Glacial Varved Clay Concretions of New England 
By Ray S. BassLer, Head Curator, Department of Geology, U. S. National Museum 
(With 12 plates] 
A strange but wholly natural phe- 
nomenon startled the people of the 
southern tip of Maine one morning in 
1670. A hillside about 130 feet back 
from the Kennebunk River bank let 
loose, jumped over the intervening 
woods turning upside down on the 
way, and landed in the river channel, 
thereby damming it for a spell. The 
occurrence was recorded by William 
Hubbard in his “History of New 
England” (1815), as follows: 
At a place called Kennebunk at the north- 
east side of Wells in the Province of Maine, 
not far from the river side, a piece of clay 
ground was thrown up by a mineral vapour 
over the top of high oaks that grew between 
it and the river. ‘The said ground so thrown 
up fell in the channel of the river, stopping 
the course thereof, and leaving an hole forty 
yards square in the place whence it was 
thrown, in which were found thousands of 
round pellets of clay, like musket bullets. 
All the whole town of Wells are witnesses of 
the truth of this relation; and many others 
have seen sundry of these clay pellets which 
the inhabitants have shewn to their neigh- 
bours of other towns. 
Later in the same year, John Win- 
throp, Governor of Connecticut, in 
the Winthrop Papers of the Massa- 
chusetts Historical Collection, de- 
scribed “the strage and prodigious 
wonder” in more detail: 
The relation wc I have fr6é credible per- 
sons concerning the manner of it is this: 
That the hill being about 8 rods fro Kenne- 
bunke rivers side, on the west side of the 
river about 4 miles fré the sea, was removed 
over the drye land about 8 rods, and over 
the trees also we grew betweene the hill & 
y' river, leaping over them into y* river, 
where it was seene placed, wt the upper 
part downward, & dammed up y* river for a 
tyme till the water did worke it selfe a pas- 
sage thorow it. The length of the hill was 
about 250 foote, the breadth of it about 80 
foote, the depth of it about 20 foote. The 
situation of the hill as to the length of it was 
norwest & southeast. The earth of it isa blew 
clay wtbout stones, many round bullets of 
clay were wttin it we seem to be of the same 
clay hardned * * * J had from them 
(Major William Philips and Mr. Herlaken- 
dine Symonds) some few of those round 
bullets, & small pieces of the earth in other 
forms, wc were found vpon that now vpper 
part wc was before the lower, or inward 
bowells of y® hill, as also a small shell or 2 of 
a kind of shellfish vsuell in many places of the 
sea, but how they should be w'*in y* hill is 
strage to cosider. I have sent all y' I had of 
thé amongst other things to y* Royall Society 
for their repository. 
Governor Winthrop’s specimens, 
upon receipt by the Royal Society, 
were cataloged in their Journal Book 
for 1734 as “clay generated in the 
form of horseshoes, from the bottom 
of the Connecticut River.” ‘The error 
of locality did not matter since these 
claystones, as they were then named, 
occurred in equal abundance along 
both the Connecticut and Kennebunk 
Rivers. 
More than two centuries after the 
Kennebunk slide, Edward E. Bourne 
in his ‘History of Wells and Kenne- 
bunk” (1875) wrote: 
Concerning the overturned hill, it is wished 
that a more certain and punctual relation 
might be procured of all the circumstances 
of the accident. * * *° No intelligent 
person of the present day can hesitate a 
moment as to the explanation of this strange 
event. The same thing has occurred several 
times within the last fifty years. Oak trees 
then stood all along the banks of the rivers, 
and this wonder was one of those avalanches 
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