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  3. The white population of the new United States did not stretch far beyond the eastern seaboard until the 19th century. The Britis

The white population of the new United States did not stretch far beyond the eastern seaboard until the 19th century. The Britis

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问题     The white population of the new United States did not stretch far beyond the eastern seaboard until the 19th century. The British Proclamation of 1763, the War of 1812, geological barriers and the lack of modern transportation all provided resistance against westward migration. But by the mid-1800s, the concept of Manifest Destiny — the belief that Americans had a divine right to expand their territory — gained footing, and Americans began to buy into the inevitability of settling both unexplored and already-claimed western frontiers, including the lands that now make up Texas, California, Colorado and Oregon. The California Gold Rush, the construction of railroads and a growing pioneer spirit all contributed to the expansion of the "wild west."
    Europeans began populating the land within the continental boundaries of the mainland United States shortly after the first colonial settlements were established along the Atlantic coast. The first British settlers in the New World stayed close to the Atlantic, their lifeline of needed supplies from England. By the 1630s, however, Massachusetts Bay colonists were pushing into the Connecticut River valley. Resistance from the French and the Indians slowed the movement westward, yet by the 1750s, northern American colonists had occupied most of New England.
    In the South, settlers who arrived too late to get good tidewater land moved westward into the Piedmont. By 1700 the Virginia frontier had been pushed as far west as the fall line — the point upstream at which the rivers emptying into the Atlantic became unnavigable. Some pioneers climbed beyond the fall line into the Blue Ridge Mountains, but the major flow into the backcountry regions of Virginia and the other southern Atlantic colonies went southward rather than westward.
    Germans and Scots-Irish from Pennsylvania moved down the Shenandoah Valley, largely between 1730 and 1750, to populate the western portions of Virginia and the Carolinas. By the time of the French and Indian Wars, the American frontier had reached the Appalachian Mountains.
    The British Proclamation of 1763 ordered a halt to the westward movement at the Appalachians, but the decree was widely disregarded. Settlers scurried into Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky. After the American Revolution, a flood of people crossed the mountains into the fertile lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. By 1810 Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky had been transformed from wilderness into a region of farms and towns.
    Despite those decades of continuous westward pushing of the frontier line, it was not until the conclusion of the War of 1812 that the westward movement became a significant outpouring of people across the continent. By 1830 the Old Northwest and Old Southwest — areas scarcely populated before the war — were settled with enough people to warrant the admission of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Alabama, and Mississippi as states into the Union.
    During the 1830s and 1840s, the flood of pioneers poured unceasingly westward. Michigan, Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Iowa received most of them. A number of families even went as far as the Pacific coast, taking the Oregon Trail to areas in the Pacific Northwest. In 1849 fortune seekers rushed into California in search of gold. Meanwhile, the Mormons ended their long pilgrimage in Utah.
    Between the gold rush and the Civil War, Americans in growing numbers filled the Mississippi River valley, Texas, the southwest territories, and the new states of Kansas and Nebraska. During the war, gold and silver discoveries drew prospectors — and later settlers — into Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Montana.
    By 1870 only portions of the Great Plains could truly be called unsettled. For most of the next two decades, that land functioned as the fabled open range, home to cowboys and their grazing cattle from ranches in Texas. But by the late 1880s, with the decline of the range cattle industry, settlers moved in and fenced the Great Plains into family farms. That settlement — and the wild rush of pioneers into the Oklahoma Indian Territory — constituted the last chapter of the westward movement. By the early 1890s, a frontier had ceased to exist within the 48 continental states.
All of the following slow down the process of westward movement EXCEPT
选项 A、resistance from the French and the Indians.
B、the fall line in the Virginia frontier.
C、the prohibition order by British government.
D、the California Gold Rush.
答案D
解析 本题与上题紧密相关。文章第二段最后一句明确指出，法国人和印第安人的反抗滞缓了西进运动，即[A]；第一段第二句提到，英国1763年公告、1812年战争、地理阻隔和现代交通的缺少都对向西迁移产生了阻碍；之后第三段谈到了弗吉尼亚州的瀑布线阻碍西进，促成南进，这是对地理位置产生阻碍的证明，即[B]；第五段第一句解释了英国1763年公告的内容，是英国政府禁止人们继续西进，即[C]。根据第一段最后一句和第七段第四句，福利尼亚州的淘金热事实上起到促进西进的作用，所以[D]是本题的答案。
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