Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/245

 and Williamsport, the East Branch from Wilkes-Barre in the Wyoming basin, and the Juniata from the Broad Top region, south of Huntingdon. The Anthracite basins lie on the right, enclosed by zigzag ridges of Pocono and Pottsville sandstone; the Plateau, trenched by the West Branch of the Susquehanua is in the northwest. Medina sandstone forms most of the central ridges.

3. The drainage of Pennsylvania.—The greater part of the Alleghany plateau is drained westward into the Ohio, and with this we shall have little to do. The remainder of the plateau drainage reaches the Atlantic by two rivers, the Delaware and the Susquehanna, of which the latter is the more special object of our study. The North and West Branches of the Susquehanna rise in the plateau, which they traverse in deep valleys; thence they enter the district of the central ranges, where they unite and flow in broad lowlands among the even-crested ridges. The Juniata brings the drainage of the Broad Top region to the main stream just before their confluent current cuts across the marginal Blue Mountain. The rock-rimmed basins of the anthracite region are drained by small branches of the Susquehanna northward and westward, and by the Schuylkill and Lehigh to the south and east. The Delaware, which traverses the plateau between the Anthracite region and the Catskill Mountain front, together with the Lehigh, the Schuylkill, the little Swatara and the Susquehanna, cut the Blue Mountain by fine water-gaps, and cross the great limestone valley.. The Lehigh then turns eastward and joins the Delaware, and the Swatara turns westward to the Susquehanna; but the Delaware, Schuylkill and Susquehanna all continue across South Mountain and the Newark belt, and into the low plateau of schists beyond. The Schuylkill unites with the Delaware near Philadelphia, just below the inner margin of the coastal plain; the Delaware and the Susquehanna continue in their deflected estuaries to the sea. All of these rivers and many of their side streams are at present sunk in small valleys of moderate depth and width, below the general surface of the lowlands, and are more or less complicated with terrace gravels.

4. Previous studies of Appalachian drainage.—There have been no special studies of the history of the rivers of Pennsylvania in the light of what is now known of river development. A few recent essays of rather general character as far as our rivers are concerned, may be mentioned.