PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE ADIBONDACKS. 199 



but a precipitous escarpment on the southeast. The Gothics are like a 

 steep wedge standing on its base, and tapering from all four sides of 

 the base to the ridge. Whiteface is a long sharp ridge, steep if not 

 actually precipitous on each side, and leading up to a peak at the south- 

 western end. Some buttresses run out from the ridge and make beauti- 

 ful cirques on its flanks. Hurricane, when viewed from the east, re- 

 sembles a sharp volcanic cone ; from the west it is flat. There are sev- 

 eral, of which Dix is the highest example, which, like Vesuvius, have 

 a small conical summit set upon a large mountainous base. Nipple- 

 top is a rather favorite name in the local nomenclature of the inhabit- 

 ants. There are several smaller mountains which have the outlines of 

 a steep haystack when viewed from certain directions, and their pre- 

 cipitous sides and doming tops fix the eye at once. Yet they may each 

 be a ridge when seen from the opposite. One very exceptional peak, 

 quite inappropriately called Sugarloaf, near Hulett's on Lake George, 

 is a circular mesa, with a flat top several acres in area and dropping 

 with steep sides to the lake slope below. It resembles a round fort 

 or old-time castle, such as St. Angelo, across the Tiber from Eome, or 

 Castle William on Governor's Island in New York Harbor. It is due 

 to flat foliation in the gneisses combined with intersecting vertical 

 joints. Not a few other mountains, although of very irregular shapes 

 at the base, yet have flat tops of considerable area. Their level sum- 

 mits appear to be the surviving remnants of some old-time peneplain 

 now faulted into relief, as will be later explained. 



The plateau portion, which makes up practically the western half, 

 is not absolutely flat, but is more or less diversified with low hills and 

 intervening broad valleys. Occasional summits give views of moderate 

 extent, but no elevations can properly be called mountains, and the 

 general term plateau is most expressive. It may well be the remnant 

 of an old peneplain, perhaps the important one widely developed in 

 Cretaceous time in the east. 



The Valleys. — The mountains can not all be described without par- 

 allel and complementary reference to the valleys, and in discussing the 

 latter the causes which have led to the production of the former may 

 best be mentioned. 



At least two marked and contrasted types of valleys may be dis- 

 tinguished. There is an old series which in part probably dates back 

 even to Precambrian time In the eastern mountains the cause of 

 their excavation is oftentimes obviously the presence of relatively soft 

 and easily eroded limestone in the series of gneisses. In several 

 notable cases the Potsdam and even later ' Paleozoic formations can 

 be traced by the remaining outliers some miles into the old crystallines, 

 and although subsequent faulting has exercised its modifying and dis- 

 guising influence, yet it has appeared to several observers that the old 



