2. COLONIAL GEOGRAPHY.


[Sidenote: British America.]

By the end of the eighteenth century the term "Americans" was commonly
applied in England, and even the colonists themselves, to the English-
speaking subjects of Great Britain inhabiting the continent of North
America and the adjacent islands. The region thus occupied comprised the
Bahamas, the Bermudas, Jamaica, and some smaller West Indian islands,
Newfoundland, the outlying dependency of Belize, the territory of the
great trading corporation known as the Hudson's Bay Company, and--more
important than all the rest--the broad strip of territory running along
the coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Altamaha River.

[Sidenote: Boundaries.]

It is in this continental strip, lying between the sea and the main chain
of the Appalachian range of mountains, that the formation of the Union was
accomplished. The external boundaries of this important group of colonies
were undetermined; the region west of the mountains was drained by
tributaries of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi rivers, and both these
rivers were held in their lower course by the French. Four successive
colonial wars had not yet settled the important question of the
territorial rights of the two powers, and a fifth war was impending.

So far as the individual colonies were concerned, their boundaries were
established for them by English grants. The old charters of Massachusetts,
Virginia, and the Carolinas had given title to strips of territory