Valleys Sentence Examples
The valleys afford rich pastures, and the plains produce every species of grain.
The hilly regions of Limousin, Prigord and the Cvennes are the home of the chestnut, which in some places is still a staple food; walnuts grow on the lower levels of the central plateau and in lower Dauphin and Provence, figs and almonds in Provence, oranges and citrons on the Mediterranean coast, apricots in central France, the olive in Provcnce and the lower valleys of the Rhneand Durancc. Truffles arc found under Silk Cocoons.
The district is by no means devoid of fertility, the steep slopes facing the south enjoying so fine a climate as to render them very favorable for the growth of fruit trees, especially the olive, which is cultivated in terraces to a considerable height up the face of the mountains, while the openings of the valleys are generally occupied by towns or villages, some of which have become favorite winter resorts.
The highland region of northern Albania is divided into two portions by the lower course of the Drin; the mountains of the northern portion, the Bieska Malziis, extend in a confused and broken series of ridges from Scutari to the valleys of the Ibar and White Drin; they comprise the rocky group of the Prokletia, or Accursed Mountains, with their numerous ramifications, including Mount Velechik, inhabited by the Kastrat and Shkrel tribes, Bukovik by the Hot, Golesh by the Klement, Skulsen (7533 ft.), Baba Vrkh (about 7306 ft.), Maranay near Scutari, and the Bastrik range to the east.
But the Apennines of Central Italy, instead of presenting, like the Alps and the northern Apennines, a definite central ridge, with transverse valleys leading down from it on both sides, in reality constitute a mountain mass of very considerable breadth, composed of a number of minor ranges and groups of mountains, which preserve a generally parallel direction, and are separated by upland valleys, some of them of considerable extent as well as considerable elevation above the sea.
She was floating on a cloud, gazing languidly down at mounds and valleys of white sand.
By far the larger portion of Northern Italy is occupied by the basin of the Po, which comprises the whole of the broad plain extending from the foot of the Apennines to that of the Alps, together with the valleys and slopes on both sides of it.
Whilst the heavier troops moved down the Kabul valley to Pencelaotis (Charsadda) under Perdiccas and Hephaestion, Alexander with a body of lighter-armed troops and cavalry pushed up the valleys which join the Kabul from the north - through the regions now known as Bajour, Swat and Buner, inhabited by Indian hill peoples, as fierce then against the western intruder as their Pathan successors are against the British columns.
Its territory is divided into two nearly equal parts by the eastern branch of the Sierra Madre Occidental, the northern part belonging to the great central plateau region, and the southern to an extremely broken region formed by the diverging branches of the Sierra Madre, with their wooded terraces and slopes and highly fertile valleys.
The surface of Minas Geraes is broken by mountain ranges and deeply eroded rivercourses, the latter forming fertile valleys shut in by partly barren uplands, or campos.
AdvertisementThe valleys are well watered and produce excellent crops of cereals and dates.
North of the fiftieth parallel the depths diminish towards the north-east, two long submarine ridges of volcanic origin extend north-eastwards to the southwest of Iceland and to the Faeroe Islands, and these, with their intervening valleys, end in a transverse ridge connecting Greenland, through Iceland and the Faeroe Islands, with Northwestern Scotland and the continental mass of Europe.
There is no forest, timber of any size being found only in the valleys near running water.
Towards the Black Sea coast its thickness diminishes, and it disappears in the valleys.
The fauna of the scrub in the river valleys is decidedly rich, and includes aquatic birds.
AdvertisementBetween the ranges lie valleys of about the same width as the bases of the mountains.
These valleys are generally levelfloored, but at their borders gradually slope upward, and are filled, often to a depth of several thousand feet, with the detritus of gravel, sand and silt from the neighbouring hills.
In the upper parts of the valleys a number of lakes occur, occupying hollows and rock basins in the agglomerates and ashes, fed by springs, and feeding many of the streams that drain the mountain slopes.
The area between the northern border of the Persian high lands and the Caspian and Aral Seas is a nearly desert low-lying plain, extending to the foot of the north - western extremity of the great Tibeto-Himalayan mountains, and prolonged east- Trans- ward up the valleys of the Oxus (Amu-Darya) and Caspian Jaxartes (Syr-Darya), and northward across the country re ior, and of the Kirghiz to the south-western border of Siberia.
In the valleys also are strips covered with a fertile alluvial deposit.
AdvertisementMost of the crop is grown in the irrigated coastal valleys.
Similar wide tracts of less broken country occur, after a mountainous interruption, in northern British Columbia and to some extent in the Yukon Territory, where wide valleys and rolling hills alternate with short mountain ranges of no great altitude.
On the eastern flanks of the ranges the forest is much thinner, and on the interior plateau and in many of the valleys largely gives way to open grass land.
In Ontario the flora of the northern part is much the same as that of the Gulf of St Lawrence, but from Montreal along the Ottawa and St Lawrence valleys the flora takes a more southern aspect, and trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants not found in the eastern parts of the Dominion become common.
Indigenous palms grow in the valleys of the Sierra Jose Ignacio, also to some extent in the departments of Minas, Maldonado and Paysandu.
AdvertisementSeveral valleys often unite into a large elevated plain, broken only by scattered buttes and spurs.
The slopes and valleys are densely wooded, the lower regions being very fertile and adapted to tropical agriculture.
The only cultivable soil occurs in the valleys of the large rivers, but the deer-forest and the shootings on moor and mountain are among the most extensive in Scotland.
The two valleys are separated by the low ridge of the Suram or Meskes mountains.
In these high and stony valleys every available patch of ground is utilized for the cultivation of barley, even up to altitudes of 7000 and 8000 ft.
Mingrelia and Imeretia (valley of Rion) are the gardens of Caucasia, but the high valleys of Svanetia, farther north on the south slopes of the Caucasus mountains, are wild and difficult of access.
The more important of the carnivores which haunt the forests, valleys and mountain slopes are the bear (Ursus arctos), wolf, lynx, wild cat and fox (Vulpes melanotus).
Nevertheless the spirit of resistance in these stubborn mountaineers was not finally broken until 1864, when the Russians eventually stifled all opposition in the difficult valleys and glens of the western Caucasus.
It is divided into six provinces, and covers a broken, mountainous region, partially barren in its higher elevations but traversed by deep, warm, fertile valleys.
It produces Indian corn and other cereals and potatoes in the colder regions, and tropical fruits, sweet potatoes and mandioca (Jatropha manihot, L.) in the low tropical valleys.
The Peak District of the north, on the other hand, though inferior in grandeur to the mountainous Lake District, presents some of the finest hill scenery in England, deriving a special beauty from the richly wooded glens and valleys, such as those of Castleton, Glossop, Dovedale and Millersdale.
Five well-contrasted types of scenery in Derbyshire are clearly traceable to as many varieties of rock; the bleak dry uplands of the north and east, with deep-cut ravines and swift clear streams, are due to the great mass of Mountain Limestone; round the limestone boundary are the valleys with soft outlines in the Pendleside Shales; these are succeeded by the rugged moorlands, covered with heather and peat, which are due to the Millstone Grit series; eastward lies the Derbyshire Coalfield with its gently moulded grasscovered hills; southward is the more level tract of red Triassic rocks.
The earliest English settlements in the district which is now Derbyshire were those of the West Angles, who in the course of their northern conquests in the 6th century pushed their way up the valleys of the Derwent and the Dove, where they became known as the Pecsaetan.
The country, mountainous in its southern portion, possesses extensive forests, fertile valleys, producing rice, wheat and other grains in abundance, and rich pasturages.
During the summer they frequented the mountainous districts, and retired to the valleys to winter.
The ground in the valleys and plains bear very good corn, but especially bears barley or bigge, and oats, but rarely wheat and rye."
Chantre in 1894 picked up lustreless ware, like that of Hissarlik, in central Phrygia and at Pteria, and the English archaeological expeditions, sent subsequently into north-western Anatolia, have never failed to bring back ceramic specimens of Aegean appearance from the valleys of the Rhyndacus, Sangarius and Halys.
The difficulty of communication between the valleys has resulted in the growth of a great number of dialects.
The disturbances among the underlying rocks of Ohio have been slight, and originally the surface was a plain only slightly undulating; stream dissection changed the region to one of numberless hills and valleys; glacial drift then filled up the valleys over large broken areas, forming the remarkably level till plains of northwestern Ohio; but at the same time other areas were broken by the uneven distribution of the drift, and south-eastern Ohio, which was unglaciated, retains its rugged hilly character, gradually merging with the typical plateau country farther S.E.
Those that flow directly into the lake are short, but some of the rivers of this region, such as the Cuyahoga and the'Grand, are turned by drift ridges into circuitous courses and flow through narrow valleys with numerous falls and rapids.
July is the warmest month, and in most parts of the state January is the coldest; in a few valleys, however, February has a colder record than January.
Carinthia possesses a great number of Alpine lakes, which, unlike the other Alpine lakes, lie in the longitudinal valleys.
They occur up mountain slopes as far as vegetation extends, in tropical valleys and forests, in open grassy plains, in sandy deserts, and even in fresh-water ponds and between tide-marks on the seashore.
It stretched westwards into the valley of the Irkut, and up the lower valleys of the Upper Angara and the Barguzin.
Syria happens to lie on the line of least resistance for communication between the early subtropic seats of civilization in the Nile and Euphrates valleys and the civilizations of Europe.
In every direction can be seen luxuriant valleys through which rivers thread their silvery way, wild chasms, magnificent waterfalls - that of Maletsunyane has an unbroken leap of over 600 f t.
The greater part of the territory is mountainous, with fertile, well-watered valleys and valuable forests.
The largest of a group of beautiful lakes in the higher Andean valleys is the celebrated NahuelHuapi (Lion Grass), which is nearly 50 m.
In the plains the soil is generally of sand or alluvial clay, covered in the valleys with a rich vegetable mould.
There are eight other rivers on the same side, seventeen on the south side, six at the east end and four at the west end, besides more than 1200 smaller streams, and the deep valleys cut by the streams add to the broken surface of the country.
The fertile valleys of the north and west are devoted to agriculture and the plains to stockraising.
To the south of the Nerbudda the Satpura range stretches across the province, containing the greater part of five districts, its crystalline and sandstone rocks rising in places through the superficial stratum of trap, and with large areas of shallow stony land still covered to a great extent with forest interspersed by black-soil valleys of great fertility.
To the north, west and south, a flat coastal belt, bordering the Irish Sea, with its inlets Morecambe Bay and Solway Firth, and broadest in the north, marks off the Lake District, while to the east the valleys of the Eden and the Lune divide it from the Pennine mountain system.
