GENERAL VIEW OF THE GEOGRAPHY. 5 



some places, however, the main ridge is separated from the ocean by 

 tracts of lower country, as much as one hundred miles in breadth, trav- 

 ersed by parallel lines of hills. This ridge, for which no general name 

 has yet been adopted,* is almost entirely of volcanic formation ; being 

 part of the great line or system of volcanoes, which extends from Mexico to 

 the East Indies, passing along the west coast of America, from the south- 

 ernmost point of California to the south-west extreme of Aliaska, thence 

 through the Aleutian Islands to Kamtchatka, and thence southward 

 through the Kurile, the Japan, the Philippine, and the Molucca Islands. 

 There are many elevated peaks, nearly all of them volcanoes, in every 

 part of the chain; the most remarkable break, or gap, is that near the 

 46th degree of latitude, through which the Columbia rushes, at the dis- 

 tance of a hundred miles from the Pacific. 



The great chain of mountains which separates the streams emptying 

 into the Pacific from those flowing into the other divisions of the ocean, 

 runs through the northern continent, as through the southern, in a line 

 generally parallel with the shore of the Pacific, and much nearer to that 

 sea than to the Atlantic. Under the 40th degree of latitude, where the 

 western section of America is widest, the distance across it, from the 

 summit of the dividing chain to the Pacific, is about seven hundred miles, 

 which is not more than one third of the distance from the same point of 

 the mountains to the Atlantic, measured in the same latitude. 



The dividing chain south of the 40th degree of latitude has received 

 many names, no one of which seems to have been universally adopted. 

 It has been called, by some geographers, the Anahuac Mountains; and by 

 that name, though entirely unknown to the people of the adjacent country, 

 it will be distinguished whenever reference is made to it in the fol- 

 lowing pages. 



The portion of the great ridge north of the 40th parallel is generally 

 known as the Rocky or Stony Mountains. From that latitude, its course 

 is nearly due north-westward, and gradually approaching the line of the 

 Pacific coast, to the 54th degree, where the main chain turns more west- 

 ward, and continues in that direction so far as it has been traced, — prob- 

 ably to Bering's Strait. Another ridge, called the Chipewyan Moun- 

 tains, indeed, extends, as if in prolongation of the Rocky Mountains, from 

 the 53d parallel, north-westward, to the Arctic Sea, where it ends near the 

 70th degree of latitude ; but the territory on its western side is drained 

 by streams entering that sea either directly, or passing through the ridge 

 into the Mackenzie River, which flows along its eastern base. 



The Rocky Mountains, so far as their geological structure has been 

 ascertained, consist of primary formations, principally of granite. Though 

 rising, in many places, from eight to sixteen thousand feet above the 

 ocean level, they do not, in general, appear very high to the beholder, on 

 account of the great elevation of the country at their bases. On the east- 

 ern side, within a hundred and fifty miles of the great chain, and running 

 nearly parallel to it, are several ridges, from which the surface gradually 

 declines, becoming more nearly plane as it approaches the Mississippi, 

 the Red River, and Hudson's Bay. The part of the continent west of the 

 Rocky Mountains is, as already stated, traversed, in its whole extent, by 



* The author of this work ventures to propose, for the great ridge here mentioned, 

 the name of Far-West Mountains, which seems to be more definite, and in every 

 respect more appropriate, than any other which could be adopted. 



