ELIZABETHTOWN AND PORT HENRY QUADRANGLES 1 5 



passes, and in whose bottoms, small isolated swampy places with 

 specially interesting flora may be found. If the northeast ridges 

 from 4 to 7 miles west of Mineville, as shown on the map, are 

 selected and the contours critically observed these features come 

 out strongly. The little isolated dells amid the higher mountains 

 present extremely picturesque spots with often the track of a deer 

 or even the footprint of a bear in the mud. 



** The Gulf." At the extreme southern edge of the Port Henry 

 quadrangle and in Bulwagga mountain, there is a deep gorge of ex- 

 traordinarily short length for its depth. It is one of the most 

 remarkable physiographic features of the entire area. Although 

 on the map a little forking brook is shown coming down from it 

 into the Ticonderoga quadrangle to the south, the amount of water 

 is very small and altogether insufficient to have produced the de- 

 pression. 



Bulwagga mountain is more of a plateau than a mountain sum- 

 mit. Near the head of the gorge it stands at the looo to iioo 

 contour. Suddenly and far more abruptly than the contours on the 

 map indicate, the surface drops three or four hundred feet precipi- 

 tously away to the eastward. From the projecting spur of Bul- 

 wagga, which bounds • it on the north side and which reaches a 

 little higher than the 1200 foot contour it must be 600-800 feet 

 to the bottom of the gorge. The entrance to the gorge is quite 

 flat at about the four or five hundred foot contour. To the east 

 tlie slope drops oflf with a moderate gradient to the 1401 foot 

 level of the Paleozoic floor. Attempts to get pictures from the 

 upper edge were not very successful as the drop is too abrupt for 

 a camera to take in a significant view. The whole physiographic 

 form and relations remind one of the barrancas of the Mexican 

 plateau in the State of Vera Cruz, and elsewhere. In the Mexican 

 region the streams have eaten back with surprising rapidity into 

 the plateau and their valleys fall away with great abruptness, but 

 in the case of this gorge, there is no water adequate to the task. 

 We must conclude that a small lobe of ice in the closing, and 

 perhaps also in the opening glacial epoch, ate back into the moun- 

 tains and developed a cirque, on a small scale. The practically 

 precipitous slopes can thus be explained. The bottom is now some- 

 what disguised by the blocks which have fallen in, and no rock 

 basin and pool such as should exist in a typical cirque are visible. 

 The master joints run n. 40 w. true, and coincide with the axis 

 of the gorge. Some such line of weakness must have located it 



