A panoramic VIew of American geography

The land of the US: geography, the face of the land, mountain and rivers, weather and climate.

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Токарева, глава 1, с.13 и с. 31.

Americans' encounter with their land has been abrupt and often violent, consuming much of the nation's energies. Americans had to confront and come to terms with a huge, wild country. It has been said that America is a nation with an abundance of geography but a shortage of history. It took less than 400 years to subdue more than 3 million square miles of territory. Even today much of the U.S. remains relatively unpopulated.

Just as Americans have reshaped the face of their land, the people themselves have been shaped by constant contact with the land. But the geography of the country played into their hands — the country was insulated by large oceans from political threat, and the land allowed Americans to become self-sufficient in agriculture and basic minerals. A magnificent system of natural waterways linked distant parts of a vast territory, made travel cheap, and allowed great mobility.

Over the course of time the American land yielded a bounty whose reputation spread around the globe and attracted floods of immigrants. Sometimes the reports of that bounty were overblown by land speculatorsand travel agents, and people were enticed to America through promises of paradise on earth. In spite of such hyperboles, however, the wealth of the land was still considerable.

Settlement of the American land was often a painful process. Territory was usually settled before it was well known, and people learned geography from hard experience by trial and error.

Today the United States is the fourth largest country in the world, in both size and population. It covers an area of 3,618,465 square miles.¹'² The U.S. is divided into 50 states. Those which border one another on the continent are grouped into seven regions: New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont), Middle Atlantic States (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania), Southern States (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Flor­ida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia), Mid­western States (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin), Rocky Mountain States (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming), Southwestern States (Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas) and Pacific Coast States (California, Oregon, Washington). In addition, Hawaii and Alaska are grouped separately.

Дата добавления: 2015-04-24