730 GEOLOGY OF OLD HAMPSHIRE COUNTY, MASS. 



the lake to hug the western shore; and as the river took the place of the 

 lake, it occupied the same position and cut very soon down into till or sand- 

 stone, and so was unable to swing in broad oscillations, as in the deeper 

 clay-filled Hadley basin. From the notch to Smiths Feiiy a narrow terrace, 

 or, for a distance, two narrow terraces, border the river on the west. On 

 the east the river is wearing into the great gorge terrace of Dry Brook Hill, 

 and a single sand slope of 1 88 feet touches the water's edge. From the 

 south end of this hill to Holyoke the first position of the river was much 

 farther east, and it has swung west to its present place and built on the east 

 side an early flood plain, long since abandoned, and the river has now cut 

 its bed deep in the sandstones and is thus prevented from oscillating. 

 D(Hibtless if the dam below were removed the water would run in rapids 

 o\'er this ground, as it does over the rocks above Turners Falls. There is 

 in all this distance scarcely a trace of any low terrace on the west side of 

 the river. 



Across Chicopee there is a fine, low terrace bounded on the east by a 

 high scarp of the high terrace, which eveiywhere shows till in great force 

 beneath the sands of the old lake. From the Chicopee River south to the 

 south line of the town the high terrace scarp comes forward to the river. 

 Across Springfield there is developed a complicated series of river terraces. 

 An incomplete terrace borders the stream opposite and above Hampden 

 Park. The business portion of the city is built upon the normal flood plain 

 of the river. Above this are two well-marked terraces, which send back 

 deep lobes to the north and south of the armory grounds, up old water 

 courses, and a remnant of one of these intermediate terraces is preserved 

 in the hill north of the Memorial Church, cut off" possibly by an oxbow, 

 the only one found in this basin upon the main stream. The low terrace 

 contracts to nothing on the south line of the town and widens again in 

 Longmeadow. 



On the west side of the river the low terraces expand south of Holyoke 

 into the broader meadows of West Springfield and Agawam. 



The series in all this distance is quite complicated, matching the oppo- 

 site side of the river. There is across West Springfield an early flood plain 

 raised well aljove the river, and around the entrance of the Westfield River 

 the incomplete terrace occupies broad areas from which the water is largely 

 kept out by artificial embankments. South of this tributary, across Agawam, 

 the system of later terraces is developed with a beauty not exceeded in the 



