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Report of the Secretary of Agriculture in relation to the forests, rivers, and mountains of the southern Appalachian region

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  • 126 SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION. number to over 6,000 feet. The mountain slopes, though usually steep, are forest-covered, and have a deep, fertile soil of varying physical character, which is very readily eroded and washed away when the forest covering is removed. The Blue Ridge, though not so high as the mountains to the west, is an older range and constitutes the divide between the waters flowing to the east and those flowing to the west, the streams flowing in either direction having their head springs in or near the gaps of this divide. (Pis. LXIX, LXX.) The Bine Ridge j,, considering the Blue Ridge as the great divide of the great divide. g fe & ° i this region two portions of it are especially notable. (See PI. XII.) Near Grandfather Mountain, the highest point on the Blue Ridge, the New or Kanawha River rises and flows northward through Virginia and thence northwestward into the Ohio; the Yadkin rises a few yards distant on the east and flows northeast and then southeast into the Atlantic; the Linville, a branch of the Catawba, rises on the west side and flows south-southeast, cutting across the Blue Ridge in a deep gorge, while a few miles farther west the Watauga and Nolichucky flow northwest and southwest, respectively, into the Tennessee and the Gulf. One hundred and fifty miles farther southwest, where the Blue Ridge is somewhat broken up near its junction with the Balsam cross ridge, the French Broad rises and flows eastward; the Saluda flows southeast; the Savannah south, and the Tuckasegee west-southwest, into the Tennessee. (PI. LXX1.) The most striking characteristic of the Blue Ridge is the great apparent difference in height when viewed from its two sides, the streams flowing toward the east plunging down its sides in narrow V-shaped gorges for a thousand feet or more in a distance of a few miles until they reach the gentle slopes of the Piedmont Plain. (See PI. XXVII). Those flowing westward have a much easier descent. gore*. river This is well shown by the great falls on the Linville River, which, rising on the western slopes of Grandfather Mountain, in Mitch, 11 County, flows in a general southerly course to its junction with the Catawba River, near the southern end of the Linville Mountains. The falls proper, which are located about :-! miles below the Mitchell-Burke County line, have a perpendicular plunge of 40 feet, and the cascades above are about 50 feet in height, this fall of 90 feet occurring in a linear distance
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Object’s are ‘parent’ level descriptions to ‘children’ items, (e.g. a book with pages).