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| - The North Continent of Barrayar was the settlement site of the original colonists from Earth. It came to be divided into 60 Districts ruled by Counts; it is not known whether this division covered the entire continent or if there were yet-unclaimed regions. Mountain ranges on the continent included the Dendarii Mountains, which ran east-west through Vorkosigan's District and another near the northern coast, in Vorpatril's District. The other continent on Barrayar was called the South Continent. "The fifty thousand Firsters from Earth had only meant to be the spearhead of Barrayar's colonization. Then, through a gravitational anomaly, the wormhole jump through which the colonists had come shifted closed, irrevocably and without warning. The terraforming which had begun, so careful and controlled in the beginning, collapsed along with everything else. Imported Earth plant and animal species had escaped everywhere to run wild, as the humans turned their attention to the most urgent problems of survival. Biologists still mourned the mass extinctions of native species that had followed, the erosions and droughts and floods, but really, Miles thought, over the centuries of the Time of Isolation the fittest of both worlds had fought it out to a perfectly good new balance. If it was alive and covered the ground who cared where it came from?" ―Miles reflects on the ecology of the North Continent
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