The aim of this book is to give a condensed and, I trust, readable account of the leading facts concerning the North American continent which, from the point of view of the geographer, seem most interesting and instructive. The area of the continent is so vast and the diversity among its various parts so great, however, that the completeness of treatment which characterizes the preceding volumes in the series to which it belongs could not be attempted. To obviate in a measure this confessed shortcoming, there has been appended to each chapter a list of books which will enable the reader to continue the studies outlined in it.

A complete review of the geography of a continent should, as it seems to me, be divided into two parts: first, a discussion of the natural conditions, or physical geography, and, second, man's dependence on and use of the natural resources, or economic geography. Each of these two leading phases of the subject was embraced in the preliminary outline of the present volume, but owing to a desire to make each chapter as complete as practicable, and also on account of limitations as to space, the treatment of the economic phases of geography has been necessarily brief. But little more can be claimed for the book as finished than that it is an attempt to describe some of the more prominent and attractive aspects of the natural conditions pertaining to North America.

While writing this book I have become more and more impressed with the incompleteness and inadequacy of the printed records relating to the geography of the continent of which it treats. Extensive tracts, particularly in the far North, have not been traversed by observant men, vast areas throughout the continent have not been surveyed and mapped, and even in the somewhat thickly inhabited portions of the more enlightened countries there are large districts in reference to the geography of which there is but little critical information available. Under these conditions it seemed best to select typical examples of various geographical features from the better known portions of the continent to represent the conditions throughout the less thoroughly explored domain in which they are situated, and at the same time serve to illustrate the highly creditable advances made by American geographers in definitely formulating the principles of physiography. The book may, in a measure, be considered as an attempt to present in popular form a report of progress concerning the study of the geographical development of North America at the beginning of the twentieth century.

I. C. R.