PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE REGION. 77 



while farther soutli it is generally respected by the streams as a divide. 

 North of our l)oundary, the range encloses the upper basin of the St. 

 Francis river, but decreases in height and disappears in the lowlands of the 

 St. Lawrence about the Ciiaudiere river. 



On the west of the Green Mountains lies the Taconic range, whose dis- 

 connected summits consist of folded schists rising from limestone valleys. 

 The range is best developed in w'estern Massachusetts and southwestern 

 Vermont, where the chief elevations are, beginning on the south, Mt. 

 Everett, 2G24 ; Greylock, 3505 ; Mt. Eolus, 3148 ; Mt. Equinox, 3872. 

 The associated valleys have their highest level at about a thousand feet in 

 Berkshire, Massachusetts. A second subordinate range lies along the 

 eastern shore of Lake Champlain ; it is built of red sand-rock, dipping to 

 the east and presenting bold bluffs to the west ; the highest peaks are Buck 

 and Snake mountains, the latter rising to 1310 feet. These two ranges are 

 traversed by many streams. 



The Hudson and Champlain valleys trend north with the strike of their 

 bedded rocks, and are doubtless guided also by the great dislocations that 

 pass between the Green Mountains on the east and the Adirondacks and 

 Catskills on the west. The Hudson still maintains an open passage to the 

 sea, holding its way even through the Highlands, where the Green Moun- 

 tains turn south-westward to New Jersey ; but the Champlain valley has 

 been converted into a lake, as will be further noted below, and its side val- 

 leys are flooded into bays Avhile its ridges stand up in promontories and 

 islands. Its waters now stand at an elevation of one hundred feet and the 

 divide south of Whitehall between the waters flowing north and south is 

 under two hundred feet above the sea. To the north, the Champlain val- 

 ley expands into the great plain of the St. Lawrence. 



The Connecticut valley is a strong depression between the mountains. 

 At the junction of the Passumpsic with the main stream the elevation is a 

 little less than 500 feet. Thence southward, the river course is remarkably 

 straight, following close to a line of ancient slates, between New Hamp- 

 shire and Vermont, and then along the middle of the Triassic sandstones to 

 central Connecticut at Middletown, where the river turns southeast through 

 the crystalline highlands, while the valley goes on to Long Island Sound at 

 New Haven. This oblique outlet is showm to be old by its gently sloping 

 sides ; it serves better than any other single feature to demonstrate that the 

 larger lines of our present drainage were determined before the land stood 

 at its present attitude and altitude. 



The valley is diversified by mountains of three kinds. In Vermont there 

 are several isolated masses of intrusive granite that rise from the lower 

 ground, of which the conical Ascutney (31G3 feet) maybe taken as the 

 finest example. In Massachusetts and Connecticut, there are ridges of trap 

 and sandstone. The latter seldom attain prominence south of Mt. Toby 



