THE SOUTHEAST( land of change)

This Southeast region is changing more rapidly than any other part of the US-not because the land is new, but because the area’s old, exhausted land is being given new life.

The region is blessed with plentiful rainfall and a mild climate.On most of its farmlands,crops can be grown without frost at last six month of the year.A transportation artery, the Mississippi River and its southern branches, runs through the heart of the area,and other rivers are found near its coast. Crops grew easily in its soil, which is brown on the coastal plain, red on the low hillsides, and black in east Texas.The mountains contribute coal,water,and rich valleys. Florida is a garden for subtropical fruits. Some of the nation largest fields lie in the states of Louisiana and Texas.The region is naturally rich in forests and minerals.

Before the US declared its freedom from Great Britain in 1776,the economy of the colonies (both north and south)was predominantly agricultural.

The geography of the northeast did not fit well into this pattern and, with independence,the northern states broke away from it. But the South, with its rich soil and ideal climate found its wealth in agriculture with such crops as tobacco, rice and indigo.

Industrial power, the energy that turns machines is being developed, at last,for human use. For example,natural gas is a great resource for industrial power, but it must be transported after it is taken from the ground.Today South has built new pipeline underground which carry this resource from the gas and oil fields to mines and mill sites.

 

THE GREAT PLAINS

The Great Plains begin with he 50 centimeters rainfall line which runs north and South almost through the center of the country.The traveler becomes aware of the difference in the atmosphere once he crosses this invisible line.This is a land of extreme heat and extreme cold. It is a land where water is worth more than property. It is almost flat, rising imperceptibly for 640 kilometers until it suddenly meets the mountains to the West.

Nowhere is the rainfall more unpredictable or the climate more violent. For two or three years there may be enough rain.Then there is a year when no rain falls, when the streams from the mountains dry up and their channels are filled with sand.The wind blows constantly.It is very hot from July to September,but it the winter snow covers houses.

The Great Plains is a hard country. The heat of the summer is scorching (hot),the winter is freezing.The wind blows fiercely with few hills or forests to stop it, from Montana on the Canadian border to the Mexican border state of Texas.Water is precious. Its scarcity drove the settlers on across the plains as far as they could go.Only Red Indians knew how to survive here. They captured the wild horses, descended from those that escaped from Spanish explores in the 16^th century,and hunted the buffalo, that provided them with most of their food, clothing and tools.

THE MOUNTAINS AND DESERTS region like the Great Plains did not attract settlers at first. It was a fearful area, to be crossed as quickly as possible to reach the Pacific coast. Seeking land and gold, the settler at first found neither until they reached the Pacific slopes.But then gold was found at Pikes Peak and in a few other parts of the Rocky mountains. Clearly,there was gold in the Rockies and men hurried back,faster than they had hurried through.

The Majestic Rocky mountains stretch all the way from Mexico to the Arctic, like the Alps, they are high, sharp and rugged. Compared with the Appalachians in the East,they are young and their faces of bare rock are capped with snow,even to the south. In the high valleys, there are remains of the glaciers, while below them there are clear, icy lakes.

The Rocky mountains are the long backbone of the continent –over 4,200 meters high and 560 kilometers wide in Utah and Colorado,because of its unusual and varied natural beauty, much of this mountain and desert region has been preserved unspoiled in national parks such as Yellowstone in Wyoming and Death Valley in California.

Today about 170,000sq.kilometres of deserts. In the 960 kilometers between Salt lake city,Utah and Peno,Nevada,there is nothing but dead lakes,dry rivers, snakes and small animal life, enormous mineral wealth,and the inhuman beauty of the desert.

Most of Rocky Mountain gold is gone today. Some other minerals also vanished much too quickly due to mining methods. While soil can gradually be restored and trees planted on bare hillsides,the mineral wealth of the earth can not be re-created.

Today the nation’s largest open-hit copper mining center is Bingham, Utah, in one of the Great basin ranges.

Modern industry demands more and more of the nation’s mineral wealth.

Each new electric plant needs many kilometers of copper wire: machines require iron,lead and other minerals.Coal, oil and natural gas must drive the machines.

States like Texas and Oklahoma long have been noted for their oil production, but the west also has vast new energy reserves.

The West is the site for the development of alternative energy sources. Wind-power experiments conducted in New Mexico eventually may lead to installations providing two percent of the nation’s electrical power.

Sunny Colorado,New Mexico and California,along with numerous other states, are important testing grounds for solar energy.

