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Transcriber's note: The original publication has been replicated
faithfully except as listed in the List Of Corrections at the end of the
text. Words in italics are indicated like _this_.

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                        Appletons' World Series

                       _THE REGIONS OF THE WORLD_

                               EDITED BY

                         H. J. MACKINDER, M.A.

                      _Reader in Geography in the
                          University of Oxford_

                 Each complete in One Volume, Large 8vo.


    BRITAIN AND THE BRITISH SEAS
      By the EDITOR

    WESTERN EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
      By ELISEE RECLUS

    CENTRAL EUROPE
      By JOSEPH PARTSCH, Ph.D.

    SCANDINAVIA AND THE ARCTIC REGION
      By Sir CLEMENTS R. MARKHAM, K.C.B.,
        F.R.S., President Royal Geog. Soc.

    THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
      By PRINCE KROPOTKIN

    THE NEARER EAST
      By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A.

    AFRICA
      By J. SCOTT KELTIE, LL.D., Sec. R. G. S.

    INDIA
      By Colonel Sir THOMAS HOLDICH, K.C.I.E.,
        C.B., R.E.

    THE FARTHER EAST
      By ARCHIBALD LITTLE

    NORTH AMERICA
      By ISRAEL C. RUSSELL, LL.D.

    SOUTH AMERICA
      By JOHN C. BRANNER, LL.D.

    AUSTRALASIA AND ANTARCTICA
      By H. O. FORBES, LL.D.


[Illustration: FIG. 1.--North America.

From a photograph of a relief map by Victor and Cosmos Mindeleff. Scales
of original: Horizontal, 120 miles to 1 inch; vertical, 40,000 feet to 1
inch: proportion, 1:16.]




                             NORTH AMERICA

                                  BY

                            ISRAEL C. RUSSELL

           PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

                        _With Maps and Diagrams_

                             [Illustration]

             NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1904

                            COPYRIGHT, 1904
                       BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY




                                PREFACE


The aim of this book is to give a condensed and, I trust, readable
account of the leading facts concerning the North American continent
which, from the point of view of the geographer, seem most interesting
and instructive. The area of the continent is so vast and the diversity
among its various parts so great, however, that the completeness of
treatment which characterizes the preceding volumes in the series to
which it belongs could not be attempted. To obviate in a measure this
confessed shortcoming, there has been appended to each chapter a list of
books which will enable the reader to continue the studies outlined in
it.

A complete review of the geography of a continent should, as it seems to
me, be divided into two parts: first, a discussion of the natural
conditions, or physical geography, and, second, man's dependence on and
use of the natural resources, or economic geography. Each of these two
leading phases of the subject was embraced in the preliminary outline of
the present volume, but owing to a desire to make each chapter as
complete as practicable, and also on account of limitations as to space,
the treatment of the economic phases of geography has been necessarily
brief. But little more can be claimed for the book as finished than that
it is an attempt to describe some of the more prominent and attractive
aspects of the natural conditions pertaining to North America.

While writing this book I have become more and more impressed with the
incompleteness and inadequacy of the printed records relating to the
geography of the continent of which it treats. Extensive tracts,
particularly in the far North, have not been traversed by observant men,
vast areas throughout the continent have not been surveyed and mapped,
and even in the somewhat thickly inhabited portions of the more
enlightened countries there are large districts in reference to the
geography of which there is but little critical information available.
Under these conditions it seemed best to select typical examples of
various geographical features from the better known portions of the
continent to represent the conditions throughout the less thoroughly
explored domain in which they are situated, and at the same time serve
to illustrate the highly creditable advances made by American
geographers in definitely formulating the principles of physiography.
The book may, in a measure, be considered as an attempt to present in
popular form a report of progress concerning the study of the
geographical development of North America at the beginning of the
