ROCKLAND 



5044 



ROCKY MOUNTAINS 



buildings. Besides the public schools, with a 

 fine high school which cost $125,000, the city 

 has Augustana College, Visitation Academy and 

 an excellent public library. 



In 1816, Colonel George Davenport 

 lished Fort Armstrong on the site of Rock 

 Island, and in 1826 he made the first settle- 

 ment. It was organized as Stephenson in 1835, 

 and in 1841 it was consolidated with Farn- 

 hamesburgh, under the present name. In 1849 

 it became a city and is now governed on the 

 commission plan. In 1918 the city adopted pro- 

 hibition, putting nearly fifty saloons and thirty 

 wholesale liquor houses out of business. 



ROCKLAND, a town in Russell County, On- 

 tario. It is on the Ottawa River, and on the 

 Grand Trunk and Canadian Northern railways, 

 twenty-three miles by rail east of the city of 

 Ottawa. It has some manufacturing interest, 

 including a mica factory, sash-and-door factory, 

 lumber and planing mills, -but it is best known 

 as a summer resort. Population in 1911, 3,397; 

 in 1916, 3,700. 



ROCK RIVER, a river about 325 miles long, 

 which rises in the southern-central part of Wis- 

 consin, flows southwest and joins the Missis- 

 sippi near the city of Rock Island, 111. Because 

 of swift rapids it is of no importance to navi- 



gation, but furnishes excellent water power to 

 the cities situated on its banks. Among these 

 are Watcrtown, Janesville and Beloit, in Wis- 

 consin, and Roc-kford, Sterling and Dixon, in 

 Illinois. The country through which the river 

 flows contains much picturesque scenery. At 

 Janesville there is a huge rock jutting into the 

 water, on which Black Hawk is said to have 

 made his last speech to the Indians (see BLACK 

 HAWK). 



ROCK SALT. See SALT. 



ROCKY MOUNT, N. C., a commercial center 

 in the northeastern part of the state, situated 

 on the dividing line between Edgecomb and 

 Nash counties, and on the Tar River. It is 

 sixty-eight miles northeast of Raleigh, the state 

 capital, and 124 miles north of Wilmington, by 

 the Atlantic Coast Line Railway. Rocky Mount 

 is a tobacco and cotton market, and its chief 

 manufactures depend on these products. Be- 

 sides hosiery and tobacco factories and lumber 

 mills, it has the large machine and repair shops 

 of the Atlantic Coast Line. The city has a 

 Federal building, erected in 1905 at a cost of 

 $100,000, a high school, a business school and 

 three hospitals. In 1910 the population was 

 8,051 ; it had increased to 12,067 (Federal esti- 

 mate) by 1916. G.K.H. 



OCKY MOUNTAINS. Most of us, 

 when we think of the Rocky Mountains, pic- 

 ture to ourselves the whole western edge of 

 North America, from the point where the first 

 peaks tower above the Great Plains to the 

 abrupt shores of the Pacific. We may, also, 

 consider the Rockies as the North American 

 half of the Cordilleran chain, which extends 

 from Cape Horn to the Arctic Circle, and of 

 which the Andes form the South American half. 

 But geographers, when they refer to them, in- 

 clude in the Rocky Mountains only the east- 

 ernmost range of the northern Cordilleras, the 

 wall of granite which begins near Vera Cruz in 

 Mexico and passes north and west through 

 Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, 

 Idaho, Montana, Alberta, British Columbia and 



the Yukon to Alaska. They do not include the 

 western Sierra Madre in Mexico, the Sierra Ne- 

 vada, Cascade and Coast ranges in the United 

 States, nor the Coast, Gold and Selkirk moun- 

 tains in Canada. 



In Mexico. At their southern end the Rocky 

 Mountains touch the eastern coast of the con- 

 tinent, their steep slopes rising almost directly 

 out of the Gulf of Mexico. Here in the tropics 

 is the tallest peak in all the Rockies, the snow- 

 tipped cone of Orizaba, whose summit is more 

 than 18,000 feet above the near-by sea. North 

 of it the range marks the eastern boundary of 

 the great Mexican plateau; it is low, and is 

 broken in many places. 



In the United States. The engineers of the 

 first railroad to the Pacific, searching for a 



