features of North America, let us cast our eyes first on the mountain
chain which, running from south-east to north-west, at first low and
narrow, and increasing both in breadth and height from Panama to
Veragua, Guatimala, and Mexico (where it was the seat of a civilisation
which preceded the arrival of Europeans), arrests the general
equatorial current of the waters of the ocean, and opposes a barrier to
the more rapid commercial intercourse of Europe and Western Africa with
the eastern parts of Asia. North of the 17th degree of latitude and the
celebrated isthmus of Tehuantepec, the mountains, quitting the coast
of the Pacific, and following a more direct northerly course, become
an inland Cordillera. In North Mexico, the “Crane Mountains” (Sierra
de las Grullas) form part of the Rocky Mountain chain. Here rise, to
the west, the Columbia and the Rio Colorado of California; and, to the
east, the Rio Roxo de Natchitoches, the Candian, the Arkansas, and the
Platte or shallow river, a name which has latterly been ignorantly
transformed into that of a silver-promising river Plate. Between the
sources of these rivers (from N. lat. 37° 20′ to 40° 13′) rise three
lofty summits (formed of a granite containing much hornblende and
little mica), called Spanish Peak, James’s or Pike’s Peak, and Big Horn
or Long’s Peak. (See my Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, 2me
édit. t. i. pp. 82 and 109.) The elevation of these peaks exceeds that
of any of the summits of the Andes of North Mexico, which, indeed, from
the 18th and 19th parallels of latitude, or from the group of Orizaba
and Popocatepetl (respectively 2717 toises or 17374 English feet, and
2771 toises or 17720 English feet,) to Santa Fé and Taos, never reach
the limits of perpetual snow. James Peak, in lat. 38° 40′, is supposed
to be 1798 toises, or 11497 English feet; but of this elevation only
1335 toises (8537 English feet) has been measured trigonometrically,
the remaining 463 toises, or 2960 English feet, being dependent, in the
absence of barometrical observations, on uncertain estimations of the
declivity of streams. As a trigonometrical measurement can hardly ever
be undertaken from the level of the sea, measurements of inaccessible
heights must generally be partly trigonometrical, and partly
barometrical. Estimations of the fall of rivers, of their rapidity and
of the length of their course, are so deceptive, that the plain at the
foot of the Rocky Mountains, nearest to the summits above spoken of,
was estimated, previous to the important expedition of Capt. Frémont,
sometimes at 8000, and sometimes at 3000 feet. (Long’s Expedition, vol.
ii. pp. 36, 362, 382, App. p. xxxvii.) It was from a similar deficiency
of barometrical measurements that the true elevation of the Himalaya
continued so long uncertain: but now the resources which belong to
the cultivation of science have increased in India to such a degree,
that Captain Gerard, when on the Tarhigang, near the Sutlej, north of
Shipke, at an elevation of 19411 English feet, after breaking three
barometers, had still four equally correct ones remaining. (Critical
Researches on Philology and Geography, 1824, p. 144.)
Frémont, in the expedition which he made in the years 1842-1844 by
order of the Government of the United States, found the highest summit
of the whole chain of the Rocky Mountains to the north north-west of
Spanish, James’s, Long’s, and Laramie Peaks. This snowy summit, of
which he measured the elevation barometrically, belongs to the group of
the Wind River mountains. It bears on the large map, edited by Colonel
Abert, Chief of the Topographical Office at Washington, the name of
Frémont’s Peak, and is situated in 43° 10′ lat. and 110° 13′ W. long.
from Greenwich, almost 5-1/2° north of Spanish Peak. Its height, by
direct measurement, is 12730 French, or 13568 English feet. This would
make Frémont’s Peak 324 toises (or 2072 English feet) higher than the
elevation assigned by Long to James’s Peak, which, according to its
position, appears to be identical with Pike’s Peak in the map above
referred to. The Wind River mountains form the divortia aquarum, or
division between the waters flowing towards either ocean. Captain
Frémont (in his Official Report of the Exploring Expedition to the
Rocky Mountains in the year 1842, and to Oregon and North California
in the years 1843-44, p. 70,) says, “We saw, on one side, countless
mountain lakes, and the sources of the Rio Colorado which carries its
waters through the gulf of California to the Pacific; and, on the other
side, the deep valley of the Wind river, where are situated the sources
of the Yellowstone river, one of the principal branches of the Missouri
which unites with the Mississippi at St. Louis. To the north-west,
rise, covered with perpetual snow, the summits called the Trois Tetons,
where the true source of the Missouri itself is situated, not far from
that of the head water of the Oregon or Columbia, or the source of that
branch of it called Snake River or Lewis Fork.” To the astonishment
of the adventurous travellers, they found the top of Frémont’s Peak
visited by bees: perhaps, like the butterflies seen by me, also among
perpetual snow but in much more elevated regions in the Andes of Peru,
they had been carried thither involuntarily by ascending currents of
air. I have seen in the Pacific, at a great distance from the coast,
large winged lepidopterous insects fall on the deck of the ship,
having, no doubt, been carried far out to sea by land winds.
