakes, which, with their connecting streams, form a network of important waterways traversable by canoes and boats.