INTRODUCTION. 
25 
1. The general form of the plateau, as to contour, is that of a long, 
narrow loop, or a much flattened and somewhat distorted ellipse, being 
widened in the middle by a southward bulge in the region of the French 
Broad river, and the southern half having twice the breadth of the 
northern ; the average being about 30 miles, the maximum 50, and the 
minimum not more than 15. 
2. The narrowest part of the plateau (about the Grandfather) is also 
the highest, having an altitude of about 3500 to 4000 feet, while the 
average for the whole does not exceed 2600. 
3. About the rim of this highest and narrowest part of the plateau 
(the highest table land east of the Mississippi), rise the culminating points 
of the Appalachian system, the Roan, the Grandfather and the Black, 
representing the three sub-systems into which it divides itself in this 
region, viz : the Smoky Mountains, the Blue Ridge and the transverse 
ranges, the Black being the highest point of the whole Appalachian 
system, and the Grandfather the highest point of the whole range of the 
Blue Ridge ; the Roan, although one of the highest and hugest masses of 
the Smoky Mountains, is exceeded in elevation a few hundred feet in a 
more southern part of that range. 
4. From the borders of this portion of the plateau eight considerable 
rivers take their rise, radiating to all points of the compass, viz: North 
Toe, Elk, Watauga, New River, Yadkin, John’s River, Linville and 
North Fork, being the head waters of the Tennessee, Ohio, Yadkin and 
Catawba. 
5. In a general view, the two chains, — the Blue Ridge and the Smoky, — 
are to be regarded as one, constituting with their cross connections, an 
expanded, as well as much elevated continuation of the Blue Ridge 
proper, (the eastern range of the Appalacian system), which separates the 
great Appalachian valleys, — Yalley of Virginia and Valley of East Ten- 
nessee, — from the Atlantic plain ; standing to this mountain system and 
to the Atlantic ocean as the great plateau of the Rocky Mountains does to 
that system, and to the Pacific ; the whole broad backed swell having 
been carved and grooved transversely and variously by atmospheric agen- 
cies, into an irregular and double connected chain, the real crest of it, the 
dominant ridge of the whole, (the proper Blue Ridge in this view), being 
thrown to the western margin, (the Smoky Mountains) ; the Blue Ridge 
being only the eastern depressed margin of the first and higher plateau, 
or upper bench of the Atlantic slope; a view which would be obvious 
enough, but for the singular and altogether exceptional fact that the 
drainage of this plateau is thrown to the west, the streams rising along 