The district as a whole is grooved by a main depression, running from north to south along the valleys of St John, Thirlmere, Grasmere and Windermere, surmounting a pass (Dunmail Raise) of only 783 ft.; while a secondary depression, in the same direction, runs along Derwentwater, Borrowdale, Wasdale and Wastwater, but here Sty Head Pass, between Borrowdale and Wasdale, rises to 1600 ft.
The valleys are particularly adapted to horseand sheep-farming, which are growing industries.
The Perche in the southwest and the Thimerais in the north-west are districts of hills and valleys, woods, lakes and streams. The region of the east and south is a level and uniform expanse, consisting for the most part of the riverless but fertile plain of Beauce, sometimes called the "granary of France."
Immediately south of the Jebel Sangeli are the comparatively fertile Jidali and Gebi districts or river valleys - the Gebi flowing east in the direction of Ras Hafun, while the Jidali has a southerly course towards the Wadi Nogal.
The Coniferae are found northward and in the mountain valleys.
The idea of general intercommunication is negatived by the fact that the chief cemeteries are separated by low ground or valleys, where any subterranean galleries would be at once filled with water.
To the westward there is a rapid drop to the wellwatered valley of the Yaw River, and then a rise over broken, dry country before the valleys of the Myit-tha and Mon rivers are reached.
It may be described as the emporium of the trade of the Chindwin and Yaw river valleys.
The Iser, Bober, Aupa, Zacken, Queiss, and a great number of smaller streams also rise among these mountains or on their skirts; and small lakes and tarns are not unfrequent in the valleys.
The Great and Little Schneegruben - two deep rocky gorge-like valleys in which snow remains all the year round - lie to the north of the Hohe Rad.
Blocks of these minerals lie scattered on the sides and ridges of the mountains and in the beds of the streams; and extensive turf moors occupy many of the mountain slopes and valleys.
The northern part can best be regarded as a low plateau (once marine sediments) sloping southward, traversed by the large diluvial valleys of the Mississippi, Red and Ouachita rivers, and recut by smaller tributaries into smaller plateaus and rather uniform flat-topped hills.
In the west there are swelling hills and gentle valleys, with the royal palm the dominating tree.
There are few river valleys that are noteworthy - those of the Yumuri, the Trinidad and the Gaines.
At Guantanamo and Trinidad are other valleys, and between Mariel and Havana is the fine valley of Ariguanabo.
There are numerous high valleys shut in among the mountains of this range; the most noteworthy being the plain of Livno, which lies parallel to the Dalmatian border, at a height of 500 ft.
Along the whole northern rim of Bosnia, as also in the fluvial and Karst valleys (poljes), are found diluvial and alluvial formations, interrupted at one place by an isolated granite layer.
In both alike the scirocco, bringing rain from the south-west, is a prevalent wind, as well as the bora, the fearful north-north-easter of Illyria, which, sweeping down the lateral valleys of the Dinaric Alps, overwhelms everything in its path.
There are fertile valleys in the vicinity which provide the city's markets with fruit and vegetables, while the vineyards of Camargo (formerly known as Cinti), in the southern part of the department, supply wine and spirits of excellent quality.
He pursued his conquests against the Greeks, and established good government throughout his dominions, which at the time of his death included the valleys of the Sakaria and Adranos, extending southwards to Kutaiah and northwards to the Sea of Marmora.
Throughout the mountainous country the valleys are well watered and cultivated, with fortified villages perched on the surrounding heights.
Their slopes enclose well-watered valleys of great fertility, in which the Berber tribes cultivate tiny irrigated fields, their houses clinging to the hill-sides.
A few soundings made outside this coast seem to indicate that the fjords continue as deep submarine valleys far out into the sea.
As a whole the coasts are unusually mountainous, and Greenland forms in this respect an interesting exception, as there is no other known land of such a size so filled along its coasts on all sides with high mountains and deep fjords and valleys.
The whole interior of Greenland is completely covered by the so-called inland ice, an enormous glacier forming a regular shield-shaped expanse of snow and glacier ice, and burying all valleys and mountains far below its surface.
It extends as a completely even plain of snow, with long, almost imperceptible, undulations or waves, at a height of 7000 to 10,000 ft., obliterating the features of the underlying land, the mountains and valleys of which are completely interred.
Over the deepest valleys of the land in the interior this ice-cap must be at least 6000 or 7000 ft.
Here the ice converges into the valleys and moves with increasing velocity in the form of glaciers into the fjords, where they break off as icebergs.
Agriculturally the department is flourishing, the valleys of the Allier and the Sioule known as the Limagne Bourbonnaise comprising its most fertile portion.
Only in the valleys of the Red, Minnesota and Mississippi rivers does the elevation fall below 800 ft.
This soil prevails throughout the southern counties and the Minnesota and Red River valleys, in which sections cereal crops predominate.
In 1823 extensive explorations of the Minnesota and Red River valleys were conducted by Major Stephen Harriman Long (1784-1864), and subsequently (1834-1836) knowledge of the region was extended by the investigations of the artist George Catlin (1796-1872), the topographer George William Featherstonhaugh (1780-1866), and the geologist Jean Nicholas Nicollett (1786-1843).
The village is the nearest station to Greylock, which can be easily ascended, and affords fine views of the Hoosac and Housatonic valleys, the Berkshire Hills and the Green Mountains; the mountain has been a state timber reservation since 1898.
Water is plentiful in the Elburz, and situated in well-watered valleys and gorges are innumerable flourishing villages, embosomed in gardens and orchards, with extensive cultivated fields and meadows, and at higher altitudes small plateaus, under snow until March or April, afford cool camping grounds to the nomads of the plains, and luxuriant grazing to their sheep and cattle during the summer.
The soil in the valleys and on the lower slopes of the hills is fertile, indeed 35.08% of the whole area is arable.
These trenches have for successive geological periods been the drainage valleys of immense lakes (probably also of glaciers) which formerly extended over the plateau or fiords of the seas which surrounded it.
A typical feature of the north-eastern border of the high plateau is a succession of broad longitudinal 5 valleys along its outer base, ' The wide area between the middle Lena and the Amur, as well as the hilly tracts west of Lake Baikal, and the Yeniseisk mining region are in this condition.
These valleys are not synclinal foldings of rocks; they seem to be erosion-valleys.
Formerly filled with alpine lakes, these valleys are now sheeted with flat alluvial soil and occupied by human settlements, and are drained by rivers which flow along them before they make their way to the north through narrow gorges pierced in the mountain-walls.
All the valleys and depressions bear traces of immense post-Pliocene lakes.
Several alpine lakes, of which the picturesque Teletskoye may be specially mentioned, occupy the deeper parts of the valleys of the Altai.
In the alpine tracts of the north the narrowness of the valleys and the steep stony slopes strewn with debris, on which only lichens and mosses are able to grow, make every plot of green grass (even if it be only of Carex) valuable.
The climate of Siberia, however, cannot be called unhealthy, except in certain localities where goitre is common, as it is on the Lena, in several valleys of Nerchinsk and in the Altai Mountains.
On the lower plateau, in Transbaikalia, grain is successfully raised in the Nerchinsk region, with serious risks, however, from early frosts in the valleys.
The fruit also is of excellent quality and in great variety, although the culture of the vine is limited to some of the warmer valleys in the southern districts.
The basin thus presents interesting problems. The existence of wide valleys where the small upper waters of the Cherwell, Evenlode and Coln now flow, the occurrence of waterborne deposits in their beds from the northwest of England and from Wales, and the fact that the Thames, like its lower southern tributaries which pierce the North Downs, has been able to maintain a deep valley through the chalk elevation at Goring, are considered to point to the former existence of a much larger river, in the system of which were included the upper waters of the present Severn, Dee and other rivers of the west.
The surface is generally gently rolling, and in places along the banks of the Winooski or Onion river, the shore of the lake, and in the valleys, it is very picturesque.
The central plateau is a plain whose surface presents "rounded, flat-topped hills and low ridges and reefs of limestone," with narrow intervening valleys.
From the valleys their rugged, deeply indented escarpments, stretching away to the horizon, have the appearance of a continuous chain of mountains.
The great part of this immense region consists of chapadoes, as the larger table-land areas are called, chapadas or smaller sections of the same, and broadly excavated river valleys.
A considerable part of it has been excavated by these rivers to a level which gives their valleys the elevation and character of lowlands, though isolated hills and ranges with the characteristic overlying horizontal sandstone strata of the ancient plateau show that it was once a highland region.
Its chapadas are covered with extensive campos, its shallow valleys with open woodlands, and its deeper valleys with heavy forests.
The mountain slopes are still masses of dense forest, though their lower elevations and neighbouring valleys have been cleared for cultivation and by dealers in rosewood and other valuable woods.
As the outlet of the Tocantins is so near to that of the Amazon, and their lower valleys are conterminous, it is convenient to treat them as parts of the same hydrographic basin.
The lakes of the Alagoas coast, however, are long, narrow and deep, occupying valleys which were deeply excavated when the land stood at a higher level, and which were transformed into lakes by the elevation of the coast.
In the Parahyba valley, which extends across the state of Rio de Janeiro, the mean temperature is somewhat higher than it is in Sao Paulo and Minas Geraes, and the nights are warmer, but the higher valleys of the Serra do Mar enjoy a delightfully temperate climate.
The lower river valleys of the Tocantins-Araguaya, Xingu, Tapajos and Paraguay are essentially tropical, their climate being hot and humid like that of the Amazon.
The higher valleys of the Parana and its tributaries, and of the rivers which flow northward, are sub-tropical in character, having high sun temperatures and cool nights.
The ophidians are also numerous, especially in the wooded lowlands valleys, and the poisonous species, though less numerous than others, include some of the most dangerous known - the rattlesnake surucucd (Lachesis rhombeatus), and jarardca (Bothrops).
Formerly this coast region furnished large quantities of Brazil-wood (Caesalpinia echinata), and the river valleys have long been the principal source of Brazil's best cabinet-wood - rosewood (Dalbergia nigra), jacaranda (Machaeriumfirmum,Benth.),vinhatico (Plathymenia foliosa, Benth.), peroba (Aspidosperma peroba), cedro, &c. The exotic mangabeira (mango) is found everywhere along the coast, together with the bamboo, orange, lemon, banana, cashew, &c.
In general, the carrasco growth extends over the whole central plateau, and heavy forests are found only in the deep river valleys.
Edinburgh occupies a group of hills of moderate height and the valleys between.
Its banks in its upper course are wild and picturesque, with occasional wide deep valleys, with climate and vegetation resembling the coast belt.
The series covers considerable areas in the lowest parts of the valleys and near the coast.
