The discovery of the American Continent flashed on the world like the discovery of a new Creation. In reading the correspondence of the learned at the time, the return of Columbus, and the knowledge which that return brought, is spoken of with a rapture of language more resembling an Arabian tale than the narrative of the most adventurous voyage of man. The primitive races of their fellow-beings, living in the simplicity of nature, under forests of the palm, with all delicious fruits for their food, with gold and pearls for their toys, and the rich treasures of new plants and animals of all species for their indulgence and their use, were described with the astonishment and delight of a dream of Fairy-land, or the still richer visions of restored Paradise.
Yet, when the hues of imagination grew colourless by time, the continents of the West displayed to the ripened knowledge of Europe virtues only still more substantial. The contrast between the northern and southern portions of the New World is of the most striking kind. It is scarcely less marked than the distinction between the broken, deeply-divided, and well-watered surface of Europe, and the broad plains, vast mountain ranges, and few, but mighty rivers, which form the characteristic features of Asia. In North America, we see a land of singularly varied surface, in its primitive state, covered with forest; with an uncertain climate; a soil seldom luxuriant, often sterile, every where requiring, and generally rewarding human industry; watered by many rivers, penetrated in almost every direction by navigable streams, and traversed from north to south, an unusual direction for rivers, by an immense stream, the Mississippi, bringing down the furs, the produce of the north, the corn of the temperate zone, the fruits of the tropics, and connecting all those regions with the commerce of Europe: a natural canal, of more than two thousand miles, without a perceptible difference of breadth, from New Orleans to the falls of St Anthony. The Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, noble rivers, traverse the land in a variety of directions, with courses of from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles; and to the north of the United States, a chain of vast inland seas, a succession of Mediterraneans, surrounded by productive provinces, rapidly filling with a busy population.