MOUNTAIN 



3978 



MOUNTAIN 



The most interesting feature of the city is a 

 cone-shaped mound seventy-five feet high, a 

 relic of the Mound Builders (which see). When 

 excavated in 1838 it was found to contain burial 

 vaults, skeletons and copper ornaments. The 

 city has a Federal building, courthouse ami 

 Reynolds Memorial Hospital, and is the seat 

 of the state penitentiary. It is a commercial 

 center of the surrounding agricultural and coal- 

 mining region, and has important manufacto- 

 ries of glass, enameled ware, foundry products, 

 leather, flour and feed, lamps, metal ceilinps, 

 clothing, cigars and other commodities. The 

 town of Moundsville was platted in 1831 a 

 short distance from Elizabethtown, the older 

 settlement. The two places were united under 

 the name of Moundsville in 1866. 



MOUNTAIN, moun' tin, a huge elevation of 

 the earth's surface, constituting the noblest fea- 

 ture of the landscape. In structure a mountain 

 is either a fold in the rocky envelope of the 

 globe, or a mass of immense blocks of stone, 

 broken and partly upturned. Mountains usu- 

 ally occur in systems, which are often of great 

 extent, several of the more imposing exceeding 

 4,000 or 5,000 miles in length. 



Mountains speak to the scientist of the gigan- 

 tic grindings and twistings which the earth's 

 crust underwent in very ancient periods. Some- 

 times they resulted from a single fold, some- 

 times from several. But the majestic peaks 

 of the Alps were produced by a less regular 

 upheaval, for the strata are crushed and broken 

 as if they had been crumpled in a Titanic fist. 

 The process of folding is usually very slow, as 

 is proved by the fact that rivers flowing across 

 the folds will often cut their channels down- 

 ward quite as fast as the rock is pushed up- 

 ward. Lofty systems are thus traversed by 

 streams, which would have been turned aside if 

 they had dug their channels more slowly. 

 Mountains usually show a core of granite cov- 

 ered with strata of sedimentary rock. Not all 

 ranges are formed by folding. The ridges in 

 the Great Basin of the United States, for ex- 

 ample, are composed of great blocks of sedi- 

 mentary rock that have been crushed and 

 tilted. Still others are of volcanic origin. 



The loftiest mountain in the world is Mount 

 Everest, one of the Himalayan range, which is 

 29,002 feet above sea level. The elevation of 

 mountains is usually determined by the ba- 

 rometer, by noting the boiling point of water 

 as it is carried upward, or by the use of sur- 

 veying instruments and computations in trigo- 

 nometry. The last is the most scientific method. 



Consult Gelkle's Mountains. Their Origin, 

 CroH-th and Decay; Suess's The Face of the 

 Vortft. 



itri:itt>(i Subjects. The following important 

 mountain ranges and individual peaks are de- 

 scribed under their proper headings in these vol- 

 umes : 



AFRICA 

 Atlas Kilimanjaro 



ASIA 



The following general articles will also be of 

 interest : 



Barometer Hill 



Erosion Volcano 



Geology 



