Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A General View of the United States: Comprising, Also, a Description of Each Individual State and Territory in the Union; To Which Are Added, Various Tabular Statements, Comprehending Aggregates of the Population of the United States, at Different Periods, as Well as in the Year 1840
The United States are situated between 24° 20' and 54° 40' N. Latitude, and longitude 17° E., and 1250 W. Longitude, extending through 29 degrees of lati tude and 58 degrees of longitude, and comprise a superficial area of upwards of square miles. The frontier line has a length of miles, Of which about 3600 are sea-coast, and 1200 lake-coast. A line drawn across from the At lantic to the Pacific, through the centre, is about 2500 miles in length.
So vast a region of course includes a great variety of surface, soil, and climate. It abounds in navigable rivers, and a large proportion of it is susceptible of culti vation, and is of a quality calculated to repay the labour bestowed upon it, more than almost any other region of the same extent in the world: but a small portion of its surface is occupied by mountains, which, from their height or ruggedness, forbid all attempts to render them productive in the means of subsistence to, man. There are no great deserts, and few barrens; nothing like the vast sterile plains which exist in other parts of the world. The basins of the rivers are exceed ingly productive: that of the Mississippi, including the Missouri, is undoubtedly the finest valley on the globe. It is abundantly watered by streams, which not only give fertility to their borders, but are ready to waft the gifts of the soil to the ocean, and bring back to the inhabitants the products of all other climes. The soil returns an ample harvest for all that is planted in it, and the climate is favour able to almost every production of the earth that can sustain life or increase its luxuries.
Though lying within the temperate zone, the United States embrace a great variety of climate. In the northern parts, the winters are long and severe; snow often falls to the depth of two or three feet, and the cold is so piercing as to oblige the inhabitants to make very diligent provision against it. Spring returns here in April, and in summer the heat is great. In the southern parts of the country, snow is seldom seen, ice is rarely formed in the rivers, and those fruits which shrink from a northern climate, and ?ourish only in warm regions, are scattered over the soil. In Georgia, the inhabitants may collect the figs which grow before the windows, and may load their tables with oranges, lemons, and other exquisite fruits that grow in their gardens and groves, while in parts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, even peaches will not ?ourish. Between these extremities, as in Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Illinois, there is a te gion adapted to the wine-grape, which thrives best in places removed from both the torrid and frigid zones.
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