14 THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 



this master stream with rock, sand and clay and completely changed the 

 course of drainage. Yet such is the story we can read if we have skill to 

 interpret the legend etched on the surface of the earth. After the drainage 

 had been thoroly blocked by the action of the glacier, the new streams in 

 places cut across the sides of the old valleys making deep gorges in the 

 rock walls ; in places they ran thru the preglacial valleys in a direction 

 opposite that held by the original stream. As the new streams cut thru the 

 rocky gorges they rushed with a force that carried the stony fragments from 

 the glacial wear and their own cutting out into the old valley beyond, 

 where the more gently flowing water dropped the sediment and spread it 

 out over the floor of the valley to the depth of a hundred feet, more or 

 less. The gravel and sand left by the earlier flood waters was later covered 

 by a thick bed of clay which has since weathered into a most excellent soil. 

 The present river has cut this broad gravel plain by a deep trench, leaving 

 most of the plain as a convenient terrace for the home of man. The early 

 settlers were quick to take advantage of this provision of nature. They 

 cleared away the forest and built their houses on this level, fertile land. 

 And that is how the boy came to live in this beautiful, wide valley. 



As the boy watched the neighbors build their houses of sawed pine 

 lumber brot on the cars from Chicago, he began to wonder why the house 

 he lived in had hewed oak logs for sills and joist, why the studding and 

 rafters and roof boards were oak, why the clapboards, doors and window 

 frames were walnut, and the shingles huge hand-riven strips of wood. Then 

 he learned that before the days of the railroad, before even lumber was brot 

 in rafts down the river, the earliest houses had been built of the timber 

 that grew on the valley sides. When he became old enough to prepare the 

 fuel for the kitchen stove the boy sawed up cords of walnut fence rails. 

 Now-a-days the walnut logs from which the rails had been split would be 

 worth a fortune. A few late survivors of the walnut forests, so abundant 

 in the early days, have recently been cut down and made into gun stocks. 



This beautiful valley, small portion of the environment of the grown, 

 ups, was a world of wide boundaries and rich experiences to the boy. The 

 remnants of the forests that once filled the valley were still abundant on 

 the sides and crests of the slopes. In them were found the berries in 

 summer, the nuts in autumn, rabbits and ^squirrels and grouse in winter. 

 The river, tho it sometimes caught a boy in a treacherous current running 

 off a point and carried him away to an untimely death, was a welcome 

 refuge on a hot summer day, a meeting place of all the urchins innocent 

 of bathing suits and unsuspicious of the blistering effects of a blazing sun. 

 In winter its frozen surface was a highway for wood-laden bob sleds, and 

 its smooth stretches offered the adventurous skater an avenue for extended 

 exploration, and to the boys and a few girls a crystal floor for winter 

 sport. A bonfire of driftwood on the sandy point of the island made a cosy 

 center for warming the tingling fingers and toes of the youth whom a bright 

 moon and crisp air had lured to the joys of a skating party. The sides of 

 the valley supplied a long gentle slope. for coasting ; and tho toboggans were 

 unknown the village blacksmith could put steel shoes on home-made sleds 

 that would make them swift and durable. 



In spring the friendly river became a raging . monster. The copious 

 rains and melting snow brot such floods that the ice crust of the stream was 

 lifted bodily and borne down the racing torrent. Tee jams were formed, 



