430 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



escaped, horses, cows and sheep were not so fortunate. Those 

 remaining shut up in the stables perished with thenn, as the houses 

 one after another were crushed and sunk in various places. But of 

 the poultry, two hens, and also a cock that was heard to crow most 

 lustily as the mansion in which he was cooped up sailed along, were 

 found alive after the event. 



The masses that blocked up the valley travelled with a height of 

 about sixty feet, and while their surface was slightly culminated, the 

 front of each terminated in a blunt point projecting in the middle 

 and lower part. As these great double-acting ploughshares were 

 propelled along, they turned up the soft mud from the bed of the 

 river, casting it on the bank on each side ; and the stench which 

 arose during the operation, caused probably by the disengagement 

 of sulphuretted hydrogen from the decaying vegetables displaced, 

 was so utterly intolerable, that no one could approach the river to 

 within 100 yards. Where the first mass struck the opposite bank 

 the height it attained was seventy-five feet, and from this the cul~ 

 minating ridges gradually recurved until they gained a position in 

 the middle of the valley, gradually lowering also until they reached 

 the height of sixty feet, as above mentioned. 



No sooner was the valley thus blocked up than the waters above 

 the impediment began to rise. Houses, logs and planks, and indeed 

 everything composed of wood, were set afloat for nine miles up, being 

 as far as the granite hills. But it was two days before the lake thus 

 formed attained a sufficient height to overtop the obstacle. The 

 water first found an escape by the gully between the original bank 

 on the left and the slope on the east side of the culminated impeding 

 mass, making a slight detour where favoured by a depression through 

 a wood round the point where the launch first struck the bank in 

 question ; and its erosive action thus put into operation was sufficient 

 in the course of six months to carry away nearly the whole of the 

 clay lodged in the valley. The quantity must have been several 

 millions pf tons ; and in the month of October so much had been 

 swept into Lake St. Peter, that the Maskinonge above the slip was 

 then not more than ten feet beyond its ordinary depth. 



Though the surface of the great area disturbed remained for some 

 time unbroken after the general movement began, it gradually sunk 

 as this continued, and at the period I saw the place, in the subse- 

 quent autumn, the bottom of the chasm was thirty feet below the 

 level of the surrounding country, while about 400 yards from the 

 river there was a sudden descent of fifteen feet more, from which 

 the ground sloped gently to the water's edge. There was then very 

 little of the original surface to be seen. Here and there was visible 

 a small grass-covered patch, and occasionally there might be seen, 

 still entire, twenty or thirty yards of the wooden fence used in the 

 country for the divisions of property. But nearly the whole area 

 exhibited the greatest confusion, being thrown up into a multitude 

 of parallel clay hillocks, from three to four feet high. No doubt 

 these mounds were occasioned by the pressure of mass against mass 

 in the direction of motion, at right angles to which would be their 



