1 84 STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 



History of Opinions Respecting the Age and Elevation of the 

 White Mountains. 



These mountains have afforded scientific writers abundant opportunity 

 for the display of theories respecting the geological equivalency and ele- 

 vation of the strata. A citation of the most important among them will 

 illustrate the progress of scientific thought, and give credit to divers 

 original suggestions. The older writers generally believed in an igneous 

 ejection of granite, bursting through horizontal strata, pouring over them, 

 and throwing great masses upward with steep inclinations. These views 

 came not from original application to these mountains, but were a trans- 

 ference of the ideas of European authors to our ranges. 



A very early publication was that by President Dwight, in his Travels 

 in Neiv Engla7id, volume 2, 1821. He writes thus concerning the Notch 

 (p. 147): 



The Notch of the White Mountains is a phrase, appropriated to a very narrow defile, 

 extending two miles in length between two huge cliffs, apparently rent asunder by 

 some vast convulsion of nature. This convulsion was, in my own view, unquestiona- 

 bly that of the deluge. There are here and throughout New England, no eminent 

 proofs of volcanic violence ; nor any strong exhibitions of the power of earthquakes. 

 Nor has history recorded any earthquake, or volcano, in other countries, of sufficient 

 efficacy to produce the phenomena of this place. The objects rent asunder are too 

 great: the ruin is too vast, and too complete, to have been accomplished by these 

 agents. The change appears to have been effectuated, when the surface of the earth 

 extensively subsided ; when countries, and continents, assumed a new face ; and a 

 general commotion of the elements produced the disruption of some mountains, and 

 merged others beneath the common level of desolation. Nothing, less than this, will 

 account for the sundering of a long range of great rocks ; or rather, of vast mountains ; 

 or for the existing evidences of the immense force, by which the rupture was effected. 



James Pierce presents a notice of a trip to Mt. Washington in 1823, 

 from Fryeburg, Me., to the Notch, and thence over the several peaks 

 to the summit, which hardly differs from what one would write at the 

 present day of the same route. He speaks of "Mt. Prospect" as the 

 name for the eminence now known as Pleasant.* 



Prof. C. U. Shcpard, in 1830, speaks of the granite and other rocks 

 in the Notch. It "here offers the aspect of immense beds frequently 



*■ Amcr. Jour. Sci., I, vol. 8, p. 175. 



