Appalachia

“ The poor whites were not highlanders by descent, nor had they a whit of the bold, self-reliant spirit of our western pioneers. They never entered Appalachia until after it had been won and settled by a far manlier race, and even then they went only in driblets. The theory that the southern mountains were peopled mainly by outcasts or refugees from old settlements in the lowlands rests on no other basis than imagination. ”

“ Deterioration of the mountain people began as soon as population began to press upon the limits of subsistence. At first, naturally, the best people among the mountaineers were attracted to the best lands. And there to-day, in the generous river valleys, we find a class of [Pg 370] citizens superior to the average mountaineers that we have been considering in this book. But the number and extent of such valleys was narrowly limited. The United States topographers report that in Appalachia, as a whole, the mountain slopes occupy 90 per cent. ”

“ The Appalachians are not high enough seriously to affect the climate or landscape of the region. Their flanks slope gradually down to the sea, furrowed by rivers which from the first gave character to the colonies.In New England, where there is an abundance of good harbors, the coast is narrow and the streams are short and rapid, with stretches of navigable water between the waterfalls which turn the wheels of industry for a busy, ingenious, and thrifty people. ”

“ It is a noisy, busy place, with wide streets, swift electric cars, and blazing furnaces. To see it grow is like watching a new Pittsburg rise up in the heart of the South.
From the Berkshire country at the north to the southern end of the Appalachians, there are to-day thriving towns and fertile fields. No longer does the mountain wall cut off the products of the West from the markets of the East. Yet hardly a hundred years ago the eastern strip of country was practically shut off from the whole territory drained by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. ”

“ Apart from the wisdom of thus preserving a vast tract of forest land and conserving the water-supply of many important rivers, there is, in this idea of an Appalachian National Park, an appeal to the aesthetic side as well—to that love of wild, undisturbed nature and of mountain scenery that seems to be a natural instinct in large numbers of our people. ”

“ These medicinal waters, together with the purity and energizing character of the air, has long given the mountains, especially in North Carolina and Virginia, a high repute as a health resort.
Vegetation and Fauna. The Appalachian region is covered with a dense forest growth where it has not been removed by man, forest trees covering the mountain slopes practically to their summits, except where the barren rocks furnish no soil. ”

“ East of the Appalachian is too good for you; we want it. Go West; go West. We will give no rest to the soles of your feet.” Do we want the Black Hills? Migrate! We will surround you with a cordon of soldiers and a cordon of Government agents, who will eat the life out of you. ”

“ This wonderful range, which also goes by the name of the Appalachians, has, in my opinion, no rival in the American Rockies as regards the loveliness of its scenery and the infinite variations of colour of its slopes. "The best scenery in the world, sir," an American would say, and he would not be so very far wrong either. ”

“ Between the ridges and in pockets or coves of the mountains are lands that are easily cultivated, and in many places the mountains, when cleared, are fertile to their summits. The scenic culmination of the Appalachians is Blowing Rock in North Carolina, 3,500 feet above the sea, where the rifleman without stirring from one spot may drop his bullets into the Catawba flowing into the Atlantic, the New, which is a head water of the Ohio, and the Watauga, a branch of the Tennessee. ”

“ These mountain ridges maintain a remarkably uniform altitude, gradually increasing from both directions toward the central mass in western North Carolina. Lying between the comparatively narrow and regular wall of the Blue Ridge and Alleghanian ranges, west of it, is the great Appalachian Valley, which is a characteristic feature of the topography, for it extends the entire length of the mountain system. ”

“ The Appalachians extend from Canada into Georgia and Alabama, nearly parallel with the Atlantic, 20 to 100 miles inland, and known from north to south as the Height of Land in Maine, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, the Adirondacks and Catskills in New York, the Berkshires in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Highlands in New Jersey and the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania and the south, where they have parallel ranges, as the Blue Ridge. ”

“ The middle section of the Appalachians, rather arbitrarily limited by the Hudson and the James rivers, may be described first because The Middle Appalachians. it contains the best representation of the three longitudinal belts of which the mountain system as a whole is composed. The mountain-making compression of the heavy series of Palaeozoic strata has here produced a marvellous series of rock folds with gently undulating axes, trending north-east and south-west through a belt 70 or 80 m. wide; no less wonderful is the form that has been produced by the processes of sculpture. ”

“ High and erect these young mountains stand to this day, their sharp angles and rocky contours vouching for their youth, in strange contrast with the shrunken forms of the old Adirondacks, Green Mountains, and Appalachians, whose lowered heads and rounded shoulders attest the weight of ages. ”

“ It is difficult now to appreciate the pressure once exerted on the Appalachian highlands by human settlement. Back when land meant livelihood to a nation of agrarian people, the gradual pressure from the eastern coast, across the Piedmont, reached the Appalachian chain. ”

“ Nowhere do they invade the region of perpetual snow, and glaciers are absent. These statements are true also for all of the mountains on the eastern side of the continent to the south of Hudson Strait.
The Appalachians abound in beautiful scenery, but, except about a few of the very highest domes and ridges, have 82 little of the stern ruggedness which is typical of truly great mountains. Their countless valleys are now mostly cleared of their primitive forests and under cultivation. To a large extent also even the steep hillsides are tilled. ”

“ The Blue Ridge, along the eastern side, consists of layers of crystalline rocks, the oldest known in the Appalachians, that have suffered so great an amount of metamorphism as to render the determination of their exact age a matter of considerable difficulty. ”

