CHAPTER XIX. 



THE CHAMPLAIN PERIOD (Continued). 



THE CONJ^ECTICUT RIVER LAKES. 



INTRODUCTION. 



"About -4 miles above Si)utli Hadley the Connecticut passes between 

 the two large mountains, Tom and Holyoke, having apparently made here 

 in ancient times a breach in tliis range and forced its passage. By the old 

 people in Northampton I was informed many years since of an Indian tra- 

 dition that the great valley north of these mountains was once a lake. The 

 story is certainly not improbable. From an attentive sm'vey of the country 

 along this river, 1 have no diflftculty in believing that a chain of lakes occu- 

 pied the several expansions at some distant period of time. Here certainly 

 the general geography of the country and the particular appearance of the 

 scenery near the river are favorable to this opinion." ' This is the earliest 

 geological discussion of the subject. Still more interesting is the eai-liest 

 discussion by President Hitchcock of the ancient lakes of the Connecticut,^ 

 which he believed to have been drained ])y the cutting down of the gorge 

 below Middletown, Connecticut, and their lessened remnants drained in 

 turn by tlie cutting of the notches in the trap ridges. 



The abundant deposits of the glacial lakes of the region east of the 

 river in the main antedate those of the valley itself; those of the lakes to 

 the west are mt)re strictly synchi-onous with, or perhaps a little later than, 

 the valley deposits. 



That the ice was thrust forward as a valley glacier beyond the front of 

 the inland ice appears clear from tl;e disposition of the lower of these lake 

 and stream deposits (mt, PI. XXXV, C, D) along the eastern border (see 

 p. 588). That it was thrust forward into deep water in the valley, in its 



' President Timothy Dwight's Travels in New England, Vol. I, 1822, p. 325. 

 =^ Am. ,Jour. Sci., l8t series, Vol. VII, 1824, p. 16. 

 >rON XXIX 39 609 



