be no less living because spread broadcast throughout the
whole land, and absorbed into the common national life.
Effective natural boundaries, defining a limited area, are of
determining influence in fostering the life of primitive peoples
or of civilized colonies. Diffusion over an unlimited space, in
the one case, tends to weaken the hold on the land and the
growth of the state, while, in the other, it greatly retards the
development of those elements that make for civilized life.
Aside from other factors, the possession by the English, in the
settlement period, of a limited and protected area, naturally
restricted by the sea and the mountains, resulted, speaking
broadly, in the building up of thickly settled, compact colonies
as contrasted with the boundless empire of the French, opened
to them by their control of the Mississippi and the St. Law-
rence rivers. It is noteworthy that, of the great river-high-
ways leading to the interior of the continent, — the St. Law-
rence, the Hudson-Mohawk, and the Mississippi, — none was
at first possessed by the English, who had everywhere, unwit-
tingly but fortunately, selected portions of the coast where
their natural tendency to expand was temporarily held in
check.
The Appalachian barrier, which thus served to protect and
to concentrate the efforts of the English, may be said to extend
from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Alabama, coming nearest to
the coast in passing across New York. In the northern part
of Maine, where the mountains descend to a low water-shed,
enormous forests, with no easy river-route facilitating peaceful
or warlike travel, formed almost as effective a barrier; while
passage southward, along the coast, was impeded during the
early period by the presence of a foreign nation, the Dutch.
There were, indeed, certain narrow entrances to this enclosed
territory from the north, as the larger streams, flowing south-
ward from the water-shed along the Canadian boundary, could
be utilized, in connection with those flowing northward from
its other slope to the St. Lawrence. The many falls along
their courses, entailing laborious carries in the dense forest,
together with the necessary longer ones across the height of
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THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND
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