A Book of the United States. Various
Читать онлайн книгу.
the northern parts of New England are usually deep, and the rains, which at this time of the year, are generally copious, raise the river from fifteen to twenty feet, and extend the breadth of its waters in some places a mile and a half or two miles. Almost all the slime conveyed down the current at this season, is deposited on these lands, for here, principally, the water becomes quiescent, and permits the earthy particles to subside; this deposit is a rich manure; the lands dressed with it are preserved in their full strength, and being regularly enriched by the hand of nature, cannot but be highly valuable. Nor are these grounds less distinguished by their beauty. The form of most of them is elegant; a river passing through them becomes, almost of course, winding; the earth of which they are composed is of a uniform texture, the impressions made by the stream upon the border are also nearly uniform; hence this border is almost universally a handsome arch, with a neat margin, frequently ornamented with a fine fringe of shrubs and trees.
Nor is the surface of these grounds less pleasing; their terraced forms and undulations are eminently handsome, and their universal fertility makes a cheerful impression on every eye. A great part of them is formed into meadows which are here more profitable, and every where more beautiful than lands devoted to any other culture; here they are extended from five to five hundred acres, and are every where covered with a verdure peculiarly rich and vivid. The vast fields also which are not in meadow, exhibit all the productions of the climate, interspersed in parallelograms, divided only by mathematical lines, and mingled in a charming confusion. In many places, large and thrifty orchards, and every where forest trees standing singly, of great height and graceful figures, diversify the landscape. Through its whole extent this valley is almost a continual succession of delightful scenery. The Connecticut is one of the most beautiful rivers in the world; the purity, salubrity and sweetness of its waters, the frequency and elegance of its meadows, its absolute freedom from aquatic vegetables, the enchanting elegance and grandeur of its banks, sometimes consisting of a smooth and winding beach, here covered with rich verdure, there fringed with bushes, now crowned with lofty trees, and now formed by the intruding hill, the rude bluff, and the shaggy mountain; these are objects which no description can equal.
GENERAL REMARKS ON VALLEYS.
Valleys are formed by the separation of chains of mountains or of hills. Those which are formed between high mountains, are commonly narrow and long, as if they had originally been only fissures dividing their respective chains, or for the passage of extensive torrents. The angles of their direction sometimes exhibit singular symmetry. In the Pyrenees there are said to be valleys whose salient and re-entrant angles so perfectly correspond, that if the force which separated them were to act in a contrary direction, and bring their sides together again, they would unite so exactly that even the fissure would not be perceived. There are some highly situated valleys containing rivers and lakes which have no outlets or streams. Most high valleys have their surface upon a level with the summits of the secondary mountains in the neighborhood. The lower valleys widen as they recede from the secondary mountains from which they originate, and gradually lose themselves in the plains. Their opposite angles correspond regularly, but are very obtuse.
The sort of narrow passage by which we enter into these high valleys is called a pass or defile. Between Norway and Sweden is one of these passes, formed by several masses of rock cut by nature into the shape of long parallelograms, and which have between them a passage shut in by perpendicular walls. This pass is near Skiærdal; another of the same kind is at Portfeld, or the Mountain of the Gate. These openings exactly resemble those by which the Hudson passes through successive chains of mountains, which seem desirous of checking its course. The Cordilleras of the Andes present the most stupendous passes of this kind that are known; they are from four to five thousand feet deep.
The valleys of the Hudson and Connecticut are equalled by few in the old world for natural beauty and romantic scenery. Of the valleys of Europe, that of the Rhine is most celebrated; and is only more interesting than the Hudson on account of its old historical associations, its populous cities, and the picturesque ruins and massive monuments of architecture which frown upon its banks.
CHAPTER III.—PRAIRIES AND PLAINS.
ONE of the most remarkable features of the western country consists in its extensive prairies or savannahs, which prevail in all the vast region between the Alleghany and the Rocky Mountains, and also to the west of the Rocky Mountains. When seen from the summits of the Mexican and the Rocky Mountains, they seem absolutely boundless to the view. They are not to be considered merely as dead flat, but undulating into gentle swelling lawns, and expanding into spacious valleys, in the centre of which is always found a little timber, growing on the banks of the brooks and rivulets of the finest water. Pike, who viewed them from the summit of the Blue Mountain, under the source of the Arkansaw, says, ‘the unbounded prairie was overhung with clouds, which seemed like the ocean in a storm, wave piled on wave, and foaming; while the sky over our heads was perfectly clear, and the prospect was truly sublime.’ In these vast prairies the soil is dry, sandy, with gravel; but the moment we approach a stream, the land becomes more humid, with small timber. It is probable that these steppes or prairies were never well wooded, as, from the earliest ages, the aridity of the soil, having so few water-courses running through it, and these being principally dry in summer, no sufficient nourishment has been afforded to the growth of timber. In all timbered land, the annual discharge of the leaves, with the continual decay of old trees and branches, creates a manure and moisture, which are preserved from the heat—the sun not being permitted to direct his rays perpendicularly, but to shed them only obliquely through the foliage. But in Upper Louisiana, a barren soil, dried up for eight months in the year, presents neither moisture nor nutriment for the growth of wood.
These vast plains of Louisiana, near the upper courses of the Arkansaw, with its tributary streams, and the head-waters of the Kanzas, White and Grand Osage rivers, may become in time like the sandy deserts of Africa; ‘for,’ says Pike, ‘I saw in my route, in various places, tracts of many leagues, where the wind had thrown up the sand in all the fancied forms of the ocean’s rolling waves, and on which not a single speck of vegetation appeared.’ From this circumstance Pike deduces the following remark: ‘From these immense prairies may arise a great advantage to the United States, namely, the restriction of our population to some certain limits, and thereby a continuation of the Union. Our citizens being so prone to rambling, and extending themselves on the frontiers, will, through necessity, be compelled to limit their extent on the west to the borders of the Missouri and Mississippi; while they leave the prairies, incapable of cultivation, to the wandering and uncivilized aborigines of the country.’ These prairies, from the borders of the Mississippi, on the east, to the base of the Mexican Alps on the west, rise with a continually increasing acclivity for many hundred miles, till, at the base of the mountains, they attain an elevation of eight thousand feet, as we are informed by Pike, which is greater than the elevated level of the great desert of Gobi, on the north-west of China, estimated by Du Halde to be five thousand five hundred and eleven feet above the level of the sea, or the great arid desert, to the north of the cape of Good Hope, traversed by the Orange river, and lately visited by the Rev. Mr. Campbell, the elevation of which is estimated by Colonel Gordon at six thousand five hundred and sixty-one feet above the level of the sea. In addition to the aridity of the Louisiana prairies, they are so impregnated with nitre, and other salts, as to taint the waters that flow in various directions. Pike says, that for leagues together, they are covered with saline incrustations; and a number of tributary streams descending into the Arkansaw and Kanzas rivers are perfect salines; and beyond the river Platte, as we are informed by Colonel Lewis, the lands are not only destitute of timber, but even of good water, of which there is but a small quantity in the creeks, and even that is brackish. The same saline incrustations pervade the prairies on the Upper Missouri; and the same want of timber, little or no dew, with very little rain, continues till the neighborhood of the mountains.
The calcareous districts, which form the great portion of the region west of the Alleghanies, present certain tracts entirely divested of trees, which are called barrens, though capable of being rendered productive. The cause of this peculiarity has not been accurately examined. Those parts of this region which are