366 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



with pitifully feeble gropings of the imagination 

 to repicture some of that distance scene. My data 

 is all based, of course, on geological volumes, and 

 appears to be accepted by most reliable students of 

 physical geography. 



As nearly as we can judge, the period of the 

 early Pleistocene was something like a million 

 years ago, and at this time the northeastern coast 

 of the United States was elevated a mile or more 

 above its present level. This made of Manhattan 

 Island an elongated line of rugged hills about one 

 hundred miles inland, while the great Hudson 

 drained not only its own valley, but most of the 

 great lakes to the north. This mighty flood rushed 

 southward through the Palisades, past Manliattan 

 and on out toward the Atlantic, augmented by 

 the tributaries of the Connecticut, the Housatonic, 

 the Passaic and the Hackensack Rivers. 



So low has the coastal region sunk since that 

 time that today the Hudson, as far up as Albany, 

 is little more than an elongated fjord, the effect of 

 the ocean's tides being felt throughout this entire 

 distance of a hundred and fifty miles. Even the 

 Palisades were much more imposing in olden 

 times, for the glaciers had not then filled the 

 Catskill bed of the river with the hundreds of 

 feet of rocks and gravel which now choke it. If 

 we could have then floated down the Hudson the 

 Palisades would have towered four times as high 

 above us. 



In those days the compound river rushed 

 through the channel which on clear days can now 



