arrow ridges with steep
escarpment on both sides, running southwesterly in parallel chains, and
each chain separated from its neighbors by deep, slender dales. Wherever
one goes westward from the Valley he will encounter tier after tier of
these ridges, as I have already described.

[Illustration: Photo by U. S. Forest Service

"The very cliffs are sheathed with trees and shrubs"--Linville River and
Falls, N. C. The walls of one gorge are from 500 to 2,000 feet high.]

As a rule, the links in each chain can be passed by following small
gaps; but often one must make very wide detours. For example, Pine
Mountain (every link has its own distinct name) is practically
impassable for nearly 150 miles, except for two water gaps and five
difficult crossings. Although it averages only a mile thick, the people
on its north side, generally, know less about those on the south than a
Maine Yankee does about Pennsylvania Dutchmen.

The Alleghanies together have a width of from forty to sixty miles.
Westward of them, for a couple of hundred miles, are the labyrinthine
roughs of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

In southwestern Virginia the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies coalesce,
but soon spread apart again, the Blue Ridge retaining its name, as well
as its general character, although much loftier and more massive than in
the north. The southeast front of the Blue Ridge is a steep escarpment,
rising abruptly from the Piedmont Plateau of Carolina. Not one river
cuts through the Ridge, notwithstanding that the mountains to the
westward are higher and much more massive. It is the watershed of this
whole mountain region. The streams rising on its northwestern front flow
down into central plateaus, and thence cut their way through the Unakas
in deep and precipitous gorges, draining finally into the Gulf of
Mexico, through the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

The northwestern range, which corresponds to the Alleghanies of
Virginia, now assumes a character entirely different from them. Instead
of parallel chains of low ridges, we have here, on the border of North
Carolina and Tennessee, a single chain that dwarfs all others in the
Appalachian system. It is cut into segments by the rivers (Nolichucky,
French Broad, Pigeon, Little Tennessee, Hiwassee) that drain the
interior plateaus, and each segment has a distinct name of its own
(Iron, Northern Unaka, Bald, Great Smoky, Southern Unaka or Unicoi
mountains). The Carolina