216 Connecticut River Valley. 
of color, indicating that they, like the clay-beds, have been formed 
by diffusion and subsidence of their materials, in water. Other and 
generally sterile plains have doubtless been formed by a more sud- 
den process, and more violent action of water. 
In ancient lakes —The facts which have been stated must lead the 
way in accounting for the formation of the plains arranged in layers, 
situated so far above the highest inundations of the river. No one, 
who considers the power of currents and falling water, will maintain 
that Connecticut river has not lowered its bed, during a lapse of 
several thousand years. At some former period, a chain of lakes 
must have possessed the centre of the valley, connected by streams 
falling, as now at the rapids of the river, or more abruptly, from the 
level of higher lakes, to the level of others below. ‘The elevation 
of the lakes was at least as great, in different divisions of the valley, 
as that of the existing plains in the same divisions. ‘The hills which 
press upon the water’s edge, on either side of the Connecticut, at 
White river falls, were probably, at some former period, united by. 
an unbroken ledge of rocks, which lying across the present channel, 
formed the lower brim of a long basin, and sustained the waters of a 
lake reaching to the Fifteen mile falls, of varying width, correspond- 
ing with the distance of the hills which formed the boundary on op- 
posite sides. At Bellows falls was, probably, another rocky barrier, 
sustaining a lake thirty five miles long, extending to White river falls. 
Similar barriers existed below, probably one near Brattleborough, 
and others in succession, as far down as Middletown, below which the 
higher plains disappear from the course of the river. 
To raise a lake above the existing plains, the supposed barrier at 
White river falls, must have been more than two hundred feet higher 
than the present surface of the water at the same place. Such a 
barrier would have elevated the water above and beyond M’Indoo’s 
and Dodge’s falls, and half way up the Fifteen mile falls, giving to 
the lake alength of thirty five or forty miles, and an average breadth 
of about two miles. The well known ox-bow meadows, and the 
plains of Haverhill and Newbury, occupy nearly a central position 
in the basin of the lake described. North of this center, the Con- 
necticut river valley is one hundred miles in length, and from twen- 
ty to fifty miles broad, embracing a superficial extent of more than 
three thousand square miles. Over this surface fragments and rocky 
strata have been decaying thousands of years, and the finer earth 
produced by such decay, has been carried down by rains and floods, 
