XXXIV.

This upheaval of the earth's surface, reminding the geographer of the Italian peninsula, vaguely perhaps in form, in natural fertility and in purity of climate, is destined to play an important part in the future advancement of the Republic. For here is the heart of the eastern portion of the continent, geographically, climatologically, and mineralogically. Here Nature is too prolific to be long neglected by the cupidity or the ambition of men, when the barriers and obstructions of inquiry and settlement, which have been reared against the advance and design of civilization by the Slave Faction, shall have been removed. When the tide of European emigration, which steadily brings to the New World the pure blood and youth of races, turns its stream of industrial life towards these valleys, mountain slopes, and terraces; when the laws of alimentation are understood and properly observed; when the spire of the school-house rises in the vista of every landscape, or points the way at every cross-road,--then we may expect to see a new variety of the human race appear, possessed of remarkable physical strength and beauty, and whose ideas and efforts, typical of the healthy and developed mind, will, like the influences of New England and Scandinavia, give fresh impulse and impress to the civilizations of the earth.