The valleys and coast belt, though practically free from malarial fever, are hot and humid, and fires in dwelling houses are seldom required even in the coolest months; the lower plateaus are cool and the air dry; the uplands are bracing and often very cold, with snow on the ground in winter.
Ostriches do well in the dry, arid valleys of the Tugela and Mooi `rivers.
The only point still remaining undecided is whether the valleys of the Bom-kemchik (a tributary of the Yenisei) and its left-hand tributaries do not belong geographically to the Altai region.
The remainder of this extensive territory ranges at altitudes of 3000 to 4500 ft., even in the bottoms of the river valleys and in the lower plains; while the ridges which constitute the water-partings rise about 2000 ft.
On this vast upper terrace even the bottoms of the river valleys are at altitudes of 4200 to 5500 ft., with one single exception - the narrow gorge of the Khua (Khi)-khem, or upper Yenisei; while the highest pass across the Tannu-ola Mountains is 7090 ft., though the others are much lower.
This same character is also exhibited by the bottoms of the broad valleys, while the more elevated and hilly portions of the territory, especially on their northern slopes, are covered with larch, cedar, pine and deciduous trees belonging to the Siberian flora; where the forests fail they are marshy or assume the character of Alpine meadows - e.g.
The fauna is a mixture of the Siberian and the Daurian - the latter penetrating up the valleys of the Selenga basin.
In Transylvania the climate bears the extreme characteristics peculiar to mountainous countries interspersed with valleys; whilst the climate of the districts bordering on the Adriatic is modified by the neighbourhood of the sea.
It breaks up into long spurs southwards, deep amongst which are hidden the valleys of Kafiristan, almost isolated from each other by the rugged and snow-capped altitudes which divide them.
Like the Kunduz, it probably drains the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush by deep lateral valleys, more or less parallel to the crest, reaching westwards towards the Khawak pass.
The valleys are narrow, but fertile and populous.
The mountains are rugged and difficult; but there is much of the world-famous beautyof scenery, and of the almost phenomenal agricultural wealth of the valleys of Bokhara and Ferghana to, be found in the as yet half-explored recesses of Badakshan.
These tribes raised wheat, presumably in the river valleys, and sold it for export; in the eastern half from west to east were Georgi (perhaps the same as Aroteres) between the Ingul and the Borysthenes (Dnieper), nomad Scyths and Royal Scyths between the Borysthenes and the Tanais (Don).
To sum up the history of Scythia, the oldest inhabitants of whom we hear in Scythia were the Cimmerii; the nature of the country makes it probable that some of them were nomads, while others no doubt tilled some land in the river valleys and in the Crimea, where they left their name to ferries, earthworks and the Cimmerian Bosporus.
The middle veld is marked by long low stony ridges, known as rands, and these rands and the kopjes are often covered with scrub, while mimosa trees are found in the river valleys.
In places, as between Mafeking and Johannesburg, the descent is in terracelike steps, each step marked by a line of hills; in other places there is a gradual slope and elsewhere the descent is abrupt, with outlying hills and deep well-wooded valleys.
The banken veld district is also generally healthy though hotter than the plateaus, and malarial fever prevails in the lower valleys.
The forest patches are confined to the deep kloofs of the mountains, to the valleys of the larger rivers and to the seaslopes of the Drakensberg and other ranges, where they flourish in.
Rose and other flowering shrubs and trees grow well on the banken veld and in the valleys.
Fruit farming is a thriving industry, the slopes of the plateaus and the river valleys being specially adapted for this culture.
This branch consists of parallel chains enclosing elevated valleys, in one of which lies the town of Merida at the height of 5410 ft., overlooked by the highest summit of the chain (Picacho de la Sierra, 15,420 ft.).
The cacau is at its best in the humid forests of this region and is cultivated in the rich alluvial valleys, and the banana thrives everywhere, as well as the exotic orange and lemon.
Sugar-cane is cultivated in the alluvial valleys and coffee on their slopes up to a height of about 2000 ft.
Irrigation, which has not been used to any great extent, is needed in some parts of the country for the best results, but in others, as in the valleys and on the northern slopes of the Maritime Andes, the rainfall is sufficiently well distributed to meet most requirements.
The surface of the state is much broken by the Sierra Madre Occidental, which extends through it from north to south and covers its entire width with parallel ranges, enclosing fertile valleys.
The soil of the sierra valleys is fertile, and when it is irrigated forage and cereal crops may be grown in abundance.
These and other tributary streams have been covered in and built over (in some cases serving as sewers), but it is possible to trace their valleys at various points by the fall and rise of streets crossing them, and their names survive, as will be seen, in various modern applications.
The coast plain (in large part), the river valleys, and the eastern sides of the lower hills are covered with mimosa and other thorn trees.
Drifts, entries and tunnels find their chief application in mining regions cut by deep valleys.
The Hindu Kush is, in fact, but the face of a great upheaved mass of plateau-land lying beyond it northwards, just as the Himalaya forms the southern face of the great central tableland of Tibet, and its general physiography, exhibiting long, narrow, lateral valleys and transverse lines of "antecedent" drainage, is XIII.
Other passes across this important water-divide are the Shandur (12,250 ft.), between Gilgit and Mastuj; the Lowarai (10,450 ft.), between the Panjkora and Chitral valleys; and farther south certain lower crossings which once formed part of the great highway between Kabul and India.
Traces of Roman glass manufactories have been found in Valencia and Murcia, in the valleys which run down to the coast of Catalonia, and near the mouth of the Ebro.
In their upper courses all the southern affluents of the Ghazal flow across a plateau of ferruginous laterite, their valleys having steep banks.
The land has hills and valleys, but the surface of water at rest is a horizontal plane; and if disturbed the surface moves in waves.
North of the plateau rises a well-watered and undulating belt of country, into which run low ranges of limestone hills, sometimes arid, sometimes covered with dwarf-oak, and often shutting in, between their northern and north-eastern flank and the main mountain-line from which they detach themselves, rich plains and fertile valleys.
To the north of the watershed, the Girna and its tributary the Mosam flow through fertile valleys into the Tapti.
The whole of Pisidia is an elevated region of table-lands or upland valleys in the midst of the ranges of Mt Taurus which descends abruptly on the side of Pamphylia.
The only rivers of importance are the Cestrus and the Eurymedon, both of which take their rise in the highest ranges of Mt Taurus, and flow down through deep and narrow valleys to the plain of Pamphylia, which they traverse on their way to the sea.
Pannonia inferior was divided into (1) Valeria (so called from Diocletian's daughter, the wife of Galerius), extending along the Danube from Altinum (Mohacs) to Brigetio (6-SzOny), and (2) Pannonia secunda, round about Sirmium (Mitrovitz) at the meeting of the valleys of the Save, Drave, and Danube.
At the two extremities of New Caledonia, parallel longitudinal ranges of mountains enclose valleys; for the rest the island consists essentially of confused masses and ranges of mountains, rising to an extreme elevation of 5387 ft., the plains being chiefly the deltas of rivers.
Such river-transported material or alluvium is common in all river valleys.
It occupies, in great part, the low alluvial plain that skirts the shores of the bay and fills the valleys between numerous low wooded hills.
The village, which is connected by stage with the station, is situated at the junction of two valleys and commands delightful views of mountain scenery.
Feran there is little cultivable land, the greater part consisting of bare, rocky hills and sandy valleys, sparsely covered with tamarisk and acacia bushes.
In many places longitudinal dunes are found exceeding a day's journey in length, the valleys between which take three or four hours to cross; but the most striking feature of the Nafud are the high crescent-shaped sand-hills, known locally as falk or falj, described by Blunt and Huber, who devoted some time to their investigation.
Both are generally bare and unproductive, the uplands, however, contain the fertile valleys of Khaibar and Medina, draining to the Wadi Hamd, the principal river system of western Arabia; and the Wadi Jadid or Es Safra, rising in the Harra between Medina and Es Safina, which contain several settlements, of which the principal produce is dates.
Dawasir; the whole of this hilly region of eastern Nejd is, perhaps, rather a rolling down country than truly mountainous, in which high pastures alternate with deep fertile valleys, supporting numerous villages with a large agricultural population.
Hadramut; the two others run for a long distance through fertile valleys and, like many of the wadis on the seaward side of the range, have perennial streams down to within a few miles of the sea.
Eastward the plateau becomes still more sterile, and its elevation probably falls more rapidly till it reaches the level of the Jauf and Nejran valleys on the borders of the desert.
Farther north, in Asir, the plateau is more mountainous and contains many fertile valleys.
The lower valleys produce dates in abundance, and at higher elevations wheat, barley, millets and excellent fruit are grown, while juniper forests are said to cover the mountain slopes.
In the cultivated upland valleys all over Arabia the Zizyphus j ujuba, called by some travellers lotus, grows to a large tree; its thorny branches are clipped yearly and used to fence the cornfields among which it grows.
Part of it is built on a level plateau and part in deep valleys adjoining, the tops of the campaniles of the lower portions being on a level with the streets of the upper.
From 1682 until the Napoleonic period, Bordighera was the capital of a small republic of the villages of the neighbouring valleys.
The principal valleys, which lie at an altitude of 2600 to 3250 ft.
Nevertheless, all this southern district of Tunisia bears evidence of once having been subject to a heavy rainfall, which scooped out deep valleys in the original table-land, and has justified the present existence of immense watercourses - watercourses which are still, near their origin, favoured with a little water.
The coast, extending from the base of the Western or Maritime Cordillera to the Pacific Ocean, consists of a sandy desert crossed at intervals by rivers flowing through narrow, fertile valleys.
It contains stupendous chains of mountains, elevated plains and table-lands, warm and fertile valleys and ravines.
The valleys form a marvellous contrast to the surrounding desert.
In some valleys there are expanses of sugar-cane, in others cotton, whilst in others vineyards and olive-yards predominate.
All these valleys, except Morrope and Chao, are watered by rivers which have their sources far in the recesses of the mountains, and which furnish an abundant supply in the season when irrigation is needed.
The Santa and Nepena valleys are separated by a desert 8 leagues in width, on the shores of which there is a good anchorage in the bay of Ferrol, where the port of Chimbote is the terminus of a railway.
Wells are dug in their beds, and the fertility of the valleys is thus maintained.
Here the maritime range approaches the ocean, leaving a narrower strip of coast, but the fertile valleys are closer and more numerous.
The valleys of Ica, Palpa, San Xavier and Nasca are rich and fertile, though they do not extend to the sea; but between Nasca and Acari there is a desert 60 m.
The southern valleys of this part of the sierra furnish streams which form the main rivers of Pampas, Pachachaca and Apurimac. These, uniting with the Mantaro, form the Ene, and the Ene and Perene (which drains the province of Tambo) form the Tambo.
