28 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



normal to the river. (The contour lines of the sheet are erroneous 

 in that they do not indicate this terrace form.) The upper limit 

 of the area is near the 640 foot level and from this it slopes gently 

 toward the river, terminating at the top of the river bluff. The 

 materials of the bluff are till. 



Another area of sands, smaller in extent, occurs on the opposite 

 side of the river. Its elevation at the highest part of the surface is 

 640 feet. 



These sands are interpreted as lacustrine deposits made in a body 

 of waters impounded behind the eastern end of the morainic belt. 

 The moraine evidently originally extended to the foot of the Lu- 

 zerne mountain around which the present river flows. As the ice 

 sheet withdrew to the north, waters gathered in a depression back 

 of the dam made by the moraine where it abutted against the south- 

 ward-extending slope of the mountain. At a later time the river 

 established its course through the lake and eventually swept away 

 the greater portion of the deposits made in the lake and cut through 

 them into the underlying till, resulting in the existing topography. 



It is possible that the waters of this eastern lake were in fact 

 continuous with those of Lake Corinth. Assuming that the latter 

 stood at 660 feet elevation, the contour lines of the sheet indicate that 

 a connection between the two may have existed. There is, however, 

 no proof of this in the present distribution of the deposits. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUDSON CHANNEL 

 FROM CORINTH EASTWARD 



Reference has already been made (page 10) to evidences derived 

 from topography that in a former geological period a stream occu- 

 pying the course of the present Hudson north of Corinth then 

 flowed southward across the area of the Saratoga quadrangle, fol- 

 lowing the trough of the Paleozoic basin. Miller 1 has shown that 

 this stream was not the preglacial Hudson, but had its source on 

 the south siide of a divide at Stony Creek (about 16 miles north of 

 Corinth) which then separated the drainage basin of the upper 

 Hudson from that of the southward flowing stream (named by 

 Miller the Luzerne river). During Pleistocene times the Pludson 

 river — the Stony Creek divide having been breached by erosion — 

 took possession of the channel of the Luzerne river as far as Corinth 

 and there became diverted into its present course from Corinth east- 

 ward to near ( Hens Falls, where it entered its old preglacial channel. 



1 0/>. cit., p. [85. 



