After passing the Hodson the. Illur 12i.lso con tinues to the N. L. about twenty miles, and then similar to the other chains of the same system on both sides of that river, rapidly inflects to a course a very little N. of E., a direction which it maintains above two hundred and fifty miles in the states of New York, Massachusetts and Vermont. For the first seventy miles of its northerly course, the Blue Ridge discharges from the eastern slope numerous branches of Housatonick, and from the Fishkill, Wappingees, Jansen's or Ancram, and Kinderhook creeks flowing into Hudson. With the sources of Housatonick and Iloosack rivers, the features of the Blue Ridge change; hitherto from the Hudson a line of river source, it now loses that character, and is broken into innumerable ridges by the higher sources of Hoosack and Batten Kill flowing into the Hudson; and thence by Paulet, Otter, Onion, La Moelle, and Mississque rivers falling into Lake Champlain. All these latter streams rise in the chain already noticed under the name of South East Mountain.
. We may be permitted to hazard a hypothesis, that what is designated Green Mountains in the southern part of Vermont, and the ridge or series of.ridges known by the same term in the northern part of the same state, are respectively fragments of the two separate chains we have been reviewing, though represented generally as the continuation of one and the same chain.
In relative elevation and mass, the Blue Ridge and South East Mountain reverse their characters on the opposite sides of the Hudson. To the south westward the former greatly exceeds; but on the contrary, between the basins of Connecticut and Hudson, the latter gradually increasing in base and height assumes a decided superiority, and at one point, about 8 or 10 miles eastward from Rutland in Vermont, rises in Killington Peak to 4000 feet above the level of Atlantic tides. This height ex ceeds that of any part of Blue Ridge, except the Peaks of Otter. To this general comparison be tween the two chains there is one exception, how ever, which has been, it is true, noted already, but to avoid ambiguity may be repeated. Where the two chains are broken by the Hudson, nearly all the large and elevated peaks are parts of Blue Ridge; such as Anthony's Nose, 935 feet; Bare Mount, 1350; Crow's Nest, 1418; Butter Hill, 1535; Bull Hill, 1484; and Break Neck Hill, 1187, above tide water.
White Mountains, in New Hampshire, may be regarded as the nucleus of the north-eastern part of the Appalachian system, but so defectively have the chains been grouped as to leave the points of connection doubtful. If we examine Connecticut basin in relation to the mountains, we find that stream rising between two chains, and flowing down the intermediate valley, in the higher part of its course, and, if the expression can be admitted, en tangled in the extensions of both chains, towards its final discharge into Long Island Sound.
The very striking distinction in the character of the United States coast on the south-west and north east side of the estuary of the Hudson, will be more pnrticularly noticed under the head of the river basins; but we merely glance on the subject in this place to remark, that the coast of the United States southwest from the Hudson is longitudinal to the Appalachian chains, whilst the coast to the north east of that estuary, is transversal to that part of the system to which it appertains. That the gen eral course of the Appalachian system is from south west to north-east is only true of that section be tween the Hudson and Gulf of Mexico, and there, also, with great specific exceptions; but to the north-eastward of the Hudson the commonly as sumed range of the mountain system is utterly in error. Over the whole Appalachian physical sec tion of the continent of North America, the mean or general course of the rivers are along or very nearly at right angles to the range of their depen dent mountain chains. This admirable natural structure prevails in the whole system, and has given to the courses of the rivers on each side of the Hudson valley, their specific characters.
From the estuary of the Hudson to the utmost bounds of the United States south-westwardly, the coast is low, and alluvial in its component mate rials, whilst from that estuary to the north-east ward the shore, with but trivial exception, is bold, and in many places actually rocky. To this, Cape Cod, physically, is not an exception, more than is Long Island: the former being really insular in all its essential characters, and only deviating from other islands on the Atlantic coast of the United States, in being united by a sandy neck to the main land. The boldness of the north-eastern coast is an effect in full accordance with the internal structure of the country, to which it is an immense abutment. Here, the mountains so far from extending from south-west to north-east, on the contrary, stretch in lateral chains whth a very slight deviation to the south-west and north-eastward of due north and south, and the rivers flow down the intervening vallies in an astonishing manner parallel to the mountain chains, and to each other. This is the case with the Hudson, Housatonick, Connecticut, Merrimack, Kennebeck and Penobscot.