Allegheny Mountains

“ Through the broad bed of mountains that divide the Atlantic from the Western States—traversed by our route for 190 miles—natural gorges are found, cutting all of them to their bases, except the Allegheny, which is passed with comparatively easy gradients, and without encountering difficulties of a very unusual character. ”

“ After ascending the Allegheny nearly to the top, as far as human sight could reach, in every direction, there were chains of mountains, occasionally checkered by small farms and low bottoms, covered with forest trees. ”

“ The grades for reaching the summit do not exceed eighty feet to the mile. The elevation of the vast plain from which the Rocky mountains arise, is so great, that the mountains, when they are reached, present no obstacles so formidable as those offered by the Allegheny ranges to several lines of railroads which cross them. * * * The line of the railroad up the eastern slope of the Rocky mountains is not so difficult as those upon which several great works have been constructed in the eastern states. ”

“ Volume XI Pennsylvania Folk Lore Series
“The country east of the Mississippi was inhabited by a very powerful nation. * * * Those people called themselves Alligewi. * * * The Allegheny River and Mountains have been named after them. * * * The Lenni-Lenape still call the river Alligewi Sipu, the river of the Alligewi, but it is generally known by its Iroquois name–Ohe-Yu–which the French had literally translated into La Belle Riviere, The Beautiful River, though a branch of it retains the ancient name Allegheny.” ”

“ Beyond the Allegheny ranges, which are gradually broken down into their lower foothills, and then to an almost monotonous level, the expansive prairie lands stretch towards the setting sun. From their prolific agriculture has come much of the wealth and prosperity 402 of the United States. The rivers flowing out of the mountains seek the Mississippi Valley, thus reaching the sea through the Great Father of Waters. ”

“ The road ran between the "sand stretch," which, of course, was now frozen and covered with snow, and the quarry. The approach to this was sheltered, fortunately for the concealment of the boy rescuers, by a growth of timber extending down the mountain slope to the road.
Ernie called a halt about two hundred yards from the point in the road which appeared the most favorable place for an ambush.
"Let's leave the road and make our way through the trees," he suggested.
"There comes the automobile!" exclaimed Paul, excitedly, pointing down the highway to the southwest. ”

“ We are going to spend the vacation in the mountains, with the cave as headquarters. Will you have the stove hauled there and set up and keep a fire in it a good deal of the time to dry the place out thoroughly? We will come to Hollyhill on an early train, so as to have plenty of time to haul the mattresses and other outfittings to the cave and get it ready for habitation. We will all have guns and will have some great times shooting game. Of course, you will be in on all this."
Paul did as requested. ”

“ The Alleghany Mountains rise west of the valley in bolder sculpturing than that of the Blue Ridge, the side toward the great interior valley, the “Alleghany front,” being steep and rugged; but on the side of the Mississippi Valley the slope is gradual, descending westward in lessening ridges from the plateau which marks the summit region; this configuration is due to the fact that the stratified rocks (see below) incline westward, exhibiting their upturned edges in precipices toward the east. ”

“ Beyond Cressons the road begins the ascent of the Alleghenies, and in doing so makes many turns, and from the right hand of the road a gorgeous spectacle is presented looking down into the valleys, where the houses are dwarfed by distance until they look like mole-hills, and men are not distinguishable. There are horseshoe curves as sharp and graceful as any on the roads that climb over western mountains, while the scene is often more picturesque because of the high state of cultivation of the mountain slopes. ”

“ This inequality of the surface is not confined to the Allegheny mountain; the country between the Monongahela and Ohio rivers, although less elevated, is not better adapted for the bed of a road, being filled with impediments of hills and hollows, which present considerable difficulties, and wants that super-abundance and convenience of stone which is found in the mountain. ”

“ Yet here, as in the neighbourhood of the natural bridge, are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles, and have never been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and mountains, which must have shaken the earth itself to its centre. (2) .—The height of our mountains has not yet been estimated with any degree of exactness. The Alleghaney being the great ridge which divides the waters of the Atlantic from those of the Missisipi, its summit is doubtless more elevated above the ocean than that of any other mountain. ”

“ Standing in view of the junction of these magnificent rivers, meeting almost from opposite extremities of the continent, and each impressed with the peculiar character of the regions from which it descends, we seem to imagine ourselves capable of comprehending at one view all that vast region between the summits of the Alleghanies and of the Rocky Mountains, and feel a degree of impatience at finding all our prospects limited by an inconsiderable extent of low muddy bottom lands, and the unrelieved, unvaried, gloom of the forest. ”

“ This valley intermediate is one of the most fertile and admirably situated in the world; it extends from New Jersey to Georgia, with an average width of about forty miles and a length of about six hundred, having an area of over twenty thousand square miles. The Alleghany Mountains on the west are composed principally of round, symmetrical ridges, often like gigantic works of art, so uniform are their arches; none of them rise to more than five thousand feet above the sea, and their surfaces are so little broken that they generally afford tillable though as yet generally untilled land. ”

“ The Allegany Mountains is a name given to a range of several ridges of mountains stretching from Vermont to Carolina, of which one ridge alone is properly called the Allegany Mountain. These ridges are nearly 170 miles in width; and the middle one, or the Allegany, forms the backbone of the rest. The ridge which first presented itself to our view, is called in Howell's Map the South Mountain. The road (which here began to be very rocky and stony) is carried over the least elevated part of the mountain, and from its summit we beheld that beautiful limestone valley so recommended by Brissot. ”

“ Going along the top of the Long Ridge, or as the natives call it, the Ridge Pole, we were astonished at its hight and singular formation—it being, I believe, the most elevated point of land in the Alleghany mountains, though my data on this subject is by no means positive. The summit of the ridge is extremely narrow—being not more, in many places, than six or ten feet in width—the descent on the west side being regular, but steep, while on the east it is little else than a precipice for a thousand feet down. ”

