Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
=The Cordillera Region of Canada.=--A length of nearly thirteen
hundred miles of the great mountainous or Cordillera region of the
Pacific coast is included in the western part of Canada. Most of
this, Mr. George M. Dawson says, in a paper on the Physical Geography
and Geology of Canada, is embraced in the province of British
Columbia, where it is about four hundred miles wide between the
Great Plains and the Pacific Ocean. To the north it is included in
the Yukon district of the Northwest Territory till it reaches, in a
less elevated and more widely spread form, the shores of the Arctic
Ocean on one side and on the other passes across the one hundred and
forty-first meridian of west longitude into Alaska. The orographic
features of this region are very complicated in detail. No existing
map yet properly represents even the principal physical outlines,
and the impression gained by the traveler or explorer may well be
one of confusion. There are, however, the two dominant mountain
systems of the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range. As a whole, the
area of the Cordillera in Canada may be described as forest-clad,
but the growth of trees is more luxuriant on the western slopes of
each of the dominant mountain ranges, in correspondence with the
greater precipitation occurring on these slopes. This is particularly
the case in the coast region and on the seaward side of the Coast
Range, where magnificent and dense forests of coniferous trees
occupy almost the whole available surface. The interior plateau,
however, constitutes the southern part of a notably dry belt, and
includes wide stretches of open grass-covered hills and valleys,
forming excellent cattle ranges. Farther north, along the same belt,
similar open country appears intermittently, but the forest invades
the greater part of the region. It is only toward the arctic coast,
in relatively very high latitude, that the barren arctic tundra
country begins, which, sweeping in wider development to the westward,
occupies most of the interior of Alaska. With certain exceptions
the farming land of British Columbia is confined to the valleys and
tracts below three thousand feet, by reason of the summer frosts
occurring at greater heights. There is, however, a considerable
area of such land in the aggregate, with a soil generally of great
fertility. In the southern valleys of the interior irrigation is
necessary for the growth of crops.
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