Vineyards and sugar-cane yield crops in the warmer ravines; the sub-tropical valleys are famous for splendid crops of maize; wheat and barley thrive on the mountain slopes; arid at heights from 7000 to 13,000 ft.
Numerous rivers flow through the valleys between these spurs, which are the native home of the quinine-yielding cinchona trees.
With the cinchona trees grow many kinds of melastomaceae, especially the Lasiandra, with masses of purple flowers, tree-ferns and palms. In the warm valleys there are large plantations of coca (Erythroxylon Coca), the annual produce of which is stated at 15,000,000 lb.
The other products of these warm valleys are excellent coffee, cocoa, sugar, tropical fruits of all kinds, and gold in abundance.
There are two distinct general types - the coast tribes occupying the fertile river valleys, who are employed on the plantations, in domestic service in the cities, or in small industries of their own, no longer numerous; and the sierra tribes, who are agriculturists, miners, stock-breeders and packers, still comparatively numerous.
Railway construction in Peru began in 1848 with a short line from Callao to Lima, but the building of railway lines across the desert to the inland towns of the fertile river valleys and the Andean foot-hills did not begin until twenty years later.
This seems incompatible with the arid character of the country and the peculiar conditions of its civilization, but irrigation has been successfully employed in the fertile valleys of the coast.
Sugar-cane is cultivated in most of the coast valleys, and with exceptional success in those of the Canete, Rimac, Chancay, Huaura, Supe, Santa, Chicama, Pacasmayo and Chiclayo.
Maize is another important food product which is generally cultivated along the coast and in the lower valleys of the sierra.
A superior quality of bean is produced in the eastern valleys of the Andes, especially in the Chanchamayo valley.
Cacao is another montana product, although like coffee it is cultivated in the warm valleys of the sierra, but the export is small.
Grapes are produced in many of the irrigated valleys of the coast, such as Chincha, Lunahuana, Ica, Vitor, Majes, Andaray, Moquegua and Locumba, and the fruit is manufactured into wines and brandies.
Olives were introduced early in colonial times and are cultivated in several coast valleys, especially in the provinces of Camanh (Arequipa) and Moquegua.
Goats are raised in Piura and Lambayeque for their skins and fat, and swine-breeding for the production of lard has become important in some of the coast valleys immediately north of Lima.
The island is mountainous throughout, the low granite ridges, parted by bleak, tortuous valleys, leaving in some places a narrow strip of level coast-land, and in others overhanging the sea in lofty precipices.
The Puntis are agricultural and inhabit the valleys, and they make excellent traders.
The wooded hills to the northward throw out to the south and south-west long spurs, between which are the low valleys of several rivers and brooks.
It is less arid than the province of Atacama, the surface near the coast being broken by well-watered river valleys, which produce alfalfa, and pasture cattle for export.
Pastoral interests are largely in feeding cattle for the Chilean markets, for which large areas of alfalfa are grown in the irrigated valleys of the Andes.
Since the uplift and stream dissection a slight depression has allowed the sea to invade the lower portions of the river valleys, forming the bays known as Narragansett Bay, Providence "river," Sakonnet " river," &c. Glaciation has disturbed the river 1 Block Island, over which the jurisdiction of the state extends, lies Jo m.
Soon after 1301 the Seljuk amirs overran the whole of the Hermus and Cayster valleys, and a fort on the citadel of Sardis was handed over to Aragonese period.
The department includes an arid, sand-covered region on the coast traversed by deep gorges formed by river courses, and a partly barren, mountainous region inland composed of the high Cordillera and its spurs toward the coast, between which are numerous highly fertile valleys watered by streams from the snow-clad peaks.
Some are contained in alluvial depressions in the river valleys; others have been formed by volcanic eruptions, the ejecta damming the rivers until exits were found over cliffs or through gorges.
The granite forms the prevailing rock in valleys of erosion.
Granite, diorite and other plutonic rocks hem in the winding upper valleys of the Kisogawa, the Saigawa (Shinano river) and many other rivers of this province, their clear water running over granite.
The climate is that of the other central states of Germany, temperate in the valleys and plains and somewhat inclement in the hilly regions.
In the valleys the soil is particularly fertile, yielding luxuriant crops of wheat, maize, barley, spelt, beans, potatoes, flax, hemp, hops, beetroot and tobacco; and even in the more mountainous parts rye, wheat and oats are extensively cultivated.
Lastly we have the white - Burchell's, or square-mouthedrhinoceros (Rhinoceros (Diceros) simus), the largest of the five, and differing from the other species in having a square truncated upper lip. In conformity with the structure of the mouth, this species lives entirely by browsing on grass, and is therefore more partial to open countries or districts where there are broad grassy valleys between the tracts of bush.
Two-thirds of the inhabitants are Germans; the remainder, chiefly found in the valleys of the Drave and Save, are Sla y s (Slovenes).
The eastern slopes receive more rain and are well clothed with vegetation, but the lower valleys are subtropical in character and are largely devoted to sugar production.
Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon have many features in common; in both the southern portion is less arid and barren than the northern, the western valleys better wooded and more fertile than the eastern.
In general the main elevations of the two ranges form pairs lying opposite one another; the forms of both ranges are monotonous, but the colouring is splendid, especially when viewed from a distance; when seen close at hand only a few valleys with perennial streams offer pictures of landscape beauty, their rich green contrasting pleasantly with the bare brown and yellow mountain sides.
Most of the mountain spurs run from east to west, but in northern Lebanon the prevailing direction of the valleys is north-westerly, and in the south some ridges run parallel with the principal chain.
The valleys have for the most part been deeply excavated by mountain streams; the apparently inaccessible heights are crowned by numerous villages, castles or cloisters embosomed among trees.
A number of valleys run to the north and north-east, among them that of the Nahr el-Kebir, the Eleutherus of the ancients, which rises in the Jebel el-Abiaei on the eastern slope of Lebanon, and afterwards, skirting the district, flows westward to the sea.
Few perennial streams take their rise in Anti-Lebanon; one of the finest and best watered valleys is that of Helbun, the ancient Chalybon, the Helbon of Ezek.
Of the valleys descending westward the first to claim mention is the Wadi Yafufa; a little farther south, lying north and south, is the rich upland valley of Zebedani, where the Barada has its highest sources.
The valleys are highly fertile, and where irrigation is employed large crops are easily raised.
The Cuttack delta is divided into two great valleys, one of them lying between the Baitarani and the Brahmani,'the other between the Brahmani and the Mahanadi.
During floods they pour over their banks upon the surrounding valleys, by a thousand channels which interlace and establish communication between the main streams. After numerous bifurcations they find their way into the sea by three principal mouths.
The river valleys in the vicinity produce cotton, pepper, tobacco, rice, Indian corn and fruit.
Its surface is roughly broken by mountain ranges extending southward from the Sierra de Ajusco, forming numerous valleys opening southward.
It is composed of several groups, which are intersected by the valleys of numerous rivers, and which descend in sloping terraces towards the Danube and the Hungarian plain.
They have a superstitious objection to firing a gun, thinking that it offends the deities of the woods and valleys, and brings down rain.
The town lies between the valleys of the Ehen and its tributary the Dub Beck, in a district rich in coal and iron ore.
With the unwelcome help of a French army under Marshal Catinat, he invaded the Waldensian valleys, and after a difficult campaign, characterized by great cruelty, he subjugated them.
Rice, cotton, sugar-cane, yucas (Manihot aipi) and tropical fruits are produced in the irrigated valleys of the coast, and wheat, Indian corn, barley, potatoes, coffee, coca, &c., in the upland regions.
The surface of the country is for the most part very mountainous, being traversed towards the south by the great Cantabrian chain; but at the same time it is diversified with numerous narrow valleys and small plains.
The soil, though not very fertile, except in some of the valleys and sheltered hillsides, produces wheat, maize, barley, rye, flax, grapes, peaches, apples and other fruits.
Numerous old river valleys and furrows entrenched in.
Such valleys are very clearly indicated in the belts of the western Baltic by furrows a thousand yards wide and twenty to thirty fathoms deeper than the neighbouring sea-bed.
The upper molars, which may be either selenodont or buno-selenodont, carry five cusps each, instead of the four characteristic of all the preceding groups; and they are all very low-crowned, so as to expose the whole of the valleys between the cusps.
These artificial lakes are usually formed by throwing embankments across the lower extremities of valleys, and thus arresting and accumulating the waters flowing through them.
In the broad river valleys of the eastern part of the Prairie Plains region are forests and isolated groves consisting principally of pecan, cypress, cottonwood and several species of oak.
This tract consists of a succession of stony ridges of trap rock, enclosing valleys or basins of fertile soil, to which cultivation is for the most part confined, except where the shallow soil on the tops of the hills has been turned to account.
In the northern part of the country it spreads into several side valleys, from one of which rises the extinct volcano Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa (19,321 ft.).
A little vegetation is met with in the stream valleys, but most of the rivers marked on the map have ceased to show running water in their lower courses.
These valleys are among the most beautiful and fertile in Spain.
The soil in the valleys is fertile, yielding wheat, barley, maize, flax, hemp and fruits.
It is a rolling highland dominated by long, wooded hill-ridges, remarkably even-topped in general elevation, intersected and broken by deep valleys.
The soil, except in some of the valleys, is not naturally fertile; and sandy wastes are common in the south-east parts.
The Exe, Barle, Lyn and other streams, traversing deep picturesque valleys except in their uppermost courses, are in favour with trout fishermen.
By this Lothair received Italy and the imperial title, together with a stretch of land between the North and Mediterranean Seas lying along the valleys of the Rhine and the Rhone.
There are, however, extensive oak, pine and beech forests in the highlands, and many beautiful oases in the deeply sunk valleys, and along the rivers, especially beside the Ebro, which is, therefore, often called the "Nile of Aragon."
Formerly these beautiful antelopes existed in countless numbers on the plains of South Africa, and were in the habit of migrating in droves which completely filled entire valleys.
The Waldensian valleys lie to the south-west of Turin, in the direction of Monte Viso, but include no high or snowy mountains, while the glens themselves are (with one or two exceptions) fertile and well wooded.
The principal town near the valleys is Pinerolo (Pignerol).
To the north-west of Pinerolo, up the Chisone valley, there opens at Perosa Argentina the valley of St Martin, another important Waldensian valley, which is watered by the Germanasca torrent, and at Perrero splits into two branches, of which the Prali glen is far more fertile than that of Massello, the latter being the wildest and most savage of all the Waldensian valleys.
The Waldenses, under their more modern name of the Vaudois, have survived to the present day in the valleys of Piedmont, and have been regarded as at once the most ancient and the most evangelical of the medieval sects.
To get rid of Waldo, whose date was known, the name Waldenses or Vallenses was derived from Vallis, because they dwelt in the valleys, or from a supposed Provençal word Vaudes, which meant a sorcerer.
Everywhere, and especially in the district round Toulouse, heretics were keenly prosecuted, and before the continued zeal of persecution the Waldenses slowly disappeared from the chief centres of population and took refuge in the retired valleys of the Alps.
There, in the recesses of Piedmont, where the streams of the Pelice, the Angrogne, the Clusone and others cleave the sides of the Alps into valleys which converge at Susa, a settlement of the Waldensians was made who gave their name to these valleys of the Vaudois.
In the more accessible regions north and south heresy was exposed to a steady process of persecution, and tended to assume shifting forms. Among the valleys it was less easily reached, and retained its old organization and its old contents.
Little settlements of heretics dispersed throughout Italy and Provence looked to the valleys as a place of refuge, and tacitly regarded them as the centre of their faith.
If their character was approved they were taught during the winter months, when work was slack, for a space of three or four years; after that they were sent for two years to serve as menial assistants at a nunnery for women, which curiously enough existed in a recess of the valleys.
But the love of their native valleys was strong among the exiles, and in 1689 one of their pastors, Henri Arnaud, led a band of Boo men to the reconquest of their.
The 18th century, however, was a time of religious decadence even among the Alpine valleys, and the outbreak of the French Revolution saw the Vaudois made subjects of France.
Large sums of money were collected to build hospitals and churches among their valleys, and they were looked upon as the possible centre of a Protestant church in Italy.
Especially from England did they receive sympathy and help. An English clergyman, Dr Gilly, visited the valleys in 1823, and by his writings on the Vaudois church attracted considerable attention, so that he was enabled to build a college at La Torre.
Moreover, Dr Gilly's book (A Visit to the Valleys of Piedmont), chancing to fall into the hands of an officer who had lost his leg at Waterloo, Colonel Beckwith, suggested an object for the energies of one who was 10th at the age of twenty-six to sink into enforced idleness.
Beckwith visited the valleys, and was painfully struck by the squalor and ignorance of a people who had so glorious a past.
He lived in La Torre till his death in 1862, and the name of the English benefactor is still revered by the simple folk of the valleys.
The total population of the Waldensian valleys (for they also contain Roman Catholics in no small number) amounts to about 20,000 all told.
None of them is navigable in the mountain valleys; but the Tista, after it debouches on the plains, can be navigated by cargo boats of considerable burthen.
The various ridges and mountain masses are separated by steep-sided valleys, which run down to the sea, forming deep fjords, so that no part of the interior is more than 12 m.
The surface of the country is beautifully diversified, undulating tracts and well-wooded hills alternating with fertile valleys watered mainly by the Aar and its tributaries.
The edges of the plateaus are gapped by deep valleys; the hilly tract between the Dvina and its tributary the Livonian Aa has received, from its picturesque narrow valleys, thick forests and numerous lakes, the name of "Livonian Switzerland."
Valleys are deeply sunk in the plateau, the largest with bottom lands of sufficient width to give rise to strips of fertile farm land.
It broadened and deepened many of the valleys; rounded the hills; turned aside many streams, causing changes in drainage and giving rise to innumerable waterfalls and rapids; and it formed the thousands of lakes, large and small, which dot the surface.
The other large river valleys are far less useful as highways, though each is paralleled by one or more railways.
The mainland, opposite the western end of Long Island, is traversed by the lower Hudson and other channels - submerged valleys - which form a branching bay with several islands, the largest of which are Staten and Manhattan Islands.
The temperature of the larger valleys is notably higher than that of the uplands; and the temperature along the lake shores is decidedly influenced by the large bodies of water.
In the larger valleys and along the shores of lakes considerable alluvium is mixed with this clay.
The year 1778 saw the bloody operations of the Tory Butlers and their Loyalist and Indian allies in the Mohawk and Schoharie valleys and notably the massacre at Cherry Valley.
Large and deep lakes fill many of the mountain valleys.
On the eastern side of the Alps the glaciers appear to have been confined to the mountain valleys.
Both slopes of the Cascades are cut deep by valleys.
In some of the larger valleys there are glacial terraces.
Along the coast the prevailing winds blow from the west or south; in the Puget Sound Basin from the south, and in eastern Washington from the south-west, except in the Yakima and Wenatchee valleys, where they are north-west.
In the valleys of rivers which have overflowed their banks and on level bench lands there is considerable silt and vegetable loam mixed with glacial clay; but on the hills and ridges of western Washington the soil is almost wholly a glacial deposit consisting principally of clay but usually containing some sand and gravel.
The drainage of the Vosges valleys and of the Rhine valley is collected and carried into the Rhine about 10 m.
The manufacture of cottons, and on a smaller scale of woollens, is special to Alsace, the chief centres of the industry being Mulhausen, Colmar and the valleys of the Vosges.
Timber trees are almost confined to the river valleys, where willows, yellow wood, iron wood, red wood, mimosas and, in deep gorges, the wild fig are found.
The majority of the inhabitants appear to have been members of the Bechuana division of the Bantus, but in the valleys of the - Orange and Vaal were Korannas and other Hottentots, and in the Drakensberg and on the western border lived numbers of Bushmen.
The points of passage were commanded by high ground a little farther up where the valleys definitely diverge, and beyond the flank of the ill-concealed positions of the defence.
The east slope of the Lewis and Clark range is marked by long high spurs, and the valleys between them end in radiating canons that are crowned with bold cliffs.
The valleys of the principal streams are deeply eroded; bluffs are common along their borders, and buttes elsewhere on the plains.
Most of the bluffs along the principal river valleys, especially those in the south-east, are entirely bare of vegetation, but on the bottom lands along the rivers and streams considerable patches of cottonwood and willows are common.
The mountain valleys are covered with little except grasses; on the higher parts of the mountains there are barren rocks or only a scant growth of timber; but many of the lower mountain slopes, especially those along the western border, are clothed with heavy timber, ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, Douglas-fir and western larch being the principal species.
Some of the best soil is in the mountain valleys, for these valleys were once lakes and rich deposits of alluvium were made in them.
It is mildest in the valleys of the Elbe, Mulde and Pleisse and severest in the Erzgebirge, where the district near Johanngeorgenstadt is known as Saxon Siberia.
The origin and subsequent formation of rivers and the valleys along which they flow are considered under Geography, § Principles of Geography, and Geology, § viii.
The surface of this plain, however, ranges from level river valleys in the east to irregular plateaus broken by buttes and scored by canons in the west.
As the part east of the river was once covered by the ice-sheet, its hills have been lowered and its valleys filled through the attrition of glaciers until the surface has a gently undulating appearance.
The plains, except in the south-east corner, are underlaid by sheets of water-bearing sandstone, which carry a volume of water under such pressure that in the valleys of the James river and the Missouri river and its western tributaries a strong surface flow may be obtained from artesian wells.
It is usually greatest in the valleys of the James and Big Sioux rivers and least in the extreme north-central and north-western parts of the state.
They are intersected, especially on the north, by many deep valleys, well wooded.
A remarkable feature of the belt is the longitudinal chain of broad valleys - the Great Appalachian Valley - which, in the southerly sections divides the mountain system into two subequal portions, but in the northernmost lies west of all the ranges possessing typical Appalachian features, and separates them from the Adirondack group. The mountain system has no axis of dominating altitudes, but in every portion the summits rise to rather uniform heights, and, especially in the central section, the various ridges and intermontane valleys have the same trend as the system itself.
Former tributaries have given place to others developed with reference to the distribution of more or less easily eroded strata, the present longitudinal valleys being determined by the out-crop of soft shales or soluble limestones, and the parallel ridges upheld by hard sandstones or schists.
Only by way of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, and round about the southern termination of the system were there easy routes to the interior of the country, and these were long closed by hostile aborigines and jealous French or Spanish colonists.
The rainfall follows the valleys of the Mu and the Irrawaddy, and leaves the rest of the district comparatively dry.
The ice-sheet wore down from the hills and filled the valleys with debris until the surface has a billowy appearance.
A few miles from the streams the country is less broken, and there are deep grassy valleys, in which the animals may find shelter in winter.
Poplars grow in the valleys, and the cactus and sage brush are common.
The inhabitable part of the land consists 'of the lower slopes of the range with the valleys and small alluvial plains which lie between its spurs.
But although the crests of its component ranges reach altitudes of 21,500 to 22,000 ft., they are not as a rule overtopped by individual peaks of commanding and towering elevation, as the Himalayas are, but run on the whole tolerably uniform and relatively at little greater altitude than the lofty valleys which separate them one from another.
E.S.E., and separated by high intermont valleys, which are choked with disintegrated material and divided into a chequered pattern of self-contained, shallow lacustrine basins.
The flanks of the mountains are so deeply buried in disintegrated material that the difference in vertical altitude between the floors of the valleys and the summits of the ranges is comparatively small.
As a rule, the streams flow alternately east and west down the intermont latitudinal valleys, until they break through some transverse glen in the range on the northern side of the valley.
But in respect of precipitation there is a very marked difference between the valleys of the north and those of the south.
Whereas both the mountains and valleys of the Astintagh and of the Akato-tagh (the next large range to the Astin-tagh on the south) are arid and desolate in the extreme, smitten as it were with the desiccating breath of the desert, those of the Arka-tagh and beyond are supersaturated with moisture, so that, at any rate in summer, the surface is in many parts little better than a quaking quagmire.
Nevertheless, owing to the fact that nearly all the longer and more important crossings of Tibet and its northern montane region have been made from north to south, or vice versa, that is, transversely across the ranges, and comparatively few from east to west along the intermont latitudinal valleys, the identifications between ranges in the east and ranges in the west are in more than one instance more or less doubtful.
But though the great morphological features of this latitudinal valley forcibly recall the latitudinal valleys of Tibet, the climatic differences give rise to differences between the basins corresponding to the differences between the mountain-ranges themselves.
Not only is it of lower elevation than them both, but it dies away towards the west, the valleys on each side of it meeting round its extremity to form one broad, open valley, with an altitude of 11,790 to 13,725 ft.
The floor of the valley consequently slopes away in both directions, like the Chimen valley between the Akato-tagh and the Chimen-tagh; and in so far as it slopes westwards towards the Kum kol lakes it differs from nearly all the other great latitudinal valleys that run parallel with it, because they slope generally towards the east.
The crests of the ranges lie comparatively little higher than the valleys which separate them, the altitudes in the latter running at 14,940 to 16,700 ft., if not higher, and being only 500 to moo ft.
When the altitudes of the intermont latitudinal valleys are compared, the significance orographically of the Chimen valley and of the Kum-kol valley is strikingly emphasized.
