THE MOUNTAIN. 95 



and rivers continue to flow. Some of these streams cleave 

 into the mountain ranges so deeply as to bring forth 

 geological formations below the coal series. This is ap- 

 parent in the gaps of the Susquehanna and its tributary 

 streams through the Alleghany Mountains; also in the 

 gaps of the Conemaugh, Youghiogheny, and other streams, 

 through the collateral ranges of Laurel Hill and Chestnut 

 Ridge. Stretching westward from the Alleghany, the re- 

 gion between it and its parallel ridges presents a con- 

 tinued series of undulating surfaces, or labyrinth of hills, with 

 certain features of sameness, yet with a forever-renewed 

 variety of landscape, surprising in its diversity, and exceed- 

 ingly beautiful. The traveler, who has passed through this 

 country, will not forget the continually-recurring delight 

 with which there arose before him a perfectly new and 

 heretofore unseen combination of hill and valley; each 

 variety of soil exhibiting its characteristic clothing or vege- 

 table dress, thus giving rise to an endless succession of the 

 most exquisite and diversified pictures of nature. This is 

 the general character of the Alleghany with the region west 

 of it. 



It is the Alleghany Mountain itself, however, which pre- 

 sents claims of the greatest interest in the world of uses and 

 beauties for man. The great sweep of its eastern range of 

 knobs, with steep southeastern declivities, overlooks, like a 

 range of observatories, the region stretching for miles in 

 front toward the sea; the picturesque gorges and ravines 

 cut abruptly into the mass forming the mountain, are 

 the courses of fresh, rushing mountain streams, with their 

 craggy sides covered by forests of evergreen pines and 

 laurels ; while westward it gradually mingles with an in- 

 terminable extent of rolling hills. It is this wild and ma- 

 jestic character that attracts and holds spell-bound with 

 visions of beauty the lovers of nature, and makes the moun- 

 tain and its groups of landscapes of every style of grandeur 

 and beauty the glory of the world, a region of never-failing 

 attraction and delight. 



