A Literary and Historical Atlas of America

A Literary & Historical Atlas of America

[vii] When General Hamilton spoke in the Federalist over a century ago of "an empire, in many respects the most interesting in the world," meaning the United States of America, he did not, he could not, foresee the vast growth of his country and its northern and southern neighbours which this book portrays. The volume is the third in a series of small atlases, meant to cover in turn the whole globe, and to do it in a way to knit up geographical and historical knowledge with the facts of commerce and the literary record of each land or region. One chief purpose of these maps is to trace clearly the development of the United States, beginning with "the most remarquable parts" of the New England of the Pilgrim Fathers, described by Captain John Smith in 1614, and not forgetting the territories of the old American-Indian nations. Some inkling too is given in facsimile of the early charts, views, and maps by the explorers and cartographers who made a survey of the first settlements. For example, we have an old map of Guiana invaluable as a Sir Walter Raleigh record, giving the mouths of the Oronoke, or Orinoco, where his men tugged against the stream, and stretching southward to the Amazon itself, and we get from the map of Peru at the period of the Conquest a clear idea of the country in the time of Pizarro. As with the great rivers, so with the great American cities. You can compare "old New York," as represented in one page, with the new New York and its environs which are a world's wonder to-day. Then again you can take the chart of the Early Highways that ran westward into the wilderness and estimate how the power of the engineer has, since the railway came, caught the States in an iron network and rearranged the Americas. Battlefields and sieges, by which the right of the new country to its national life and individuality was [viii] "wrenched," as Tennyson said in his address to the old country,[1] are not forgotten. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 57610
Author: Bartholomew, J. G. (John George)
Release Date: Jul 31, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English