WHETSTONE GULF AKD ITS PRE-GLAClAL VALLEY 485 



plateau with the main mass is situated at Boonville, at 1,135 feet above 

 the sea. Northwest of this town is a well formed plain or plateau at an 

 altitude of about 1,300 feet. To the east the steep slope faces the Black 

 River Valley, some distance beyond which the country is underlaid by 

 crystalline rocks at a much lower level. Immediately west of this plateau 

 is an escarpment rising abruptly to the summit tableland, about 1,900 

 feet above the sea. The rocks are composed of shales of the Utica and 

 Lorraine series, jointed and easily eroded. The summit is swampy, with 

 a large area drained through Whetstone Gulf (see figure 3). Whetstone 

 Gulf is a magnificent gorge 2 miles long, increasing to 1,000 feet in 

 width and 500 feet in depth. Two miles to the south, at the Gulf Sta- 

 tion, on a lumbering road at the border of the swamp, begins an insignifi- 

 cant gully. The little gully soon widens out into a valley with two or 

 more tributaries and all, together, make a broad, deep embayment in the 

 escarpment more than a mile wide, from which the drift filling has been 

 partly removed (see figure 3). It opens to the lower plain near the 

 hamlet of Houseville. This was the pre-Glacial drainage valley of the 

 upper plateau, while that of the present day descends through the nar- 

 row gorge of Whetstone Gulf. Other similar indentations of the upper 

 plateau also occur. 



Prospect Falls on Side of pre-Glacial Gorge 



Prospect Falls is situated on West Canada Creek, above Trenton Falls. 

 Its striking feature is the broad cataract, descending some 25 feet over 

 the northern wall of a buried canyon, which is only 200 to 300 feet 

 wide, closed by drift above and below the falls. The outlet of this basin 

 is through a narrow chasm in the southern rock wall, which is the begin- 

 ning of the canyon of Trenton Falls. Until these falls had receded to 

 this point the present basin was filled with drift with no cataract at 

 Prospect; but as Trenton Falls cut through this rock wall of the buried 

 channel the drift was removed and Prospect Falls commenced their 

 descent. This was so recent that the cataract has hardly commenced to 

 excavate a channel for itself in the newly exposed rock-bed. 



Such hanging Valleys in northern N"ev7 York no Evidence of 



GLACIAL Erosion 



Attention is called to these features, showing how that in this lately 

 ice-covered region the glaciers did little erosive work, and that the occur- 

 rence of hanging valleys is no evidence of glacial excavations, even in 



