RETURN FROM PITTSBURG 293 



States better housed and clad, who appeared to have 

 given so much attention to the mountains. However, 

 Mr. Husband was over-interested in the regularity 

 and straight line of the Alleghany which he compared 

 to a solid wall, reckoning off-hand that the foot-hills 

 of the mountains signified neither more nor less than 

 the little inequalities made by the protruding stones 

 of a wall. He estimated the width of the Alleghany 

 as from the foot of the Dry Ridge or Willis's Mount- 

 ain to the western foot of the Chesnut Ridge, (thus 

 including the Laurel-hill), counting this one single 

 mountain-wall, and hence some 80 miles in breadth. 

 Then taking the one, two, and three-mile jutties as so 

 many eightieth parts of the whole, he compared them 

 to the projecting stone-points of a wall, say four feet 

 in thickness, and found that the apparently formless 

 off-shoots from the chief mountain wall are merely to 

 be regarded in relation as so many jutting stone-points, 

 of half an inch or more, in a wall of the thickness 

 mentioned, and therefore are quite insignificant. I 

 could at the moment make nothing of this vindicatory 

 estimate. He then spoke much of Woodward's and 

 Burnet's + systems, of the central fire and other igne- 

 ous and setherial hypotheses, and his talk became con- 

 tinually more astonishing. But among many just and 

 reasonable observations he made, it was plain that his 

 ideas as a whole turned about an axis and were directed 

 towards a main object which I could not by question- 

 ing discover. He mentioned that he had travelled 

 more than 400 miles along the Alleghany southwards, 

 and would within a brief space undertake a similar 

 journey, in which he most courteously invited me to 

 join him. I enquired what was the purpose of this 



