Note 801 — Chapter XI

Becker in Ibid., pp. 348–9. The same author cites from the Trans. of Am. Geog. Soc., 1874, the following interesting statement made by Gen. Milnor: “Nowhere else on the continent can similar great valleys such as the Missouri and Columbia be found, meeting advantageously at a common point on the main dividing backbone which separates the continental waters flowing east and west to the two oceans. The heads of these main valleys are here only from three to four thousand feet above the sea, while the great treeless plains—further south—are elevated more than six thousand feet.”