54 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



good form, and again west of West Chazy. As already stated 

 (page 19) this level of the lowering waters is not recognized dis- 

 tinctly south of the Mooers quadrangle. 



The Covey channel. The form, dimensions and relations of the 

 Covey pass are shown on plate 5. 



The postglacial drainage history of this critical locality is not 

 known in all its details. The locality is difficult to reach, far from 

 highways and farther from any hospitable place of entertainment. 

 It is a wild and romantic place ; forest on the north wall of the 

 channel, the roughest kind of rocky and swampy ground on the 

 south side ; on the west, at the head of the channel, a wide swamp 

 and lake; and on the east, downstream, steep or precipitous rock 

 clififs and ledges, dropping down to the exceedingly rough lower 

 ground. Attempts to reach the pass from the south were aban- 

 doned on account of the difficulty and limitation in time. 



The channel proper is a splendid example of an abandoned river 

 bed, over the hardest of sandstone ; but it is unusual in the absence 

 of any correlating delta. Below the normal channel we expect to 

 find the deposited detrital burden of the current. Here is nothing 

 of the sort. The low ground southeast is very rough, with no 

 deposit of ordinary detritus. The only loose material within the 

 grasp of the stream was whatever filling of drift the ice sheet had 

 left in the pass. 



It is more than possible that the recent history of the pass has 

 been duplicated by glaciation earlier than the Wisconsin (Labra- 

 dorian ice body), and this admission makes it uncertain as to how 

 much of the form and character of the channel are really due to 

 Iroquois outflow, and how much to earlier episodes of river work. 

 It seem's probable that the earliest water across the col was 

 tributary to a glacial lake, which we may call the Ellenburg lake, 

 having its control on the Altona rocks. As the Ellenburg waters 

 lowered, the Covey river cascaded over the Potsdam ledges and 

 removed whatever detritus it had dropped in the preceding flow. 

 Its latest cascading must have been the most vigorous and erosive. 

 Another query is whether the rocks on the lower ground are partly 

 glacial, rinsed off by the flood, or blocks plucked from the channel 

 by the latest river, or by more ancient rivers. 



The ravine or " gulf " below the upper broad channel, with its 

 lakelets is evidence of plunging flow to low receiving waters, prob- 

 ably at the marine level. The ravine is not correctly contoured, 

 for about midway between the head of the gulf and Covey Hill 

 post office is an extensive filling, with piled rocks, and broad swamps. 



