Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/738

UNITED PROVINCES OF AGRA. most densely populated. A comparison with earlier census returns shows that the population is almost stationary. The people are mainly Hindus. Those who hold to some form of the Hindu religion outnumber the Mohammedans about 7 to 1. The Christians number about 100,000. There are more large cities in the United Provinces than in any of the other provinces. The chief are Lucknow (in Oudh), Benares, Cawnpore, Agra, Allahabad, Bareilly, and Mecrut.  UNITED STATES. The territory of the United States of America, exclusive of Alaska and colonial dependencies, lies in the temperate portion of North America, but reaches almost to the tropical zone. It embraces an area of 2,970,038 square miles. The area including Alaska is 3,560,922 square miles; and including the colonial dependencies, 3,699,440 square miles. The United States proper, or the United States south of Canada, extends approximately from longitude 67° to 125° W. from the Atlantic Ocean (whose great arm, the Gulf of Mexico, forms half of the southern boundary) to the Pacific. The northern boundary is somewhat arbitrary in the east between New England and the Lower Saint Lawrence region, but from northern New York it follows the Saint Lawrence and the middle line of the Great Lakes to northern Minnesota. Beyond the Lake of the Woods the boundary follows the 49th parallel to the Pacific Ocean. The peninsula of Florida extends to about 25°, and the southern part of Texas to about 26°, north latitude. The parallel 49° is about that of Paris, while the latitude of Key West carries one far down into the Sahara. It may be further observed that New York is on the parallel of Naples and Constantinople, and Memphis on that of Gibraltar. The United States has preponderatingly a natural boundary of salt and fresh waters. On the side of Mexico and of British Columbia the boundary crosses the Cordilleran Ranges. This article treats of the United States proper except when otherwise stated. Alaska, and also the colonial dependencies (see section Colonies below), are treated under their respective heads.

. The lands of the United States may be roughly separated into four areas: the Atlantic lowlands, the Appalachian highlands, the Mississippi Valley, and the Pacific highlands. These regions are nowhere sharply separated from each other. Leaving out for a moment the narrow strip of Atlantic lowland, one may best view the United States as made up of two great uplands, with a broad lowland lying between. The country thus shows the physical plan of North America, for the Appalachian belt rises from the Gulf plains in Alabama and ends northward on the shores of Labrador. The Western uplands or Cordilleras begin virtually at the base of the continent; they rise to a great elevation in Mexico, maintain great heights and gain their greatest width in the Western United States; and thence continue through British America and Alaska. In like manner the Mississippi plains are continuous with the Hudson Bay region and the central plains of Canada to the shores of the Arctic Sea, and it is possible to pass from the delta of the Mississippi to the mouth of the Mackenzie River without rising 1000 feet above the ocean.

. This region, although not large, contains a vast population, and is historically the most important. It made the interior of the continent accessible to discovery from the east, offered hospitable ground to the colonists, and is rich in the harbors that have led to the building of cities and the growth of commerce. These lowlands are not the same in origin in the North as in the South. The Atlantic rim of New England is a rough lowland rising from sea level to the height of four or five hundred feet. It is beset with rough hills, of native rock, and of glacial waste. It is an uneven but subdued or nearly worn-out mountain country, like western Massachusetts or northern New England, except that it is more fully degraded. South of New York, on the other hand, and reaching to Florida Strait, is the Atlantic Coastal Plain, including southern New Jersey, Delaware, and a broad belt of all the South Atlantic States. It is a smoother land, without projecting masses of rocky hills, and sloping gently up from the tide levels to the rougher lands of the Appalachian belt. It is intersected by Delaware and Chesapeake bays and their rivers, and by more southerly streams. It is often known as the ‘tidewater country’ because the sea enters its estuarine rivers for scores of miles. It is covered with fields of tobacco, cotton, rice, and fruit orchards, or with pastures or native forest. The region is in greater part a sea bottom uncovered at a comparatively recent period, and becomes continuous, beneath the Atlantic waters, with the continental shelf which lies between the land border and the deep seas. West of this plain is a much denuded belt of ancient Appalachian mountains, which is becoming known as the Piedmont Plain. It is from a few hundred to a thousand feet in altitude and lies between the coastal plain and the Blue Ridge. See.

One feature of the entire Atlantic coast is that the rivers are tidal. They may occupy narrow channels to the sea border, like the Hudson, or they may enter at the head of deep and spacious bays, as do the Delaware and the Susquehanna. Such a water system with the above rivers, the Potomac, James, and other streams, is well called a ‘drowned’ river system. By this is meant that the trunk valley and its branches were cut out by land streams, and that the sea has entered their lower parts because of a sinking of the edge or of larger parts of the continent. The historical meaning of these conditions can hardly be reckoned. It is enough here to observe that nearly all the harborages and quiet salt waters of our Atlantic border have this origin; and that thus have grown our great seaboard cities, where ships may ride safely at the mouth of tidal streams whose waters offer gateways to the interior of the continent.

. From the physical point of view these may he taken as the eastern part of the rocky skeleton of the country and the continent. In their highest points, the White Mountains in the north and the Black Mountains in the middle south, they attain elevations exceeding 6000 feet in the loftiest projections east of the Rocky Mountains. Historically they form the Appalachian barrier, with large consequences in colonial annals and in the opening of the lands that lie westward. See. 