becomes more inaccessible. The only habitable portions are the
bottoms of the valleys, but they are only wide enough to support
a most scanty population. Between them most of the land is too
rough for anything except forests. Hence the people who live at
the bottoms of the valleys are strangely isolated. They see
little or nothing of the world at large or even of their
neighbors. The roads are so few and the trails so difficult that
the farmers cannot easily take their produce to market. Their
only recourse has been to convert their bulky corn into whisky,
which occupied little space in proportion to its value. Since the
mountaineer has no other means of getting ready money, it is not
strange that he has become a moonshiner and has fought bitterly
for what he genuinely believed to be his rights in that
occupation. Education has not prospered on the plateau because
the narrowness of the valleys causes the population to be too
poor and too scattered to support schools. For the same reason
feuds grow up. When people live by themselves they become
suspicious. Not being used to dealing with their neighbors, they
suspect the motives of all but their intimate friends. Moreover,
in those deep valleys, with their steep sides and their general
inaccessibility, laws cannot easily be enforced, and therefore
each family takes the law into its own hands.

Today the more rugged parts of the Appalachian system are chiefly
important as a hindrance to communication. On the Atlantic slope
of the old crystalline band there are great areas of gentle
relief where an abundant population can dwell. Westward on the
edges of the plateau and the plains beyond a still greater
population can find a living, but in the intervening space there
is opportunity for only a few. The great problem is to cross the