It Was A
Part Of The Great System Of Granite Mountains Which Forms One Of
The Most Important And Striking
Features of North America,
stretching parallel to the coast of the Pacific from the Isthmus
of Panama almost to the
Arctic Ocean; and presenting a
corresponding chain to that of the Andes in the southern
hemisphere. This vast range has acquired, from its rugged and
broken character and its summits of naked granite, the
appellation of the Rocky Mountains, a name by no means
distinctive, as all elevated ranges are rocky. Among the early
explorers it was known as the range of Chippewyan Mountains, and
this Indian name is the one it is likely to retain in poetic
usage. Rising from the midst of vast plains and prairies,
traversing several degrees of latitude, dividing the waters of
the Atlantic and the Pacific, and seeming to bind with diverging
ridges the level regions on its flanks, it has been figuratively
termed the backbone of the northern continent.
The Rocky Mountains do not present a range of uniform elevation,
but rather groups and occasionally detached peaks. Though some of
these rise to the region of perpetual snows, and are upwards of
eleven thousand feet in real altitude, yet their height from
their immediate basis is not so great as might be imagined, as
they swell up from elevated plains, several thousand feet above
the level of the ocean. These plains are often of a desolate
sterility; mere sandy wastes, formed of the detritus of the
granite heights, destitute of trees and herbage, scorched by the
ardent and reflected rays of the summer's sun, and in winter
swept by chilling blasts from the snow-clad mountains.
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