ULISHA MiTCHEtIv SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 19 



its channel faster and the divide mi^^frates eastward un- 

 til it is finall}^ permanently located at Toe River g-ap, all 

 the waters of the northwest having- been captured by 

 westward flowing- streams. The next capture I shall 

 take up belongs to the southwest tributary of the orig-inal 

 river. The Hiwassee orig-inally formed the headwaters 

 of the river that drained the southern end of the Ashe- 

 ville syncline and led its wattrs up to the French Broad 

 and thence out by that river. It is almost if not quite im- 

 possible to determine which of these captures took place 

 first and in what order the others followed, but I am in- 

 clined to think that the rivers of the northeast were cap- 

 tured pretty much iu the order that I have treated them, 

 i. e., the headwaters TNew River) were captured first, 

 then a new stream cut in and took another deal off the 

 head and so on do .vn; in the southwest it is most probable 

 that they d\d take this order. Considering- the amount 

 of erosion that the Little Tennessee has done I think that 

 that stream was the first one to cut through and make a 

 capture, thus draining* all the basin west of the Balsam 

 Mountains. Later the Hiwassee was captured and in- 

 verted and now runs out the southwest end of the baisin. 

 We can see by comparing- the sketch of the orig-inal 

 drainag'e with the map of to-day that the capture would 

 turn a larg-e volume of w^ater throug-h the Little Tennes- 

 see's g'org-e and thus help to sink it very rapidly. This is 

 most probably what happened. As evidence of capture 

 and inversion in the Little Tennessee River we have sev- 

 eral rivers coming into it like the barbs on an arrow; i. e. 

 they show their former tendency to run the other way. 

 The Hiwassee also has several branches coming-in in that 

 manner, as the Nattely River and Shoal Creek. In map 

 (I; we can see the river system of the Asheville syncline as 

 it orig-inally was. We see the little Tennessee and the 

 river that captures the Hiwassee just cutting- throug-h 

 the Great Smoky Mountains and looking in upon their 

 prey. They are moving their respective divides to the 



