THE VASTNESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

Thames Star, Volume XX, Issue 6132, 30 November 1888, Page 4

THE VASTNESS OF THE UNITED STATES.

Mr Brydgeg in bis new book, " Uncle Sam," says:—'* The single State of Texas is as large as England, France, and Ger* . many combined. Into California, England and tbree other European kingdoms could be placed side by side and not overlap. Colorado, which in England is hardly known except in connection with the Colorado beetle, has nevertheless an area of 104,000 square miles—nearly twice the area of Turkey, which has cost Europe bo many millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of men slain. New Mexico, Dakota, Arizona, and Montana are almost unknown lands in Europe; and yet they have a total area of 531,000 square miles, which gives an average larger than Austria, and a total equal to Great Britain and Ireland, France Italy, Portugal, Greeoe, Denmark, Belgium, and Holland. The distances between cities on tbis vast continent seem incredible when placed io juxtaposition with European distances. The' journey from New York t6 San Francisco, for example, is three times as long as that from London to Gibraltar—is, indeed, fire hundred miles greater than from England 'to Quebec. Home is as near to London as Chicago is to Boston. Buda-JPestb, Warsaw, and Stockholm are not quite as far from the British metropolises Milwaukee is from Albany ; and Madrid is a hundred and fifty miles nearer. General Sherman recently stated that the northern line of defences during the Civil War exceeded five thousand miles. This would make a line as great as one drawn from London across the Channel to Paris and Vienna. through Constantinople, Asia Minor, and Persia to Afghanistan, or through the Puojaub, and away down Central India nearly to Madras; The mineral wealth of the United States is enormous; Uncle Sam's coalfield alone is as large as Great Britain and France put together. Iron exists in every State of the Union, and is worked in twenty-two; gold, silver, and copper abound, whilst in further illustration of the fact that our Transatlantic cousins have " struck ile,"it is enough to mention the circumstance that the wells in Pennsylvania alone yield no less tbau seventy thousand barrels of oil every day.