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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.
Which of the following speeds up the process of westward expansion?
选项 A、Population explosion in Europe.
B、Improvement on transportation.
C、People’s hatred for wars.
D、People’s desire to escape exploitation.
答案B
解析 文章第一段第二句中提到，阻碍西进运动的因素之一就是地理阻隔且缺少现代交通方式；第四甸说，加州淘金热、铁路的建造、日益增长的拓荒精神都为向“蛮荒西部”扩张做出了贡献。由此可以判断，修建铁路改善交通，可以促进西进，所以[B]是答案。文中虽然几次提到战争，并说战争确实减缓了西进运动的进程，但并没有说人们是因为憎恨战争才向西移民的，所以[c]错误。其他两个选项文中没有提及。
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