248 Facts relating to Diluvial Action. 



grooves were made by the Indians, before the settlement of the 

 country by the white people. Large fragments of rocks or boul- 

 ders are found in every part of country, which fragments, in pass- 

 ing over the surface of the strata, have doubtless made these fur- 

 rows. Most of them have the corners worn off. There are but few 

 instances in which other stones are found besides the natural strata 

 of the country.- In some instances, the stones are composed altogeth- 

 er of sea shells ; in two instances, I have found palm leaves and 

 ferns incorporated in the soft gray slate. The soil is much fuller of 

 the small particles of quartz and feldspar than in Orange county, or 

 in the New England states. The disintegration produces a fine sand, 

 upon which there rises an abundant growth of pine and hemlock. 

 For three hundred miles to the westward, it is evident that the soil or 

 earth was raised and increased very much by the deluge, and the 

 mountains and ridges were lowered and robbed of their loose stones, 

 by the same cause. The opening of about fifty miles wide through 

 this pan of the Alleghany ridge has probably tended in some measure 

 to control and direct the course of the current of water. The mas- 

 todon appears not to have been a native of this section of the country, 

 but was probably an inhabitant of the champaign countries to the west, 

 and the bodies may have been borne, on this mighty current, through 

 falls and cataracts to the low, basin-like counties of Ulster and Or- 

 ange, where they were finally deposited. Before the deluge, the 

 counties of Orange and Ulster were probably formed of low sharp 

 ridges of gray wacke and limestone, and narrow short vallies running 

 in different directions, with little or scarcely any soil or earth either in 

 the vallies, or on the low sharp ridges, and of course such countries 

 would not be the natural residence of the unwieldy mastodon. The 

 carcases of these animals were probably in some cases brought whole, 

 in others they were lacerated and torn assunder, or bruised, and the 

 bones broken, before the flesh had decayed and dropped from them. 

 This appears from the place and the condition in which the bones 

 are found. The first skeleton found in Orange was taken out of a 

 swamp near Crawford on the Newburgh turnpike. This carcase 

 was deposited entire and unbroken in a pond or basin of water, and 

 after the flesh was decayed from the bones, they were spread over 

 an area of about thirty feet square ; the outlet of this pond is a firm 

 rock ; the pond has been filled up by decayed vegetable substances, 

 and now forms a swamp of about ten acres covered with maple and 

 black ash. In the north part of this swamp, about two years ago, 



