that has been made upon them. The Dutch first fished their country out
from under the sea, and afterwards defended it in a war of eighty
years' duration against the first military power on the globe: two
feats, perhaps, equally without parallel.

Being thus satisfied upon the point of pedigree, we may proceed to
inquire about estate. To what inheritance of land has Nature invited
our New Man? He comes to the country of highest organization, perhaps,
upon either hemisphere. Brazil and China suggest, but probably do not
sustain, a rivalry. What is implied in superior organization will
appear from the items to be mentioned.

1. Elaboration. Central North-America is to an extraordinary degree
worked out everywhere in careful detail, in moderate hill and valley,
in undulating prairie and fertile plain,--not tossed into barren
mountain-masses and table-lands, like that vast desert _plateau_ which
stretches through Central Asia,--not struck out in blank, like the
Russian _steppes_ and the South American _llanos_, as if Nature had
wanted leisure to elaborate and finish. Indeed, these primary
conditions of fertility and large habitability appertain to America, as
a whole, to such degree, that, with less than half the extent of the
Old World, it actually numbers more acres of fertile soil, and can, of
course, sustain a larger population.

2. Unity. Between the Rocky Mountains and the Atlantic coast, and
between the Gulf of Mexico and the northern wheat-limit, a larger space
of fertile territory, embracing a wider variety of climate and
production, is thrown into one mass, broken by no barrier, than can,
perhaps, elsewhere be found.