Note 366 — Chapter VII · —Geographical Boundaries

Its peripheral character comes out strongly in the mingling of contiguous ethnic elements found in every frontier district. Here is that zone of transitional form which we have seen prevails so widely in nature. The northern borderland of the United States is in no small degree Canadian, and the southern is strongly Mexican. In the Rio Grande counties of Texas, Mexicans constituted in 1890 from 27 to 55 per cent. of the total population, and they were distributed in considerable numbers also in the second tier of counties. A broad band of French and English Canadians overlaps the northern hem of United States territory from Maine to North Dakota.366 In the New York and New England counties bordering on the old French province of Quebec, they constitute from 11 to 22 per cent. of the total population, except in two or three western counties of Maine which have evidently been mere passways for a tide of habitants moving on to more attractive conditions of life in the counties just to the south.367 But even these large figures do not adequately represent the British-American element within our boundaries, because they leave out of account the native-born of Canadian parents who have been crossing our borders for over a generation.