THE OLD ICE-FLOOD 



transcends all our experience with ice and snow, or 

 the experience of the race since the dawn of history, 

 that only the scientific imagination and faith are 

 equal to it. The belief in it rests on indubitable evi 

 dence, its record is written all over our landscape, 

 but it requires, I say, the scientific imagination to 

 put the facts together and make a continuous his 

 tory. 



Three or four hundred feet above my cabin, five 

 or six hundred feet above tidewater, there is a bold 

 rocky point upon which the old ice-sheet bore heav 

 ily. It has rubbed it down and flattened it as a 

 hand passing over a knob of soft putty might do. 

 The great hand in this case moved from the north 

 east and must have fairly made this rocky promin 

 ence groan with its weight. The surface, scratched 

 and grooved and planed by the ice, has weathered 

 away, leaving the rock quite rough ; its general out 

 lines alone tell the tale of the battle with the ice. 

 But on the east side a huge mass of rock, that had 

 been planed and gouged by the glacier, was detached 

 and toppled over, turning topsy-turvy before it had 

 weathered, and it lies in such a position, upheld 

 by two rock fragments, that its glaciated surface, 

 though protected from the weather, is clearly visi 

 ble. You step down two or three feet between the 

 two upholding rocks and are at the entrance of a 

 little cave, and there before you, standing at an 

 angle of thirty or forty degrees, is this rocky page 

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