Catskill Mountains

“ The panorama of the mountains, as seen from Catskill village, is not a view of a single chain, but takes the eastern end of the border chains and the short range bearing the High Peak, which rises between the two. The Catskills do not present prominent examples of anticlinal and synclinal folds or arches, or fragments of arches, as in ordinary mountain-chains, but are masses of piled-up strata, seldom deviating notably from their original horizontal position. ”

“ The Catskill Mountains are of this type, while real mountains may be so worn down that you would take them for plains. You see, with the Hills and the Mountains, as with other royal families, it isn't the importance of the individual that counts, but the ancestry. ”

“ In still other cases mountains of considerable area and altitude have resulted from erosion of uplifted regions where the uplift has been practically unaccompanied by either folding, faulting, or igneous activity. Any low-lying area, regardless of the character of its rocks, structure, or previous history, may be notably upraised and simply subjected to erosion. An excellent illustration is afforded by the Catskill Mountains of New York, where numerous deep valleys and narrow ridges have been carved out of upraised nearly horizontal strata. ”

“ The Catskill Mountains, for example, have as their summit layers some three thousand feet of coarse red sandstones of this series, whose structure is that of river deposits, and whose few fossils are chiefly of fresh-water types. The Chemung is therefore composed of delta deposits, more or less worked over by the sea. The bulk of the Chemung equals that of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. To furnish this immense volume of sediment a great mountain range, or highland, must have been upheaved where the Appalachian lowland long had been. ”

“ You can lie on your pillow at Catskill, and see the god of day look upon you from behind the pinnacles of the White Mountains in New-Hampshire, hundreds of miles away. Noble prospect! As the great orb heaves up in ineffable grandeur, he seems rising from beneath you, and you fancy that you have attained an elevation where may be seen the motion of the world. No intervening land to limit the view, you seem suspended in mid-air, without one obstacle to check the eye. ”

“ Above, the western shore for a long distance is lined with apple orchards and vineyards, while the eastern bank for over thirty miles is a succession of villas interspersed with hamlets. Moving northward, the noble Catskill range comes into full view, gradually changing from distant gray to nearer blue, and then to green with the closer approach. Along the river for 178 many miles, where these magnificent mountains give such a grand front outlook, there are a series of old Knickerbocker estates, many occupied by the descendants of the early settlers. ”

“ The Appalachian mountains extend in several ridges across the middle district from southwest to northeast, the highest elevations being those of the Catskill group in southeastern New York, where Slide Mountain towers 4,205 feet above sea-level. ”

“ The sunrises in the Catskills are rendered uniquely beautiful by the peculiar formation of the ground, and from the same reason the thunder storms are often thrilling in character and awful in their magnificence. Waterfalls of all sizes and kinds, brooks, with scenery along the banks of every description, forests, meadows, and lofty peaks make monotony impossible, and give to the Catskill region an air of majesty which is not easy to describe on paper. ”

“ The highest peak of the range is Slide Mountain, in the western Catskills, at the head of the Big Indian Valley, rising forty-two hundred and five feet. A large portion of this mountain, including the crest, is a New York State reservation, and from its top six States are in view. These Catskill peaks are built up of huge and 190 jagged piles of crags and broken stone, through which the torrents have carved the "Cloves." The stratified rocks are easily split into layers, and they furnish the towns along the Hudson with much of the flagging used for footwalks. ”

“ These mountains are unlike any others in America, in that while every other range possesses peaks with jagged points, generally of stones tumbled in confusion, the Catskills have gracefully rounded summits, which, though sometimes rising to a height of four thousand feet, yet exhibit few effects of aberrant forces ”

“ We think of the Catskills as mountains, but their steep cliffs and table-topped heights show that they are really the remnants of a plateau, the nearly horizontal strata of which have not yet been worn away. ”

“ In point of age, these mountains beside the Catskills are like infants beside their great-grandfathers. Yet it is a singular contradiction that in their outlines old mountains look young, and young mountains look old. The only youthful feature about young mountains is that they carry their heads very high, and the only old feature about old mountains is that they have a look of repose and calmness and peace. All the gauntness, leanness, angularity, and crumbling decrepitude are with the young mountains; all the smoothness, plumpness, graceful flowing lines of youth are with the old mountains. ”

“ The Catskills or Blue Mountains, as they are known from this distance, fill the western horizon, while the beautiful landscapes sloping down toward the river are so exquisite that the traveler involuntarily pauses to take it all in. For a goodly portion of the time the road keeps well up along a side hill, giving an extensive view over the valley beneath and to the mountains beyond—the autumn colors and softness are like the fairy dreams of childhood. ”

“ Though a part of the Appalachian system, the range appears in it as an anomaly; for, while the other Appalachian ranges trend from the southwest to the northeast, the Catskills run at right angles to them, or from the southeast to the northwest. The Catskills also surpass all the neighboring ranges of mountains by two thousand feet of height. Professor Guyot has devoted the summer vacations of seventeen years to their examination. ”

“ The old Mountain House, standing upon its ledge of rock, from which one looks down upon a map of a considerable portion of New York and New England, with the lake in the rear, and heights on each side that offer charming walks to those who have in contemplation views of nature or of matrimony, has somewhat lost its importance since the vast Catskill region has come to the knowledge of the world. A generation ago it was the centre of attraction, and it was understood that going to the Catskills was going there. ”

“ As a result of the excavation of valleys, plains may be far from flat. Generally speaking, the valleys are deep in proportion as the land is high. The valleys of plateaus, on the whole, are deeper than those of plains, and the ridges and hills between them are therefore higher. If the ridges or hills be very high, they may be called mountains. For example, the Catskills are simply the big hills left in the erosion of the plateau which once existed where the mountains now are. The depressions between the mountainous hills have been worn out by running water. ”