Frémont’s map and geographical investigations comprehend the extensive
region from the junction of the Kanzas river with the Missouri, to
the falls of the Columbia and to the missions of Santa Barbara and
Pueblo de los Angeles in New California; or a space of 28 degrees of
longitude, and from the 34th to the 45th parallel of latitude. Four
hundred points have been determined hypsometrically by barometric
observations, and, for the most part, geographically by astronomical
observations; so that a district which, with the windings of the route,
amounts to 3600 geographical miles, from the mouth of the Kanzas to
Fort Vancouver and the shores of the Pacific (almost 720 miles more
than the distance from Madrid to Tobolsk), has been represented in
profile, shewing the relative heights above the level of the sea. As
I was, I believe, the first person who undertook to represent, in
geognostic profile, the form of entire countries,--such as the Iberian
peninsula, the highlands of Mexico, and the cordilleras of South
America, (the semi-perspective projections of a Siberian traveller,
the Abbé Chappe, were founded on mere and generally ill-judged
estimations of the fall of rivers),--it has given me peculiar pleasure
to see the graphical method of representing the form of the earth
in a vertical direction, or the elevation of the solid portions of
our planet above its watery covering, applied on so grand a scale as
has been done in Frémont’s map. In the middle latitudes of 37° to
43° the Rocky Mountains present, besides the higher snowy summits
comparable with the Peak of Teneriffe in elevation, lofty plains of
an extent hardly met with elsewhere on the surface of the earth, and
almost twice as extensive in an east and west direction as that of
the Mexican plateaux. From the group of mountains, which commences a
little to the west of Fort Laramie to beyond the Wahsatch mountains,
there is an uninterrupted swelling of the ground from 5300 to 7400
English feet above the level of the sea. A similar elevation may even
be said to occupy the whole space from 34° to 45° between the Rocky
Mountains proper and the Californian snowy coast chain. This space, a
kind of broad longitudinal valley like that of the lake of Titiaca,
has been called, by Joseph Walker, a traveller well acquainted with
these western regions, and by Captain Frémont, “The Great Basin.” It
is a terra incognita of at least 128000 square miles in extent, arid,
almost entirely without human inhabitants, and full of salt lakes, the
largest of which is 4200 English feet above the level of the sea, and
is connected with the narrow lake of Utah. (Frémont, Report of the
Exploring Expedition, pp. 154 and 273-276.) The last-mentioned lake
receives the abundant waters of the “Rock River;” Timpan Ogo, in the
Utah language. Father Escalante, in journeying, in 1776, from Santa Fé
del Nuevo Mexico to Monterey in New California, discovered Frémont’s
“Great Salt Lake,” and, confounding lake and river, gave it the name
of Laguna de Timpanogo. As such I inserted it in my map of Mexico;
and this has given rise to much uncritical discussion on the assumed
non-existence of a great inland salt lake in North America,--a question
previously raised by the well-informed American geographer, Tanner.
(Humboldt, Atlas Mexicain, planche 2; Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle
Espagne, T. i. p. 231, T. ii. pp. 243, 313, and 420; Frémont, Upper
California, 1848, p. 9; and, also, Duflot de Mofras, Exploration de
l’Oregon, 1844, T. ii. p. 40.) Gallatin says expressly, in the Memoir
on the Aboriginal Races in the Archæologia Americana, vol. ii. p. 140,
“General Ashley and Mr. J. S. Smith have found the lake Timpanogo in
the same latitude and longitude nearly as had been assigned to it in
Humboldt’s Atlas of Mexico.”
I have dwelt on the remarkable swelling of the ground in the region of
the Rocky Mountains, because, doubtless, by its elevation and extent,
it exercises an influence hitherto but little considered, on the
climate of the whole continent of North America, to the south and east.
In the extensive continuous plateau, Frémont saw the waters covered
with ice every night in the month of August. Nor is the elevation of
this region less important as respects the social state and progress
of the great United States of North America. Although the elevation
of the line of the separation of the waters nearly equals that of
the passes of the Simplon (6170 French, or 6576 English feet), of
the St. Gothard (6440 French, or 6865 English feet), and of the St.
