mountains begin at the Blue Ridge, which in Virginia raises its
even-topped heights mile after mile across the length of that
State. In North Carolina, however, they lose their character as a
single ridge and expand into the broad mass of the southern
Appalachians. There Mount Mitchell dominates the eastern part of
the American continent and is surrounded by over thirty other
mountains rising to a height of at least six thousand feet. The
Piedmont plateau, which lies at the eastern foot of the Blue
Ridge, is not really a plateau but a peneplain or ancient lowland
worn almost to a plain. It expands to a width of one hundred
miles in Virginia and the Carolinas and forms the part of those
States where most of the larger towns are situated. Among its low
gentle heights there rises an occasional little monadnock like
Chapel Hill, where the University of North Carolina lies on a
rugged eminence which strikingly recalls New England. For the
most part, however, the hills of the Piedmont region are lower
and more rounded than those in the neighborhood of Philadelphia.
The country thus formed has many advantages, for it is flat
enough to be used for agriculture and yet varied enough to be
free from the monotony of the level plains.

The prolonged and broken inner valley forming the second band of
the Appalachians was of some importance as a highway in the days
of the Indians. Today the main highways of traffic touch it only
to cross it as quickly as possible. From Lake Champlain it trends
straight southward in the Hudson Valley until the Catskills have
been passed. Then, while the railroads and all the traffic go on
down the gorge of the Hudson to New York, the valley swings off
into Pennsylvania past Scranton, Wilkesbarre, and Harrisburg.
There the underlying rock consists of a series of alternately