“ The more primitive rocks of the Highlands, the Adirondacs, and the White Mountains do not offer such numerous and picturesque sheets of falling water as the red sandstone of the Catskills.
Starting from Overlook Mountain, whence the view is said to be magnificent, and proceeding northward, we first reach the Plattekill Clove, up whose steep and wooded cleft winds a wild road, chiefly used for quarrying purposes, and down whose abrupt declivity the Plattekill leaps from crag to crag in a series of fine falls and cascades. ”

“ The very base of its mountains rarely exceeds six hundred feet above tide. "No wonder, then," says Professor Guyot, "that the aspect of the Catskills is nowhere more imposing than from the Hudson River and the surrounding lowlands, from which their whole height is seized at a glance, and that it has been thus far believed that the highest points were found among the mountains of the eastern end." ”

“ At home, one thinks of a mountain as either a vast pile of barren, frowning rocks and precipices, or [7] else a steep acclivity covered with a tangle of primitive forest timber. But here, the mountains are high, grassy sheep-walks, smooth, treeless, rounded, and as green as if dipped in a fountain of perpetual spring. I did not wish my Catskills any different; but I wondered what would need to be done to them to make them look like these Scotch highlands. Cut away their forests, rub down all inequalities in their surfaces, pulverizing their loose bowlders ”

“ The fact, that there was once the summit level of this great valley, is a stubborn one, however difficult it may be to reconcile it with reasonable causes and results; and the mind of feeble man is at once almost paralyzed in endeavouring to comprehend the process by which the adjacent country, from this to the base of the Rocky Mountains, as well as in other directions, could have been swept away ”

“ Katahdin,—the more I saw of it, the more grateful I was to the three powers who enabled me to see it: to Nature for building it, to Iglesias for guiding me to it, to myself for going.
We sat upon the deck and let Katahdin grow,—and sitting, talked of mountains, somewhat to this effect:—
Mountains are the best things to be seen. Within the keen outline of a great peak is packed more of distance, of detail, of light and shade, of color, of all the qualities of space, than vision can get in any other way. No one who has not seen mountains knows how far the eye can reach. ”

“ On the shore of the main-land, west of Mount Desert, is Blue Hill, another lone mountain. Katahdin is still another astray, of grander proportions, it is true, but belonging to this family of lost mountains. Although they appear a continuous chain when massed by distance, the Mount [Pg 30] Desert range is, in reality, broken into little family groups, as exhibited on the map. ”

“ The northeast border chain begins at South Mountain, near the Catskill Mountain House, which is 2,497 feet high, culminates at Black Dome, 4,003 feet high, and ends at Leonard Hill, 2,649 feet high, showing a similar rapid rise for a quarter of the distance, and a gradual fall toward the western end with the central range. ”

“ The heights increase regularly from the Overlook to Hunter Mountain, one quarter of the way back, which, 4,038 feet high, is the highest point of the northern Catskills, overtopping High Peak, which has borne that name, by nearly four hundred feet. From this point the heights diminish to the Utsyantha, at the western end of the chain, whose height, 3,205 feet, is not greatly different from that of Overlook, 3,150 feet. The High Peak range, which is sandwiched between this range and the northern range, is only six miles long, and is distinguished by its High Peak, 3,664 feet high. ”

“ Standing here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless, as if the work of creation were done. But in the midst of this outer steadfastness we know there is incessant motion and change. Ever and anon, avalanches are falling from yonder peaks. These cliff-bound glaciers, seemingly wedged and immovable, are flowing like water and grinding the rocks beneath them. The lakes are lapping their granite shores and wearing them away, and every one of these rills and young rivers is fretting the air into music, and carrying the mountains to the plains. ”

“ The sun is already high above the green-clad, rock-capped, rugged mountains on the eastern side of the valley, when we came out upon the piazza to take our first daylight view of Calistoga. It is glorious! Eastward, a long range of mountains, fantastic in form, abrupt and rugged, skirts the whole horizon. A long mesa, bench, or table, on the summit shows where the great river of lava flowed away from the crater southward towards the Bay of Suisun ages ago. ”

“ During the day there was a grand procession of thunderclouds filing along over the northern Catskills, and letting down veils of rain and enveloping them. From such an elevation one has the same view of the clouds that he does from the prairie or the ocean. They do not seem to rest across and to be upborne by the hills, but they emerge out of the dim west, thin and vague, and grow and stand up as they get nearer and roll by him, on a level but invisible highway, huge chariots of wind and storm. ”

“ We may, therefore, conceive the original form of the Catskills to have been that of a high plateau, a mass of elevations forming a part of the Appalachian plateau region which extends west of the Alleghanies from south Virginia, and fills nearly all the western portion of the State of New York south of Lake Ontario and the Mohawk River. ”

“ In the preceding evening I had seen the summits of new and yet higher mountains, the Catskills, by which I might hope to climb to heaven again, and had set my compass for a fair lake in the south-west, which lay in my way, for which I now steered, descending the mountain by my own route, on the side opposite to that by which I had ascended, and soon found myself in the region of cloud and drizzling rain, and the inhabitants affirmed that it had been a cloudy and drizzling day wholly. ”

“ In the dry midsummer of the lower portion of the range the withered hills and valleys seem to lie as empty and expressionless as dead shells on a shore. Even the highest mountains may be found occasionally dull and uncommunicative as if in some way they had lost countenance and shrunk to less than half their real stature. But when the lightnings crash and echo in the cañons, and the clouds come down wreathing and crowning their bald snowy heads, every feature beams with expression and they rise again in all their imposing majesty. ”