North American Cordillera

The geographic provinces of North America.

The four great physical divisions of North America, the Laurentian Highland, the Appalachian Highland, the Plains, and the Western Cordillera, are strikingly different in form and structure.

The Laurentian Highland presents a monotonous waste of rough hills, irregular valleys, picturesque lakes, and crooked rivers.

Most of it is thinly clothed with pine trees and bushes such as the blueberry and the huckleberry.

Happy is New York in its situation where no one of the three bands of the Appalachians opposes any obstacle.

The plains of North America form the third of the four main physical divisions of the continent.

For the most part, they lie between the great western Cordillera on one side and the Laurentian and Appalachian Highlands on the other.

Yet they lap around the southern end of the Appalachians and run far up the Atlantic coast to New York.