GORGES ON CONNECTICUT RIVER. 99 



of the stream, to see if I could not discover marks of former fluviatile action on 

 its face. Perhaps I ought to have concluded that drift agency had obliterated all 

 traces of river action. But I had noticed that bottoms of valleys have been more 

 affected by that agency than high mural points. Accordingly, on the face of this 

 mountain, I found much less of drift action than at its base : and I fancied that in 

 many places, especially in depressions of the surface, I could see the smoothing 

 and rounding effects so peculiar to running water. In general, however, long 

 exposure to atmospheric agencies has caused a scale to fall off from the surface, 

 and thus nearly destroyed its original character. But even in that case, the 

 general contour might not be destroyed, and thus we may sometimes detect river 

 action where the surface has become rough. 



But it is at the top of Kilburn Peak I think the marks of ancient currents of 

 water are most obvious. Here we sometimes see what seem to have been the 

 shores of ancient currents : namely, ragged walls running out in the direction of the 

 valley, that is north and south, but inclining to N. E. and S. W., as if the outlet of 

 the lake, in those early times, had that direction, because certain joints in the 

 rocks have the same, and thus made the erosion easier. But though the marks of 

 ancient fluviatile action on the west side and top of this mountain seemed to me 

 quite distinct, I do not forget how difficult it is to distinguish such action from that 

 of the ocean. But that the river itself was the chief agent in forming this gorge 

 of 800 feet high, I cannot doubt. 



3. Gorge at Brattleborough. — Wantastoguit mountain, at Brattleborough, 1050 feet 

 above the river, according to my measurements, corresponds in position and shape 

 so nearly to Kilburn Peak, and there is such a general resemblance between the 

 narrow valley of Brattleborough and that of Bellows Falls, that we can hardly 

 doubt that the agencies which operated in the one place acted in the other. I 

 found on the west face and top of Wantastoguit mountain, quite as distinct marks 

 of erosion by water as on Kilburn Peak, on the top perhaps a little more distinct ; 

 especially if we admit that the gulfs running N. N. E. and S. S. W., with ragged 

 mural faces, were caused b}' water from the ancient lake. Perhaps, however, in 

 the less elevation of the hills on the west side of Connecticut river, at Brattle- 

 borough, for several miles, we have stronger evidence of oceanic action. But I 

 cannot doubt, that though we have no cataract in the river at Brattleborough, as 

 at Bellows Falls, the stream has had an important agency in past ages and on a 

 former continent, in the removal of a barrier, which once dammed up the Con- 

 necticut at this place, and formed a lake reaching to Bellows Falls. That barrier 

 may, indeed, have extended a considerable part of the distance to Bellows Falls, 

 as the narrow and deep gulf reaching even beyond Putney testifies. 



4. Gorge between Mettaicampe and Sugar Loaf at Sunderland. — In another part 

 of this paper I have referred the erosions of most of this valley to oceanic action, 

 though I cannot doubt that the river exercised an important agency. How much, it 

 is impossible now to say : since like the gorge at Bellows Falls and Brattleborough, 

 the erosion was previous to the drift period. 



5. Gorge between Holyolee and Tom, at South Hadley. — The same remarks will 



