A NEW SUMMEE-KESORT. 



which were engulfed beneath the waters of the lake, and in the dark depths of 

 the other depressions. 



If you now pass around to the north side of the principal chasm or Green 

 Lake, you will find the walls of rock are considerably higher than on the south 

 side, the elevation imparting grandeur to the scene. But, as you go eastward 

 over the limestone pavement, honeycombed into large, open joints, and with its 

 curious, round, water-worn holes, you will find yourself again, not, as you ex- 

 pected, on a wide, level plateau extending northward, but on another high, nar- 

 row wall similar to Sentinel Point ; but this is a mole, not a promontory, and 

 extends around this side of the lake nearly to the gap, separating the valley of 

 Green Lake from two others of these remarkable deep depressions lying imme- 

 diately north of it. They are very large, deep, dark, crater-like sink-holes, covered 

 with heavy timber. Days might be spent in exploring the precipices and gorges 

 in these cool forests. It is less than a quarter of a mile northward to the fine 

 precipices which overlook the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western or Syracuse 

 and Binghamton Railway, between Jamesville and Syracuse, affording mag- 

 nificent views of Butternut Creek Valley. There is here also a very curious 

 cave, of considerable extent, caused by the front of the cliff sinking, owing to 

 its foundation giving way, and separating a great mass or pillar of the rock 

 from the main body, producing a very deep fissure. It is an unfinished ava- 

 lanche. Broken pieces of the upper part of the rock afterward fell into the 

 opening, arching it over. There is a similar and larger cave farther west. 



The most probable explanation of the general structure of this whole locality 

 is, that all these depressions are sink-holes, and that their subsidence was caused 

 by the former existence in the underlying Onondaga Salt group, beneath these 

 limestones, of large beds of rock-salt the most soluble of rocks which were 

 destroyed by underground solution, and that these singular depressions, Green 

 Lake and those that surround it, and probably other important features in Cen- 

 tral New York, have been caused by the consequent subsidence of the strata. 

 The ancient sea, which has eaten out the surface of the overlying Onondaga 

 limestone pavement, as above described, furnished the dissolving power, wear- 

 ing great cavities in the salt-beds. With such an exposure, their destruction 

 was inevitable. The solution was irregular, and the sinking corresponds to it 

 the narrow ribs of rock between the depressions being sustained either by simi- 

 lar ribs of salt saved from destruction, or, as is more probable, by the broken 

 materials which fell into the cavities in such a way as to sustain the circumfer- 

 ence of the pits. Their form indicates some unusual origin, and, accepting the 

 explanation or theory of their formation, it appeals to the imaginative powers 

 to fancy when the cataclysm occurred, and what were the sights and sounds 

 that attended it, which there was no eye to see and no ear to hear. It is true 

 that no rock-salt has ever been found in Onondaga County, salt being here 

 extensively manufactured from brine, the source of which is only a matter of 

 conjecture ; but no search has ever been made for it under the limestone, where 

 alone it could be protected. A bed of rock-salt, seventy feet thick, was found 

 in June, 1878, at Wyoming, New York, thirty-seven miles southwest of Roch- 

 ester, in a deep boring penetrating through the overlying formations into the 

 Onondaga salt-group ; and at Goderich, in Western Canada, beds of rock-salt 

 from seventy to one hundred and twenty-six feet in thickness have been dis- 



