e Allegheny Plateau and the Great
Appalachian Valley, the New York-New Jersey Highlands and a large
portion of the Blue Ridge; and the southern consists of the prolongation
of the Blue Ridge, the Unaka Range, and the Valley Ridges adjoining the
Cumberland Plateau, with some lesser ranges.

_The Chief Summits._--The Appalachian belt includes, with the ranges
enumerated above, the plateaus sloping southward to the Atlantic Ocean
in New England, and south-eastward to the border of the coastal plain
through the central and southern Atlantic states; and on the north-west,
the Allegheny and Cumberland plateaus declining toward the Great Lakes
and the interior plains. A remarkable feature of the belt is the
longitudinal chain of broad valleys--the Great Appalachian
Valley--which, in the southerly sections divides the mountain system
into two subequal portions, but in the northernmost lies west of all the
ranges possessing typical Appalachian features, and separates them from
the Adirondack group. The mountain system has no axis of dominating
altitudes, but in every portion the summits rise to rather uniform
heights, and, especially in the central section, the various ridges and
intermontane valleys have the same trend as the system itself. None of
the summits reaches the region of perpetual snow. Mountains of the Long
Range in Newfoundland reach heights of nearly 2000 ft. In the
Shickshocks the higher summits rise to about 4000 ft. elevation. In
Maine four peaks exceed 3000 ft., including Katahdin (5200 ft.), Mount
Washington, in the White Mountains (6293 ft.), Adams (5805), Jefferson
(5725), Clay (5554), Monroe (5390), Madison (5380), Lafayette (5269);
and a number of summits rise above 4000 ft. In the Green Mountains the
highest point, Mansfield, is 4364 ft.; Lincoln (4078), Killington
(4241), Camel Hump (4088); and a number of other heights exceed 3000 ft.
The Catskills are not properly included in the system. The Blue Ridge,
rising in southern Pennsylvania and there known as South Mountain,
attains in that state elevations of about 2000 ft.; southward to the
Potomac its altitudes diminish, but 30 m. beyond again reach 2000 ft. In
the Virginia Blue Ridge the following are the highest peaks east of New
river: Mount Weather (about 1850 ft.), Mary's Rock (3523), Peaks of
Otter (4001 and 3875), Stony Man (4031), Hawks Bill (4066). In
Pennsylvania the summits of the Valley Ridges rise generally to about
2000 ft., and in Maryland