Lawrence covers about 73,000 square miles;
the aggregate, it is estimated, represents not less than 9,000 solid
miles--a mass of water which would have taken upward of forty years
to pour over Niagara at the computed rate of 1,000,000 cubic feet in
a second. As the entire basin of this water system falls short of
300,000 square miles, the surface of the land is only three times that
of the water.
HOW THE UNITED STATES GOT ITS LANDS.--The United States bought
Louisiana, the vast region between the Mississippi River, the eastern
and northern boundary of Texas (then belonging to Spain), and the
dividing ridge of the Rocky Mountains, together with what is now
Oregon, Washington Territory, and the western parts of Montana and
Idaho, from France for $11,250,000. This was in 1803. Before the
principal, interest, and claims of one sort and another assumed by
the United States were settled, the total cost of this "Louisiana
purchase," comprising, according to French construction and our
understanding, 1,171,931 square miles, swelled to $23,500,000, or
almost $25 per section--a fact not stated in cyclopedias and school
histories, and therefore not generally understood. Spain still held
Florida and claimed a part of what we understood to be included in the
Louisiana purchase--a strip up to north latitude 31--and disputed our
boundary along the south and west, and even claimed Oregon. We bought
Florida and all the disputed land east of the Mississippi and her
claim to Oregon, and settled our southwestern boundary dispute for the
sum of $6,500,000.
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