48 SATURDAY LIX'TIKES. 



Paleozic time came a mighty convulsion, the overbur- 

 dened crust giving way under the enormous pressure from 

 above, and the hiteral pressure of a cooling globe, and 

 Hexing, fracturing, tilting, uplifting these strata, sometimes 

 to the height of more than 10,000 feet. 



Then and thus was the great mass of the xVppalachian 

 System permanently raised above the ocean, and unimpor- 

 tant have been the changes since, except by erosion, as on 

 the east the waves thundering against its rocky base have 

 pulverized and spread out the sand which lines our coast 

 from Cape Cod to Florida ; and on the west the rains and 

 the rivers have prepared and distributed the fertile soil of 

 the Mississippi Valley, and then woven over it a net-work of 

 water courses. 



This mountain mass, this great continental fold, extends 

 from the promontory of Gaspd on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 to northern Georgia and Alabama, for about 1,300 miles, in 

 an undulating line, with a general trend from northeast to 

 southwest, and presents very different a.spects in different 

 parts of its course. 



On the east, a genth' sloping plain extends from the 

 mountains to the ocean, about 50 miles wide in New Eng- 

 land, almost disappearing near the Hudson, and then in the 

 Pine Barrens of New Jersey, and the Eastern Shore, gradu- 

 ally widening, till in North Carolina, South Carolina, and 

 Georgia, it attains a width of 200 miles, while seaward, it 

 extends from 20 to 100 miles farther, forming those extensive 

 shoals which line the coast from Newfoundland to Florida. 



Its elevation above tlie sea, at the foot of the mountains, 

 is, in New England, from 300 to 500 feet. In the valley of 

 the Hudson, it rises but little above the sea level, but as we 

 go farther south, into Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, 

 it attains an altitude of over 1,000 feet, forming a plateau of 

 considerable extent, known as the Piedmont Region, and 

 presenting like tlie similar plateaus between the parallel 

 mountain chains, a most attractive combination of beautiful 

 scenery, fertile soil, and a climate, for comfort and healthful- 

 ness, unsurpassed on the globe. 



