212 STKATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 



freshet upon the south-western slope of the most southern of these pyra- 

 mids. The mountain side seems to have been covered by spruces grow- 

 ing above loose blocks carpeted abundantly with moss, very much as is 

 common all over the White Hills wherever the climate permits temperate 

 vegetation to flourish. No valley furrowed the slope ; and it seems diffi- 

 cult to understand why the waters should have accumulated so enor- 

 mously at this point, and nowhere else in the neighborhood, if we may 

 judge by the effect produced, especially since the bare mountain side 

 exposed at this time has rendered the area conspicuous as a landmark 

 fifty miles away. It were easy to imagine that some atmospheric dis- 

 turbances had collected the waters naturally dispersed in an area having 

 the diameter of a mile, and discharged them in a narrow stream upon the 

 forest beneath. Clouds are sometimes said to "burst," when their con- 

 tents are poured very quickly into some limited area, most usually when 

 a tornado or rapidly-formed nimbus flits by ; and something of that na- 

 ture, though not approved by the best meteorologists, will best explain 

 the phenomena displayed in Waterville during this never-to-be-forgotten 

 storm. 



Almost immediately after the storm this locality was visited by a party 

 consisting of Prof. G. H. Perkins, ph. d., of the University of Vermont, 

 Rev. M. T. Runnells, of Sanbornton, and Charles Cutter, of Campton. 

 Prof. Perkins wrote a description of the changes wrought in the country, 

 and published it in the American Joimial of Science (ii, vol. xlix, p. 158). 

 As he made careful estimates of distances in the upper part of the moun- 

 tain, I will use his figures in the paragraph which follows. 



The sliding commenced about forty rods from the summit, a little one 

 side of the highest point. The beginning of the bare earth is only a rod 

 in width. The breadth increases gradually for fifty or sixty rods. For 

 the following seventy rods down hill it widens rapidly, attaining at one 

 hundred and thirty rods distance a width of twenty-five or thirty rods. 

 Thirty-six rods lower, the breadth is seventeen rods. The course is nearly 

 straight to this point, — one hundred and sixty rods, — where it begins to 

 curve towards the north-west instead of continuing south-westerly, and 

 eighty rods below is what Prof. Perkins regarded as a termination of the 

 slide. The waters excavated a gorge through the boulder-clay or hardpan 

 of the country, after passing the Elbow, often twenty-five feet deep, the 



