On the eastern coast of North America, midway between the equator and the pole, is a tract of land properly described as a peninsula, from a physical conformation which has had important relations to its civil history.' The northern extremity of the Appalachian zone of clevated land is separated from the continent by the long bed of the St. Lawrence, and the deep and broad chasm which holds the waters of Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the river Hudson. The series of ridges and plateaus, which, rising from the sandy shore of the Gulf of Mexico, stretches nearly unbroken in a direction parallel to the Atlantic coast, is suddenly interrupted and cut down to its base by a valley sunk thousands of feet between the Katskill Mountains and the lofty chains and table-lands of the Adirondac region on one side, and the long belt of the Green Mountains on the other. The average width of 1 This geographical feature, though imperfectly understood, was not overlooked in early times. "New England is by some affirmed to be an island, bounded on the north with the river Canada, so called from M. Cane; on the south with the river Mohegan, or Hudson River, so called because he was the first that discovered it." (Josse VOL. I. 1 lyn, New England's Rarities, pp. 4, 5; this depression is not far from twenty miles. At the north it expands into a broad prairie between Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, while among the Highlands near, West Point it is compressed to the diminished width of the Hudson where that river seems to have broken a link between the two parts of the Appalachian chain. The insulation of this tract is all but complete. The tide runs up the St. Lawrence nearly five hundred miles, almost reaching the point where the river Richelieu, or Sorel, discharges the surplus waters of Lake George and Lake Champlain. The surface of Lake Champlain is only ninety feet above the ocean; the canal which now unites its waters with those of Hudson River running in an opposite direction, scarcely rises fifty more to its highest level; and at Troy and Albany, a hundred and fifty miles from the sea, the tide is met again, coming up from the south. Of that long depression of nine hundred miles from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Hudson, the tide-waters cover six hundred and fifty miles; while for the remaining two hundred and fifty the elevation above the ocean is not so great as is reached by ordinary structures reared by the hand of man. A level way was prepared by nature, along which the travel and the commerce of tranquil times have at length succeeded to the incursions of savage or of civilized war. The area thus defined as one physical region, and measuring with the neighboring islands about a hundred and forty-five thousand square miles, is occupied by the British Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with part of that of Lower Canada; the six States of the American Union known by the collective name of New England; and a narrow section of the State of New York. New England, covering less than half of England. this surface, extends from the forty-first degree nearly to the forty-eighth degree of north latitude, and from the sixty-seventh degree almost to the seventy-fourth Area of New degree of west longitude. It is bounded by British possessions on the north, northeast, and northwest; on the southeast, east, and south, by the Atlantic Ocean; and on the west, by Lake Champlain and by the State of New York, which through nearly three degrees of latitude interposes a breadth of some twenty miles, mostly of lowland, between it and Hudson River. It has an area of about 65,000 square miles, of which about 31,700 belong to the State of Maine, 9,300 to New Hampshire, 10,200 to Vermont, 7,800 to Massachusetts, 1,300 to Rhode Island, and 4,700 to Connecticut. Maine occupies the northeastern corner. West of the southern half of Maine lie New Hampshire, touching the ocean for only a few miles, and the inland State of Vermont. South of New Hampshire and Vermont, along their whole extent, is Massachusetts, measuring the breadth of Southern New England from east to west, and stretching to a double width on the sea, which it fronts with its entire eastern border. South of Massachusetts are Rhode Island, exposed on its southern side to the Atlantic, and Connecticut, lying along the oval-shaped strait known as Long Island Sound. Long Island, with its low plains and sandy beaches, though by nature attached to New England, politically belongs elsewhere. The sea-coast, measured without allowance for interruption by the less considerable inlets, extends about seven hundred miles. Only moderate elevations present themselves to the view along the greater part of the line of the New-England coast. Inland, the great topographical feature is a double belt of highlands, separated almost to their Ranges of bases by the deep and broad valley of Connecti- highlands. cut River, and running parallel to each other from the south-southwest to the north-northeast, till, around the sources of that river, they unite in a wide space of tableland, from which streams descend in different directions. Thence, separating again, they take a northeasterly course through the State of Maine and the Province of New Brunswick, till they come out upon the Gulf of St. Lawrence along both sides of the deep Bay of Chaleurs, which may be considered as the lower extremity of the long depression. At the foot of the eastern belt and following its curve lies a tract of lowland, gently sloping towards the shore with a surface broken by moderate elevations, and from being forty or fifty miles broad in Massachusetts, gradually spreading in Maine to nearly double that width. In Connecticut, the descent to the sea is by still easier steps. To regard these highlands, which form so important a feature of New England geography, as simply two ranges of hills, would not be to conceive of them correctly. They are vast swells of land, of an average elevation of a thousand feet above the level of the sea, each with a width of forty or fifty miles, from which, as from a base, mountains rise in chains or in isolated groups to an altitude of several thousand feet more. In structure, the two belts are unlike. The western system, which bears the general name of the Green Mountains, is composed of two principal chains, more or less continuous, covered, like several shorter ones which run along them, with the forests and herbage to which they owe their name. Between these a longitudinal valley can be traced, though with some interruption, from Connecticut to Northern Vermont. In Massachusetts and Connecticut it is marked by the course of the Housatonic, in Vermont by the rich basins that hold the villages of Bennington, Manchester, and Rutland, and further on by valleys of less note. The space between these mountain ranges and the Connecticut is mostly occupied by a rugged table-land measuring in height from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet. In Massachusetts, this is deeply furrowed by transverse valleys, through which torrents like the Westfield and the Deerfield rivers descend to the Con necticut. In Vermont, both heights and streams assume a more gentle character. mountains, north. The mountains have a regular increase in elevation from south to north. From a height of less than Increase in a thousand feet in Connecticut, they rise to an the height of average of twenty-five hundred feet in Massachu- towards the setts, where the majestic Greylock, isolated between the two chains, lifts its head to the stature of thirtyfive hundred feet. In Vermont, Equinox and Stratton Mountains, near Manchester, are thirty-seven hundred feet high; Killington Peak, near Rutland, rises forty-two hundred feet; Mansfield Mountain, at the northern extremity, overtops the rest of the Green Mountain range with an altitude of forty-four hundred feet. The rise of the valley is less regular. In Connecticut, its bottom is from five hundred to seven hundred feet above the sea; in Southern Massachusetts it is eight hundred feet; it rises thence two hundred feet to Pittsfield, and one hundred more to the foot of Greylock, whence it declines to the bed of the Housatonic in one direction, and to an average height of little more than five hundred feet in Vermont, in the other. Thus it is in Berkshire County, in Western Massachusetts, that the western swell presents, if not the most elevated peaks, yet the most compact and consolidated structure. Nowhere else in New England has the locomotive engine to climb to such a height in order to reach the valley of the Hudson. Between Westfield and Pittsfield, the Western Railway attains an elevation of no less than fourteen hundred and seventy-five feet above the surface of the water in Boston harbor. The eastern belt has no continuous range of mountains. In Massachusetts, it is a broad, undulating surface, about a thousand feet high, broken by valleys of moderate depth. Numerous smooth and bare summits, like the crests of parallel waves, lift a space of arable land a few hundred feet above the general level. Here and there, |