A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 4, part 2: John Tyler
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 4, part 2: John Tyler
Presidents -- United States; Tyler, John, 1790-1862; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
This description can only agree with that of a vast table-land into
which the streams cut so deep and form such narrow valleys as to be
invisible.
But if a chain of highlands, or even an "axis of maximum elevation,"
had existed as they lay it down, within 20 miles, it would have been
visible, and it need not be said that they would not have failed to
describe it. The inconsistency between their map and this true and
forcible description of the features of the country is apparent.
The same general character of table-land is found to the north of the
St. John above the Grand Falls. Its first important northern tributary
is the Grand River. In ascending this stream the level of the table-land
is soon reached. The river runs between banks of very moderate elevation
and on a regular slope, and although running with great rapidity upon a
pebbly bed it is yet so tortuous that while its distance from its mouth
to the Wagansis portage in a straight line is no more than 13 miles the
meanders of its channel amount to 30.
On the Wagansis portage the table-land is terminated by a ridge whose
summit is elevated 264 feet above the wagansis[33] of Grand River. It
was at first believed that this, although of small elevation, was a
dividing ridge, and that it might correspond to one construction which
has, although inaccurately, been put on the treaty of 1783. This belief
was speedily removed, for the rivulet on its northern side was found to
be cut off from the Restigouche by the Sugar Loaf Mountain, and is
therefore a branch either of the Grand River or of the stream which
falls into the St. John immediately above the Grand Falls. The height of
land which divides this rivulet from the wagan of the Restigouche is not
elevated above the former more than 117 feet. There is, in fact, at this
place a gap 5 or 6 miles in breadth in the great system of mountains
which extend from the Gulf of St. Lawrence at the Bay des Chaleurs to
the river St. Lawrence near the Temiscouata portage. At the northern
verge of the table-land which has been described, and near the mouth of
Green River, rises to the height of about 1,600 feet a mountain known
from the name of that stream. This is, like Mars Hill, isolated, and
affords an extensive view. To the north and west the prospect is bounded
by a continuous line of horizon, which, instead of being obviously below
the level of the eye, as in the view of the disputed territory from Mars
Hill, is evidently of even greater height than the Green River Mountain
itself.
[Footnote 33: Wagan is a term in the Abenaki language signifying way.
Sis is a diminutive particle. Wagansis is therefore the little way; and
it seems probable that the name of Grand River, the usual epithet for
the St. John, has been improperly applied to the small stream which
bears it on the map.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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