248 Facts relating to Diluvial Action. 
grooves were made by the Indians, before the settlement of the 
country by the white people. Large fragments of rocks or boul 
ders are found in every part of country, which fragments, in pass- 
ing over the surface of the strata, have doubtless made these fur- 
rows. Most of them have the corners worn off. There are but few 
instances in which other stones are found besides the natural. strata 
of the country. In some instances, the stones are composed altogeth- 
er of sea shells ; in two instances, I have found palm leaves and 
ferns incorporated in the soft gray slate. The soil is much fuller of 
the small particles of quartz and feldspar than in Orange county, or 
in the New England states. The disintegration produces a fine sand, 
upon which there rises an abundant growth of pine and hemlock. 
For three hundred miles to the westward, it is evident that the soil or 
earth was raised and increased very much by the deluge, and the 
mountains and ridges were lowered and robbed of their loose stones, 
by the same cause. The opening of about fifty miles wide through 
this part of the Alleghany ridge has probably tended in some measure ~ 
to control and direct the course of the current of water. ‘The mas- 
todon appears not to have been a native of this section of the country, 
but was probably an inhabitant of the champaign countries to the west, 
and the bodies may have been borne, on this mighty current, through 
falls and cataracts to the low, basin-like counties of Ulster and Or — 
ange, where they were finally deposited. Before the deluge, the 
counties of Orange and Ulster were probably formed of low sharp 
ridges of graywacke and limestone, and narrow short vallies running 
in different directions, with little or scarcely any soil or earth either ia 
the vallies, or on the low sharp ridges, and of course such countries 
would not be the natural residence of the unwieldy mastodon. The 
carcases of these animals were probably in some cases brought whole; 
in others they were lacerated and torn assunder, or bruised, and the 
bones broken, before the flesh had decayed and dropped from them. 
This appears from the place and the condition in which the be 
ae. found. The first skeleton found in Orange was taken out ofa 
ynear Crawford on the Newburgh turnpike. ‘This carcase 
was deposited entire and unbroken in a pond or basin of water, and 
after the flesh was decayed from the bones, they were over 
an area of about thirty feet square ; the outlet of this pond is omen 
rock ; the pond has been filled up by decayed vegetable substat 
and now forms a swamp of about ten acres covered ivanell 
black ash. In the north part of this swamp, ae — 
ia 
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