78 BRITISH AMERICA.

The surface of the extensive countries of British America, with the exception of the sterile parts of the north, the savannahs, and where towns and settlements have been formed along the sea-coasts, and on the banks of rivers, is still covered with dense and almost limitless forests, which commence at the sea-coast, and extend to the banks and lakes of the St Lawrence; beyond which they are succeeded by others of equally gigantic growth, that terminate, with the occasional interruption of a buffalo prairie, only at the shores of the Pacific.

In many of the most extensive districts, we still discover no signs of civilization, nor any marks of the progress of improvement; and the scenery, in its primeval wildness and natural luxuriance, exhibits what the whole of North America was about two centuries ago, when none but the Indian tribes tra- versed its woods, and the bark canoe of the savage alone navigated the waters of its Atlantic shores, or those of its rivers and inland seas.