Environs of Kingston, Ont. 113 
RES 
from the inroads of the water and from other disturbing 
influences, beyond the special elevation of the Laurentian 
ridges before referred to, and the general elevation of the 
whole country here and to the north-eastward, to admit of 
the necessary fall for the great glaciers of the glacial 
period. The traces left by quaternary forces are seen in the 
limestone escarpments at many points in the environs of 
the city ; the broad river valleys now occupied by Little 
Cataraqui and Great Cataraqui Creeks; the ice grooves, 
visible in every direction, but developed on a magnificent 
scale, near the upper steamboat landing on Wolfe Island ; 
the great deposits of sand at Cataraqui and elsewhere; and 
the Laurentian and other boulders seattered everywhere, 
even on the top of the Fort Hill, where the huge block of 
unworn Potsdam sandstone, half buried in the soil, is a 
conspicuous object. 
Whilst the history of the site of the city and its environs 
during the vast ages which elapsed between the Trenton 
period and the close of the Tertiary, is almost a blank, yet, 
from the latter time, its history begins once more. Sugges- 
tions of great forces having been at work come, as we 
have seen, from all sides—from the lake bottom, the river 
valleys, the grooved rocks, the great stretches of escarp- 
ments, the scattered boulders. At the close of the Pliocene 
the Laurentian area in the townships to the northward 
and eastward was higher than it presently is, and cireum- 
stances seem to show that this elevation extended so far 
over the limestone area in the vicinity of Kingston that 
the lake shore at that time was probably outside of a line 
drawn from Stony Point, off Sacket’s Harbour, to South 
Bay Point, in Prince Edward County. A rise of 100 feet 
would bring to the surface nearly the entire area presently 
under water between this limiting line and the city- 
excepting what would then form two inlets or river chan- 
nels—the relicts, it may be, of two glaciers—the one on the 
west side of Duck Island and extending inwards towards 
Kingston to within three miles of the present Nine-mile 
Point Lighthouse, and the other on the east side of the 
