DEEP CUT IN UNION, N. H. 97 



road, and is 650 feet above the Connecticut. The third is the Franconia Notch, 

 which is about 2295 feet above the same river. And a fourth is the White Moun- 

 tain Notch, which is 1557 feet above. 



On the west side of Connecticut river we find the lofty Green Mountain range, 

 running parallel to the river, its culmination being some 30 miles distant. 

 Through this ridge there are two depressions occupied by railroads. The Rutland 

 and Burlington road crosses at the Mount Holly Gap, 1350 feet above Connecticut 

 river, at Bellows Falls. The Central Railroad passes the summit, near Montpelier, 

 930 feet above the Connecticut, at Lebanon. Still further north, the Passumpsic 

 and Connecticut Railroad (not yet finished) passes over the summit at about 900 

 feet above the Connecticut at West Lebanon. 



At Bellows Falls, the hills extending easterly and westerly to these two lofty 

 dividing ridges, crowd so closely upon the Connecticut as to leave only a nar- 

 row gorge, although the mountain on the east side of the river (Kilburn Peak, 

 formerly Fall Mountain, 1 828 feet above the top of the falls and 1114 feet above the 

 ocean) is the highest. Yet if this gap were closed, it would raise the waters high 

 enough to flow out laterally through some of the passes above mentioned as the 

 location of railroads. And when we see the evidence of erosion on the west face 

 of Kilburn Peak, to the height of 900 feet, we cannot but suspect that this gap 

 was once closed, and that the waters did spread out so as to form a lake, extending 

 to the dividing ridges east and west, and northwards perhaps even to Canada. 

 If, therefore, we could find evidence of the former passage of water through 

 some of the above named gaps, it would make such a conjecture almost certain. 

 Such evidence we do find at the Summit level of the Northern railroad, in Union, 

 two and a half miles from the station house in Canaan. 



In approaching this spot by railroad from Connecticut river, we ascend a small 

 tributary to Canaan. There we have before us a mountain ridge, running nearly 

 N. E. and S. W., with a deep depression in Union. To the north, as a part of the 

 ridge, lies Mount Carnagan, which I judged to be at least 1500 feet above the 

 railroad. The cut below will give some idea of the appearance of the range as we 

 approach it from the west. The stream has diminished to a small brook, which 



1 In 1856 the Class in Amherst College, that will graduate in 1857, visited Fall Mountain, and 

 formally imposed on it the name of Kilburn Peak; to commemorate the memory of two men by the 

 name of Kilburn and Peak, who, with their families, the earliest settlers of Walpole, performed a feat 

 of courage and self-defence at the foot of this mountain, perhaps more daring and extraordinary than the 

 whole history of Indian warfare in this country can present, and rivalling that of Leonidas and his 

 Spartans, at Thermopylae — See New Hampshire Historical Collections. 

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