Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. By the term America, whieh appears on the title page of this book, we mean the United States of America. As we are writing for the information of a class of readers who have never visited this country, we propose to speak in as simple and concise a manner as possible. Whatever statements of fact we may make, shall be founded upon the public and other authentic records; and in submitting any general observations, we shall endeavor to steer a middle course, and give only such opinions as are held in common by the people of the country. Before proceeding to the main object of this volume, however, we think it necessary to take a brief survey of the area and population of the United States, as follows: The total area of the Republic, which extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and, excepting Alaska, lies wholly in the temperate zone, is about 3,830,000 square miles an extent of surface larger than the whole of Europe; it has a coast line, including shores of bays, sounds, and lakes, of 30,000 miles, of which 2,800 are on the Atlantic, 1,800 on the Pacific, and 2,000 on the Gulf of Mexico; it is traversed from north to south by two great ranges of mountains, called the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains; its rivers are numerous, and among the largest in the world; its lakes contain more than one half of the fresh water on the globe; and itspopulation, according to the census of 1870, is not far from 39,000,000, which is a considerable advance upon the population hitherto claimed for the Empire of Japan. In the last 70 years, the increase has been about 33,000,000. Of these inhabitants, it has been estimated that more than two fifths of them are immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants, from foreign countries. Great Britain and Ireland have contributed mo...
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