576 GEOLOGY OF OLD HAMPSHIRE COrXTY, MASS. 



If we look north we see the sands divide on the ridge on which the 

 village of Helclieitowu is built, an eastern lobe passing up the broad valley 

 in Avhicli Jaliisli Brook now flows, the other running north at the western 

 foot of the ridge. While the three southern streams were now normal 

 tributaries of the lake, disturbed by ice only in their upper reaches or not 

 at all, these two northern lobes were the place of entrance of two tributary 

 streams which came down in courses largely supplied by the ice itself. 



Following up the east of these lobes we find it continuing east of 

 Belchertown village with a width of above half a mile, and northeast of the 

 villao-e widening into a still more extensive area of coarse sands of great 

 thickness — a fiUed-up lake at a high level — and then continuing northward 

 in the narrow, deep valley of Jabish Brook as a broad sand fiat on either 

 side of and much higher than the brook and rising rapidly until, coming 

 out on the higher ground, it widens and makes a broad curve to the west 

 and again to the north, in the extreme north of Belchertown, and continues 

 north in Pelham, through the high valley east of the asbestos mine, to join 

 the high terrace in the Pelham basin described later (p. 578). Wlien it 

 makes the second curve to the north it sends down a lobe to the south, and 

 it is here unsvipported upon the west by any rocky shore line, but dips 

 westward in a great terrace (b'*, PI. XXXV, D). It was here plainly sup- 

 ported for a time by the ice which still filled the Connecticut Valley to the 

 west, and on the breaching of this support the waters ran down along 

 the west side of the ridge, instead of the east, as before, cutting a terrace 

 in the sands already depo.sited, and, walled on the west by ice, joined the 

 Belchertown Lake by the western lobe as detailed below, running south 

 across the ice which filled the notch at the east end of the Holyoke range. 



Starting at its south end, one can follow the western lobe north past 

 Belchertown village for nearly 3 miles, and at the railroad station it is 471 

 feet above the sea. The low range then forming its western boundary sinks 

 down to the level of the plateau, and the plateait itself comes to a sudden 

 termination on a line (b**, PI. XXXV, D) which runs northeast from the end 

 of this range to join the Belchertown range. Standing anywhere on this 

 line, one is at the north end of the sands, and looks down, across a broad, 

 sloping area of till and rock, quite free from any covering of sands, ujjon a 

 billowy surface of "reticulated ridges" at 337 feet above sea, which con- 

 tain the Belchertown ponds, and lower, beyond these, to the west, upon the 

 eastern edge of the highest terrace flat of the Connecticut at about 290 feet. 



