Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/291

 again these spaces are filled with a multitude of hills of a lesser elevation, confusedly scattered, and in no wise affecting the direction of the principal chains. On the confines of North Carolina and Tennessea the Alleghanies are, {259} on the contrary, isolated mountains, and only contiguous by their base; they embrace also in diameter an extent of country less considerable, and which is not computed to be more than seventy miles. The furrow that bears more particularly the name of the Alleghany Ridge in Pennsylvania, and that of Blue Ridge in North Carolina, is the only one that, continuing uninterruptedly, divides the rivers that run into the Atlantic Ocean from those that swell the current of the Ohio. The height of this chain is still infinitely less than that of the neighbouring mountains. It is here that the Alleghanies, which cross the United States for the space of nine hundred miles, have the highest elevation. This is the opinion of most of the inhabitants, who, from the mountainous part of Pennsylvania and Virginia, have emigrated on the confines of North Carolina, and who know the respective heights of all these mountains. That of the first rank is called Grandfather Mountain, the next Iron Mountain, and thus in succession Yellow Mountain, Black Mountain, and Table {260} Mountain, which are all situate upon the western rivers. On the top of Yellow Mountain, the only one that is not stocked with trees, all the abovementioned may be seen.

We may again remark, in support of the preceding observation, that from the 10th to the 20th of September the cold is so keenly felt upon the mountains that the inhabitants are obliged to make a fire, which is not the case upon any of those in Virginia, although they are situated more northerly by several degrees: and besides I