Both are much more deeply excavated than all the other latitudinal valleys that run parallel to them, the Chimen valley being 875 ft.
The glaciers also attain a greater development in the western portion of the Nan-shan, but the valleys are dry, and the slopes of both the mountains and the valleys, furrowed by deep ravines, are devoid of vegetation.
In the northeastern Nan-shan, on the contrary, a stream runs through each gorge, and both the mountain slopes and the bottoms of the valleys are covered with vegetation.
The valleys of the Bann and Lagan, with the intervening shores of Lough Neagh, form the fertile lowlands.
The inland valleys and slopes are very fertile and heavily forested, and much of the Brazilian export of rosewood and other cabinet woods is drawn from this state.
The climate of the coastal zone and deeper valleys is hot, humid and unhealthy, malarial fevers being prevalent.
It is in great part occupied by mountains and forests, but has valleys and districts near the sea-coast of great fertility.
The valleys towards the Black Sea abound in fruit trees of all kinds, while the valley of the Sangarius and the plains near Brusa and Isnik (Nicaea) are fertile and well cultivated.
The branches as well as the upper parts of the main streams flow through broad and shallow valleys; the middle courses of the main streams wind their way through reed-covered marshes, the water ebbing and flowing with the tide; in their lower courses they become estuarine and the water flows between low banks.
Its principal streams are those that cross the West Shore of the Coastal Plain and here wind their way from Parr's Ridge rapidly toward the south-east in narrow steep-sided gorges through broad limestone valleys.
To the eastward it abounds in mountains and valleys; to the westward it is a rolling plateau.
Alluvial loams occupy the narrow river valleys; but the most common soil of the section is that formed from gneiss with a large per cent.
The Allegheny ridges have only a thin stony soil; but good limestone, sandstone, shale and alluvial soils, occur in the valleys and in some of the plateaus of the extreme west.
In the centre, the valleys of the Ohio, the Cumberland and the Tennessee were the battle-ground of large armies attacking and defending the south and south-eastern states of the Confederacy, while on and beyond the great waterway of the Mississippi was carried on the struggle for those interests, vital to either party, which depended on the mighty river and its affluents.
The valleys and ridges of eastern Tennessee screened him as he rapidly marched on Louisville and Cincinnati.
It is a mountainous country intersected with rocky canons and fertile valleys, which occasionally broaden out into alluvial plains like that of the Shelif, or the Metija near Algiers, or those in the neighbourhood of Oran and Bona.
The Little Atlas, otherwise the Tell or Maritime Atlas, lies between the sea and the Saharan Atlas, and is composed of many distinct ranges, generally of no great elevation and connected by numerous transverse chains forming extensive table-lands and elevated valleys.
To the Pliocene period the marine deposits of the Sahel of Algiers and of the Sahel Jijelli must be attributed; also the lacustrine marls and limestone of the basin of Constantine, and the ancient alluviums of the basins and depressions which bear no relation to the existing valleys.
The Kabyles, a division of the Berbers, occupy chiefly the more mountainous parts of the Tell, but some live in the plains and valleys.
It has a good harbour, is the outlet for the produce of several fertile valleys, and the starting-point of a railway which penetrates into the Sahara.
The soil in the valleys is volcanic and fertile, but the gradual utilization of natural timber increases the liability to drought, as there are no streams. The climate is variable and rainy.
The upper parts of the main valleys are of characteristic form, not ending in lofty mountain-walls but comparatively low and level, and bearing lakes.
It comprises the valleys of the Tekez (middle and lower portion), Kunghez, the Ili as far as the Russian frontier and its tributary, the Kash, with the slopes of the mountains turned towards these rivers.
It is pleasantly situated on rising ground between two small valleys opening into that of the Dove, and the most beautiful scenery of Dovedale is not far distant.
This region, very fertile in the valleys and enjoying a cooler and damper climate than the lower plains, is densely populated, and agriculture and cattle-breeding are carried on extensively.
Its southern foothills are covered with loess, making them fertile valleys.
Darvaz, a small vassal state of Bokhara, is situated on the Panj, where it makes its sharp bend westwards, and is emphatically a mountainous region, agriculture being possible only in the lower parts of the valleys.
This plateau belt is exceedingly rugged with sharp ridges alternating with narrow valleys which have steep sides but are seldom more than 150o ft.
The boundary between the two realms was marked approximately by the valleys of the Meuse and Moselle and by the Jura.
The Hohe Tauern contains many high lying valleys, traversed by the streams which flow into the Salzach, as well as numerous depressions and passes, here called popularly Tauern.
Its superstructure consists of igneous rocks of all descriptions with which the original valleys between its marginal ranges have been filled by volcanic action.
The Sierra Madre Occidental consists of several parallel ranges in the north, where a broad belt of country is covered with a labyrinth of ridges and valleys.
In the valleys of some of these denuded slopes oak and pine are succeeding the tropical species where fires have given them a chance to get a good foothold.
Then follows the creation, when the creators said " Earth," and the earth was formed like a cloud or a fog, and the mountains appeared like lobsters from the water, cypress and pine covered the hills and valleys, and their forests were peopled with beasts and birds, but these could not speak the name of their creators, but could only chatter and croak.
Though the country is generally mountainous, with dense forests of oak and walnut, there are some deep, well-watered valleys, and the climate is mild.
The whole White Mountain region abounds in deep narrow valleys, romantic glens, ravines, flumes, waterfalls, brooks and lakes.
In the mountain region the soil is mostly a sandy loam composed of disintegrated granitic gneiss and organic matter; on the lower and more gentle slopes as well as in the valleys this is generally deep enough for a luxuriant vegetable growth but on the upper and more precipitous slopes it is thin, or the rocks are entirely bare.
The climate is healthy and bracing, except in the lower valleys along the river banks and in the marsh land, where malarial fever is prevalent.
Cereals are grown in many of the river valleys.
The plain and the neighbouring valleys produce cacao, tobacco, rice and sugar-cane.
Many secondary ridges and spurs shoot off the main range, forming high, narrow valleys (see Caucasus).
Lying within the rich agricultural region of the Lebanon and Schuylkill valleys and near vast fields of anthracite coal and iron ore, Reading possesses unusual business and industrial advantages.
The Cordilleran system on the western side of the continent is lofty, broad and complicated, with heavy forests near the north-west coast, but elsewhere with trees only on the higher ranges below the Alpine region, and with treeless or desert intermont valleys, plateaus and basins, very arid in the south-west.
In a north-eastern section, practically all of New England is occupied by the older crystalline belt; the corresponding northern part of the stratified belt in the St Lawrence and Champlain-Hudson valleys on the inland side of New England is comparatively free from the ridge-making rocks which abound farther south; and here the plateau member is wanting, being replaced, as it were, by the Adirondacks, an outlier of the Laurentian highlands of Canada which immediately succeeds the deformed stratified belt west of Lake Champlain.
The transition from the strongly folded structure of the Alleghany ridges and valleys to the nearly horizontal structure of the Appala; chian plateau is promptly made; and with the change of structure comes an appropriate change of form.
The horizontal strata of the plateau present equal ease or difficulty of erosion in any direction; the streams and the submature valleys of the plateau therefore ramify in every direction, thus presenting a pattern that has been called insequent, because it follows no apparent control.
The height is greatest along the inner or north-western border of the belt, and here a sub-mountainous topography has been produced by normal dissection, chiefly in the Tertiary cycle; the valleys being narrow because the rocks are resistant.
The relief is strong enough to make occupation difficult; the slopes are forested; the uplands are cleared and well occupied b farms and villages, but many of the valleys are wooded glens.
The rivers which most perfectly exemplify this habit are the Delaware, Susquehanna and Potomac; the Hudson, the north-eastern boundary of the middle section, is peculiar in having headwaters in the Adirondacks as well as in the Catskills (northern part of the plateau); the James, forming the south-western boundary of the section, rises in the inner valleys of the stratified belt, instead of in the plateau.
For the most part the rivers follow open valleys along belts of weak strata; but they frequently pass through sharp-cut notches in the na1row ridges of the stratified beltthe Delaware water-gap is one of the deepest of these notches; and in the harder rocks of the crystalline belt they have eroded steep-walled gorges, of which the finest is that of the Hudson, because of the greater height and breadth of the crystalline highlands there than at points where the other rivers cross it.
When the central uplands are followed south-east or south to the coast, their altitude and their relief over the valleys gradually decrease; and thus the surface gradually passes under the sea.
The White Mountains of northern New Hampshire may be treated as a complex group of rnonadnocks, all of subdued forms, except for a few cliffs at the head of cirque-like valleys, with Mt Washington, the highest of, the dome-like or low pyramidal summits, reaching 6293 ft., and thirteen other summits over 5000 ft.
In New England also a wellestablished drainage undoubtedly prevailed in preglacial times; but partly in consequence of the irregular scouring of the rock floor, and even more because of the very irregular deposition of unstratified and stratified drift in the valleys, the drainage is now in great disorder.
The maturely dissected and recently glaciated uplands of New England are now somewhat depressed with respect to sea-level, so that the sea enters the valleys, forming bays and estuaries, while the interfiuve uplands and hills stand forth in headlands and islands.
Here Mt Mitchell risesto 6711 ft., the highest of the Appalachians, and about thirty other summits exceed 6000 ft., while the valleys are usually at altitudes of about 2000 ft.
The height and massiveness of the mountains decrease to the south-west, where the piedmont belt sweeps westward around them in western Georgia and eastern Alabama Some of the residual mountains hereabouts are reduced to a mere skeleton or framework by the retrogressive penetration of widening valleys between wasting spurs; the very type of vanishing forms, Certain districts within the mountains, apparently consisting of less resistant crystalline rocks, have been reduced to basin-like peneplains in the same time that served only to grade the slopes and subdue the summits of the neighboring mountains of more resistant rocks; the best example of this kind is the Asheville peneplain in North Carolina, measuring about 40 by 20 m.
The rivers of the mountain belt, normally dividing and subdividing in apparently fnsequent fashion between the hills and spurs, generally follow open valleys; there are few waterfalls, the streams being as a rule fairly well graded, though their current is rapid and their channels are set with coarse waste.
The valley floors always join at accordant levels, as is the habit among normally subdued mountains; they thus contrast with glaciated mountains such as the Alps and the Canadian Rockies, where the laterals habitually open as hanging valleys in the side slope of the main valleys.
A section of the coastal plain, from North Carolina to southern New Jersey, resembles the plain farther south in general form and quality of soils, but besides being narrower, it is further characterized by several embayments or arms of the sea, caused by a slight depression of the land after mature valleys had been eroded in the plain.
The valleys by which the uplands are here and there trenched to moderate depth appear to be, in part at least, the work of streams that have been superposed upon the perieplain through the now removed cover of stratified rocks.
