The _Wallkill_, which crosses the Hudson at West Point, forty miles below the Catskill, is the continuation of the Blue Ridge, or _Eastern Chain_, which is the most general appellation for the extensive ridge which fronts the Atlantic. The eastern and western ranges run parallel to each other, south-west, till on the frontiers of North Carolina and Virginia they unite in a knot which has been called the Alleghany Arch, because the principal chain embraces there in a curve all its collaterals from the east. A little farther to the south, but still in North Carolina, a second knot unites all the collateral ridges from the west, and forms a culminating point of heads of rivers. The second bifurcation stretches south-west and then west, and the name of the [2]Cumberland Mountains through the whole state of Tennessee, while the proper _Alleghany Chain_, left almost alone, continues its course to the south-west, and completes the boundary of Georgia and the two Carolinas. From the Alleghany Arch, there are three principal ridges or ramifications of the Alleghany, running north-east and nearly parallel to each other, namely, the _Alleghany Proper_, the _North Mountain_, and the _Blue Ridge_. Of the last ridge the highest summits are the Otter Peaks. The elevated district of South Carolina presents seven or eight mountains running in regular directions, the most distinguished of which is the [3]Table Mountain. Mr. Jefferson, with peculiar felicity of illustration, called the range of the Alleghanies the spine of the United States separating the eastern from the western waters, and the whole of the territory from the Mississippi to the Atlantic into three natural divisions, materially differing from each other in climate, configuration, soil, and produce; namely, the coast, the mountains, and the western territory.