UNITED STATES.

394. The territory subject to the government of the United States extends across the Continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and from the British possessions on the north to Mexico, and the Gulf of that name on the south. Its total area is estimated at 2,500,000 square miles; but the regularly organized portions of the republic, or the States Proper, which return representatives to the legislature, and have a voice in the presidential elections, are confined to the eastern portion of this district. It stretches inland from the Atlantic to the Missouri River, following the parallel of New York, and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, a distance of 1,100 miles from east to west by 1,200 from north to south.

395. The coast-line of the States extends from Passamaquoddy Bay, on the border of New Brunswick, to the Rio del Norte, the boundary from Mexico. It is estimated at upwards of 3,000 miles, marked with many irregula rities. The most conspicuous are the Floridan Peninsula, a long and narrow projection on the south-east; Chesapeak Bay, a spacious inlet into which the Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers discharge themselves; Delaware Bay, the estuary of the stream of that name; Long Island Sound, running up to New York, and receiving the waters of the Hudson and Connecticut; and Massachusetts Bay, into which the Merrimack and Kennebec flow, bounded on the south by the singular peninsula of Cape Cod. The rivers mentioned drain the Atlantic side of the country; but they have no extended line of navigation, except the Hudson, celebrated for the romantic scenery of its banks, and associations with the early colonists. The tide ascends its channel to Troy, 160 miles from its mouth, to which point it is navigable by sloops. On the coast of the Gulf of Mexico the Mobile has its outlet; and further west the mighty Mississippi-Missouri, which embraces the large. part of the country in its basin. Its chief affluent having an entire course within the frontier is the Ohio, styled by the early French settlers La Belle Rivière, from its beauty. It descends from the state of New York, and enters the

great river at the junction of Kentucky, Missouri, and Illinois, after an independent flow of 1,200 miles. Lagoons are common along the southern coasts; and besides the great inland seas, the navigation of which is shared with Canada, lakes are numerous in the highland region of the north-east. Lake Champlain, discharging by the Richlieu River into the St. Lawrence, is the largest entirely belonging to the country; and Lake George, near its southern border, the most picturesque, -the Loch Katrine of the States, but upon an extended scale.

396. From the central districts, north-east to the British frontier, the country is traversed by a range of mountains, embracing many parallel ridges, called the Alleghany or Apallachian Chain, but locally distinguished by a great variety of names. One of the highest points, Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, rises 6,428 feet; but the greatest elevation is attained by the Black Mountain, 6,478 feet, on the borders of Tennessee and North Carolina. These highlands press close upon the Atlantic in the northern parts of their course, but southward retreat from it, leaving a gradually expanding plain between them and the ocean, on which are the principal centres of wealth and civilization. The plain embraces the entire south, its maritime districts consisting largely of low swamps, or of monotonous tracts of sand covered with forests of gigantic pine-trees, hence called Pine-Barrens. Notwithstanding the clearance of the surface consequent upon the increase and spread of population, vast natural woods clothe the slopes of the Alleghanies, and appear in all their primitive glory in the vale of the Ohio, where magnificent oaks of various kinds, locust-trees, black walnuts, and tall tuliptrees, the plane, sugar-maple, hiccory, and splendid magnolia flourish, in connection with an undergrowth of beautiful flowering shrubs. In the far west grassy prairies, apparently interminable, characterize the landscape. Though metalliferous and mineral deposits have been very imperfectly explored, the useful metals, iron and lead, occur abundantly, and are widely distributed, while gold, to some extent, is obtained from washings in Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina. Salt is procured from brine springs all over the Mississippi valley. Bituminous coal is plentiful in Illinois, along the Ohio, and near Lake Michigan, while

enormous beds of the anthracite kind are extensively worked in Pennsylvania.

