114 THE MOUNTAIN. 



Separating at their cradle, the young streams part to tra- 

 verse a whole continent, before they again unite in the great 

 mother's bosom of the ocean from whence they came. The 

 waters which flow east into the Atlantic, have generally steep 

 and rocky beds from the mountain-summit to the first range 

 of valleys, after which they take their courses with slower 

 and more regular currents to the sea. 



Their channels are sometimes in the line of the valleys, and 

 again cleave the groups of parallel mountains by a series of 

 water gaps, forming that most extraordinary combination of 

 the picturesque and grand found only in the startling land- 

 scape pictures of this beautiful region. 



The cause of the greater rapidity of the currents of the 

 eastern streams is obvious, as the eastern side of the moun- 

 tain presents a bold and precipitous escarpment, a wall, as it 

 were, rising above the valleys at its base. 



Through the notches, ravines, and gaps cut into this jut- 

 ting buttress or rampart, rush the streams that flow directly 

 east. It would be difficult to conceive anything more at- 

 tractive, wild, and wonderful than these swift and arrowy 

 streams pouring over falls and rapids, or rushing and boiling 

 through their rocky channels. 



On the western side of the Alleghany Mountain the 

 streams have slower and gentler currents, presenting irregu- 

 lar courses, and with more winding and circuitous channels. 

 As the high table-lands fall off more gradually from the 

 Alleghany spurs westward to the Mississippi, the streams 

 flow through the irregular washes of denudation which sepa- 

 rate the labyrinth of hills more slowly. Many of these 

 streams are quiet and sluggish, appearing as mere passive 

 and dead drains of the surface. Their waters appear dif- 

 ferent from those of the eastern shed, where they flow through 

 the beds of the larger currents. Descending these streams 

 the waters become turbid from the intermingling of the softer 

 mineral elements which form this region. 



The larger bodies of water here show the well-known 

 muddy and turbid character of western rivers. They form 



