91 



limestone, and other rocks, are frequently torn from 

 the sides of those mountains, and carried to a great 

 distance into the low grounds, by the resistless torrents 

 of water that often rush from the steep and awful pre- 

 cipicies of those stupendous snow-capped heights. 



This will not appear strange when we learn from the 

 same author, that whole villages are sometimes swept 



Hence, the fair and unequivocal conclusion is, that they must have 

 been brought from some unknown point or place to the northward, 

 by currents of water, and deposited where they are ; and that too, 

 most probably, enclosed in ice : for such is their form that if em- 

 braced in a mass of ice of sufficient size, and elevated from the 

 earth by water, they might be floated over the ocean without the 

 chance of escape, except by the melting of the ice. 



Cases of a similar kind occur elsewhere, as will appear by the fol- 

 lowing extract of a letter from Professor Cooper : " The shore of 

 the north east bank of Susqueliannah, from Wilksbarre in Pennsyl- 

 vania, down to Sunbury, is, or a few years ago was, abundant in 

 sienitic rolled pebbles, from the size of a man's head to the size of a 

 marble; red felspar, hornblend, and quartz; felspar and quartz; 

 fe.spar and hornblend ; quartz and hornblend. 1 know of no 

 sienitic formation in the vicinity : the nearest I have heard of from 

 Col. Gibbs and Mr. McClure, is in the vicinity of Lake George, 

 and to the eastward of it. These are annually shifting their places, 

 being enveloped with ice, which when it is deposited on the shores 

 lower down, the ice melts and leaves the stones. I have traced 

 them from Wilksbarre as low down as Sunbury and even Harris- 

 burgh." 



By what possible means, I would ask, were these stones, (of 

 which there can be no mistake, for I have seen and examined them) 

 brought from Lake George over land to Wilksbarre, except by a 

 current setting from the north east, which is precisely the direction 

 from the one to the other of these two places ? 



