460 W. Upham—Northern part of the Connecticut Valley 
face by a steep escarpment ; and their appearance is sometimes 
very striking, and even grand, as they rise in gigantic steps on 
the side of the valley, shaped with a smoothness, order and 
beauty, which could not be surpassed by art. 
e most interesting discovery made during the survey of 
this valley is, that a massive gravel ridge, often nearly covered 
by the alluvium of the highest terraces, extends from Lyme, 
. H., to Windsor, Vt., a distance of twenty-four miles. It is 
principally gravel, always waterworn, the largest pebbles be- 
ing one to two feet in diameter. with occasional layers one or 
two feet in thickness of coarse sharp sand. These deposits are 
very irregularly bedded, and a section always shows a some- 
what anticlinal stratification, conforming to the slopes of the 
ridge. Its height is 150 to 250 feet above the river, by which 
it has been frequently cut through, as well as by tributary 
streams. This ridge occupies nearly the middle of the valley, 
and as the river has cut its channel through the alluvium, this 
has been often a barrier rising steeply upon one side and pro- 
tecting the plains behind it. In two or three places it has been 
swept away by the river for a distance of one half mile to one 
mile, and below these places the terraces show by their coarse- 
ness that the ridge has supplied a portion of their material. 
Similar ridges of gravel have been often described by European 
geologists, under the various names of kames in Scotland, 
eskers in Ireland, and asar in Sweden. They have also been 
escribed by geologists in many portions of the northern 
United States. In both the Connecticut and Merrimack Val- 
leys they extend long distances, but have hitherto escaped no- 
tice, owing to the large amount of levelly stratified alluvium, 
forming the conspicuous terraces and plains, by which these 
underlying gravel ridges, or kames, are often nearly concealed. 
"he kames are thus shown by their position to be the oldest of 
our modified drift deposits. 
The series of kames already mentioned lie along the middle 
or lowest te of the valleys, which are bordered by high ranges 
of hills; but in the southeast part of New Hampshire, in some 
parts of Maine, and in eastern Massachusetts, where there are 
only scattered hills, with the valleys not much below the gen- 
eral level of the country, these ridges, of smaller size than in 
the great valleys, are found extending usually north and south 
without special regard to the present water-courses. 
The origin of the kames has been a.question much discussed 
by European geclogists, and the theory commonly accepted on 
both sides of the Atlantic was, that they were heaped up in 
these peculiar ridges and mounds through the agency of marine 
currents during a submergence of the land. Even if such 
ridges could be formed by this cause under any circumstances, 
