PLEISTOCENE MARINE SUBMERGENCE / 



ABSENCE OF LAKES IN THE HUDSON-CHAMPLAIN 



VALLEY 



Following the latest ice sheet no waters were held in the valley 

 above sea level, and the earlier geologists were right in attributing 

 the deltas and shore features to an incursion of the sea. But in 

 later years the assumption of even higher elevation of the land 

 instead of lower at the time of the ice removal, and the postulation 

 of lakes in the valley instead of sea-level water, makes some 

 present discussion of the subject necessai"y. 



It is evident that no waters could be hemmed in by glacier ice on 

 the south ; hence there could be no glacier lakes. And the term 

 " glacial " applied to the Albany and Vermont waters is a misnomer. 

 The only possible high-level or lake waters would be " morainal " 

 or "drift barrier"; or lakes with land barrier. In other w^ords, 

 any nonmarine waters in the Hudson-Champlain valley w^ould have 

 required either- morainal blockade or uplift O'f land on the south. 



Long ago Upham assumed land uplift of the continental border 

 in order to hold up the Champlain high waters (5, page 486; 6, 

 page 508). We now find that the summit water plane in the valley, 

 clearly marked by abundance of shore phenomena (see plate 10), 

 does not drop to sea level until far south of Staten island, and the 

 gratuitous land barrier would have to lie far out to sea ; and would 

 have to extend around the New England coast so as to block off 

 Long Island sound. This conception of a land barrier has no basis 

 in any evidence or argument submitted, and may be dismissed. 

 Land uplift in the Glens Falls district sufficient to block the earlier 

 and higher Champlain waters is disproved later in this writing. 



Morainal dams might be postulated for tli^ narrow places in the 

 Hudson valley. The most suggestive location for a drift barrier is 

 at the Narrows, the crossing by the terminal moraine. But it will 

 be recognized that the escaping waters would effect a passage 

 through the narrow dam of morainal drift. The Hudson waters 

 were deep and long lived, as proved by the extensive and thick 

 clays and the broad deltas, and no drift barrier could stand up for 

 any length of time against heavy outflow. In this connection it 

 must be realized that the outflow carried not only the land drainage 

 of that time but the large volume of water from the melting glacier ; 

 and that after the ice front had receded as far north as Albany all 

 the drainage now carried by the St Lawrence river, augmented by 

 the ablation of a thousand miles of the ice front, passed out through 

 the Hudson valley. These facts apply also to any other location of 



