Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/720

Rh 678 Utah in its central basin. The Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon, the Sierra Nevada of California, and the Coast Range prolonged through the California!! peninsula, have a general direction from north to south; while the Wahsatch, the Humboldt, the Blue Moun tains, the Salmon River, and other ranges, stand rather across the table-land, or obliquely, from west to east. It may be convenient to speak of the former series, regarded altogether, as the general Pacific Coast Range, which we also observe to be continued northward, with some intervals, beyond latitude 60 N. to the peninsula of Alaska, pre senting summits of increased height, that of Mount St Elias being above 17,000 feet, and Mount Fairweather nearly 15,000 feet. In the Cascade Range are Mount St Helens, north of the Columbia River, attaining an eleva tion of 15,750 feet; Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson, about 15,500 feet. The Sierra Nevada, at its northern extremity, where it forms an acute angle with the coast range, displays the lofty terminal peak of Mount Shasta, having an altitude of 14,400 feet. The minor Calif ornian Coast Range nowhere rises to 4000 feet. The main Cor dillera or spine of Western North America, which in the British Dominion and in the United States territory is called the Rocky Mountains, but which takes the name of the Sierra Madre in Mexico, and in the isthmus, farther south, is split into two lower groups of a volcanic character, attains the height of 16,000 feet in Mount Brown, and 15,700 feet in Mount Hooker, both near the 54th degree of latitude, above the source of the Saskatchewan river; but Fremont, in the Wind River group, between Oregon and Nebraska, is 13,560 feet high, and there are peaks of 10,000 feet or 12,000 feet in Utah and New Mexico. The highest mountains, however, in North America, ex celling even Mount St Elias, belong to a volcanic series which crosses the table-land of southern Mexico from west to east, and of which the culminating points are Popo catepetl, 17,884 feet, and Orizaba, 17,373 feet; while Agua, in Guatemala, rises to 13,000 feet. Thus we may remark, at each extremity of the Cordillera, at its north end, towards Alaska, and at its south end, in Central America, it is encountered by a cluster of volcanoes, Mount St Elias being one of this description, which exceed the height of the Rocky Mountains. The spaces enclosed between the main trunk and branches of this immense system of mountains are several hundred miles wide, and their surface is elevated 5000 feet or 6000 feet above the sea-level, as in the Utah lake-basin, the Nevada territory, and the plateau of Anahuac, or southern Mexico, which last has an elevation of 6000 feet to 8000 feet, and has therefore a temperate climate within the tropics. An outline merely has been given of the western high land region of North America. The eastern highlands of this continent are mainly constituted by the Alleghanics or Appalachian system of mountains, with their dependen cies, which are of no great height, the Black Mountain, or Mount Guyot, in North Carolina, being the highest, at 6476 feet; but they extend nearly 2000 miles, from the Gulf of St Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, having a gene ral direction from north-east to south- Avest. The strip of land, one or two hundred miles wide, between these moun tains and the Atlantic coast, is of the greatest historical interest, as it includes the seats of all the older English settlements on this continent, which seems destined for the grandest dwelling-place of our nation. North of the Gulf of St Lawrence, through the peninsula that terminates with Labrador between the Atlantic and Hudson s Bay, the Appalachian system of mountains is continued, or resumed, in a range called the Watchish, only 1500 feet high, but in the severe climate of that region covered with perpetual enow. The Alleghanies, south of the St Law- [N. AMERICA. rence, including the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, are not so much a chain of mountains as a long plateau, crested by several different ridges, and intersected by wide valleys of con siderable elevation, but altogether on a much smaller scale than the highlands of Western America. East of the river Hudson the mountains are chiefly granitic, with rounded summits, often covered with turf or moss to the top; they assume a more regular formation in Penn sylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, but again decline and break into detached groups in approaching their southern extremity in Alabama. Next to the summit in North Carolina, which is named above, Mount Washington in New Hampshire stands pre-eminent, with an altitude of 6428 feet. The scenery of these &quot;White Mountains&quot; is very striking, especially where the Saco river cleaves its way through the barrier of granite by a cutting two miles long, in one place only 22 feet wide, between lofty pre cipitous walls. It is in the &quot; Green Mountains,&quot; succeed ing these to the west, and giving their name in French to the neighbouring State, that the prevalent form becomes that of round humps on a broad base, with firs or shrubs growing on the slopes, and with scanty grass or lichens on the summits. Both these two contrasted groups of New England mountains enter the State of Massachusetts from the north; the Hoosac and Taconic extensions of the Green Mountains rise on the west side, while the White Moun tains are continued by those of which Mount Holyoke and Wachusett are the most conspicuous; and between their parallel ranges is the Connecticut river, with the Housa- tonic, Mount Tom, and Blue Hills to overlook its lower course. These features of the country, though of far less physical importance than the towering peaks of Colorado and California, will always be associated with the genuine traditions of English rural, domestic, and social life, trans planted to the New World in the 17th century, and defended by a long struggle against stern nature and savage men in the early age of the American colonies. The natural boundary separating New England from the great and more modern State of New York is that noble river the Hudson, rising in the Adirondack Mountains, near Lake Champlain and the waters of the St Lawrence, but pouring its beautiful and useful stream directly south, to the greatest of American commercial ports and cities. This river passes close by the Catskill and Shawangunk Mountains, from which is continued the general distribu tion of the eastern American highlands along the Atlantic states, but with a more westerly declination from the coast, running through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, the borders of Tennessee, and North Carolina, the upper parts of Georgia and Alabama. It is in Virginia that the Alle ghanies have their greatest breadth, which is about 150 miles. They rise highest in North Carolina and Tennessee, and subsequently keep up a distinct line of position, across the cotton-growing States, between those of the Atlantic seaboard and those of the Lower Mississippi. This cir cumstance, it may be remarked, has had most important effects on the political and military events of late years, in the results of the attempted secession of the slavehold- ing States from the Union. Another feature of physical geography, which probably conditioned the earlier stages of that momentous civil struggle, in the disputes relating to the Missouri compromise and to the admission of Kansas as a free-soil State, is the existence of the Ozark range of mountains. These stand in the middle of the great Mis sissippi valley, stretching across from northern Texas to Arkansas and the confluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi. By the elevation they give to the soil, in latitudes between 30 and 40, as well as by the raised table-land of New Mexico and Arizona farther west, the