218 A RIVER VIEW. 



When the February thaw came and brought up the 

 volume of fresh water again, the sea brine was beaten 

 back, and the fish, what were left of them, resumed 

 their old feeding-grounds. 



It is this character of the Hudson, this encroach- 

 ment of the sea upon it, that has led Professor New- 

 berry to speak of it as a drowned river. We have 

 heard of drowned lands, but here is a river overflowed 

 and submerged in the same manner. It is quite cer- 

 tain, however, that this has not always been the char- 

 acter of the Hudson. Its great trough bears evidence 

 of having been worn to its present dimensions by 

 much swifter and stronger currents than those that 

 course through it now. Hence, Professor Newberry 

 has advanced the bold and striking theory that in 

 pre-glacial times this part of the continent*was sev- 

 eral hundred feet higher than at present, and that the 

 Hudson was then a very large and rapid stream, 

 that drew its main supplies from the basin of the 

 Great Lakes through an ancient river-bed that fol- 

 lowed pretty nearly the line of the present Mohawk ; 

 in other words, that the waters of the St. Lawrence 

 once found an outlet through this channel, debouching 

 into the ocean from a broad, littoral plain, at a point 

 eighty miles southeast of New York, where the sea 

 now rolls 500 feet deep. According to the soundings 

 of the coast survey, this ancient bed of the Hudson is 

 distinctly marked upon the ocean floor to the point 

 indicated. 



To the gradual subsidence of this part of the con- 



