Excerpt from History of the World From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Vol. 4: Collected and Arranged From the Best Authorities The new continent, when compared with the old, enjoys three important advantages. First, it is free from such vast deserts as cover a large part of the surface of Asia and Africa, and which not only withdraw a great propor tion of the soil from the use of man, but are obstacles to communication between the' setti ed districts, and generate that excessive heat which is often injurious to health, and always destructive to industry. Secondly, no part of its soil is so far from the ocean as the central regions of Asia and Africa. Thirdly, the interior of America is penetrated by majestic rivers, the Mississippi, Amazon, and Plata, greatly surpassing those of the old continent, in magnitude, and still more in the facilities they present for enabling the remotest inland districts to communicate with the sea. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.