The United States

The United States is a federal republic of 50 states including Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands. It stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s a huge country where distances are so vast that town are often hundreds of miles apart. On arriving in New York, a traveller from Europe is only half-way to Hollywood, and to complete a journey to California it would take him about a week travelling by car.

Many of the States are larger than whole European countries; the Mississippi-Missouri, the largest stream of water in the world, is 9 times as long as the Po; and the surface of the five Great Lakes along the border with Canasa – Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, Lake Huron and Lake Superior – could cover the whole area of Italy.

The durface of the United Stated consists of vast central plains bounded by two high mountain ranges: the Rocky Mountains, or Rockies, in the west and the Appalachians in the east. The Rockies, so bare and rugged with their towering rocks and mighty canyons, offer a picturesque world-famous scenery.

The principal rivers of the United States are the Connecticut, the Delaware, the Potomac and the Hudson flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, the Mississippi-Missouri and its tributaries, the Ohio, the Illinois, the Tennessee and the Arkansas flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, the Columbia and the Colorado flowing into the Pacific Ocean.

Within its borders, America has almost every type of climate. In summer you would feel as hot in Washington or Mississippi as in Singapore. A severe winter in North Dakota or Nebraska might be as uncomfortable for you as the cold winters in the steppes of Russia. To enjoy a really temperate climate you should go to the Pacific coast.

Though the original settlers of the United States were essentially of British stock, immigration over the last two centuries has made the United States the melting pot of the world. Practically every country is represented by immigrants and their descendants: Germans, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Chinese, Negroes, etc. the Negroes, the descendants of the claves brought over from Africa in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, make up about 10% of the total population, while the American Indians, the descendants of the early inhabitants of the country, represents only 0.3%. 

Source: R. Colle – I. Vay, L’esame di inglese, Lattes, an old Italian book 1974.