NORTH ADAMS, a city of Berkshire county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., situated at the junction of the N. and S. branches of the Hoosac river, and the Boston & Maine (at the W. terminus of the Hoosac Tunnel) and the Boston & Albany railways, in the extreme N.W. part of the state. Pop. (1905) 22,150; (1910) 22,019. Area, 19.9 sq. m. In the city are the villages of North Adams, Greylock and Blackinton. Within the city limits are a natural bridge across Hudson Brook, 50-60 ft. high, and ruins of Fort Massachusetts, which was captured in 1746 by French and Indians under the command of Pierre François de Rigaud, Chevalier de Vaudreuil (1704–1772). North Adams is the seat of a state Normal School (1897). Among its manufactures are cotton (especially print) and woollen goods, and boots and shoes. In 1900 the factory products of the city were valued at $10,741,495, and in 1905 at $8,035,705. North Adams secured incorporation as an independent township in 1878. Township government was abandoned and city government was organized in 1895; in 1900 part of Williamstown was annexed.
NORTHALLERTON, a market town in the Richmond parliamentary division of the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, 30 m. N.N.W. from York by the North Eastern railway, on which it is an important junction. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4009. It lies in a plain west of the Cleveland and Hambleton Hills, on the Sun Beck, a small tributary of the river Wiske. The church of All Saints is a large cruciform structure, Norman, Early English and Perpendicular, with a central tower 80 ft. in height. There is a grammar-school. Among the charities are a hospital founded in 1476 by Richard Moore. There are no traces of the fortified palace of the bishops of Durham, of the White Friars’ monastery founded in 1354, or of the Austin priory founded in 1341. The town has a considerable agricultural trade, and there are motor-engineering works. In the neighbourhood of Northallerton is the priory of Mount Grace, a Carthusian foundation of 1397. It consists of an outer court entered through a gatehouse, the church and chapter-house, with other buildings lying on the north side, partly surrounded by monastic dwelling-houses. These houses, with gardens attached, also surround three sides of the cloister court, which lies north of the outer court. In the vicinity are a monks’ well and a ruined chapel of the 16th century.
Northallerton (Alvetune, Allerton) is said to have been a Roman station and afterwards a Saxon “burgh,” but nothing is known with certainty about it before the account given in the Domesday Survey, which shows that before the Conquest Earl Edwin had held the manor, but that the Normans had destroyed it so utterly that it was still waste in 1086. Soon after his accession William Rufus gave it to the bishop of Durham, whose successors continued to hold it until it was taken over by the ecclesiastical commissioners in 1865. As a borough by prescription Northallerton returned two members to the parliament of 1298, but was not represented again until 1640, when its ancient privileges were restored. The Municipal Reform Act of 1832 reduced the number of members to one, and in 1885 the town was disfranchised. The first account of the borough and its privileges is contained in an inquisition taken in 1333 after the death of Anthony, bishop of Durham, which shows that the burgesses held the town with the markets and fairs at a fee-farm rent of 40 marks yearly, and that they had two reeves who sat in court with the bishop’s bailiff to hear the disputes of the townspeople. This form of government continued until 1851, when a local board was formed, which in 1894 was superseded by an urban district council. A weekly market on Wednesday was granted by King John to the bishop in 1205. A subsequent bishop obtained a grant of a fair on St Bartholomew’s day, which according to Camden (circa 1585), had become almost “the most thronged” cattle fair in England, but is no longer held. In 1317 the town was burnt by the Scots under Robert Bruce, although the burgesses paid 3000 marks that it might be spared. In consequence they were exempted from taxes in 1319.
See Victoria County History, Yorkshire; C. J. D. Ingledew, The History and Antiquities of Northallerton in the County of York (1858); J. L. Saywell, The History and Annals of Northallerton (1885).
NORTH AMERICA. In the article America a brief geographical survey is taken of the two continents which bear this name; and their points of similarity and contrast are broadly indicated. When North America is compared with the northern continents of the Old World, an important correspondence is found between it and the greaterComparison of North America
and Eurasia. part of Eurasia; but here the corresponding parts are reversed, right and left, like the two hands. The Laurentian highlands agree with Scandinavia and Finland, both having escaped deformation since very ancient times. A series of water bodies (the Great lakes in North America; the southern Baltic, with Onega, Ladoga, &c. in Europe) occupy depressions that are associated with the boundary between the very ancient lands and their less ancient covering strata. The old worn-down and re-elevated Appalachian mountains of south-eastern North America agree well with the Hercynian mountains of similar history in middle Europe (Ardennes, Slate mountains of the middle Rhine, &c.), each range entering the sea at its Atlantic end (in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; in Brittany, Wales and Ireland), and dipping under younger formations at its inland end. Certain younger ranges—seldom recognized as mountains because they are mostly submerged in the American mediterraneans (Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea), but of great absolute relief and with crests rising in the larger West Indian islands—may be compared with the younger ranges of southern Europe (Pyrenees, Alps, Caucasus) bordering the classic Mediterranean and the seas farther east. The central plains of North America correspond well with the plains of Russia and western Siberia; both stretch from great enclosed water bodies on the south to the Arctic Ocean, and both are built of undisturbed Palaeozoic strata toward the axis of symmetry and of younger strata away from it. Finally, the Western highlands of North America may be compared with the great mountain complex of central and eastern Asia. In this remarkable succession of resemblances we find one of the best proofs of the continental unity of Eurasia. Moreover, the resemblances thus described controvert the idea, prevalent when geology was less advanced than to-day, that the New World of civilized discovery is an “old world” geologically, and that the Old World of history is geologically “new.” Both worlds are so old, and both share so well the effects of successive geological changes from the most ancient to the most modern periods, that neither can regard the other as older or younger than itself.
There are several climatic similarities between North America and Eurasia. The Appalachians and the Hercynian mountains of middle Europe both contain extensive coal deposits of similar geological age, thus indicating a climatic and geographic resemblance at a time of great antiquity. The Laurentian highlands and the Scandinavian highlands were both heavily and repeatedly glaciated in recent geological times, and the ice sheets that crept out on all sides from those centres spread far over the lower lands to the south and away from the axis of symmetry towards the continental interior, scouring the highlands and leaving them rocky and barren, strewing extensive drift deposits over the peripheral areas, and thus significantly modifying their form and drainage; while the much loftier mountain ranges of western America and central Asia suffered, singularly enough, a far less extensive glaciation. At the present time, the plentiful and well-distributed rainfall of the continental border on either side of the Atlantic is succeeded by an increasing aridity towards the continental interior, until the broad plains that rise towards the distant mountain complexes are comparatively barren or even desert. Within each greater mountain area extensive interior drainage basins are found holding salt lakes, and the recently determined former extension of these lakes in Central Asia agrees with the well-proved extension of Pleistocene lacustrine conditions in western North America.
The following sketch of the geological development of North America considers the larger physiographic divisions already indicated.
The extensive area of ancient crystalline rocks (Archean), stretching from Labrador past Hudson Bay to the Arctic Ocean, is of greatly disordered structure, and hence must have once had a
