Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/205

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PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE ADIRONDACKS.
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E. A. Howell, show this in all desirable clearness. Along the shores of Lake Champlain the ridges come in one after another from the southwest, making the western shore of the lake a series of bays with bold intervening headlands. The central portion of Lake George, where the wildest and most picturesque scenery is found, is another example. Precipitous escarpments characterize the shores, while mountains of rugged outline shut in the observer. In the interior these characters appear on an even grander scale. The Lower Ausable lake is a Graben; Avalanche lake, one of the sources of the Hudson, has cliffs so steep that the traveler must take to a boat to find a passage. In Wilmington notch, as also in Indian pass, cliffs hardly less than a thousand feet, front the traveler.

A second but less strongly developed series of faults runs northwest and southeast and is the cause of many cross breaks at right angles with the set last mentioned. They serve to block out the individual mountains amid the general northeast trend of the ridges, and are responsible for innumerable little cross-passes which are found on all the summits. In the high mountains, the little cross-passes almost always have a well-defined bear or deer trail following them through. They serve also to develop sharp shoulders in the precipices of the first type and to give the shores of a lake a very serrated outline. In the Mount Marcy and Elizabethtown quadrangle they, with the first set, have occasioned the interesting 'lattice-shaped' drainage noted by Professor Brigham some years ago. The little streams flow

Fig. 7. The Cascade Lakes, between the Keene Valley and Lake Placid—illustrating the northwest and southeast faulted valley.