Bernard (7476 French, or 7969 English feet), yet the ascent is so
gradual, as to offer no obstacle to the use of wheel carriages of all
kinds in the communication between the basins of the Missouri and the
Oregon; in other words, between the states on the Atlantic Sea Board
opposite Europe, and the new settlements on the Oregon and Columbia
opposite China. The itinerary distance from Boston to Astoria on the
Pacific at the mouth of the Columbia, is, according to the difference
of longitude, 2200 geographical miles, or about one-sixth less than
the distance of Lisbon from the Ural near Katharinenburg. From the
gentleness of the ascent of the high plateau which leads from the
Missouri to California and to the basin of the Oregon,--(from the River
and Fort Laramie, on the northern branch of the Platte River, to Fort
Hall on the Lewis Fork of the Columbia, all the camping places of which
the height was measured were from upwards of five to seven thousand,
and at Old Park even 9760 French, or 10,403 English feet);--it has
not been easy to determine the situation of the culminating point, or
“divortia aquarum.” It is south of the Wind River mountains, nearly
midway between the Mississipi and the coast of the Pacific, at an
elevation of 7027 French, or 7490 English feet; therefore only 450
French, or 480 English, feet lower than the Pass of the great St.
Bernard. The immigrants call this point “the South Pass.” (Frémont’s
Report, pp. 3, 60, 70, 100, 129). It is situated in a pleasant
district, in which the mica slate and gneiss rock are found covered
with many species of Artemisia, particularly Artemisia tridentata
(Nuttall), asters, and cactuses. Astronomical determinations give
the latitude 42° 24′, and the longitude 109° 24′ W. from Greenwich.
Adolph Erman has already called attention to the circumstance that the
direction of the great chain of the Aldan mountains in the east of
Asia, which divides the streams flowing into the Lena from those which
flow towards the Pacific, if prolonged on the surface of the globe
in the direction of a great circle, passes through several summits
of the Rocky Mountains, between the parallels of 40° and 55°. “Thus
an American and an Asiatic chain of mountains appear to belong to
one great fissure, following the direction of a great circle, or the
shortest course from point to point.” (Compare Erman’s Reise um die
Erde, Abth. I. Bd. iii. S. 8, Abth. II. Bd. i. S. 386, with his Archiv
für wissenschaftliche Kunde von Russland, Bd. vi. S. 671).
The Rocky Mountains which sink down towards the Mackenzie River which
is covered a large portion of the year with ice, and the highlands from
which single snow-clad summits rise, are altogether distinct from the
more westerly and higher mountains of the coast, or the chain of the
Californian Maritime Alps, the Sierra Nevada de California. However
ill selected the now generally used name of the Rocky Mountains, to
designate the most northerly continuation of the Mexican Central Chain,
it does not appear to me desirable to change it, as has been often
proposed, for that of the Oregon Chain. Although these mountains do
indeed contain the sources of Lewis’s, Clark’s, and North Fork, the
three chief branches which form the mighty Oregon, or Columbia River,
yet this river also breaks through the Californian chain of snow-clad
Maritime Alps. The name of Oregon District is also employed politically
and officially for the smaller territory west of the Coast Chain,
where Fort Vancouver and the Walahmutti settlements are situated, and
therefore it is the more desirable not to give the name of Oregon
either to the Central or the Coast Chain. This name is connected with a
most singular mistake of an eminent geographer, M. Malte Brun: reading
on an old Spanish map, “And it is not yet known, (y aun se ignora)
where the source of this river” (the river now called the Columbia)
“is situated,” he thought he recognised in the word ignora the name of
Oregon. (See my Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, T. ii. p. 314).
The rocks which, where the Columbia breaks through the Chain, form the
Cataracts, mark the continuation of the Sierra Nevada de California
from the 44th to the 47th degree of latitude. (Frémont, Geographical
Memoir upon Upper California, 1848, p. 6.) This northern continuation
comprises the three colossal summits of Mount Jefferson, Mount Hood,
and Mount St. Helen’s, which rise more than 14540 French or 15500
English feet above the level of the sea. The height of this Coast
Chain, or Range, far exceeds, therefore, that of the Rocky Mountains.
