AMERICA always! Always our own feuillage! Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! Always California's golden hills and hollows--and the silver mountains of New Mexico! Always soft-breathed Cuba! Always the vast slope drained by the Southern Sea--inseparable with the slopes drained by the Eastern and Western Seas! The area the eighty-third year of these States[1]--the three and a half millions of square miles; The eighteen thousand miles of sea-coast and bay-coast on the main--the thirty thousand miles of river navigation, The seven millions of distinct families, and the same number of dwellings-- Always these, and more, branching forth into numberless branches; Always the free range and diversity! Always the continent of Democracy! Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travellers, Canada, the snows; Always these compact lands--lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge oval lakes; Always the West, with strong native persons--the increasing density there-- the habitans, friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders; All sights, South, North, East--all deeds, promiscuously done at all times, All characters, movements, growths--a few noticed, myriads unnoticed. Through Mannahatta's streets I walking, these things gathering. On interior rivers, by night, in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up: Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware; In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the hills--or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink;