588 GEOLOGY OF OLD HAMPSHIKE COUNTY, MASS. 



THE PELHAM RIVER AND THE "MORAINE TERRACE" SANDS ALONG THE 

 EASTERN VALLEY SIDE, JUST ABOVE THE LEVEL OF THE HIGH TERRACE. 



The continued melting of the ice at last restricted it to the Connecticut 

 Valley, and melting back from the steep rim of the valley on the east it 

 formed a great waterway all along the eastern side of the Amherst basin, 

 which continued south through the Belchertown notch along the eastern 

 edge of the Springfield basin. In it was deposited a great body of sand and 

 gravel (m t), occupying the position of a lateral moraine of the Connecticut 

 Valley glacier, but ha^dng rather the origin and structure of an esker.^ It 

 was a gi-eat temporary river bed, its eastern bank being the mountain side, 

 its western in part the low front ranges of the gneiss, ridges of till, and the 

 eastern end of the Holyoke range, but for the most part the eastern rim of 

 the great ice mass which still filled the valley and formed for much of the 

 way the bottom as well as the western bank of the stream. The heavy 

 sands deposited by this stream, where they rested upon a rock bottom, are 

 still flat-topped and rest against the rock on the east, with all the peculi- 

 arities of a river-bottom deposit, at a height of 50 to 60 feet above the 

 highest terrace of the Connecticut Lake which followed. This is true on 

 the West Pelham plain, and southward along the eastern part of the deposit, 

 while its western portion seems to have rested on the ice, and as the ice 

 melted this was di-opped to lower and lower levels, its bedding being 

 much shifted and confused by the process until it came to rest in a great 

 series of kettle-holed sands stretching down to and below the level of the 

 highest normal ten-ace of the Connecticut. This latter also has abundant 

 kettle-holes, from which I conclude that the deeply buried remnants of 

 the ice had not wholly disappeared when the great lake assumed its place 

 and entered upon its work of carving out its terrace flat in these kame 

 deposits. 



The normal terrace or bench of the Connecticut Lake is determined by 

 its agreement in level with the highest ten-ace on the other side of the valley, 

 where great deltas of the finest material, most delicately stratified, mark 

 the highest level of the waters, and where one passes from these directly 

 onto rock or till without crossing the complicated series of bedded deposits 

 on the eastern side which I have described. 



'It is the " moraine terrace" of President Hitchcock, an extremely apposite name, showing that 

 he had very clearly grasped the peculiarities of its formation. Surface Geology, page B3, 1860. 



