22 
GEOLOGY OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
of Hungry River ; the huge pyramidal masses about Hickory Hut Gap,, 
as Sugarloaf, Bear Wallow, Pisgah, and the Pinnacle; the high ranges 
on the north side of the upper Catawba, upon which are the conspicuous 
summits of Mackey’s Mountain and "Wood’s Knob; and, most notably, 
the long, regular and massive southerly chains of Linville and Jonas’ 
Ridge. The last are parallel and approximate, in direction due south 
and separated by the deep and narrow rift of a thousand feet, through 
which flows the torrent of Linville river; and the former of them is 
divided from the Blue Ridge by the deep, regular, steep-walled, north 
and south valle} 7 of the North Fork. This region presents some of the 
wildest and most picturesque scenery to be found east of Rocky Moun- 
tains ; as the Falls of Linville, (which make a perpendicular plunge of 
more than 100 feet), and the whole course of that river for upwards of 
10 miles, through the deep chasm whose precipitous and often vertical 
walls rise hundreds of feet and at some points more than 1,000 on either 
hand; and, along the summit of the eastern ledge of Jonas’ Ridge, the 
jagged peaks of Hawksbill and The Chimneys, and between them, on an 
isolated knob, the remarkable quadrangular column of Table Rock, whose 
level top lies nearly 4000 feet above the sea; and some 15 miles away to 
the north at the head of these spurs, the lofty, ragged summit of the 
Grandfather, nearly 6,000 feet high. The belt of country east of this, be- 
tween the Blue Ridge and the Yadkin, having a breadth of fifteen or 
twenty miles, is corrugated by numerous southerly ridges making out 
from the Blue Ridge between the tributaries of Catawba and Yadkin, 
many of them more than 2,000 feet high. 
Along the southeastern border of this plateau is another succession of 
sharp knobs and ridges running in a N. N. E. direction, from the southern 
edge of the State near Broad River, including the prominent peaks 
of King’s Mountain, Crowder’s Mountain, Spencer’s Mouutain to An- 
derson’s Mountain, in Catawba county. 
The Western Division, or mountain plateau, is bounded eastward by 
the Blue Ridge, and on the west by the Smoky Mountains, (named lo 7 
cally in the northern portion Iron Mountains, and in the southern Unaka.) 
The general direction of the axis of the plateau is about E. N. E., its 
entire length, reckoned from its southwestern termination, in Georgia, to 
its northern, which is prolonged into Virginia 50 miles, is 275 miles, two- 
thirds of it, about 5000 square miles, lying within the territory of North 
Carolina. The following admirable description of this region was pub- 
lished by Prof. Guyot, in the American Journal of Science, in 1861 : 
u Although the elevation of the Atlantic plain at the eastern base of the 
mountains is only 100 to 300 feet in Pennsylvania, and 500 in Virginia, 