The occurrence of the lake basins in the lowland belts on either side of the Niagara cuesta is an abnormal feature, not to be explained by ordinary erosion, which can produce only valleys.
The basins have been variously ascribed to glacial erosion, to obstruction of normal outlet valleys by barriers of glacial drift, and to crustal warping in connection with or independent of the presence of the glacial sheet.
The great ice sheets formed terminal moraines around their border at various halting stages; but the morainic belts are of small relief in comparison to the great area of the ice; they rise gently from the till plains to a height of 50, 100 or more feet; they may be one, two or three miles wide; and their hilly surface, dotted over with boulders, contains many small lakes in basins or hollows, instead of streams in valleys.
Thus local sheets or aprons of gravel and sand are spread more or less abundantly along the outer side of the morainic belts; and long trains of gravel and sands clog the valleys that lead southward from the glaciated to the non-glaciated area.
As in the Atlantic coastal plain, it is only the lower, seaward part of this region that deserves the name of plain, for there alone is the surface unbroken by hills or valleys; the inner part, initially a plain by reason of its essentially horizontal (gently seaward-sloping) structure, has been converted by mature dissection into an elaborate complex of hills and valleys, usually of increasing altitude and relief as one passes inland.
Its inner border affords admirable examples of topographical discordance where it sweeps north-westward square across the trend of the piedmont belt, the ridges and valleys, and the plateau of the Appalachians, which are all terminated by dipping gently beneath the unconformable cover of the coastal The, lain strata.
The peneplain is no longer in the cycle of erosion that witnessed its production; it appears to have suffered a regional elevation, for the riversthe upper Missouri and its branchesno longer flow on the surface of the plain, but in well graded, maturely opened valleys, several hundred feet below the general level.
A significant exception to the rule of mature valleys occurs, however, in the case of the Missouri, the largest river, which is broken by several falls on hard sandstones about 50 m.
The central section of the Great Plains, between latitudes 42 and 36, occupying eastern Colorado and western Kansas, is, briefly stated, for the most part a dissected fluviatile plain; that is, this section was once smoothly covered with a gently sloping plain of gravel and sand that had been spread far forward on a broad denuded area as a piedmont deposit by the rivers which issued from the mountains; and since then it has been more or less dissected by the erosion of valleys.
The idea is still better confirmed farther north in Wyoming, where the Laramie Range, flanked with upturned strata on the east and west, is for the most part a broad upland at altitudes of 7000 or 8000 ft., with no strong surmounting summits, and as yet no deep carved valleys.
In New Mexico, if glaciers were formed at all in the high valleys, they were so small as not greatly to modify the more normal forms. In central Colorado and Wyoming, where the mountains are higher and the Pleistocene glaciers were larger, the valley heads were hollowed out in well-formed cirques, often holding small lakes; and the mountain valleys were enlarged into U-shaped troughs as far down as the ice reached, with hanging lateral valleys oii the way.
In this central region, however, it is only by way of exception that the cirques were so far enlarged by retrogressive glacial erosion as to sharpen the preglacial dome-like summits into acute peaks; and in no case did glacial action here extend down to the plains at the eastern base of the mountains; but the widened, trough-like glaciated valleys frequently descend to the level of the elevated intermont basins, where moraines were deployed forward on the basin floor.
Some of the flows are still so young as to preserve their scoriaceous surface; here the shore-line of the lava contours evenly around the spurs and enters, bay-like, into the valleys of the enclosing mountains, occasionally isolating an outlying mass.
Lake Chelan, long and narrow, deep set between spurless ridges with hanging lateral valleys, and evidently of glacial origin, ornaments one of the eastern valleys.
In the new altitude of the mountain mass, its steep eastern face has been deeply carved with short canyons; and on the western slope an excellent beginning of dissection has been made in the erosion of many narrow valleys, whose greatest depth lies between their headwaters which still flow on the highland surface, and their mouths at the low western base of the range.
The highlands and uplands between the chief valleys are but moderately dissected; many small side streams still flow on the highland, and descend by steeply incised gorges to the valleys of the larger rivers.
Some of the chief valleys are not cut in the floors of the old valleys of the former cycle, because the rivers were displaced from their former courses by lava flows, which now stand up as table mountains.
Some of the western valleys have also in part of their length beeIi converted into U-shaped troughs; the famous Yosemite Vailey, eroded in massive granite, with side cliffs 1000 or 2000 ft.
Some of the gravels then occurred as piedmont deposits along the western border of the old mountains; these gravels are now more or less dissected by new-cut valleys.
The open valleys between the spaced ranges offer many tempting sites for settlement, but in the south irrigation is needed for cultivation.
To the north, the floor of the depression is for the most part above baselevel, and hence is dissected by open valleys, partly longitudinal, partly transverse, among hills of moderate relief.
Some of the bess is thought to have been derived by the wind from the surface of the drift soon after the retreat of the ice, before vegetation got a foothold upon the new-made deposit; but a large part of the bess, especially that associated with the main valleys, appears to have been blown up on to the bluffs of the valleys from the flood plains below.
The Cistercian monasteries are, as a rule, found placed in deep well-watered valleys.
These valleys, now so rich and productive, wore a very different aspect when the brethren first chose them as the place of their retirement.
There is considerable local trade with the rich farming country of the Platte and Elkhorn valleys; and the wholesale grain interests are especially important.
In the Cordilleran region on the other hand the lakes are long, narrow and deep, in reality sections of mountain valleys occupied by fresh water, just as the fjords of the adjoining coast are valleys occupied by the sea.
In many cases the lakes of Canada simply spill over at the lowest point from one basin into the next below, making chains of lakes with no long or well-defined channels between, since in so young a country there has not yet been time for the rivers to have carved wide valleys.
In most cases they reach the coast through deep valleys or profound canyons, and the transcontinental railways find their way beside them, the Canadian Pacific following at first tributaries of the Columbia near its great bend, and afterwards Thompson river and the Fraser; while the Grand Trunk Pacific makes use of the valley of the Skeena and its tributaries.
In every other part the surface is hilly or mammilated, the harder rocks, such as granite or greenstone, rising as rounded knobs, or in the case of schists forming narrow ridges, while the softer parts form valleys generally floored with lakes.
More important than the hills are the narrow and often rather deep river valleys cut below the general level, exposing the soft rocks of the Cretaceous and in many places seams of lignite.
There is also in the southern inland region an interior plateau, once probably a peneplain, but now elevated and greatly dissected by river valleys, which extends north-westward for Soo m.
At the higher levels the vegetation becomes more Arctic. Northwards the valleys of the Peace and other rivers differ little from those of Quebec and the northern prairies.
In some of the valleys having an outlet to the south the flora is partly peculiar to the American desert, and such species as Purshia tridentata, D.C., and Artemisia tridentata, Nutt., and species of Gilia, Aster and Erigonum are found that are not met with elsewhere.
But the valleys, especially those on the western side, are warm and healthy, enclose good pasture land and furnish fruits and wine in rich profusion.
The Black Forest produces excellent timber, which is partly sawn in the valleys and partly exported down the Rhine in logs.
In addition to the main lines in the valleys of the Rhine and Neckar, which are connected with the towns lying on its fringe, the district is intersected by the Schwarzwaldbahn from Offenburg to Singen, from which various small local lines ramify.
Local moraines are found in some of the valleys in Pomona and Hoy.
The scenery of Euboea is perhaps the most beautiful in Greece, owing to the varied combinations of rock, wood and water; for from the uplands the sea is almost always in view, either the wide island-studded expanse of the Aegean, or the succession of lakes formed by the Euboic Sea, together with mountains of exquisite outline, while the valleys and maritime plains are clothed either with fruit trees or with plane trees of magnificent growth.
Although the general direction of the mountains, ridges and valleys is N.E.
The valleys and slopes are carefully cultivated in fields divided by stone walls, and produce beans, peas, sweet potatoes, "Russian turnip radish," barley, a little rice and millet, the last being the staple article of diet.
The Great Valley Region consists of folded sedimentary rocks, extensive erosion having removed the soft layers to form valleys, leaving the hard layers as ridges, both layers running in a N.E.-S.W.
The " woolly aphis," " American blight," or " larch blight " (Eriosoma laricis) often attacks the trees in close valleys, but rarely spreads much unless other unhealthy conditions are present.
The application of electricity is widely developed on account of the proximity of Alpine valleys rich in torrents.
The spurs of the Carioca range project into this plain, in some places, closely up to the margin of the bay, forming picturesque valleys within the limits of the city.
Some of the residential quarters follow these valleys up into the mountains and extend up their slopes and over the lower spurs, which, with the hills covered with buildings rising in the midst of the city, give a picturesque appearance.
The main feature of the northern plain is the so-called Luneburger Heide, a vast expanse of moor and fen, mainly covered with low brushwood (though here and there are oases of fine beech and oak woods) and intersected by shallow valleys, and extending almost due north from the city of Hanover to the southern arm of the Elbe at Harburg.
There are no true mountain ranges in Maranhao, those indicated on the maps being only plateau escarpments marking either its northern margin or the outlines of river valleys.
The principal industries of Maranhao are agricultural, the river valleys and coastal zone being highly fertile and being devoted to the cultivation of sugar-cane, cotton, rice, coffee, tobacco, mandioca and a great variety of fruits.
Deep valleys separate the gently rounded ridges of forest-clad mountains, lofty spurs descend from the interior, and, running down to the sea, terminate frequently in bold rocky headlands 800 to moo ft.
Adjoining Peshawar, and separated from it by the Jowaki hills, lies the district of Kohat, a generally hilly tract intersected by narrow valleys.
The valleys of the Tochi and Wana are both fertile, but are very different in character.
In the trans-border agencies the valleys of the Swat, Kurram and Tochi rivers yield abundant rice crops.
Situated on the ancient road which runs by the Hollenpass between the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine, Freiburg early acquired commercial importance, and it is still the principal centre of the trade of the Black Forest.
That those to the westward have long been inactive is shown by the destruction of craters by denudation, by deep ravines, valleys and tall cliffs eroded on the mountain sides, especially on the windward side, by the depth of soil formed from the disintegrated rocks, and by the amount as well as variety of vegetable life.
That the mountainous mass of western Maui is much older is shown by the destruction of its crater, by its sharp ridges and by deeply eroded gorges or valleys.
This and the smaller valleys are noted for the beauty of their tropical scenery.
Its mountains, which rise to a height of 1 72 ft., are rugged and nearly destitute of verdure, but the intervening valleys afford pasturage for sheep.
The valleys are remarkable for beautiful scenery, - peaks, cliffs, lateral ravines, cascades and tropical vegetation.
