162 ABBOTT — ARTIFACTS BENEATH DEPOSIT OF CLAY. [Aprils, 



was derived from beds of Raritan clay, near the head of the valley. 

 For some reason, not now definable, this clay, taken up from the 

 bed of original deposition, was redeposited in a circumscribed area 

 and, as it proved, at a point where previously traces of man had been 

 lost in the waters of a prehistoric stream. Later, this upland 

 stream had decreased in volume, shrinking to the present trifling 

 brook. The bed of the greater stream had become choked with 

 vegetation and eolian sands had drifted in until the valley was no 

 longer well defined ; its one-time features finally disappearing when 

 forest trees for centuries thickly dotted the ground. For how long 

 this condition continued it is impossible to determine. When the 

 valley was a forested tract the Indian was in possession. For 

 somewhat more than two centuries the forest has been gone and the 

 ground under more or less constant cultivation, but the valley is 

 still to be traced. 



In the mid-autumn of 1903 there was a phenomenal flood in the 

 Delaware River. The water rose to a height unrecorded by man, 

 and the river reasserted its right to the flood-plain and beyond, for 

 its waters flowed up the ravine and the hillside brook became for 

 the time a navigable stream for a considerable distance. It was 

 clearly a return for a time to those ancient days when the entire 

 condition of the country was essentially different from what now 

 obtains — when little brooks were considerable creeks, when 

 creeks were rivers, and the river itself a stream that approached the 

 present Mississippi in magnitude ; and when this was true of the 

 tamer conditions of to-day, not only man but an arctic fauna lived 

 here. We can only refer such conditions to the closing days of the 

 Glacial Epoch. The question of Glacial Man in North America, 

 so long a vexing problem, has been found easier of solution than 

 was to be hoped for. The evidence above given is not a single 

 instance of deeply inhumed artifacts in undisturbed stratified 

 deposits ; but is submitted as a typical example of many such that 

 have been brought to light by the author and other workers in the 

 same field. 



Trenton^ N. y., April 7, igo4. 



