Foot Of Mountain Research Articles

Piedmont North Carolina and Textile Production

Ip JIEDMONT North Carolina, that portion of the state lying to the west of the Sand Hills region and extending to the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains is made up of a broad rolling peneplain, with here and there monadnocks standing out in relief. It may well be divided into two areas, the eastern or industrial and farming area; the western a resort section. The general elevation is from 300 feet in the east to about 2,000 feet at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the eastern area are found some of the very best farm lands within the state. Here, cotton, tobacco, corn, and the small grains are the main crops. The western part of the section is in general mountainous in character, the general trend of the elevations being northeast and southwest. In the west, farm lands of value are scarce. At most places the land is rough, stony, and the slope of the land too steep for good farming. Fruits, corn, and the small grains make the average crop. The drainage in the west is taken care of by the Yadkin, Catawba, and the Broad Rivers. In the upper reaches, the Yadkin and Catawba Rivers flow east, later bending sharply to the south, entering the Atlantic Ocean through South Carolina. In the falls of these rivers and their tributaries is found a tremendous water power. In the east, the drainage is for the greater part through the basins of the Cape Fear, Neuse, Tar, and Roanoke Rivers. Here, again, we find a source of hydro-electric power in the falls which occur where the streams flow from the older crystalline formations on to the more easily eroded material of the recently uplifted Coastal Plain. The power plants of most importance are located at or near the fall-line. The statistics according to the 1925 survey are as follows:

Out-of-the-World Villages of Atacama

T IS no wonder that Toconce, Aiquina, and Caspana are called out-of-the-world villages.' The Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway lies over thirty miles to the west. The old transandean route through San Pedro de Atacama, once the main road from Bolivia and still important for the cattle trade from Argentina, runs some two-score miles to the south. The three villages lie tucked away in their respective canyons as peaceful and as undisturbed as they must have lain for centuries and as they are likely to remain for centuries to come. Although an occasional automobile does arrive at Aiquina to create a stir of wonder among the natives, the only possible ways of reaching the other two villages are on foot or in the saddle. Their location as well as their poverty makes the cost of building even a cart road prohibitive. The two automobile roads which run into the general vicinity of the three villages are unused, and one of them fell into a complete state of impassability during the heavy rains of February, I9252. This is the truck road of Punta Blanca that was built and operated by the Chile Exploration Company some ten years ago, when the pipe line was laid from the source of the Toconce River to Chuquicamata. The other road runs from San Pedro inland (on the Antofagasta-Bolivia Railway), following the San Pedro and Inacaliri Rivers and swinging south around Toconce mountain to the geysers at Tatio. It was used by Italian engineers when they conducted experiments at the latter veritable Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes with a view to building a natural-steam power plant similar to the one at Larderello in Tuscany, but their project lies dormant pending the receipt of necessary funds. Even the great scenic beauty of that section of the higher Andes remains happily unexploited. The few privileged visitors lose their hearts on first beholding it: the Vega of Turi, bunch grass and hummocks and sand at the foot of the snow mountains, for all the world like a transplanted bit of Iceland; the bordering range on the south, barren and weird, like a lunar landscape; the Toconce valley with all the riotous colors and grotesque formations of the Grand Canyon; and something of Colorado about the cordillera trails, bunch grass, sagebrush, and rock strata standing on edge.

Sir Henry Hubert Hayden, F.R.S

ALL who knew Sir Henry Hayden well enough must recall a passing thought, more than once definitely formulated, that some day his irrepressible keenness for exploring new and little-known lands would lead to accident. Those who had the inestimable privilege of knowing him with real intimacy know well that, if he had to choose a way of ending his career, it would be on a mountain side and in a fight against physical difficulties. He never revealed and probably never entertained but one fear-that the medical history of his family might repeat itself and render him unfit for further exploratory work. It is appropriate that he should be laid to rest near the foot of a great mountain, and appropriate too that it should be the mountain which he had just conquered, for as a mountaineer he was as efficient as he was daring.

