UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



were all drift boulders. How sod-bound many of 

 them were, and how the old oxen used to settle into 

 their bows with rigid muscles in pulling them from 

 their beds ! If you had looked on their under sides 

 you would have seen how smoothed and worn most 

 of them were. They had been hauled across the 

 land by oxen of another kind long before yours 

 were heard of. 



The rocks that give the eyebrows to the faces of 

 the hills are place rocks the cropping-out of the 

 original strata. The place rock gives the contour to 

 the landscape; it forms the ledges and cliffs; it thrusts 

 a huge rocky fist up through the turf here and there, 

 or it exposes a broad smooth surface where you may 

 see the grooves and scratches of the great ice sheet, 

 tens of thousands of years old. The marks of the old 

 ice-plane upon the rocks weather out very slowly. 

 When they are covered with a few inches of soil 

 they are as distinct as those we saw in Alaska under 

 the edges of the retreating glaciers. 



One day, on the crest of a hill above my Lodge on 

 the home farm in the Catskills, I used my spade to 

 remove five or six inches of soil from the upper layer 

 of rock in order to prove to some doubting friends 

 that a page of history was written here that they 

 had never suspected. I quickly disclosed the lines 

 and the grooves, nearly as sharp as if made but yes- 

 terday, and as straight as if drawn by a rule, running 

 from northeast to southwest. Across the valley, a 

 54 



