•lEJIvISHA MlTCHEIyly SCIENTIIB^IC SOCIETY. 17 



thence across Hominy Gap and down Hominy into the 

 French Broad, up French Broad and out throug-h Mud 

 creek into South Carolina. We have many of our rivers 

 in the orio-inal river beds. The Hiwassee has been cap- 

 tured and inverted but it still occupies the old bed. The 

 Nantehala and Tuckaseeg"e still occupy their old beds 

 thoug-h there has been considerable chang-e, a part of the 

 latter having- been inverted. 



We would expect to find in these inverted rivers evi- 

 dence of it in their sluggish movement but we must re- 

 member that most of them have since their inversion been 

 so much lowered that they are the roughest to be found. 

 The Little Tennessee River has cut a gorg-e through the 

 Great Smoky Mountains over four thousand feet deep and 

 we could hardly expect a river to be slow and sluggish 

 whose lower waters had been lowered so much. Like- 

 wise the French Broad from above Hot Springs is very 

 rough owing to the same fact. On the northwest the 

 New river was made by cutting into the syncline and 

 leading a part of the original river out. In map (I) we see 

 that it is about to cut into the syncline and capture a 

 part of the original river. Its headwaters push forward 

 into the syncline until it has captured the headwaters of 

 the original river and inverted a small part of it. This 

 inverted part having a greater fall will move the divide 

 southwest by degrees; and this continues until it reaches 

 the mountain ranges near Boone which on account of its 

 structure marks its final divide. The next stream that 

 cut into our original river was the Watauga. It cut 

 through the Smokies from Tennessee and led off a por- 

 tion, but did its best work in determining the divide for 

 the other rivers. The strata not all being of the same 

 hardness we can see why these captures went as far as 

 they did and no farther. When New River was inverted 

 it probably would have led out much more of the streams 

 of the northern and middle portions of the basin but for 

 the fact that there was a ledge of rock that outcropped 



