THE MILLEKS RIVER DELTA. 627 



From Xorthfiekl Farms the Connecticut River runs in a canyon, with 

 sandstone on the riglit bank and crystalline rocks on the left, and at the 

 mouth of Millers River it turns west and northwest for about 5 miles 

 to Turners F;dls, cutting off a corner of the Grill sandstone massif, and 

 then runs south, skirting the diabase ridge of Greenfield. It thus gives 

 place for a great expansion of the delta of IVIillers River, aljout 5 miles 

 square, a broad elevated sand desert — the Montague plain — which on the 

 south sinks by a marked delta front to the low basin in which lies the 

 village of Montague. From Turners Falls back to the mouth of Millers 

 River one descends from the north edge of this plain by a singu; great 

 erosion scarp to the level of the river, or to the sandstone ledges int<j which 

 the stream has cut, thereb}' preventing any further ei'osion of the delta 

 beds. In all this latter distance it formerly extended north across where 

 the river now runs and rested against the sandstone, and above Factory 

 village a broad remnant of it still remains ; and at the mouth of Fall River, 

 opposite Turners Falls, it extended into the basin of Gre^ifield through 

 the gap in the trap range, and sent a large body of sand by this passage 

 into the Hadley Lake. The river poured with full current through this 

 pass, and it must have been a slight chance which determined it in the 

 direction of its present course and prevented it from choosing a channel 

 down the west side of the trap ridge through Greenfield. 



The Connecticut River was thus driven westward around the gi-eat 

 delta and compelled to cut a canyon between the sandstone and the crys- 

 talline rocks from Northfield Farms to the mouth of Millers River, and in 

 the sandstone on to and beyond Turners Falls, nearly down to the mouth of 

 the Deei-field River. 



The old bed of the Connecticut runs due south from Northfield Farms 

 past Millers Falls, and thence southwest to join its present bed at the mouth 

 of Sawmill River, in Montague. This course is marked by a line of kettle- 

 holes continued in the channel of the tliy brook mentioned above along the 

 plain north of Millers River, by tlie sharp bend of the latter, and by the 

 deep erosion basin that extends south from it. Farther on it is continued by 

 the line of large kettle-holes of which Green Pond and Lake Pleasant are 

 the most important, and by the course of Pond Brook and Sawmill River. 



Its eastern rocky border is exposed at the falls which give the name to 

 the \dllage of Millers Falls, in the north of Montague, and at the bottom of 

 the deep cuttings of the railroad just below the Millers Falls station. The 



