14 HISTORY OF "DERRYFIELD. 



of all the ascertainable facts, Mr. King believes they present 

 " perfectly overwhelming evidence that the general deposition 

 of aerial water, as compared either with the phenomena of the 

 immediately preceding period or vvith our own succeeding con- 

 dition, constituted an age of water-catastrophe whose destructive 

 power we only now begin distantly to suspect." 



We have thus briefly cited the few foregoing authorities, in 

 order to reinforce and fortify our interpretation of certain local 

 phenomena, and to the end that our theories may not wilfully 

 be divorced from fact. To the mathematician, the geologist, 

 the astronomer — to those who walk without stumbling in the 

 wide ways leading to the sun — we leave the task of explanation. 



We call to our support at this point but one other authority, 

 and quote from the works of Prof. Hitchcock, whose researches 

 in the very field of our inquiry are precisely in point and entitle 

 him to a hearing. He says : " The evidence is clear of the pas- 

 sage of the ice-sheet over all the higher New England summits." 

 The facts illustrating this statement may be found in the geo- 

 logical reports for Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Mas- 

 sachusetts ; for example as to Katahdin, the White Mountains, 

 the Green Mountains, and for Greylock in the state last named. 

 These reports are easily accessible. Prof. Hitchcock describes 

 in detail the moraines and the upper and lower till, and of the 

 former he says: "The capping of the hill is loose, the frag- 

 ments are rough, not far removed from their source, commonly 

 lying naturally." He concludes that these materials were held 

 in the ice at the time of its melting. He also refers to exten- 

 sive "sloping plains of gravel and sand, deposited by streams 

 from melting ice acting upon the moraine." He concludes by 

 remarking that "the numerous kames, elevated sand plains and 

 river terraces came into existence with the copious floods of 

 water resulting from the dissolution of the ice. The history of 

 the ice-age is incomplete without a discussion of the events 

 occurring in this great continental freshet." 