The Storage of Flood-Waters for Irrigation: A Study of the Supply Available From Southern California Streams

Many of the richest sections of California are valleys and plains at the foot of abrupt mountain ranges. The climate is suitable for raising citrus and semi-tropical fruits; but, due to the long summer droughts, this can only be done where there is · sufficient water for irrigation. The value of the products has been great, and, beginning with the small irrigation ditches of the Spanish days, the most perfect system of irrigation in the United States have been built up.

Early Paleozoic delta deposits of North America

Introduction RIVER DEPOSITS In recent years it has come to be generally recognized that within the stratigraphic series of both the old and the new world there are a number of deposits which owe their origin and characteristics not so much to the ordinary forces active in marine sedimentation, but rather to the dominance of the influence of water on land. Most noteworthy among these are the deposits formed by rivers, those formed by lakes or other standing water bodies being of secondary and limited significance. River deposits may be divided into (1) interstream deposits, or those formed along the course of the stream—that is, on its floodplain—and (2) terminal deposits, or those formed at its debouchure either at the foot of the mountains or at its junction with the sea or a lake. Considering only the last type, we find that in the first case a dry delta or . . .

Aegosthena

Aegosthena, now more generally known as Porto Germano, lies on one of the easternmost bays of the Corinthian gulf, and on the northern frontier of the Megarid. Its remoteness from ordinary routes—for between it and Velia, itself an ultima Thule, rise 2,000 feet of pine-clad mountains—accounts for the fact that it is to this day practically unknown, and also perhaps for the very scanty mention of it in ancient literature. There was a shrine of Melampus there, the Spartans passed it in their retreat from Leuctra, and that is all. But the same remoteness has preserved for us a Greek fortified town in better condition and greater completeness than any other, not even excepting Messene.The town was divided into two parts, the Acropolis defended on all sides by a line of walls and towers, and the lower town fortified on the north, from the Acropolis down to the sea, by a similar line, still remaining in good condition. We are, I think, both by the exigencies of its position and also by certain scanty remains bound to assume the existence of a corresponding south wall, of which mention will be made later. The style of building both in the Acropolis and the long wall is the same.

Recent discoveries in Eastern Cilicia

Hearing of extensive and unidentified ruins on the banks of the river Jeihan (the ancient Pyramus) at a spot now called Bodroum to the east of the Cilician plain, just as the river enters the plain from the gorges of the Anti-Taurus, we determined to visit the site. The result of our explorations, made in the early months of this year, are as follows.Our route took us past the rock of Anazarba and Kars Bazaar, at which places we decided to spend a few days, and though the spots have both been previously described we were able to add a few points to the information concerning them, both epigraphical and topographical.Anazarba.—Caesarea penes Anazarbum, as Ptolemy calls it, was second only in importance to Tarsus of the cities of Cilicia during the days of imperial Rome, and was the metropolis of the eastern portion of the great plain. The town was built at the foot of a long rocky mountain, rising like an island out of the plain for the extent of three miles and attaining an altitude of 2,000 feet. The walls as they at present stand are of Armenian and Saracenic construction, enclosing a parallelogram, one side of which is protected by the mountain; but they contain many portions of Roman work, notably the great southern gate formed by a triumphal arch erected in the time of Justinian, when that emperor restored the town after it had been ruined by an earthquake.

Survival of the Fittest

THE doctrine of the “survival of the fittest” must be strangely understood in some quarters. The American papers report Prof. Agassiz as having expressed himself in this wise at a recent meeting of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, of which he is a member:—“I do not know how animals originated; a brilliant imagination that of Darwin; a very necessary faculty in the scientist. The sense I know too well to misquote him. Hasty generalising of observation is Darwin all over. Natural selection is out of generation. Natural necessity, what is it? Do we find that only the strong beget families? Observe plants at the foot of the White mountains, where are large trees, and so up to the summit, where they are mere shrubs. The weak may and do survive as well as the strong. Ignorance lies at the base of the discussion.”

