(when it was a main divide), worn it through from west to east, capturing all that broad watershed between the two mountain ranges? Either hypothesis is within the possibility of well established river action, and both suggest the possibility of infinite change in mountain forms and river systems. Without attempting here to discriminate between these two hypotheses, for which a broader foundation of facts is needed, let us look at the channel of the French Broad below Asheville, in the river's course through the range that is higher than its source. Descending from the old plain into the river's ravine, we at once lose all extended views and are closely shut in by wooded slopes and rocky bluffs. The river falls the more rapidly as we descend, and its tributaries leap to join it, the railroad scarce finding room between the rocks and the brawling current. The way is into a rugged and inhospitable gorge whose walls rise at last on either hand into mountains that culminate some thirty miles below Asheville. At Mountain Island the waters dash beautifully over a ledge of conglomerate and rush out from a long series of rapids into the deep water above Hot Springs. Beyond the limestone cove in which the springs occur, the valley, though narrow still, is wider and bottom lands appear. Thus the water gap of the French Broad through the Unakas is narrow and rugged, the river itself a tossing torrent; but had we passed down other streams of similar course, we should have found them even more turbulent, their channels even more sharply carved in the hard rocks. On Pigeon river there are many cliffs of polished quartzite, and on the Nolichucky river a V-shaped gorge some eight miles long is terraced where the ledges of quartzite are horizontal and is turreted with fantastic forms where the strata are vertical. Where the river valleys are of this sharp cut character in high mountains, the abrupt slopes, cliffs and rocky pinnacles are commonly still more sharply accented in the heights. The Alpine tourist or the mountaineer of the Sierras would expect to climb from these cañons to ragged combs or to scarcely accessible needle-like peaks. But how different from the heights of the Jungfrau are the "balds" of the Unakas! like the ice-worn granite domes of New England, the massive balds present a rounded profile against the sky. Although composed of the hardest rock, they yet resemble in their contours, the low relief of a limestone area. Broad, even surfaces, on which rocky outcrops are few and over which a deep loam prevails, suggest rather that one is wandering over a plain than on a great mountain; yet you may sweep the entire horizon and find few higher peaks. The view is often very beautiful, it is far-reaching, not grand. No crags tower skyward, but many domes rise nearly to the same heights, and dome-like, their slopes are steepest toward the base. The valleys and the mountains have exchanged the