32 Some Account of the White Mountains 



in this country, especially if a hw more of its coefficients were 

 calculated; the convergency of the quantities concerned affording 

 an infallible test of the greatest possible amount of error. 

 I am, sir, 



Your very obedient servant, 

 London, 4 Jan. 1817. E. F. G. H. 



VII. Some Account of the White Mountains of New Hamp- 

 shire. By Jacob Bigelow, M.D. Lecturer on Materia 

 Meclica and Botany, and Rumford Professor in Harvard 

 University '*. 



J. HE terms mountain and hill are words altogether relative in 

 their signification, and are variously used in different parts of the 

 world, according to the experience and conceptions of those who 

 apply them. In this. country, elevations which are known only 

 as hills, would in Great Britain assume the character of moun- 

 tains ; while on the other hand, our highest summits dwindle to 

 an inferior size, when contrasted with the peaks and ridges of 

 Switzerland, of Tibet, and Peru. The face of the country in 

 many parts of the United States is uneven, rugged, and precipi- 

 tous ; its chains of highlands occasionally shoot up into emi- 

 nences, which are conspicuous at a great distance, and which 

 are long and difficult of ascent. But the highest of these eleva- 

 tions has no claim to be considered a mountain even of secon- 

 dary size, when compared with others which may be found in 

 every quarter of the globe. The surface of the lake of Lausa- 

 nice, in France, is higher than any mountain in the United 

 States ; and the city of Riobaniba in Peru is built at an eleva- 

 tion more than twice as great f. 



It is not, however, for their great elevation alone, that moun- 

 tains become interesting to the naturalist and traveller. Those 

 of minor or secondary size are equally objects of curiosity, and 

 often furnish to the explorer more satisfactory ffesults. The me- 

 diocrity of their height renders them of course more accessible, 

 and more susceptible of investigation in all their parts. Being 

 short of the limits of perpetual snow, they are covered with vege- 

 tables, wherever the earth on them is sufficiently deep. The pro- 

 spect from such mountains, as Baron Humboldt has observed, is 

 far more interesting than that from extreme elevations, where 

 the scenery of the adjacent country is lost and confounded by the 

 remoteness of its situation. 



* From ihe New-England Journal of Medicine and Surgery for Octobtr 

 1816. 

 t Jameson's Mineralogy, vol. iii. 



In 