“During a journey of eight months’ duration which was made along the
Maritime Alps,” says Captain Frémont, in his Report, p. 274, “we had
snowy peaks always in view; we had surmounted the Rocky Mountains by
the South Pass at an elevation of 7027 (7490 E.) feet, but we found the
passes of the Maritime Alps, which are divided into several parallel
ranges, more than 2000 feet higher;” therefore, only about 1170 feet
(1247 E.) below the summit of Etna. It is extremely remarkable,
and reminds us of the difference between the eastern and western
cordilleras of Chili, that it is only the chain of mountains nearest
to the sea (the Californian range), which has still active volcanoes.
The conical mountains of Regnier and St. Helen’s are seen to emit smoke
almost constantly, and on the 23rd of November 1843, Mount St. Helen’s
sent forth a quantity of ashes which covered the banks of the Columbia
for forty miles like snow. To the volcanic Coast Range also belong, (in
Russian America in the high north), Mount St. Elias, 1980 toises high,
according to La Perouse, and 2792 toises, according to Malaspina (12660
and 17850 E. feet), and Mount Fair Weather, (Cerro de Buen Tempo) 2304
toises, or 14732 E. feet high. Both these mountains are supposed to
be still active volcanoes. Frémont’s expedition, (which was important
alike for its botanical and geological results), collected volcanic
products, such as scoriaceous basalt, trachyte, and even obsidian, in
the Rocky Mountains, and found an extinct volcanic crater a little to
the east of Fort Hall, (lat. 43° 2′, long. 112° 28′ W.); but there are
no signs of volcanoes still active, that is to say, emitting at times
lava or ashes. We are not to confound with such activity the still
imperfectly explained phenomenon of “smoking hills;” “côtes brûlées,”
or “terrains ardens,” as they are called by the English settlers,
and by natives speaking French. An accurate observer, M. Nicollet,
says, “ranges of low conical hills are covered with a thick black
smoke almost periodically, and often for two or three years together.
No flames are seen.” This phenomenon shews itself principally in
the district of the Upper Missouri, and still nearer to the eastern
declivity of the Rocky Mountains, where a river bears the native name
of Mankizitah-Watpa, or the “river of the smoking earth.” Scoriaceous
pseudo-volcanic products, such as a kind of porcelain jasper, are found
in the vicinity of the “smoking hills.” Since the expedition of Lewis
and Clark an opinion has become prevalent that the Missouri deposits
real pumice on its banks. Fine cellular whitish masses have been
confounded with pumice. Professor Ducatel was disposed to ascribe this
appearance, which was principally observed in the chalk formation, to a
“decomposition of water by sulphuric pyrites, and to a reaction on beds
of lignite.” (Compare Frémont’s Report, p. 164, 184, 187, 193, and 299,
with Nicollet’s Illustration of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper
Mississipi River, 1843, p. 39-41.)
If, in concluding these few general considerations on the physical
geography of North America, we once more turn our attention to the
spaces which separate the two diverging coast chains from the central
chain, we find, in striking contrast, on the one hand, the arid
uninhabited plateau of above five or six thousand feet elevation, which
in the west intervenes between the central chain and the Californian
Maritime Alps which skirt the Pacific; and on the eastern side of
the Rocky Mountains, between them and the Alleghanies, (the highest
summits of which, Mount Washington and Mount Marcy, are, according to
Lyell, 6240 and 5066 French, or 6652 and 5400 English feet above the
level of the sea,) the vast, well-watered, and fertile low plain or
basin of the Mississipi, the greater part of which is from 400 to 600
French feet above the level of the sea, or about twice the elevation of
the plains of Lombardy. The hypsometric conformation of this eastern
region, _i. e._ the altitude of its several parts above the sea, has
been elucidated by the valuable labours of the highly-talented French
astronomer, Nicollet, of whom science has been deprived by a too early
death. His large and excellent map of the Upper Mississipi, constructed
in the years 1836-1840, is based on 240 astronomically determined
latitudes, and 170 barometric measurements of elevation. The plain
which contains the basin of the Mississipi is one with the Northern
Canadian plain, so that one low region extends from the Gulf of Mexico
to the Arctic Sea. (Compare my Rélation Historique T. iii. p. 234, and
Nicollet’s Report to the Senate of the United States, 1843, p. 7 and
57.) Where the plain is undulating, and where, between 47° and 48° of
latitude, low hills (côteaux des prairies, and côteaux des bois, in
the still un-English nomenclature of the natives) occur in connected
ranges, these ranges and gentle swellings of the ground divide the
waters which flow towards Hudson’s Bay from those which seek the Gulf
of Mexico. Such a dividing line is formed north of Lake Superior
by the Missabay Heights, and more to the west by the “Hauteurs des
Terres,” in which were first discovered, in 1832, the true sources of
the Mississipi, one of the largest rivers in the world. The highest of
these ranges of hills hardly attains an elevation of 1400 to 1500 (1492
to 1599 English) feet. From St. Louis, a little to the south of the
junction of the Missouri and the Mississipi, to the mouth of the latter
river at Old French Balize, it has only a fall of 357 (380 English)
feet in an itinerary distance of more than 1280 geographical miles. The
surface of Lake Superior is 580 (618 English) feet above the level of
the sea, and its depth near Magdalen Island is 742 (791 English) feet;
its bottom, therefore, is 162 (173 English) feet below the surface of
the ocean. (Nicollet, p. 99, 125, and 128.)
