8 RURAL NEW YORK 



rounded hills of decreasing elevation. The interior 

 trough is narrow and steep-sided but not to the same 

 extent as the Hudson River. As far up as Little 

 Falls, seventy miles from its mouth, there is only a 

 narrow ribbon of alluvial soil a half to three-quarters 

 of a mile in width, now on one side and now on the 

 other, or divided. On the rolling hills on either side, 

 the surface is smooth enough easily to permit success- 

 ful farming for many miles back; The land rises 

 less rapidly on the south than on the north side. 



Above Little Falls, where a dike of intensive rock 

 crosses the course of the river and gives rise to the 

 falls that are the occasion for the city, the valley 

 gradually widens out into a great amphitheater that 

 looks out westward over Syracuse, Buffalo and the 

 Great Lakes region. On the north the lowland 

 swings gradually to the north around the western 

 flank of the Adirondack Mountains, past the end of 

 Lake Ontario where it forms a plains area ten to 

 twenty miles in width with an imdulating to flat 

 surface. Thence it trends northeast along the St. 

 Lawrence River and passes out into Canada. Oppo- 

 site the source of the St. Lawrence in Lake Ontario, 

 where the surface is in general low in elevation, 

 there breaks forth a multitude of low ridges and 

 knolls of solid rock, some of which constitute the bulk 

 of the Thousand Island group. These are the out- 

 lyers of the Adirondacks. The Island region is a 

 partially submerged valley. The soil is a combina- 

 tion of lake clays and sand and gravel terraces with 

 some glacial till, interspersed between the projecting 



