This upheaval of the earth's surface, reminding the geographer of the
Italian peninsula, vaguely perhaps in form, in natural fertility and in
purity of climate, is destined to play an important part in the future
advancement of the Republic. For here is the heart of the eastern portion
of the continent, geographically, climatologically, and mineralogically.
Here Nature is too prolific to be long neglected by the cupidity or the
ambition of men, when the barriers and obstructions of inquiry and
settlement, which have been reared against the advance and design of
civilization by the Slave Faction, shall have been removed. When the tide
of European emigration, which steadily brings to the New World the pure
blood and youth of races, turns its stream of industrial life towards
these valleys, mountain slopes, and terraces; when the laws of
alimentation are understood and properly observed; when the spire of the
school-house rises in the vista of every landscape, or points the way at
every cross-road,--then we may expect to see a new variety of the human
race appear, possessed of remarkable physical strength and beauty, and
whose ideas and efforts, typical of the healthy and developed mind, will,
like the influences of New England and Scandinavia, give fresh impulse and
impress to the civilizations of the earth.