198 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



pigeons appear, and, with small gillnets let down 

 through holes in the ice, captured them in fabulous 

 numbers. On the heels of the retreating perch and 

 catfish came the denizens of salt water, and codfish 

 were taken ninety miles above New York. When 

 the February thaw came, and brought up the vol- 

 ume 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 

 Newberry 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 certain, however, that this has not always 

 been the character 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 several 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 followed pretty nearly the 

 line of the present Mohawk ; in other words, that 

 the waters of the St. Lawrence once found an out- 

 let 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 