Beltrami, who separated himself from Major Long’s expedition in 1825,
boasted of having discovered the source of the Mississipi in Lake Cass.
The river in the upper part of its course passes through four lakes,
of which Lake Cass is the second. The uppermost is the Istaca Lake (in
lat. 47° 13′ and long. 95° 0′), and was first recognised as the true
source of the Mississipi in the expedition of Schoolcraft and Allen in
1832. This afterwards mighty river is only 17 feet wide and 15 inches
deep when it issues from the singular horse-shoe-shaped Lake of Istaca.
It was not until the scientific expedition of Nicollet, in 1836, that
a clear knowledge of the localities was obtained and rendered definite
by astronomically determined positions. The height of the sources of
the Mississipi, viz. of the remotest affluent received by the Lake of
Istaca from the dividing ridge or “Hauteur de Terre,” is 1575 (1680
English) feet above the level of the sea. In the immediate vicinity,
and indeed on the southern slope of the same dividing ridge, is Elbow
Lake, in which the smaller Red River of the North, which after many
windings flows into Hudson’s Bay, has its origin. The Carpathian
mountains present similar circumstances in the proximity and relative
positions of the sources of rivers which send their waters respectively
to the Black Sea and to the Baltic. Twenty small lakes, forming narrow
groups to the south and west of Lake Istaca, have received from M.
Nicollet the names of distinguished European astronomers, adversaries
as well as friends. The map thus becomes a kind of geographical
album, reminding one of the botanical album of Ruiz and Pavon’s Flora
Peruviana, in which the names of new genera of plants were adapted to
the Court Calendar, and to the various changes taking place in the
Oficiales de la Secretaria.
To the east of the Mississipi dense forests still partially prevail;
but to the west of the river there are only Prairies, in which the
buffalo (Bos americanus), and the musk ox (Bos moschatus), feed in
large herds. Both these animals, (the largest of the New World) serve
the wandering Indians, the Apaches Llaneros and the Apaches Lipanos,
for food. The Assiniboins sometimes kill in a few days from seven to
eight hundred bisons in what are called “bison parks,” artificial
enclosures into which the wild herds are driven. (Maximilian, Prinz
zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-America, Bd. i. 1839, S. 443.) The
American bison, or buffalo, called by the Mexicans Cibolo, which is
frequently killed merely for the sake of the tongue, a much-prized
dainty, is by no means a mere variety of the Aurochs of the Old
Continent; although some other kinds of animals, as the elk (Cervus
alces) and the reindeer (Cervus tarandus), and even, in the human
race, the short-statured polar man, are common to the northern parts
of both continents, evidencing their former long continued connection.
The Mexicans call the European ox in the Aztec dialect “quaquahue,”
a horned animal, from quaquahuitl, a horn. Some very large horns of
cattle found in the ancient Mexican buildings not far from Cuernavaca,
to the south-west of the city of Mexico, appear to me to have belonged
to the musk ox. The Canadian bison can be tamed to agricultural labour.
It breeds with the European cattle, but it was long uncertain whether
the hybrid was fruitful. Albert Gallatin, who, before he appeared
in Europe as a distinguished diplomatist, had obtained by personal
inspection great knowledge of the uncultivated parts of the United
States, assures us that “the mixed breed was quite common fifty years
ago in some of the north-western counties of Virginia; and the cows,
the issue of that mixture, propagated like all others.” “I do not
remember,” he adds, “the grown bison being tamed, but sometimes young
bison calves were caught by dogs, and were brought up and driven out
with the European cows.” At Monongahela all the cattle were for a
long time of this mixed breed: but complaints were made that they
gave very little milk. The favourite food of the bison or buffalo is
Tripsacum dactyloides (called buffalo grass in North Carolina), and an
undescribed species of clover nearly allied to Trifolium repens, and
designated by Barton as Trifolium bisonicum.