“ The fact that several large rivers rising to the northwest of the northern Appalachians flow directly across or through the numerous ridges composing the system in deep, narrow valleys, and the similar behaviour of the streams rising on the eastern border of the southern Appalachians, but flowing westward, are among the most interesting features of the entire region. ”

“ As the prevailing winds come from the southwest, they do not bring much moisture, and the rainfall and snowfall are not excessive, though greater upon the heights of the central ranges than in the lower areas outside. The rainfall for the year averages about 40 inches throughout most of the Appalachian region, but in the southern section increases to 60 or 70 inches. Droughts frequently occur at the north, but seldom at the south. On the whole, the summer climate of the Appalachian region is delightful, and its charms are becoming more and more appreciated by summer visitors. ”

“ The Appalachian includes all those of North America except the Mexicans, together with those of South America north of the Amazon and east of the Andes. They are described thus. “The head is rounded, the nose large, salient, and aquiline, the eyes dark-brown, with little or no obliquity of position, the mouth large and straight, the teeth nearly vertical, and the whole face triangular. The neck is long, the chest broad, but rarely deep, the body and limbs muscular, seldom disposed to fatness.” ”

“ Today the more rugged parts of the Appalachian system are chiefly important as a hindrance to communication. On the Atlantic slope of the old crystalline band there are great areas of gentle relief where an abundant population can dwell. Westward on the edges of the plateau and the plains beyond a still greater population can find a living, but in the intervening space there is opportunity for only a few. The great problem is to cross the mountains as easily as possible. ”

“ Great faults and overthrusts are common, and add to the difficulty of unraveling the structure of the district. In the Appalachian Valley the geological structure is also quite complex, though the strata are not so intensely metamorphosed. The rocks are limestones, shales, and sandstones, and they lie in closed folds that become more open toward the western side of the valley. These folds are peculiar in that their eastward slopes are always steeper than the westward. ”

“ The country in which we were, seemed made on purpose to lose one’s-self in. The road winds along at some distance from the river, frequently out of sight of it; the shore is uneven, covered with crags and hillocks; nothing like a landmark to be seen, or a mountain to guide one’s-self by, except occasionally, when one gets a peep at the Appalachians rising out of the blue distance. ”

“ Trace the Appalachian summits from their first uprearing at Tracadiegash or Gaspé, to that last laurel-hill near Tupelo in Mississippi—on the left of you lies history, character, local identity; on the right that great common place, that vast central prairie, lying stolidly spread out between the Rockies and the Blue Ridge, producing food. ”

“ The strata have been eaten away to form valleys, or left standing as
ridges, giving the whole tract a deeply channelled character, the ridges consisting of sandstone and dolomite and the valleys of friable schists. These all trend in the prevalent direction of the Appalachian upheaval, from north-east to south-west. ”

“ Produced by long-continued subaerial decay and erosion, in later Cretaceous times this lowland extended from the Atlantic Ocean well toward the interior of North America; since then the whole continent has been generally elevated, and by successive steps the Appalachian belt has been raised to form a wide but relatively low arch. The crosswise courses of the greater rivers result from the rivers being older than the mountains, which indeed have been produced by circumdenudation. ”

“ No European chain of mountains affords so remarkable an illustration of the persistency of such flexures for a great distance as the Appalachians before alluded to, and none has been studied and described by many good observers with more accuracy. ”

“ Between the two mountain systems extends a great central area of plains, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico northward, far beyond the national boundary, to the Arctic Ocean. The rivers that drain the Atlantic slope of the Appalachians are comparatively short; those that drain the Pacific slope include only two, the Columbia and the Colorado, which rise far inland, near the easternmost members of the Cordilleran system, and flow through plateaus and intermont basins to the ocean. ”

“ In this southern region, however, the greater height and width of the Appalachian mountain system, including its elevated valleys, is a very great advantage to this region in all that concerns its fitness for the use of man. The climate of one half of the country south of the James and Ohio Rivers and east of the Mississippi is purified and refreshed by the elevations of this noble mountain system. ”

“ The geologist tells us that the earliest uplift of the Appalachian region after the close of the Carboniferous period was preceded or accompanied by a folding of the earth's crust into mountainous wave-like arches; upon these erosion at once began and these formed our first mountains. Where they were highest the geologist may infer from geologic structure and the outcrops of the oldest rocks; but the facts for that inference are not yet all gathered and it can only be said that the heights of that ancient topography were probably as great over the valley of Tennessee as over the Unaka chain. ”

“ In the long valleys between the ranges are rich farming regions.
On the east of the Appalachian ranges are foot-hills known as the Piedmont Belt. Between the Piedmont Belt and the Atlantic ocean is a strip of lowland called the Atlantic Coastal plain. West of the mountains are plateaus which slope down to the Great Central plain.
3. Rocky Mountains.—In the western part of the United States are the Rocky mountains. They cross the country from north to south. They are grander than the Appalachians. Many of them are more than two miles high. ”

“ Dry gravelly slopes and ridges of the Appalachian Mountains from southern Pennsylvania to North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia, sometimes ascending to elevations of 3000°, with isolated outlying stations in eastern Pennsylvania, western New Jersey, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia; often forming toward the southern limits of its range pure forests of considerable extent. ”

“ The rocks which underlie the Great Valley are of the same geological age as those of which the Appalachian belt is composed farther north, but more closely compressed together, and complicated by great longitudinal faults, the whole area being a comparatively depressed one, and not broken by marked ridges. ”

“ Tens of thousands made their way northward along well recognized routes to the free States and to Canada: the Appalachian ranges with their far-spreading spurs furnished the friendliest of these highways; the Mississippi Valley with its marshlands, forests, and swamps provided less secure hiding places ”