246 Facets relating to Diluvial Action. 
_ That these large masses of rocks should be broken up and thrown 
upon the the tops of high hills will appear in no way surprizing when 
we consider what must be the effect of the precipitation of the cata- 
racts into deep vallies and of their subsequent violent reflux over the 
high hills; a power more than sufficient to raise the large <a 
rock that were left on the high grounds in the country. 
- That water has the power to carry rocks and other heavy bodies 
over the tops of mountains, is evinced by the simple fact, that the only 
place where the millstone is found within two hundred miles, is at 
, on the west side of Shongham mountain, fifteen to twenty 
miles from Esopus or Kingston, up the Roundout Hill. At this 
place, all the country or Esopus millstones are sold. Now, over a 
great part of the west side of Shongham mountain, which is com- 
posed of the millstone grit, this rock has been carried to the 
height of ten or twelve hundred feet, so as to pass over the top of the 
mountain, and it lies scattered through the country for many miles 
east, between Newburgh and the Shongham mountain, and as there is — 
no other similar stone within two hundred miles, this is conclusive 
evidence that the violence of the surge carried the rock over the top 
of the mountain and left them in the position in which we now se 
them; some of the stones weigh from three to four tons. ; 
Professor Eaton, in his geological survey of the Kattskill or Alle 
ghany, says, that all the eastern slope of the Alleghany is capped or 
protected by the millstone grit, but what he called the millstone 
grit, I call the conglomerate, or puddingstone; both are form-— 
ed in part of quartz, but in the true millstone grit, the. fine. parts 
are formed by abrasion of the quartz only, while common sand mixed 
with globular pieces of quartz, forms what he calls the millstones grit 
of the Alleghany range. ie 
I have never been able to find any grooves or furrows, on the west 
side of the hills and ridges in the County ; nothing appears but the 
traces and breaches where the rocks have been torn up by some Vi0~ 
lent agent. It very rarely happens that any traces can” be found on 
the red argillaceous sandstone ; it is not sufficiently solid: to sustain 
1¢ force of heavy bodies moving in contact with it, although ‘in some 
instances the grooves appear for fifteen or twenty feet, and and then 
the strata 2 are: —— and B heoken; but the traces are ree on the : 