397. Agriculture is the absorbing pursuit of the popu lation, whose enterprise and rapidly increasing numbers annually make large additions to the amount of surface under tillage. Ordinary vegetable products require but little skill, and only rude implements to raise a crop, owing to the native fertility of the land. After supplying the home demand, the surplus bread-stuffs form an important item in the exports. Tenessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, and Indiana, produce the greatest quantity of maize; but so generally is it cultivated, and so largely used for food, as to have received the name of corn as a distinctive appellation. Flax and hemp are raised chiefly in Kentucky. Tobacco has long been the staple of Virginia, but is extensively grown in other districts. The south border of the two last-named states, the parallel of 35° N., may be taken as defining generally the northern limit of tropical cultivation. On advancing southward, the approach to a climate marked with heat and humidity is indicated by fields of rice and cotton, which, with the sugar-cane in Louisiana, are the prime objects of industry in the southern states. This is the greatest cotton-growing region of the globe, possessing in a high degree that physical condition upon which the successful cultivation of the plant depends, a peculiar combination of heat, light, and moisture. The first seeds were sown in Georgia in 1786; a small quantity of the produce was first exported in 1790; the value of the export for the year ending June 30, 1848, being returned at 61,000,000 of dollars. There are two principal kinds of the herbaceous annual cultivated; the first is the " seaisland" or "long-stapled" cotton,-so named from its growth on the low islands and sandy coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and from its long filaments. It commands the highest price, but the supply is limited, as the plants will not flourish at a distance from the sea, requiring the "action of the ocean's spray." The second is the "upland" or "short-stapled" cotton, grown in the interior, so called from its different fibre, and to distinguish it from the produce of the low maritime districts. The seed of the first is black, the second green; and hence the produce is frequently described as black and green seed cotton.

398. Manufactures form a comparatively subordinate branch of industry, but have acquired great importance in the northern states, where textile fabrics, cottons and woollens, are extensively produced for the home market and for export. The first cotton-mill was commenced in the autumn of 1789, in Rhode Island. Lowell, in the neighbouring state of Massachusetts, is now the chief site of textile manufactures; and has risen from an insignificant hamlet, in 1820, to an important town, in consequence of their introduction to it. Iron smelting and hardware production render Pittsburg, on the Ohio, the Birmingham of the Union. Home fisheries have been actively prosecuted from an early period, but are now of little moment in comparison with the foreign-that of the cod on the banks of Newfoundland, and the spermaceti whale in the Southern Ocean. This branch of industry is in the hands also of the northern states, Massachusetts embracing by far the largest amount of men and money in it. The great commercial ports are New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans. Internal communication between very remote parts of the country is readily maintained by means of the Mississippi-Missouri, and its arms; while ample facilities for the transit of goods and passenger-traffic in other districts is provided by a vast system of canals and railways. The constructed works of this class display the energy of the people, by the promptness and speed with which they have been executed, but are more remarkable for magnitude than for solidity and finish. The line of railway from Buffalo on Lake Erie, to Boston on the Atlantic shore, a distance of about 500 miles, renders steam communication continuous (the narrow Isthmus of Suez excepted), from the western coasts of Lake Michigan to the eastern coasts of China, or through nearly three-fifths of the circumference of the globe.

399. The Union at present consists of thirty states, and one district. In the following Table, the original thirteen states which joined in the declaration of independence, in 1776, are indicated by an asterisk; the legislative capitals, or seats of government in each state, are placed first in the column of cities and towns; and the figures attached to the names of places denote their distances in miles from Washington:

Washington is distant from Toronto 500 miles, from Montreal 601, from Quebec 781, and from Halifax 936. The district of Columbia is under the immediate government of Congress. It was originally a small area of ten square miles, on both sides of the Potomac, ceded to the Union by the states of Virginia and Maryland, for the site of the federal capital, in the year 1800. But by an Act of Congress in 1846, the state of Virginia resumed its portion, and the district is now confined to the Maryland side of the river.

After the original thirteen states, the other members of the Union were admitted as follows:-Vermont in 1791, Kentucky in 1792, Tennessee in 1796, Ohio 1802, Louisiana 1812, Indiana 1816, Mississippi 1817, Illinois 1818, Alabama 1819, Maine 1820, Missouri 1821, Arkansas and Michigan 1836, Wisconsin, Florida, Iowa, and Texas since 1846.

Several of the states are named after one of their rivers,—as Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Others have been derived from persons,