The inequalities of the earth's surface are like the rugosities of the human brain: the depths of the one contain the richest and most inexhaustible treasures of mineral wealth, as the wrinkles of the other collect the stores of mental lore. As the surface of the brain becomes less marked and rugged, the strength and scope of the mind vanish, and approach the standard of the lower animals; and likewise, as the elevated lands of the earth shrink in form, and sink into the level of the plain, so the characters of the races who inhabit them lose force and elevation. Sometimes the minds of men are the reflections of the beauties and sublimities of nature. Sometimes men become degraded, and nature then does not inspire. XXXI. The lofty and diversified mountain range, or system of ranges, known as the Appalachian or Alleghany, rises or reappears in the State of New York, midway between the Atlantic coast and the shores of those fresh-water seas, Erie and Ontario. It then stretches down south-westward, with its adjacent spurs, through the great States of Pennsylvania and Virginia; then, dividing, it forms, with its eastern range, the western and northern limit of North and South Carolina and Georgia; and with the western it intersects Tennessee, forming that beautiful basin known among the white men as East Tennessee, but among the traditions of the red men as the Garden of the Manitou--their God. In Northern Alabama, the separated ranges seemingly unite; and passing southward, towards the central portion of the State, the mountain summits gradually contract, and finally sink into the level of the great alluvial plains, which stretch away, without undulation, to the shores of the Gulf. These huge masses of rock, dislocated and elevated like the Vosges and the Hartz Mountains at the close of the carboniferous or devonian period of the earth's age, contain, with the adjacent and connecting bands,--which are composed of the silurian, primitive, and metamorphic ledges,--most of the accessible mineral wealth of the republic. And the collective beds of iron, coal, marble, zinc, copper, and gold are unsurpassed in similar extent and richness by the mines of any country of the known world, with the exception of those wonderful deposits of ores and minerals among the unexplored and almost inaccessible recesses and plateaus of the Sierra Nevada or the Andes.