A Varied Topography? Really? Not in Florida....

According to Chapter 8 the Appalachian mountains' rugged landscape played a major role in the settlement history of the US. The mountains were a barrier to early overland travel form the Atlantic coast and it stated that without those barriers European settlements may have spread inland more thinly and more quickly.
Well It's a good thing they didn't decide to settle in Florida since NO such barrier would of kept them from wondering in too quickly. As stated in earlier sections Florida lacks major topographic changes and lacks elevation overall. The Average Elevation found in Florida is a lousy 98 ft which which is just a tad shorter than the elevations we find in the Appalachians such as 3200 ft with many steep slopes.
Almost all the southeastern peninsula and the entire southern end are covered by the Everglades, the world's largest sawgrass swamp, with an area of approximately 5,000 sq mi (13,000 sq km). The Everglades is, in a sense, a huge river, in which water flows south–southwest from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. No point in the Everglades is more than 7 ft (2 m) above sea level. Its surface is largely submerged during the rainy season—April to November—and becomes a muddy expanse in the dry months. Slight elevations, known as hammocks, support clumps of cypress and the only remaining stand of mahogany in the continental US. To the west and north of the Everglades is Big Cypress Swamp, covering about 2,400 sq mi (6,200 sq km), which contains far less surface water.

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