line of
Messrs. Mudge and Featherstonhaugh passes are therefore the opposite of
those usually remarked in highland countries, while those of the line
claimed by the United States are the same as are always observed in
such regions.

This character of a table-land deeply cut by streams is well exhibited
in the section of their "axis of maximum elevation" by the British
commissioners. In that will be seen the mountains near the source of the
Aroostook, Alleguash, and Penobscot on the one hand, and of the Tobique
on the other, while the intervening space is occupied by a curve
resembling an inverted arch, of which the St. John occupies the
keystone. In a country of this character any line whatever would present
the appearance of a succession of eminences, and might by as liberal a
construction of the term as has been made by Messrs. Mudge and
Featherstonhaugh be called highlands.

The sameness of this general character is broken only by a single chain
of hills.[32] This is a prolongation of Mars Hill toward the north, and,
being both of less height and breadth than that mountain, is hidden by
it from the view of a spectator on Parks Hill. Mars Hill is itself an
isolated eminence, and is in fact nearly an island, for the Presque Isle
and Gissiguit rivers, running the one to the north and the other to the
south of it, have branches which take their rise in the same swamp on
its northwestern side. To the north of the Des Chutes the ground again
rises, and although cut by several streams, and particularly by the
Aroostook, the chain is prolonged by isolated eminences as far as the
White Rapids, below the Grand Falls of the St. John, where it crosses
that river. It may thence be traced in a northern direction to the Sugar
Loaf Mountain, on the Wagansis portage, where it terminates.

[Footnote 32: A chain is made up of mountains whose bases touch each
other.--BALBI.]

To this broken chain belongs the elevation of 918 feet given by Messrs.
Mudge and Featherstonhaugh to an eminence in the neighborhood of the
Aroostook Falls. An accurate profile of so many of these eminences as
fall in the line of the connected meridian is herewith submitted. This
chain of eminences is not prolonged to the westward, as it is entirely
unconnected with any other height aspiring to the name of mountain in
that direction.

It is not in any sense a dividing ridge, being cut by all the streams in
the country, and in particular to a great depth by