CHAPTER 11. 



MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. 



THE narrative of Cohasset may well commence with 

 the romance of rock. The making of its rock 

 foundation is a story that nature has recorded so honestly 

 and so minutely that men may read what events occurred 

 here millions of years ago. 



There is nothing so old in the town as the rock ledges 

 that push up their elbows and their shoulders at haphazard 

 places everywhere. They toe the edge of our streets, 

 make backs for houses to rest upon, and lift their heads 

 for observatories, like Sunset Rock. 



Not only at the jutting-out points, but underlying every 

 inch of soil is the solid rock bottom. 



People find it when digging down to make their cellars 

 or their wells. The roadmakers find it when they grade 

 down the streets. Every one may find it who will take 

 the pains to lift off the garment of soil that has been 

 spread in layers and in heaps upon it. 



Like flesh upon a bony skeleton, the soil has clothed the 

 rock, hiding many deep crevices and rounding over many 

 jagged ledges ; but everywhere the same kind of rock is 

 to be found spreading under the town. 



The deepest probing to find rock bottom has been done 

 in the meadow called the Picle,* near by the Pumping 

 Station, where the well-borers found forty feet in depth of 

 clay and sand and gravel upon that basin of rock. Forty 

 feet below the grass in that place means thirty-three feet 

 lower than the sea level, and it is fairly safe to assume 



' * Pronounced by pi^ople liere Pi'kl. 