THE WEST COAST VALLEYS

When Americans began to move to the Far West-before any gold discoveries in the region the entire Pacific Coast attracted them. Why did they come, these men,women and children from the East? Why did they endure the frightful trials of the plains, the mountains, the deserts? Why did they want so much to move West?

The Americans came because they wanted more space, free land,a freer life,and perhaps a fortune, too.

The Pacific Coast,from San Francisco to Seattle,was first reached by English,Russian and other explorers. Some established fur trading posts.

All three Pacific Coast states-Washington, California and Oregon –face toward the Orient. Cargoes of fish timber and fruit are shipped from the ports of San Francisco, Portland and Seattle to Asia. There is a large Chinese Community in San Francisco.

Quaint cable cars clang up and down its sleep hills and ships sail from the Pacific Ocean under the sweeping span of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay, one of the world’s finest land-locked harbors.

Seattle is the gateway to Alaska,the 49^th state. In order to get to Alaska a person must take a boat or airplane.

The 50^th state is Hawaii, it is a string of sun-drenched islands over 3.200 kilometers out in the Pacific Ocean from the coast of California. Pineapple plantation of Waikiki Beach are world famous. People living here speak of the rest of the US as the Mainland.

THE RIVERS:

1.Mississippi

2.Missouri

3.Ohio

4.Columbia

5.Colorado

6.Rio Grande

 

The Mississippi is one of the world’s great continental rivers, like the Amazon in South America, the Congo in Africa,the Volga in Europe, or the Ganges, Amur in Asia.Its waters are gathered from two-thirds of the United States and, together with the Missouri (its chief western branch),the Mississippi flows some 6,400 kilometers from its northern sources in the Rocky mountains to the Gulf of Mexico, which makes it one of the world’s longest waterways.

The Mississippi has been called the “father of waters”. Through all its lower course it wonders along,appearing lazy and harmless.

Where the Missouri pours into the Mississippi from the West is colours the river deep brown with small pieces of soil. Father downstream, where the clear waters of the principal eastern tributary the Ohio join the Mississippi, evidence of the difference between the dry west and raining east becomes apparent. For kilometers,the waters of the two rivers flow on side by side, without mixing. Those from the west are brown, they have robbed the soil in areas of vegetation. The waters from the east are clear and blue; they come from hills and valleys where plentiful forest and plant cover has kept the soil from being washed away.

Like the Mississippi, all the rivers in the east of the Rockies finally reach the Atlantic; all the waters to the east of the Rockies finally arrive at the Pacific. For this reason the crests of the Rocky Mountains is known as the Continental Divide. There are many places in the Rockies where a visitor may throw two snowballs in opposite directions and know that each will feed a different ocean.

The two great rivers of The Pacific side are the Colorado in the south,and the Columbia, which rises in Canada and drains the North.In the dry western country,both rivers,very different in character,they are vital sources of life. The Columbia,wild in prehistoric times,cutting and shaping the land, now flows with quiet dignity. But the Colorado is still a river of enormous fury-wild, restless and angry. It races and plunges, cutting deeply into the desert rocks. But even the furious Colorado has been dammed and put to work. All the farms and cities of the Southwestern corner of the country depend on its water.

The Rio Grande,About 3.200 kilometers long, is the foremost river of the Southwest. It forms a natural boundary between Mexico and the US, which together have built irrigation and flood control projects of mutual benefit.

THE NATION OF IMMIGRANTS

Immigrants in US why they came, why they come. The United States has often called “a nation of immigrants”. There are two good reason for this. First, the country was settled,built and developed by generation of immigrants. Secondly,even today America continuous to take in more immigrants than any other country in the world. It is not surprising, that the US is counted as the most heterogeneous societies in the world. Many different cultural traditions, ethnic sympathies, national origins,racial groups, and religious affiliations make up” we the people”

Nonetheless, it would be very misleading to view America simply as a collection of different immigrant groups and ethnic or religious loyalties. It is not true that there are more Irish,more German, and more Puerto Ricans living in New York City than there are Dublin, Frankfurt or San Juan.Nor do most New Yorkers think of themselves primarily as Jews,Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Germans or Irishmen.

The US is one of the few countries that has no “official” national language. English is the common language by use, but it is not the national language by law. About 30 million Americans speak a language other than English at home.This means,for example that if you meet an American in New Mexico who speaks Spanish as his first language,he could be a recent immigrant,having arrived in the US only a few years ago,or his grandparents could have arrived in the US a hundred years ago.