GLACIAL AND POST-GLACIAL HISTORY 645 



If the Narrows gap and Arthur Kih gap were started as outlets 

 of independent lakes at the ice-front, then by the time the ice had 

 retreated far enough to permit these water bodies to coalesce, either 

 both had been cut below the divide now crossed by Kill van KuU, and 

 had thus produced independent water bodies in Newark Bay and New 

 York Bay, or they became rival outlets to a common water body. 

 If they became rivals, then one of the following things happened: 

 One of them drew off the water below the level of the other, or before 

 either one was victorious both had succeeded in cutting below the 

 level of the land along Kill van Kull, and thus produced independent 

 water bodies (in Newark Bay and New York Bay). If one was 

 victorious, the Narrows gap, since it finally became the deeper, presum- 

 ably was the one. Under this interpretation the Newark Bay Lake 

 became tributary to Hudson Lake. Arthur Kill may have remained, 

 however, the channel of the Rahway-Woodbridge Creek system 

 (see Fig. 8), and thus have been deepened more. In either event, 

 the Newark Bay water body became independent and drained either 

 through Arthur Kill or by way of Kill van Kull. The deposits in 

 the lowlands west of the Palisade Ridge were made in this independent 

 water body. If Arthur Kill remained the outlet, then the present 

 Kill van Kull channel is due either to tidal scour or to the work of a 

 tributary working back from the Hudson, or to both. If Arthur 

 Kill was abandoned, and Kill van Kull was the outlet of this Newark 

 Bay Lake, the present channel is due to cutting by the outflow of its 

 waters and to subsequent tidal scour, and Arthur Kih gap is due 

 partly to cutting as an outlet of a lake, and later to cutting by the 

 Rahway-Woodbridge Creek, and no doubt also to some recent tidal 

 scour. 



If the present channels be accepted as inheritances from the past, 

 and not due to tidal scour, or at least not enough to obscure their former 

 relations, it would seem that the Hackensack-Passaic system, along 

 with Elizabeth River, finally became tributary to the Hudson through 

 Kill van Kull on the disappearance of Newark Bay Lake, and that 

 the Rahway River with Woodbridge Creek formed a system flowing 

 through the Arthur Kill gap. If the submerged channel outside the 

 moraine near Princess Bay Light, likewise is an inheritance from the 

 past and not due wholly to tidal scour, the Rahway-Woodbridge 



