ALLEGHANY 



OR 



APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS, 



CHAPTER I. 



GEOLOGY OF THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS. 



THIS group of mountains of the North American Conti- 

 nent, also called the Atlantic range, as described by some 

 geographers, extends through eleven degrees of latitude, in 

 a direction nearly parallel to, and from fifty to one hundred 

 miles west of the Atlantic Ocean, comprising a belt of from 

 fifty to one hundred and fifty miles wide.* 



Other geographers do not give so extensive a range to this 

 chain, but describe it as extending from thirty-five to forty- 

 one degrees north latitude, between the mouth of the St. 

 Lawrence and the source of the Alabama ;f while others 

 represent it as extending from thirty-three to fifty-three de- 

 grees of north latitude. It is again stated that the Appa- 

 lachian range "begins in the northern part of Alabama and 

 terminates in the valley of the Hudson ;"J and also that it 

 extends "from the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to middle Ala- 

 bama, fifteen hundred miles in length, and from one hundred 

 to two hundred miles broad. " The most recent and elabo- 



* Malte Brun. f Phys. Atlas. J Drake. % H. D. Rogers. 



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