432 A, Guyot— Physical Structure and Hypsometry 
the measurement of the neighboring heights. They are ‘the 
Vista,” at Haines’ Falls, for the east, Molyneux’s farm for the 
southern Catskills, Lexington Village and Windham Center 
for the central region and Vaughn’s Highland House for the 
north and west. They have been tested by reciprocal obser- 
vations among themselves. The altitudes are reduced to the 
mean tide level in New York harbor, assuming this to be about 
24 feet below mean tide in the Rondout and Catskill Creeks. 
he name Catskills is said to have been given to this wil- 
derness by the first settlers, who were of Dutch origin, on 
account of the numerous wild cats inhabiting its forests. 10 
the same settlers are due the geographical appellations of hull 
for stream, clove for gorge, and vly or viaie for swamp, so fre- 
quently met with in the Catskills. The boundaries of the 
region to which the name applies, however, are not well defined. 
But confining it between the Hudson River and the sources of 
the Delaware, from east to west, and the Catskill Creek and the 
sources of the Navesink and Rondout Creeks, from north to 
south, we enclose the mountain district which has the special 
characters above indicated ; and this is the portion comprised 
in the new map. It must be said, however, that the inhabit- 
ants of the plateau region north of Catskill Creek, to the Hel- 
erberg Mountains and west to the sources of the Susquehanna, 
claim to be still in the Catskills. : 
The mountain region is divided by the Esopus Creek into 
two groups differing considerably in their physical structure, 
e on the north, the northern or Catskills proper, situat 
mainly in Greene county; the other on the south, the southern 
Catskills or Shandaken Mountains, in Ulster county. 
e Northern or Catskills proper, between the Esopus and 
Catskill Creeks, form a massive plateau having the shape of an 
irregular parallelogram, extending from i, + on 
shut up between two high border chains, ten to fifteen miles 
distant from each other, running about in the same direction. 
The southwest border is formed by what may be called the 
central chain of all the Catskills, the other by the northeast 
order chain. The southeastern end is closed by the short 
chain of the High Peak; the northwestern by the high swell 
of plateaus which divide the headwaters of the Delaware an 
Susquehanna from those of the Schoharie Creek and the Hud- 
son. Inside of this highland three secondary ranges, starting 
from the northeast border chain and running nearly Ww 
almost to the foot of the central chain, fill the inner space 
enclosing deep valleys in which flow the waters of the 
Schoharie Creek and its tributaries. 
he only access to this interior highland is through the deep 
and wild gorges called cloves, of which there are but few; all 
