INTRODUCTION. 
21 
■Catawba and Broad rivers, and attains a height of 3,500 to 1,000 feet in 
several points along its course of twelve or fifteen miles to the mouth of 
Crooked Creek, where it rises into a precipitous mural ledge, three or four 
miles in length and 3,300 feet in height. 
From this point eastward for above twenty miles, it is a low straggling 
ridge, constituting the divide between the waters of the Catawba and 
Second Broad, scarcely reaching at any point an elevation of two thousand 
feet. But between the head waters of Silver Creek and First Broad it 
suddenly rises, in the South Mountains proper, to above 3,000 feet, which 
elevation it preserves with remarkable uniformity through the numerous 
peaks, as well along the massive spur, (Deal’s Knob, &c.,) which it sends 
off northeastward between the waters of the Catawba and the South Fork, 
as throughout the main chain for a distance of fifteen miles to Ben’s 
Knob ; beyond which the chain is prolonged three or four miles in a 
high, narrow, regular ridge of above two thousand feet, called Queen’s 
Mountain. 
From this massive portion of the range, especially from the western end 
of it, several spurs make off southward between the waters of First and 
Second Broad, the chief of which are the Bickerstaft and Lookadoo Moun- 
tains, which are, in several points, nearly as high as the main chain. 
The other range, the Brushy, is an independent chain which divides, 
for the greater part of its course, the waters of the Catawba and Yadkin, 
from a point a few miles northeast of Lenoir, for more than fifty miles, in 
a direction a little north of east. This chain also preserves through the 
greater part of its length a remarkable uniformity, in direction and eleva- 
tion, many of its peaks rising above 2,000 feet. The sharp and con- 
spicuous cone of the Pilot, and the Sauratown Mountains, which rise to a 
greater height than any part of the Brushy Mountains proper, are in fact 
only a continuation of this chain 20 miles beyond the Yadkin, which 
breaks through it at this point. 
Besides these two principal chains, the western side of the plateau is 
diversified by many spurs of the Blue Ridge of great elevation, being in 
many cases much higher than the Blue Ridge itself. Among these may 
be mentioned the Saluda Mountains on the southern border, which con- 
stitutes the State line for a distance of more than twenty-five miles 5 the 
Tryon and White Oak range in Polk County, a spur of the Saluda sep- 
arated from it by the Pacolet river, and from the Blue Ridge, (as is also 
the Saluda for the most part), by the deep and narrow gorge of Green 
River; the Hungry Mountains, which may be regarded as a continuation 
of the Tryon range, from which it is divided by the easterly bend of 
Green River, while it is separated from the Blue Ridge by the deep valley 
