OF THE UNITED STATES. 417 



&c. &c. the eastern edge of the primitive from Boston to the 

 bay of Penobscot is bounded by the ocean. 



The north western boundary of this extensive range is mark? 

 ed by a line running to the eastward of lake Champlain, twen- 

 ty or thirty miles westward of Connecticut river, to the west- 

 ward of Stockbridge, twelve miles east of Poukepsy, skirting the 

 high lands, then crossing the Hudson river at Plulipstown, by 

 Sparta about ten or fifteen miles east of Eastown, on the Dela- 

 ware, three miles east of Reading on the Schuylkill, and a lit- 

 tle west of Middletown on the Susquehannah, where it joins 

 the blue ridge, and continues along it to Magotty Gap; from 

 thence to four miles east of the lead mines at Austinville, and 

 following a south western direction, by the stoney and iron 

 mountains, six miles S. E. ot the warm springs in Buncomb 

 county, North Carolina, to the eastward of Hightown on the 

 Co usee river, and a little to the westward of the Talapousee 

 river, it meets the alluvial near the Alabama river, which runs 

 into the bay of Mexico at Mobile. 



In general the strata of this primitive rock run from a north 

 and south to a north east and south west direction, and dip al- 

 most universally to the south east at an angle of more than 45 

 degrees from the horizon; the highest elevation is towards the 

 north western limits, which gradually descends to the south east 

 where it is covered by the alluvial, and the greatest mass, as 

 well as the highest mountains, are found towards the northern 

 and southern extremities of the north western boundaries. 



Tbe outline of the mountains of this formation is generally 

 circular waving, in detached masses, with rounded flat tops, as 

 the white hills to the north, or conically waving in small 

 pyramidal tops, as the peaks of Otter, and the ranges ot luiis 

 to the south ; (has the climate any agency in the forms of the 

 northern and southern mountains r) their height does not ap- 

 pear to exceed six thousand feet above the level ol the sea, 

 except perhaps the white hills, it is even probable that those 

 mountains are not much higher. 



Within the limits prescribed to this primitive formation, there 

 is a range of secondary, extending with some intervals from 

 the Connecticut to tne Rappahannock rivers, in Width generally 