The peaks of the mountain are irregular, abrupt and broken; its sides are deeply furrowed by gorges and ravines; the shore plain is broken by ridges and by broad and deep valleys; no other island of the group is so well watered on all sides by large mountain streams; and it is called " garden isle."
In the older valleys on the islands of Kauai, Oahu and Maui, as well as on the lowland plain of Molokai, the soil is deeper and usually, too, the moisture is retained by a heavy clay.
The valleys between the mountains and the plain to the south-west are, however, extremely rich and fertile.
The whole body moves forward slowly, always advancing in the swine general direction in which they originally started, but following more or less the course of the great valleys.
The province is watered by numerous streams and rivers, which have hollowed out deep valleys; but owing to the narrowness of the level tract, their courses are short, rapid and subject to floods.
Some of the higher mountains are covered with perpetual snow, a luxury which is highly prized by the inhabitants of the valleys, where the summer is usually extremely hot, and in winter the snow falls only to melt when it reaches the ground.
The valleys and lower portions of the town were gradually filled up so as to form a series of squares, of which those of Riponne and of St Francois are the finest, the latter now being the real centre of the town.
All they can boast of is the destruction of its population and products, so that the number of inhabitants of one of the richest valleys in the world is less to-day than it was four centuries ago.
But there are many other valleys of the same kind.
The Romsdal and Naerodal of Norway and Lauterbrunnen of the Alps are well characterized glacial valleys of the Yosemite type, and in S.E.
The Pennsylvania portion of the younger Appalachian ridges and valleys, known as the central province of the state, embraces the region between the South Mountains, on the south-east, and the crest of the Alleghany plateau or Alleghany Front, on the north-west.
The ridges and intervening valleys, long parts of which have an approximately parallel trend from south-west to north-east, were formed by the erosion of folded sediments of varying hardness, the weak belts of rock being etched out to form valleys and the hard belts remaining as mountain ridges.
Then came a broad uplift followed by the erosion which carved out the valleys, leaving hard rocks as mountain ridges which rise about to the level of the old erosion plain.
The valleys rarely exceed more than a few miles in width, are usually steep-sided, and frequently are traversed by longitudinal ranges of hills and cross ridges; but the Pennsylvania portion of the Appalachian or Great Valley, which forms a distinct division of the central province and lies between the South Mountains and the long rampart of Blue Mountain, is about to m.
In the northern, middle and south-west portions of this plateau province the upland is cut by an intricate network of narrow valleys and ravines that are commonly 300-600 ft.
The Monongahela is an older stream, but like the Allegheny, it meanders much, and both rivers flow in deeply intrenched valleys.
The crests of the higher ridges in the central province are delightfully cool in summer, but the adjacent valleys are subject to excessive heat in summer and severe cold in winter.
There is some of the same formation as well as that derived from red shales on the sandstone hills in the south-east province and in many of the middle and western valleys, but often a belt of inferior slate soil adjoins a limestone belt, and many of the ridges are covered with a still more sterile soil derived from white and grey sandstones.
The north-west and north-east sections contain some glacial drift but the soil in these parts is not suitable for cultivation except in the larger valleys in the north-west where it is drained by glacial gravel or there is some sandy loam mixed with clay.
The mountain ranges are spread out, rounded, disconnected, separated by flat valleys relatively of little depth.
Amidst the mountains there are many narrow valleys, partially cultivated from an altitude of 12,000 ft.
The northern portion of Tibet is an arid and wind-swept desert; but in the southern portion the valleys of Lhasa, Shigatse, Gyantse and the Brahmaputra are covered with good soil and groves of trees, well irrigated, and richly cultivated.
All travellers testify to the perpetual wind currents from the west, which sweep across the salt bogs of Tsaidam (9500 ft.) and through the higher valleys of eastern Tibet.
The Tibetan race, which probably belongs to the Turko-Mongol stock, is divided between the nomadic tentdwelling Tibetans of the lake region and transition zone between it and the river region, and the settled sedentary population of the valleys.
Soon afterwards, when the language was extended to the western valleys, many of the prefixed and most of the important consonants vanished from the spoken words.
Lead is obtained among the mountains, and the more sheltered valleys produce grain, wine, oil, fruit and esparto grass.
Great part is mountainous, but some very fertile valleys exist, to cultivate which 2000 yoke of oxen are employed.
The scenery in the neighbourhood is striking, lofty bare mountains being varied by open plains and long valleys dotted with villages.
Many of the valleys in this region are mere sandy deserts, with an occasional oasis of cultivation, but there are also some very fertile tracts; among these is the plain on which lies the town of Ajmere.
Besides this, Charles had to struggle against the incessant rebellions in Aquitaine, against the Bretons, whose revolt was led by their chief Nomenoe and Erispoe, and who inflicted on the king the defeats of Ballon (845) and Juvardeil (851), and especially against the Normans, who devastated the country in the north of Gaul, the valleys of the Seine and Loire, and even up to the borders of Aquitaine.
The water of most of the springs and geysers holds silica in solution in considerable quantities, so that as it cools and evaporates it deposits a dazzling white sinter which has covered many square miles of the valleys and contrasts strongly with the dark green of the surrounding forests.
The second division is a series of chains of hills, intersected by deep valleys, through which run the two main rivers, the Salween and the Pawn, and their feeder streams. Many of the latter are dried up in the hot season and only flow freely during the rains.
They enclose long lateral valleys, some of which are fertile and highly cultivated, and traversed by narrow precipitous gorges at intervals, which form the only means of access to the interior from the sea.
Beyond the mountains which flank the cultivated valleys of Semail and Tyin, to the west, there stretches the great Ruba el Khali, or Dahna, the central desert of southern Arabia, which reaches across the continent to the borders of Yemen, isolating the province on the landward side just as the rugged mountain barriers shut it off from the sea.
They are formed of numerous ranges, divided by comparatively deep valleys, which, with many local exceptions, tend towards parallelism with the general direction of the whole mass.
This, between the Dauphine and the borders of Hungary, forms a broad band convex towards the north, while most of the valleys lie between the directions west to east and south-west to north-east.
But in many parts deep transverse valleys intersect the prevailing direction of the ridges, and facilitate the passage of man, plants and animals, as well as of currents of air which mitigate the contrast that would otherwise be found between the climates of the opposite slopes.
Nearly all the moisture that is precipitated during six or seven months is stored up in the form of snow, and is gradually diffused in the course of the succeeding summer; even in the hottest and driest seasons the reserves accumulated during a long preceding period of years in the form of glaciers are available to maintain the regular flow of the greater streams. Nor is this all; the lakes that fill several of the main valleys on the southern side of the Alps are somewhat above the level of the plains of Lombardy and Venetia, and afford an inexhaustible supply of water, which, from a remote period, has been used for that system of irrigation to which they owe their proverbial fertility.
The olive and the characteristic shrubs of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean do not thrive in the open air, but the former valuable tree ripens its fruit in sheltered places at the foot of the mountains, and penetrates along the deeper valleys and the shores of the Italian lakes.
They protect the valleys from destructive avalanches, and, retaining the superficial soil by their roots, they mitigate the destructive effects of heavy rains.
The spots at which they were crossed are called passes (this word is sometimes though rarely applied to gorges only), and are the points at which the great chain sinks to form depressions, up to which deep-cut valleys lead from the plains.
No attempt, of course, has been made to give a complete catalogue of the peaks and passes of the Alps, while in the case of the peaks the culminating point of a lower halfdetached group has been included rather than the loftier spurs of the higher and main group; in the case of the passes, the villages or valleys they connect have been indicated, and also the general character of the route over each pass.
The former, in the 15th century, won the Val Leventina (down which the St Gotthard train now thunders) as well as Bellinzona and the Val Blenio (though the Ossola Valley was held for a time only), while the latter added to the Val Bregaglia (which had been given to the bishop of Coire in 960 by the emperor Otto I.) the valleys of Mesocco and of Poschiavo.
Further, in 1512, the Swiss Confederation as a whole won the valleys of Locarno with Lugano, which, combined with the 15th century conquests by the Forest Cantons, were formed in 1803 into the new Canton of Ticino or Tessin.
On the other hand, the Grisons won in 1512 the Valtellina, with Bormio and Chiavenna, but in 1797 these regions were finally lost to it as well as to the Swiss Confederation, though the Grisons retained the valleys of Mesocco, Bregaglia and Poschiavo, while in 1762 it had bought the upper bit of the valley of Munster that lies on the southern slope of the Alps.
In 1797 they obtained Venetia proper, in 1803 the secularized bishoprics of Trent and Brixen (as well as that of Salzburg, more to the north), besides the Valtellina region, and in 1815 the Bergamasque valleys, while the Milanese had belonged to them since 1535.
Roughly speaking, in each of these five lands the Alpine population speaks the tongue of the country, though in Italy there are a few French-speaking districts (the Waldensian valleys as well as the Aosta and Oulx valleys) as well as some German-speaking and Ladin-speaking settlements.
Excavations made, especially since 1855, in the ancient necropolis, which lay on a plateau surrounded by valleys at the foot of the hill, and of the town, have yielded important results for the history of the art and manufactures of Praeneste.
Those on the south and north lie at an elevation of 4000 ft., having the character of steppes, with scanty forest-cover, and, save in the narrow valleys and river-courses, are suitable for cattle-rearing.
South of the volcanoes the northern affluents of the Ombilin - Sumpur, Sello and Sinamar - flow through valleys parallel to one another in a north-west to south-east direction.
Here, too, are found fertile tuffs, and the valleys are densely populated.
Unlike the northern, the southern affluents of the Ombilin do not follow longitudinal valleys hemmed in by the Barisan range and ranges of slate, limestone and sandstone.
South of the Middengebergte, however, the northern affluents of the Batang Hari, the Seliti, Gumanti, Si Potar, Mamun and Pangean, at least those in the west, again run in longitudinal valleys.
Such are the valley of Korinchi, with the river of the same name, between the peak of Korinchi and Mt Raja; the valleys of Serampei and Sungei Tenang (as imperfectly known as that of the Korinchi), in which are to be sought the sources of the Tambesi and Asei, both affluents of the Jambi; the longitudinal valley of Kedah K i?
Generally the lower valleys of the rivers lie at elevations of 600 to woo ft.; higher up they rise to 2500 or 3000 ft.; the mountain chains rise to 5500 ft.; the volcanoes tower up from 6500 to nearly ro,000 ft.
Blowing over land and in the direction of the longitudinal valleys, the south-east wind is comparatively dry, and thus favours the formation of steppes in the north such as the Toba plains.
In the west, with its long line of coast and numerous valleys, the transport of coffee has induced the construction of very good roads as far as the Lake of Toba, owing to the want of navigable rivers.