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.

Ranges of

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 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.

The mountains have a regular increase in elevation from south to north. From a height of less than

Increase in

mountains,

north.

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,

however, are isolated hills, like Watatick, near the centre of the plateau, and Wachusett, on its eastern edge, with altitudes respectively of eighteen hundred and over two thousand feet. In New Hampshire, the same general character is preserved, but the country is more broken, and the mountains grow higher and more numerous. On a line running, a little west of the centre, along an ascending series of peaks having no immediate connection with each other, the Great Monadnock, Cuba Mountain, Carr Mountain, and Moosehillock, respectively thirtytwo hundred, thirty-three hundred, thirty-five hundred, and forty-eight hundred feet high, conduct to Lafayette Mountain, which measures fifty-three hundred feet. Beyond this begins the group of the White Mountains, separate like the rest, and in its highest peak, Mount Washington, with an elevation of sixty-three hundred feet, presenting the culminating point of the northern section of the Appalachian range. The regular increase of elevation from south to north, which characterizes the Green Mountain range, appears equally in the more easterly system, and the extreme heights of the two are in nearly the same parallel of latitude.

Beyond the White Mountains, while the peaks are lower, the table-land continues to rise, till it reaches an elevation varying from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred feet. In Maine, the swell expands and sinks, though not enough to lose its importance as the principal watershed. Along its path are scattered the few high mountains of Maine, as Mount Abraham, Mount Squaw, and Katahdin, which last is said to have an altitude of more than fifty-three hundred feet.

Such are the great geographical features which determine the direction of the water-courses, the amount and distribution of water power, and the capacities of different parts of the country for various forms of the industry of civilized man, in agriculture, commerce, and the man

ufacturing arts. They materially influenced the early march of the settlements, and the establishment of the political centres.

Source and

of rivers.

The region along the northern border of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, where the two belts of highlands meet in a common table-land, supplies direction of the springs of all the important streams of the peninsular country which has been described. The Connecticut and the Androscoggin seeking the ocean by a southerly course, the feeders of the Kennebec and the Penobscot running towards the east and southeast, those of the St. John towards the northeast, and those of the Chaudière and the St. Francis towards the northwest, all descend from these heights by rapid plunges into the lower country. With their valleys they take directions and characters according with those of the slopes to which they respectively belong. In New England, they thus arrange themselves in a threefold division.

necticut.

To the general descent of the country from north to south corresponds the course of the Connecti- The Concut River. Its wide and deep valley separates not only two mountain ridges, but two solid masses of highland. A series of terraces breaks the level of its broad bed. Rarely presenting any sudden changes of direction, it obeys the nearly straight course of the parallel walls which confine its valley. Its most rapid descent is that of twelve hundred feet in the first quarter of its course, from its sources to the mouth of the Pasumpsic River, on the parallel of the White Mountains, where its surface is but four hundred feet above the sea two hundred miles distant. In eighty miles, from that point to the long and flat bottom between Windsor and Bellows Falls in Vermont, it descends only one hundred feet; thence it sinks a hundred and sixty feet to the plains of Deerfield; and at Springfield, eighty miles from its mouth, it is but forty feet above the ocean.

The