1. GEOGRAPHY. I. GENERAL-Area and Boundaries.- With the exception of Alaska, Greenland, Newfoundland, and the two small islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, all the northern half of the North American continent is comprised in th.: Dominion of Canada. Alaska, the great peninsular projection at the northwest corner of the continent, with a nar row strip of coast depending from it south ward, belongs to the United States; Greenland, a huge island at the northeast corner, is Dan ish; Newfoundland, another island blocking the mouth of the Saint Lawrence estuary on the east coast, is British, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon, lying off Newfoundland, are French. To the north of the •continent there is a cluster of large islands, divided from the mainland and from one another by comparatively narrow channels. All of these form part of Canada and are included in its area, but as yet they have been only partially explored, and their exact dimensions are not known. The official estimate, as nearly accurate as it can be made at present, gives the total area of Canada, in cluding the great fresh-water lakes wholly within its boundaries, as 3,729,665 square miles. The boundaries separating Canada from its only continental neighbor, the United States, are to a great extent meridians of longitude or parallels of latitude. Between Canada and Alaska, beginning from the north, the boundary follows long. 141° W. from the Arctic Ocean to Mount Saint Elias, within 20 miles of the Pacific, from which point it is an irregular line running about parallel with the coast round the heads of all bays and inlets of the sea at a distance of 20 to 30 miles inland. It reaches tide-water again at the head of Portland Chan nel, down which it passes, terminating in the Pacific Ocean. All the islands of the coast south of lat. 54° 40' belong to Canada as far as the southern extremity of Vancouver Island, except that a cluster of small islands between the southern end of Vancouver Island and the mainland, but south of lat. 49°, are included in the territory •of the State of Washington. The international boundary begins again in Juan de Fuca Strait. It takes a devious course from Vancouver to lat. 49° on the coast of the continent, and then follows the 49th parallel as far east as Lake of the Woods. A water boundary here begins, up Rainy River and its headwater series of lakes, cutting across the height of land to another chain of small lakes and following Pigeon River to its mouth in Lake Superior. From this point the bound ary is the chain of Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River to its intersection with lat. 45°. The line now follows a more or less arbitrary course along the 45th parallel for some distance, then rising irregularly to the north almost to lat. 47° 30' then down the upper course of the Saint John River as far as Grand Falls, then due south to the Saint Croix River, which it follows to the Bay of Fundy. The areas in square miles of the individual provinces and territories since the reailotment of territory in 1912 are as follows: Main Physical Features.- The four princi pal surface divisions are: (1) The Appalachian region, forming the extreme southeastern cor ner; (2) the Laurentian plateau or peneplain, with its fringes and outliers of lowlands, corn prising the remainder of the eastern half of Canada; (3) the central plain; and (4) the mountain region to the west. Each of these divisions represents, on- the whole, a different geological formation and has its own peculiar physical features. I. The Appalachian region of Canada is the northern extremity of the system of parallel ranges of mountains pushed up, as it were, from the southeast against the great archzan, or Laurentian, area. The ranges all run from southwest to northeast, the Nova Scotian peninsular being without a correspond ing extension in the United States. The hills
are composed of older rocks, rising out of the carboniferous strata which once overlay the whole district, but of later formation than the Laurentian plateau to the north. They are much weathered and the river valleys have been comparatively well eroded. II. The Lauren tian plateau or peneplain which covers about half the entire area of Canada is, geologically speaking, the nucleus of the continent. It pre sents a shield-shaped surface of arcluean rocks, broken into on the north by Hudson Bay_, and extending south to the Saint Lawrence River As is implied by calling it a peneplain, it is a much-weathered surface, nowhere rising to any great height, but maintaining a fair elevation above the sea-level, except along the west shore of Hudson Bay. It is a country of hard, crys talline rocks, everywhere scored by glacier ac tion, and sparsely covered with soil in which pine, spruce and other northern trees grow more or less densely, giving place in the higher latitudes to mosses and lichens. As a result of the melting of the glaciers which covered this region in the last geological period, the whole surface is a net-work of small lakes and streams. The latter have been unable to wear down the hard rocks to any appreciable extent, and consequently present all diversities of level with many falls and rapids in their course. The western limit of the plateau is marked by a series of great lakes, from Great Bear Lake in the north to Lake Huron near the southern extremity.. Adjoining the Laurentian plateau on the north and south there is, as it were, a fringe of later geological formations. Most of the large islands north of Hudson Bay as of the mainland west of it appear to consist chiefly of older sedimentary rocks in undis turbed arrangement, but the partial glaciation of these islands has hitherto prevented any de tailed geological or other survey. South of the Laurentian plateau again occurs a lowland area, consisting of the valley of the Saint Lawrence River and the, peninsula enclosed by the three lower members of the chain of great lakes. It is small in extent, but of great importance in the history of Canada, because the first Euro pean settlements were established mainly within its limits and it still contains the greater part of the population. III. The central plain is of vast extent, reaching from Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, so that only its northern portion lies in Canada. It is the elevated bed of a carboniferous sea, and from a breadth of 800 miles at the international boundary it is gradually narrowed toward the north by the westerly trend of the Laurentian plateau and broken into by subsidiary ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Still farther north, where it ter minates at the Arctic Ocean, it again expands to a width of about 300 miles. There are three steppes of different elevations in this great plain, rising from east to west, and the general slope is from the southwest downward to the east and north. IV. The fourth great region, the mountain belt, is also of vast extent, being traceable in greater or lesser width from the Tierra del Fuego, at the extremity of South America, to the farthest western point of Alaska. In Canada this mountain, or Cordil leran, region attains a breadth of about 400 miles, the greatest average elevation being in the southern portion. The Rocky Mountains, the most easterly range, are paralleled by a succession of smaller ranges, the most westerly of which is represented by the mountains of Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands. The geological age of this division is more ancient than that of the central plain, and the changes in the crust have been violent and recent, resulting in the unheaval of the Rocky Mountains, the youngest of the ranges of the Cordilleran System.