Orange County is unsurpassed by any other in the Empire State in variety of surface features and picturesque beauty of scenery. It has mountain ranges and extended ridges, streams with wide and narrow valleys, and is dotted with lakes and ponds. Along the mountain lines are a few lofty peaks, and there are many isolated hills and rocky precipices. Parts of its boundaries are the Hudson River on the northeast, the Delaware and Mongaup Rivers on the west, and the Shawangunk Kill on the northwest. Near the center the Wallkill winds along its rich valley into Ulster County, and thence into the Hudson. Its principal tributary on the northwest is Rutgers Creek--which also has several tributaries--and others are Monhagen Creek, Mechanicstown Creek and Shawangunk Kill. On the southwest it gathers in the waters of Warwick Creek--which is swollen by smaller streams in its course--and also Quaker, Rio Grande, and Tin Brook Creeks. The Otter Kill flows easterly from Chester into the Hudson. The Neversink flows from Sullivan County through the town of Deer Park, and becomes a tributary of the Hudson. The course of the Ramapo is southerly from Round Pond in Monroe to Rockland County, and it is fed by several other ponds. Other streams, large and small, are numerous. The central portion of the county consists of rolling uplands broken by deep valleys. The most prominent of the mountain ranges are the Highlands along its eastern border. Their loftiest peak, Butter Hill, is 1,524 feet high, precipitous on the river side, and sloping on the north. Another name given to it is Storm King, because clouds occasionally gather there from different directions and concentrate in storms of rain and lightning. Cro'-nest {_sic_} adjoins it on the south, and is 1,418 feet above the Hudson. Bare Mountain is next, with a height of 1,350 feet. Mount Independence, with Fort Putnam on its summit, is the background of the West Point plateau. Other well known hills are in this broken range, where Arnold, the traitor, conferred with Andre, the spy, and is more intimately identified with the military history of the country than any other mountain region. It has been written of Butter Hill and Cro'-nest that "they have a charm which might induce a man to live in their shadow for no other purpose than to have them always before him, day and night, to study their ever-changing beauty." [Illustration: Gate of the Highlands] The Shawangunk Mountains are a spur of the Alleghenies stretching northeast across the western angle of the county. They are less broken than the Highlands, and not so high as the Catskills, but of the same general formation. The western side is precipitous, but the eastern is sloping, and some of its lands are very fertile, producing sweet grasses from which much of the famous Orange County butter has been made. The peaks rise from 1,400 to 1,800 feet above tide water. This range was the original dividing line between the Wawayanda and Chesekook patents.