PROOFS OF submergp:xce 291 



De Geer saw some of the heavy beach features in the Champlain Val- 

 ley, but failed, like most observers, to determine the summit level. Saint 

 Albans, Vermont, he gives as 658 feet. The true figures are 740 feet. 



N". H. Darton, in 189 1, describing the geology of Albany and Ulster 

 counties, also recognized the estuarine origin of the Hudson Valley clays 

 and sands (18) : 



"The stratified sands aud clays occupy the great plain of the Hudson and 

 Moliavvk valleys. The clays are the basal member and the sands cap them to 

 a greater or less thickness. . . . They lie on glacial drift, for the most part 

 of no great thickness, and on the glaciated surface of the Hudson River shales 

 and sandstones. Both the underlying drift and rocks extend to the surface in 

 some localities as islands where the clays and sands were deposited around 

 them. These clays and sands were deposited in the Champlain period, which 

 followed the last glacial invasion of the region. This period was one of sub- 

 mergence, in which the waters of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers extended 

 far above their present levels and overflowed all the country west to the 

 Helderberg escarpment or the hills adjoining it to the east and north. . . . 

 To the northward there were open waters to Lake George and Lake Champlain 

 over a wide area" (page 260). 



". . . The clays and sands constitute a terrace of varying width border- 

 ing the Hudson River. . . . Thej' are the products of a submergence at the 

 close of the Glacial epoch, which is known as the Champlain period. During 

 this submergence the waters of the Hudson extended over the area now occu- 

 pied by the deposits, which have since been elevated and cut into by the pres- 

 ent drainage. 



"These deposits extend up to an altitude averaging about 250 feet to the 

 westward and to considerably less along the Hudson. They consist normally 

 of a clay deposit below overlaid to a greater or less thickness by sand. At 

 points where the streams entered the submerged area at the time of the depo- 

 sition of these deposits there are also found delta deposits of coarser ma- 

 terials. The clays lie on thin, irregular masses of glacial sands and gravels 

 or on glaciated surfaces of rocks" (19, page 369). 



Several years of close study by the Avriter of the terraces and shore 

 phenomena in the Hudson-Champlain Valley fully confirms the testi- 

 mony of the earlier geologists. Practically continuous and conspicuous 

 evidences of standing water extend up the Hudson-Champlain, rising 

 from 120 feet above tide at Croton Point to 800 feet in Vermont. This 

 is not a theor}^, but a fact, open to any one with eyes to see plain shore 

 features. Now, the waters were either oceanic — that is, sealevel or con- 

 fluent with the sea — or they were glacial. A little fair consideration of 

 the factors involved will positively rule out glacial waters. The waters 

 were deep and long-lived. No morainal drift barrier could stand up for 

 any time against the heavy outflow; for after the ice-front had receded 

 as far north as Albany all the drainage now carried by the Saint Law- 



