AMERICA, THE MOST FORTUNATE OF ALL
THE American continent is the most obliging continent of all. I am speaking, of course, of America as a purely geographical unit, not as an economic factor in the development of industry nor as political laboratory for experiments in divers new forms of government. But from a geographical point of view, America is almost everything that possibly could be desired.
It is the only continent on the western hemisphere and therefore has no immediate competitors as Africa, Asia and Europe have. It is situated between the two largest seas of the world and it was settled by white men during a period when the Atlantic had just become an important center of civilization.
It reaches almost from the North Pole to the South Pole and therefore enjoys every sort of climate. Some of the part which lies nearest to the equator is also the highest and therefore enjoys a temperature which makes it fit for human habitation.
It has practically no deserts. It has been blessed with wide plains which are situated in the moderate zone and which are therefore predestined to become the world’s granaries.
It has a coastline which is neither too simple nor too complicated and which is therefore eminently fitted for the establishment of deep-sea harbours.
As its chief mountain-ranges run from north to south, its fauna and flora could freely escape the advance of the glaciers of the ice period and had a better chance to survive than those of Europe.
More than almost any other continent it is blessed with coal and iron and oil and copper and those other raw materials which the machine age needs in ever increasing quantities.
It was practically uninhabited when the white man arrived (there were only 10,000,000 Indians on the whole continent) and there was therefore no teeming native population to prevent the invaders from doing whatever they pleased to do or to interfere seriously with the development of the country according to the white man’s plans. As a result America has no serious race-problem except the unfortunate ones of its own making.
The tremendous economic opportunities of the new and empty continent attracted the most energetic elements from every other nation and together these were able to develop a mixed race of their own which has adapted itself to its novel and unusual but very simple geographical background in a remarkably short space of time.
And finally and perhaps most important of all, the people who inhabit that continent today have no history of their own that is forever dragging them back to a past that will never come back. Unencumbered by that unfortunate luggage (which everywhere else has proved itself to be more of a nuisance than a blessing) they can forge ahead much faster than other races which must push the ancestral wheelbarrow ahead of them wherever they go.
As for the actual geographic features of the two American continents, they are not only very simple and much more symmetrical than those of any other continents, but in their main features north and South America resemble each other so closely that we can discuss them at the same time without running any risk of causing any confusion in the reader’s mind.
Both North and South America resemble triangles with the sole difference that the South American triangle is situated a little further towards the east than the northern triangle, which undoubtedly accounts for the fact that South America was discovered long before North America and was already fairly well known while most of North America still bore the legend of “terra incognita”.
Both the western sides of the triangles of North and South America consist of a mountain ridge which runs sharply from the north to the south and which occupies approximately one-third of the surface while the other two-thirds in the east consist of a wide plain, separated from the ocean (in both cases) by two shorter mountain-ranges, the hills of Labrador and the Appalachians in North America and the mountains of Guiana and Brazilian highlands in South America.
In the matter of their rivers, too, the two continents behave similarly. A few of the less important ones run northward while the St. Lawrence and the Amazon run almost parallel with each other and the Parana and the Paraguay imitate the Mississippi and the Missouri by meeting each other halfway and then running the rest of their course at right angles with the St. Lawrence and the Amazon respectively.
As for Central America, the narrow strip of land which runs from east to west, geologically speaking it is really a part of the northern continent. Then suddenly, in Nicaragua, the landscape and the fauna and flora begin to change and it becomes part of the southern continent. The rest of Central America consists of high mountains, which is one of the reasons why Mexico, although as near the equator as the Sahara Desert, is a densely populated country with an excellent climate.
South America, of course, is much nearer to the equator than North America and the Amazon River practically follows the line of the equator in the course of its magnificent career from the Andes to the Atlantic. But speaking in very general terms (as I am now doing) here we have a magnificent case wherewith to study the influence of the geographical surroundings upon Man and of Man upon his geographical surroundings.
Nature built herself two large states and finished them both in practically the same way. A main entrance on the right, a high wall on the left and a large open space in the middle provided with a richly-stored larder. Then she gave the northern stage to a company of Germanic strolling actors, who thus far had played the smaller theatres in the provincial towns, a troupe of humble origin, accustomed to long hours and the plain roles of butchers and bakers and candlestick makers. But the southern stage she rented out to noble old tragedians of the best Mediterranean school, who were accustomed to perform only in the presence of royalty and each one of whom could handle a sword or a rapier with a grace entirely unknown to their northern colleagues whose arms were stiff from the handling of spade and axe, whose backs were permanently bent by their ceaseless struggle with an unyielding soil.
Then she raised the curtain on both stages at almost exactly the same moment and bade the world come in and watch the entertainment. And behold, ere the first act was half over, neither stage looked quite the same as it had done when the opening lines were spoken. And when the second act began, such a change was noticeable among the ladies and gentlemen and the children of the cast that the audience gasped and whispered, “Can such things be?”