“ The Alleghany Plateau is the north-westernmost division of the Appalachian system; it is an eroded mass of sedimentary rock sloping north-westward to the Prairie and Lake Plains and reaching south-west from the south-western part of New York state through Tennessee and into Alabama. ”

“ They say that the lumberman has looked upon the Cheat Mountain country and seen that it is good, and I hear that some wealthy gentlemen have been there and made a game preserve. There must be lumber and, I suppose, sport, but some things one could wish were ordered otherwise. Looking back upon it through the haze of near half a century, I see that region as a veritable realm of enchantment; the Alleghenies as the Delectable Mountains. I note again their dim, blue billows, ridge after ridge interminable, beyond purple valleys full of sleep, "in which it seemed always afternoon." ”

“ The Appalachian mountain system cut off the seaboard of the United States from the interior. From the beginning, the Alleghenies profoundly influenced the course of American history, and at one time even endangered the permanency of the Union. In our own day the railroad has so reduced the importance of these mountains that it is difficult for us to realize the part which they once played in our development. Although Webster boasted that there were no Alleghenies in his politics, we have already seen [Footnote: See chaps, iii., vi., above.] ”

“ If then we attribute these convulsions to the same causes which have elsewhere generated earthquakes and volcanoes, is it probable that this is the only point in the Alleghany range thus acted on? The fact that nothing else of the kind has been, as far as I know, published to the world, is by no means conclusive, since the disturbances here have not only been unnoticed by writers, but are even unknown to nine-tenths of those persons living within fifty miles of the spot. Is it then improbable that different points of the great mountain range are sensibly acted on from year to year? ”

“ If you will look at a map, you can see for yourselves that the only region where the people of all this big section can get fresh air during the heated term, without a long journey for it, is this one line of mountains, called Alleghanies in the lump, but in reality including the Blue Ridge, the Cumberlands, your Smokies and Blacks, and others about here. ”

“ The Alleghany mountains in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, are made up principally of rocks belonging to the transition class, and among these sandstone is perhaps of more frequent occurrence than any other aggregate. We are aware that Maclure has not considered the sandstones of the Alleghany mountains generally, as belonging to the old red sandstone formation of Werner ”

“ It is true that there are a few localities within the Alleghany range, on the Green and White Mountains, and in parts of Maine, where it is evident that local glaciers have had a temporary existence; but even throughout this eastern coast-range the elevation of the mountains is so slight, and their trend so uniform in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction through twenty degrees of latitude, that the localization of the phenomena is less marked [Pg 88] than in Norway, Great Britain, or Switzerland. ”

“ Springs were everywhere on this steep face of the mountain, bearing to the surface the water from the snows that fell in the higher lands above, sank into the ground, and percolating through rock fissures, found its way to daylight again wherever a crack or seam in the rock permitted. ”

“ Surely the spot is most agreeable for health and enjoyment to the great homogeneous people who are nearly evenly divided in numbers by the Alleghany range. The Alleghany mountains have hardly commenced their material development, and being full of coal, oil, iron, and the more precious minerals, the time is approaching when that mountain range will contain on its slopes the densest population in America, and its mineral resources be worked from the vicinity of Buffalo to Alabama. ”

“ At times the ravines are deep and the river tortuous, and again it meanders across the rich flat bottom lands of a broad valley. In its winding course among these mountain ranges, this renowned river passes through and displays almost the whole geological formation of Pennsylvania. The primary rocks are to the eastward of the Susquehanna, and the bituminous coal measures begin on the western Allegheny slope, so that the river cuts into a rock stratification over six miles in thickness, as one after another formation comes to the surface. ”

“ The mountain labors incessantly to re-create, but what can it do against such fearful odds? and what shall we do when it can no longer furnish pine to build our homes, or wood to warm them? Delve deeper and deeper under the Alleghanies? In about two hundred and fifty years the noble forests, which set the early discoverers wild with enthusiasm, have been steadily driven farther and farther back into the interior, until “the forest primeval” exists not nearer than a hundred miles inland. Then the great northern wilderness began at the sea-coast. It is now in the vicinity of Lake Umbagog. ”

“ Look down, ye Alleghenies, into the Conemaugh vale,
And see the rising waters, and hear the bitter wail;
The swollen streams now empty their contents in the lake,
The waters rise to kiss the skies and walls of granite shake.
Oh, hear that awful booming; the dam has given way!
An avalanche of water God's hand alone can stay!
Oh, leap, ye hills, before it and keep this torrent back,
Or devastated towns and homes will mark its onward track!
Look down, ye Alleghenies, upon this vale of woe;
Ten thousand corpses at your base their soulless faces show ”

“ For a length and breadth of many miles the ground never falls below 9,500 feet. The vast central snow-field feeds glaciers pouring to every point of the compass. The highest peaks, such as the Carè Alto and Adamello, are merely slight elevations of the rim of this uplifted plain. Seen from within they are mere hummocks; from without they are very noble mountains falling in great precipices towards the wild glacier-closed glens which run up to their feet. ”

“ In many particulars there is a manifest resemblance between the Alleghanies, and the comparatively inconsiderable group known by the name of the Ozark mountains. They are parallel in direction, making an angle of about forty degrees with the great range of the Andes. They agree in having their most elevated portions made up of rocks of recent formation. It is well known, that, from the highly primitive gneiss rock at Philadelphia, there is a gradual ascent, across strata more and more recent, to the rocks of the coal formation, about the summit of the Alleghanies. ”