[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Appalachian Mountains.]
_The Appalachian Mountains._--This beautiful and frequently exceedingly picturesque series of long, narrow ridges separated one from another by trough-like valleys, constitutes a mountain system some 900 miles long and 50 to 130 or more miles wide (Fig. 15). The truly mountainous portion in its widest part, in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, is about 70 miles across, but a portion of the adjacent plateau on the west partakes of the same structural features and is a part of the Appalachian uplift. The system is considered as extending from the Hudson southward to central Alabama and central Georgia. At the north its terminus is indefinite, as it merges with the highlands to the east of the Hudson and with the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, which in turn are not strictly separable from the Green Mountains of Vermont. At the south, the system ends somewhat abruptly where the crystalline rocks comprising its southern terminus pass beneath the soft sediments of the coastal plain. The eastern border of the system is well defined by its junction with the Piedmont plateau, but on the west it merges through a series of lessening folds with the plateaus and plains of the eastern border of the interior continental basin. The Alleghany plateau, which skirts the western border of what is usually recognised as the Appalachian Mountains, but which is really its moderately disturbed border, extends from the Hudson to Alabama, and in its various portions is known by distinct names. Its northern extension overlooking the Hudson forms the Catskill Mountains; farther south it becomes locally the Alleghany plateau, and still farther south the Cumberland plateau. Separating the bold eastern escarpment of this series of plateaus from the generally higher mountains to the eastward lies the great Appalachian Valley, which under various names extends from the Hudson to central Alabama. This important and highly fruitful valley is underlaid to a great extent by thick bedded limestones and soft shales, and owes its existence to erosion and largely to the removal of limestone in solution.
The Appalachians are nowhere lofty, and only approach the characteristics of great mountains in their southern portion. The culminating summit is Mount Mitchell, in western North Carolina, which has an elevation of 6,711 feet. Roan Mountain, 27 miles to the northward of Mount Mitchell, rises 6,287 feet above the sea. In the neighbouring Unaka and Great Smoky Mountains, to the southwest and west of Mount Mitchell, there are many boldly rounded domes ranging in height from 5,000 to over 6,000 feet Northward of the highly picturesque southern Appalachians, the system decreases in height and is really a deeply dissected plateau, as will be shown later, in which the long, even-crested ridges have a general elevation of 4,000 feet in Virginia and about 2,000 feet in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. At its northern extension in New York it decreases still more in height, and is surpassed in elevation by the plateau on the west, there represented by the Catskill Mountains, the highest portion of which is 3,660 feet above the sea.