269 



The resolutions were unanimously adopted and tlrs 

 meeting adjourned to Powow Hill, one of the highest eleva- 

 tions in the County, affording magnificent views of the 

 ocean and of the surrounding country far and near. 



J. J. H. GREGORY of Marblehead has furnished the sketch 

 of the Topography, <tc. of Powow Hill : 



To one interested in the study of Geology, Powow Hill 

 is a very interesting deposit. I risk but little in saving that 

 it is one of the largest masses of drift in New England ; in 

 other words, it is one of the highest hills of its kind in New 

 England. There are higher hills, and we may grade upward 

 until we pass the invisible point which divides hills from 

 mountains, and onward to our highest mountains, but I 

 much doubt whether we shall find many masses of mere loose 

 material piled so high as Powow Hill. Most hills of great 

 height, and all mountains, whether isolated or in chains, as 

 far as my reading and observations have extended, owe their 

 height to the solid rock which makes them, or forms their 

 nucleus. The rocky mass may not be readily apparent, the 

 action of the elements through untold cycles having gradu- 

 ally broken down every projection, and the broken frag- 

 * ments having been still farther broken and decomposed, a 

 soil has been made, the lowest forms of vegetable life have 

 spread over the surface, supplying, by their decay, food for 

 the higher forms, until, with the lapse of ages, the once bare 

 rugged ledge has its angles smoothed, and its nakedness 

 clothed with the trees and shrubs of the forest. Yet the 

 rocky nucleus will generally outcrop at its apex, gravity 

 having carried all fragments torn from its hoary head down- 

 ward. By this process of " degradation," as it is termed, 

 mountains and hills are gradually reduced in height ; of the 

 two classes, the drift hills, or in other words, the hills made 



