Goldthwait — Old Graded Upland, etc. 451 



Art. XXKYIII. — Remnants of an Old Graded Upland on 

 the Presidential Range of the White Mountains / by James 

 Walter Goldthwait. 



The Presidential Range lies sixty-five miles inland from the 

 sea, in north-central New Hampshire. It extends in a north- 

 east-southwest direction for a distance of eighteen miles, with 

 a width of about three miles. On it are eight principal sum- 

 mits or "peaks," of which Mount Washington is considerably 

 the highest, with an altitude of 6290 feet. From this range 

 streams flow off in all directions, reaching the sea through four of 

 the largest rivers of New England, — the Connecticut, Merri- 

 mac, Saco, and Androscoggin. In respect to drainage lines, 

 therefore, this district is extremely remote. 



In form, the mountains of the Presidential Range present 

 two contrasted sets of slopes : subdued, well-graded slopes 

 above, and bold, precipitous slopes below. The former appear 

 to be due to long continued sub-aerial wasting of an early 

 cycle ; the latter, to deep and extensive stream dissection dur- 

 ing a later cycle, accentuated by local glaciation of the ravine 

 heads. Subordinate to these features, but modifying them in 

 detail are index forms of regional glaciation, of a later date 

 than the stream erosion and local glaciation. 



On all sides of the range lower ranges and summits exhibit 

 a surface so irregular, from whatever altitude it is viewed, that 

 one fails to see in the landscape any satisfactory trace of an 

 uplifted peneplain such as Davis has described in southern 

 New England. The exposure everywhere of contorted meta- 

 morphic rocks and plutonics bears abundant evidence, how- 

 ever, that the interior of New England, like the better known 

 outer portion, has been stripped of thousands of feet of its 

 original rock structure. The lofty mountains of the Paleozoic 

 and Mesozoic landscape have been worn down to an irregular 

 upland of moderate relief. No organized effort has yet been 

 made to correlate the physiographic features of the White 

 Mountains with those of southern New England. The pene- 

 plain which extends over Connecticut, Rhode Island, and 

 Massachusetts has never been followed far into New Hamp- 

 shire. This neglect by the physiographer seems strange, in 

 view of the fact that the White Mountains have become 

 widely known as a vacation resort for the tramper, camper, 

 and mountaineer. 



Professor Davis, in his description of the peneplain of 

 southern New England,* says that on " passing northward into 



* W. M. Davis : The Physical Geography of Southern New England. 

 National Geographic Monographs, No. 5, p. 269-304, 1895. 



