W. W. Phelps defines the boundaries of America.
“The Far West,” Evening and the Morning Star 1, no. 5 (October 1832): 37
The far west, as the section of country from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains may justly be styled, is not only distant from the Atlantic States, but different. . . . It is rightly named Missouri; for in plain English, it looks like the waters of misery,—or troubled water;—even as the sea which the prophet said, Casts up mire and dirt.
. . .
To return: this beautiful region of country is now mostly, excepting Arkansas and Missouri, the land of Joseph or the Indians, as they are called, and embraces three fine climates: First, like that of New-York; second, like Missouri, neither northern nor southern; and third, like the Carolinas. This place may be called the centre of America; it being about an equal distance from Maine, to Nootka sound; and from the gulf of St. Lawrence to the gulf of California; yea, and about the middle of the continent from cape Horn, south, to the head land at Baffin's Bay, north.