On the Freshwater Deposits of Bessarabia, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria

I n some brief papers recently published in the Society’s Journal, I have drawn the attention of geologists to the freshwater deposits which so extensively form the margin of the Grecian Archipelago and the Sea of Marmora. I have also stated, that they seem to me to be connected with similar freshwater deposits which I have described as existing in the southern part of the Dobrutcha, between Baljik and Kustenjeh; and with others bordering different parts of the Black Sea, such as those noticed by Hamilton in the valley of the Halys near Sinope; and by Pallas, De Hell, and others at Kertch, Taganrok, and Odessa. All these give fragmentary indications of a great Oriental Lake having extended over the area of the Grecian Archipelago, the Black Sea, and Sea of Azof. From recent observations made whilst employed within the Delta of the Danube and the adjacent lakes, I am enabled to state that large portions of the southern parts of Bessarabia, Moldavia, and Wallachia, reaching apparently to the foot of the Carpathian mountains, are composed of lacustrine deposits, purely of freshwater origin; although, from their containing a peculiar striated bivalve like a Cardium , and from the mistaking of a large fossil Dreissena for a Mytilus , by some early travellers, some portions of these deposits have been considered to be indicative of brackish water conditions; there having thus been an apparent admixture of marine with the freshwater shells of these strata. Although I thought there was an error regarding the so-called

On the Coromandel Gold-Diggings in New Zealand

T he gold which was obtained here (Coromandel, near Auckland) during the summer was all dug from either the surface, or from a depth of 18 inches varying to 4 feet below it, and was taken in some instances from the gravel of a stream bed, or in others from a bed of quartz-grit near the foot of a granite mountain. Only in one instance had any one sunk a shaft to the bed-rock. At a depth of 33 feet, a shaft, which I dug, fell in from the looseness of the surrounding earth. Mr. Stephenson, a digger, however, came upon the bed-rock at a depth of 27 feet; but there it was on so steep an inclination, that but little gold could have been expected to have been found lodging upon it. Some small pieces, of a more solid nature than any found elsewhere, were, however, washed from its surface. (See fig. p. 323.) The unusually wet summer induced the diggers, who were chiefly men from Port Philip, men used to a dry climate and firm soil, to abandon the idea of sinking shafts to the bed-rock. The New Zealand diggers contented themselves with digging near the surface, and when the small stratum of quartz-grit, where Coolahan got his gold, was exhausted, they left the district. It cannot, however, be denied, that the limited extent of the Government district was a source of discouragement to men, who, in Australia and California, look to an unlimited field for exploration. But, had

II.— On the Discovery of the Fossil Remains of Bidental and other Reptiles in South Africa .

Plate II. Having been employed, during the last seven years, under the Officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, in superintending the construction of military roads in the colony of the Cape, more especially on its eastern frontier, and having also travelled far beyond that frontier in a northerly direction, I have had opportunities of observing the geological structure of that part of South Africa; and I venture therefore, although only a self-taught geologist, to submit the following observations to the Geological Society. My principal field of research has been the tract of country extending northwards from the sea-coast of the county of Albany to the heads of the rivers which enter the sea on that coast*. The sea-boundary of this county, commencing about 450 miles to the east of Cape Town, at the mouth of the Boschman’s river, runs in a north-easterly direction about seventy miles, to the mouth of the Keiskamma river. In this length of coast are the mouths of the Great Fish and Gualana rivers, the former about 500 miles east of Cape Town, the latter about fifteen miles further to the north-east. The portion of the tract of country above described which I have examined with most attention, lies between the coast and the northern foot of the Winterberg mountain, whose summit is at the distance of nearly ninety miles from the sea. Respecting the country further in the interior I have also given some geological notices. In this eastern extremity of the colony no