Our New West - 1869 Author:Samuel Bowles Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: OUR JSTEW WEST. INTEODUCTOEY CHAPTER. Oub New West—Its Extent and Importance, and Four Great Divisions—The Cordilleras of South America and their Progress ... more »Through North America—The First Great Division, the Plains—The Second, the Rocky Mountains—The Third, the Great Interior Basin—The Fourth, the Sierra Nevadas and the Pacific Coast—The Characteristics of Each—The Promise of the Book. Our New West,—cut through its center by the east and west line of the Pacific Railroad, and only now and thus opened freely to the knowledge and the occupation of the American people,—is the larger half of the territory of the United States. From the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean is fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred miles; from British America on the north to Mexico on the south is from one thousand to twelve hundred miles. The great mountain chain of the Continent with its subdivisions separate this region into four marked sections. The Cordilleras of South America, marching in unbroken and firm column from its south to its north,and making the most magnificent mountain range in the world by its length, its hight. and its unity, humbles itself almost to the sea in crossing the Isthmus, but rears its columns anew in Central America and Mexico, with occasional individual peaks that are as famous for hight and majesty as any in all its hemispherical sweep, and yet nowhere renews that unyielding unity that is its distinguishing southern characteristic. Approaching the broader sections of Western North America, as if feeling the appeal for a wider parentage, it breaks into several lines, two especially so majestic and firm and distinctive, that each might almost fairly claim to be the parent range. The main line, unmistakably, however, passes easterly with but little disorder, and bec...« less