THE UNITED STATES IN 1790

In the physiographic features of the settled part of America there was a certain uniformity. The coast-line was low and un-inviting, except in northern New England, where it had something of the rugged picturesqueness of the western coast of Britain. South of New York stretched a long succession of barrier beaches in flattish curves, parting at the entrances of the great bays of Chesapeake and Delaware, and enclosing the shallow lagoons of Albemarle and Pamlico. A vast forest of conifers and hardwood swept up from the coast over the crest of the Appalachians, and down to the Great Lakes, the prairies of Illinois, the savannahs of the lower Mississippi, and the Gulf of Mexico. Except for natural meadows along the rivers, open country did not exist in the land that the English colonists wrested from the Indians. Their farms had been cleared from the forest; and it was still too early to aver that the colonists had conquered the forest. Volney wrote that during his journey in 1796 through the length and breadth of the United States he scarcely travelled for more than three miles together on open and cleared land. 'Compared with France, the entire country is one vast wood.' Only in southern New England, and the eastern portion of the Middle States, did the cultivated area exceed the woodland; and the clearings became less frequent as one approached the Appalachians.

Like western Europe, the United States lies wholly within the northern temperate zone, and the belt of prevailing westerly winds. The earliest European explorers had passed it by for the Caribbean and the St. Lawrence because they were seeking tropical plantations, fur-trading posts, and fishing stations. Their successors, in search of farm-lands, found the greater part of the Thirteen Colonies suitable for life and labour as are few portions of the non-European world. Yet the climate of the area settled by 1790 is in many respects unlike that of Europe.

Westerly winds reach it across a continent, without the moisture and the tempering of the Atlantic. North-west is the prevailing wind in winter, and south-west in summer. Consequently the summers are everywhere hotter than in the British Isles, and the winters, north of Virginia, colder; the extremes of heat and cold in the same season are greater; the rainfall less, although adequate for animal and plant life. Near the sea-coast a sea-turn in the wind may soften outlines, but inland the dry air, clear sky, and brilliant sunlight foreshorten distant prospects, and make the landscape sharp and hard.

In most parts of the United States the weather is either fair or foul. It rains or shines with a businesslike intensity; in comparison, the weather of the British Isles is perpetually unsettled. In the coastal plain of the Carolinas and the Gulf, there is a soft gradation between the seasons, and a languor in the air; else-where, the transition from a winter of ice and snow to a summer of almost tropical heat is abrupt.

wrote Lowell. Except where the boreal forest of conifers maintains its sombre green, the sharp dry frosts of October turn the forest to a tapestry of scarlet and gold, crimson and russet. High winds strip the leaves in November, and by New Year's day the country north of Baltimore, along the Appalachians, and east of the Sierras, should be tucked into a blanket of snow.

(From History of the United States by S. E. Morison)