Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/304

 of the Juniata breached the eastern slope of the Nittany-Bedford range and pushed the divide westward, they at last gained possession of the Siluro-Devonian monocline on its western slope; but beyond this it has not been possible for them yet to go. As the streams cut down deeper and encountered the Medina anticline near the core of the ridge, they sawed a passage through it; the Cambrian beds were discovered below and a valley was opened on them as the Medina cover wore away. The most important point about this is that we find in it an adequate explanation of the opposite location of water-gaps in pairs, such as characterize the branches of the Juniata below Tyrone and again below Bedford. This opposite location has been held to indicate an antecedent origin of the river that passes through the gaps, while gaps formed by self-developed streams are not thought to present such correspondence (Hilber). Yet this special case of paired gaps in the opposite walls of a breached anticline is manifestly a direct sequence of the development of the Juniata headwaters. The settling down of the main Juniata on Jack's mountain anticline below Huntingdon is another case of the same kind, in which the relatively low anticlinal crest is as yet not widely breached; the gaps below Bedford stand apart, as the crest is there higher, and hence wider opened; and the gaps below Tyrone are separated by some ten or twelve miles.

When the headwater streams captured the drainage of the Siluro-Devonian monocline on the western side of the ancient dividing anticline, they developed subsequent rectangular branches growing like a well-trained grape vine. Most of this valley has been acquired by the west branch of the Susquehanna, probably because it traversed the Medina beds less often than the Juniata. For the same reason, it may be, the West Branch has captured a considerable area of plateau drainage that must have once belonged to the Ohio, while the Juniata has none of it; but if so, the capture must have been before the Tertiary cycle, for since that time the ability of the West Branch and of the Juniata as regards such capture appears about alike. On the other hand, Castleman's river, a branch of the Monongahela, still retains the drainage of a small bit of the Siluro-Devonian monocline, at the southern border of the State, where the Juniata headwaters had the least opportunity to capture it; but the change here is probably only retarded, not prevented entirely; the Juniata will some day push the divide even here back to the Alleghany Front, the frontal bluff of the plateau.