Recapitulation
Look now once more upon the map and take a general survey of the country which it represents, by way of fixing the great leading features of it upon your mind. There is the lake country at the north, covered with forests, and the summit level occupied by four great inland seas, which pour their waters down over the precipice of Niagara into the lowermost lake, and thence flow off in a northeasterly direction into the ocean. South of this is the great Mississippi Valley, occupying almost the whole interior of the country, and displaying a vast net-work of rivers which, collecting the waters of the whole region, brings them all together into the center of the valley and carries them through one immense channel southward into the sea. By the side of this valley to the westward is a great dry and barren basin, bordered by mountains on every side, and with no rivers except such as are formed by streams coming down from the mountains after rains, or from the melting of the snows, and are soon absorbed by the thirsty sands. These two great basins occupy the center of the continent.
To the westward of them is the narrow strip which forms the Pacific slope, between the mountains and the sea, and to the eastward of them is the Atlantic slope, level and plain in the southern part, but mountainous and rugged toward the north.
These are the great leading features of the country, which it is necessary to keep distinctly in mind in studying its history.
Chapter 3. Remarkable Plants
Distinction of Indigenous and Exotic
A plant that grows originally in any locality as a native of it is said to be indigenous to that locality. Those which have been brought to it by man, either by accident or design, are exotic. Thus the orange tree that grows in a pot or a tub in a lady's parlor in any northern part of America is an exotic; so is the wheat that grows in the farmer's fields - both plants having been brought to that locality by man. But the Indian corn, or maize, as it is more properly called is indigenous, that plant being, so far as is known, a native of the country.
Of the numerous plants found growing in America at the time it was discovered by Europeans, some very strongly resembled plants of the same class growing in the old world, though different in species from them. There were others, however, that possessed characteristics almost wholly new, and some of them soon began to attract great attention. Among these may be named the cotton plant, rice, the tobacco plant, the potato, and maize.
The Cotton Plant
Man is the only animal needing clothing that is not furnished with it by nature, but he is provided instead with the faculty of clothing himself, and one of the most striking of the marks of design, and of the adaptation of a want to a supply, which we find everywhere around us, consists in the provision which is made for furnishing him with materials for this work.
In all the cold regions of the earth there are the skins of beasts at hand in great abundance, covered with warm wool and fur, ready for his use. In all the warm regions are the cotton plants.
Many Species
There are a great many different species of cotton plants in the world, each great tropical district producing its own kind. These different species are very unlike in many respects, and cannot be changed into one another by the influence of climate or soil, or by different modes of cultivation. They all agree, however, in this, that when the seed is ripe the capsule bursts open, and presents a white fleecy tuft to view, inviting the naked savage, as it were, to come and spin and weave himself a garment with it.
The Savage and the Cotton
Savages have in all ages and in every clime shown themselves ready to accept the invitation, and in Egypt and India, and in many tropical islands of the sea, cotton has been spun and woven from periods long antecedent to any records of history.
America, too, it was found, very soon after it was discovered, had its cotton plants, and cloth made from the little fleeces which they bore was worn by the natives in all the tropical regions. Specimens of the cloth have been found in some ancient tombs in South America, showing that it has been in use here from a very ancient period. In the colder regions the plant did not grow. Here the natives were compelled to content themselves with the skins of beasts, and with such fabrics as they could make from the fibrous bark of trees.
The name of the genus that comprises all the species of cotton plants is gossypium. Some of the species which were found in America proved to be superior to any others previously known. There is one species, in particular, which was found in some of the West India Islands, and was brought to the United States in 1786, and is now cultivated on the low and level islands lying along the southern coast, that we described in the last chapter, and which is far more valuable than any other found upon the globe. Its superiority consists in the fineness and softness and length of the fibre. It will not grow anywhere and retain its qualities except on, low rich land along the sea shore, and it thrives best upon the islands above referred to. It is called on that account sea island cotton.
The fibres of cotton, seen under a powerful microscope, appear like long ribbons, perfectly smooth and continuous from beginning to end. They are transparent, too, though the reflection of the light from so many countless millions of them when they lie together gives the whole mass a white appearance, just as a mist or fog appears white while the sun shines upon it, although it consists of millions of drops of perfectly pellucid water.
Cotton Intended for the Clothing of Men
It is not known that the tuft of cotton is of any advantage to the seed which it envelopes, or that it fulfills any other useful purpose in the economy of the plant. It would seem that it was expressly intended for the clothing of man, just at the fruits and the grains which other plants produce were intended for his food. There is this difference in the two cases, however, namely, that while the fruits and grains have a useful purpose to accomplish in respect to the plants which produce them, as well as being available for the purposes of man, the little fleece which envelopes the seed of the cotton plant seems, so far as we know, not be necessary to the plant at all, thus leaving us to infer that nature produces it with very special, if not exclusive, reference to the wants of man.
The birds in the countries where it grows make great use of it too to give a soft and downy lining to their nests.
Rice,
Several species of rice were found indigenous to America. Rice is the most productive food-bearing plant, for the use both of men and animals, that is known. It grows wild in the water in low and swampy lands along the borders of the rivers in tropical countries. Countless millions of birds gather over all the region where it grows in the season of its ripening, and multitudes of other animals, such as gain access to the ground when the water subsides, live upon it.
The Indians used to gather it by sailing in through the midst of it in their canoes, where bending down the heads of the rice, they would beat off the grains into the boat by means of a sort of threshing stick made for the purpose.
Maize
The most important and valuable plant, however, for the American Indians, especially for those who lived beyond the limits of the rice
Gathering the Wild Rice
country, was the maize, or Indian corn. A great many of the tribes cultivated this plant in fields which they cleared for this purpose, by digging around the roots of trees and burning them off. Such fields were very numerous in the northern parts of the country when it was first discovered by white men., Indeed, this plant seems to have been their chief reliance for vegetable food. they considered it as the special gift of the great Spirit, and it figures very conspicuously in all their traditionary legends in respect to the creation of the world, and the early history of the human race.