must be very vague over the eastern part of the island where there are but few Magothy wells. 

 More can be done at the western end where the streams were directed either towards the sound 

 or the head of the Hudson canyon. These results disclosed a rather unusual pattern. 



Hudson river is presumed to have been at its present location emptying into a vast canyon 

 in the Continental Shelf. The head of this gorge appears to have extended far enough north and 

 west to include Jamaica bay and the heavily eroded region north of Coney island. 



East river, which still occupies a rock valley, must have been in the same position as at 

 present except at its lower end where the existing stream has been pushed to the east of its 

 original valley by glacial material. It is assumed that East river ran directly into the Hudson 

 somewhere near Governors island. 



Starting east of the present Hellgate, a wide, but not overdeep, valley extended eastward, 

 which valley later was modiiied and submerged as the present Long Island sound. The final ero- 

 sion of this valley must have been made by an easterly flowing stream ( Sound river) which lay 

 close to the present north shore of the island. This stream, of course, picked up all the drainage 

 from the north. On the south it had many small tributaries running in short and steep courses 

 down the rather abrupt northern slope of the prospective island. These streams ran in narrow 

 and deep gorges originating near the height of land and cutting deeply into the northward 

 facing scarp. These are the present North Shore bays and quite likely there were more of them 

 at that time as some may have been buried or washed away in the Suffolk county area. 



How far west Sound river originated is unknown. Somewhere it must have turned south 

 across the axis of the island. Various points where this might have happened suggest them- 

 selves, including the Nissequogue-Connetquot area, Carmans river, Peconic bay and the gap west 

 of Block island. It may even have continued in an extension of the sound westerly to another 

 canyon in the Continental Shelf which lies east of Cape Cod. This last idea seems improbable as 

 not providing enough slope to enable the river to accomplish the erosion of the sound. 



In the west end the streams were oriented on the Hudson canyon and traces of such 

 drainage seem still faintly to show through the overlying drift (East Meadow brook and 

 others) . Three fair-sized valleys appear in this region. 



The westernmost valley is a small one parallel to East river and not far distant from it, 

 but at a somewhat lower level. This may represent the remnants of the valley of a stream which 

 came down from north of the Sound. Some remnants of Magothy are west of it, but in general 

 it is in the Raritan and lower strata. 



East of this is a more considerable valley heading up towards Flushing bay. There are 

 indications that this later served as a glacial outwash channel. This is Crosby's "Sound River 

 Valley". 



Still farther east is a more important valley running somewhat west of south and so deeply 

 cut as to suggest that in places it extends down to the Raritan. This valley heads up somewhat 

 abruptly at the water parting, suggesting that it was modified by glacial outwash also. This is 

 Veatch's "Sound River Valley". 



Both Professors Veatch and Crosby advanced the theory that the final pre-glacial exca- 

 vation of the Sound was made by the Connecticut which they assumed turned westward and 

 then southward and ran into the Hudson canyon. They were aware of the two last described 

 indentations in the pre-glacial surface and assumed that these extended farther to the north 

 and east in sufficient size and at an elevation low enough before hitting rock to cross the 

 island. The many wells which have been sunk since those times seem, as shown by the map, 

 to negative those theories, and it now appears that Sound river in this sense did not exist. No 

 new theory has been offered. This is a most important question as any such valley crossing the 

 island might well make a cross-connection with most, if not all, of the aquifers (GW-2, Fig. 13) . 



175 



