52 Eruption of Long Lake and Mud Lake, in Vermont. 
Valleys are here and there found, with streams of water pass- 
ing through them, surrounded on all sides by high grounds, . 
except a very narrow passage for the stream to enter, and an~ 
other for it to escape; and in both, the whole appearance of 
the ground indicates that the high grounds actually met, in 
some former period; that the valley was originally a lake ; 
and that its water was discharged by a water-fall. There is 
so much resemblance, between the of Long Lake and 
some 0 places which 1 have examined, that I cannot 
doubt the correctness of this opinion. Had the waters of 
that lake been discharged two centuries earlier, its bed, and 
liey which it formed, would have been filled with a 
thrifty forest ; and the evidence that it had ever been @ lake, 
would have been no morre satisfactory than we now possess, 
that the places to which I have alluded were once filled with 
water. We now know the fuet, however, that lakes may be 
suddenly and finally emptied, and their beds changed to fer- 
tile valleys, so as to lose, in no great length of time, all traces 
of the immediate action of water. 
_ Several individuals, well acquainted with the country, in- 
vat the ground at one extremity of Lake Wil- © 
- loughby, which lies a few miles east of Barton, is formed like 
that at the northern extremity of Long Lake; and that its 
much hazard, it would be an imealculable advantage to a 
. large extent of country ; as a long range of towns in the 
neigh urhood of this e, are separated from the Con- 
necticut by a chain of pathless mountains, through which no 
