246 Facts relating to Diluvial Action. 



That these large masses of rocks should be broken up and thrown 

 upon the the tops of high hills will appear in no way surprizing when 

 we consider what must be the effect of the precipitation of the cata- 

 racts into deep vallies and of their subsequent violent reflux over the 

 high hills ; a power more than sufficient to raise the large masses of 

 rock that were left on the high grounds in the country. 



That water has the power to carry rocks and other heavy bodies 

 over the tops of mountains, is evinced by the simple fact, that the only 

 place where the millstone is found within two hundred miles, is at 

 Kizerack, on the west side of Shonghara mountain, fifteen to twenty 

 miles from Esopus or Kingston, up the Roundout Hill. At this 

 place, all the country or Esopus millstones are sold. Now, over a 

 great part of the west side of Shongham mountain, which is com- 

 posed of the millstone grit, this rock has been carried to the 

 height of ten or twelve hundred feet, so as to pass over the top of the 

 mountain, and it lies scattered through the country for many miles 

 east, between Newburgh and the Shongham mountain, and as there is 

 no other similar stone within two hundred miles, this is conclusive 

 evidence that the violence of the surge carried the rock over the top 

 of the mountain and left them in the position in which we now see 

 them ; some of the stones weigh from three to four tons. 



Professor Eaton, in his geological survey of the Kattskill or Alle- 

 ghany, says, that all the eastern slope of the Alleghany is capped or 

 protected by the millstone grit, but what he called the millstone 

 grit, I call the conglomerate, or puddingstone ; both are form- 

 ed in part of quartz, but in the true millstone grit, the fine parts 

 are formed by abrasion of the quartz only, while common sand mixed 

 with globular pieces of quartz, forms what he calls the millstone grit 

 of the Alleghany range. 



I have never been able to find any grooves or furrows, on the west 

 side of the hills and ridges in the County ; nothing appears but the 

 traces and breaches where the rocks have been torn up by some vio- 

 lent agent. It very rarely happens that any traces can be found on 

 the red argillaceous sandstone ; it is not sufficiently solid to sustain 

 the force of heavy bodies moving in contact with it, although in some 

 instances the grooves appear for fifteen or twenty feet, and then 

 the strata are rough and broken, but the traces are mostly on the 

 solid puddingstone, and the common grey sandstone which remained 

 solid and unbroken at the deluge. In those cases where the old red 

 sandstone appears, if the slope or side of the hill faces the north, I have 

 seen three or four instances in which the furrows run in that direction 



