APPALACHIAN RIVER IN EASTERN TENNESSEE 35 



over those divides. The Coosa-Tennessee divide is, however, 

 wider and if peneplained by backward-cutting small streams, 

 those streams, they believe, should have a "dendritic inosculat- 

 ing" arrangement. 



Bv referring to the structural sheet of the "Ringgold Folio" 

 of the U?iited States Geologic Atlas, it will be seen that the width 

 of the Coosa-Tennessee divide is easily explained by the struct- 

 ure of the region. The floor of this valley is almost entirely of 

 Knox dol'omite and a Cambrian shale both tilted at various 

 angles, and always valley-making. It seems quite clear that, 

 throughout this region, topography depends upon structure rather 

 than upon the size of the streams. The width of the Coosa- 

 Tennessee divide is limited only by the conglomerate- and 

 sandstone-capped strata approaching horizontality. On the east, 

 the resistant capping is Silurian; on the west, Carboniferous. A 

 great river is evidently not necessary for the base-leveling of a 

 region composed of the upturned dolomite and shales of this 

 region. Cade's, Ware's and Tuckaleechee coves,' east of Chil- 

 howee Mountain, are examples of this. The floors of these coves 

 are of deformed dolomite and Wilhite slate, a very calcareous 

 slate, and are lowered as rapidly as the streams can cut down 

 their channels through the Chilhowee sandstone. These coves 

 are surrounded by massive conglomerates, sandstones and slates, 

 and the streams which drain them have their sources practically 

 within the coves. 



Dendritic branching of streams could hardly be expected in a 

 region where the beds are varied in character (alternating harder 

 and softer) and at the same time deformed into structures 

 approaching parallelism, as these have been in this part of the 

 Appalachian valley. Considering the structure and elevation of 

 the region, it is difificult to conceive how the stream habit could 

 be other than it is. 



The volume of ?naterial eroded and deposited. — This evidence 

 favoring the Appalachian River theory is briefly as follows : A 

 stream occupying, in general, the present position of the Coosa- 

 Alabama River is held responsible for the late Cretaceous and 



'"Knoxville Folio," U.S. Geologic Atlas. 



