of the Catskill Mountains. 433 
renowned for the picturesque beauty of their torrents and 
cascades, and for their ice caves. 
A striking peculiarity of the plastic forms of the northern 
Catskill group is that while its western end is, as it were, 
buried in the general plateaus of western New York, its moun- 
tains rising but moderately above their surrounding base, its 
eastern end stands isolated on three sides by deep and broadly 
open valleys, projecting, in all its height, as a mighty promon- 
tory, to within ten miles of tide water in the Hudson River. 
The very base of its mountains rarely exceeds 600 feet above 
tide. The altitude of Woodstock at the base of the Overlook 
Mountain is 594 feet; the entrance of the Plaaterkill Clove, at 
West Saugerties, 660 feet; the entrance of the Kaaterskill 
Clove, 600 feet; Kiskatom, near the foot of the North Moun- 
tain, 687; Acra, not far from the base of Blackhead, 546 feet ; 
Cairo, 347 feet. No wonder that the aspect of the Catskills is 
no where more imposing than from the Hudson River and the 
surrounding lowlands, from which their whole height is seized 
at a glance, and that it has been thus far believed that the 
highest points were found among the mountains of the eastern 
end. It is thus that the Round Top of the old geographies, 
now called the High Peak, at the head-waters of the Schoharie 
he panorama of mountains, viewed from Catskill village, 
extending from the Overlook Mountain, on the south, through 
the High Peak, the North Mountain, Black Head and Wind- 
ham High Peak, is not a single chain, but rather the eastern 
end of the border chains together with that of the short range 
bearing the High Peak, which rises between the two. — It 
is, therefore, but the abrupt termination of the whole mass 
of the Highlands toward the great gap to the Hudson Valley, 
as a description of the orographic structure of the plateau 
will show. is 
To make this description clear, a few preliminary remarks 
on the general geological structure of the Catskills, and the 
characteristic features of their topography seem to be desirable. 
We have not to look in the chains of the Catskills for a series 
of anticlinal and synclinal folds or arches, or fragments of 
arches, as in ordinary mountain chains. ‘T'hroughout the 
region the strata of which they are composed are nearly hori- 
zontal from the bottom of the valleys to their top, or have a 
dip rarely exceeding four or five degrees. The same is true 
of the plateaus. 
